“I’d Die For It Today” - Ex Navy SEALs Reveal Truth About Osama Bin Laden & Future of War | PBD Podcast | Ep. 573

Summary

PBD Podcast Episode Summary: “I’d Die For It Today” - Ex Navy SEALs Reveal Truth About Osama Bin Laden & Future of War | Ep. 573

Release Date: April 9, 2025

In Episode 573 of the PBD Podcast, titled “I’d Die For It Today,” host Cole Fackler engages in a profound and candid conversation with former Navy SEALs DJ Shipley and Robert O'Neill. The episode delves deep into the realities of military operations, the personal sacrifices made by SEALs, the future of warfare, and the challenges of transitioning to civilian life. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. Introduction and Participant Background (00:00 – 03:03)

The episode opens with a lighthearted exchange among Cole Fackler, DJ Shipley, and Robert O'Neill, establishing their camaraderie and shared military background. Cole clarifies that while DJ and Robert are not brothers, they share a close-knit bond formed through their service in the Navy SEALs.

Notable Quote:

• Cole Fackler [02:05]: “When you're around military guys, they're typically talkers, jokes, prank, the whole night.”

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2. Osama bin Laden's Death and Burial (33:00 – 40:58)

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden. Robert O'Neill provides his firsthand perspective on the decision to bury bin Laden at sea, emphasizing the strategic intent to prevent bin Laden from becoming a martyr.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [34:04]: “If you do that, you end up making him a martyr even more and growing his following even more. Like, look what he sacrificed for the cause.”
• Cole Fackler [34:16]: “Why is it we've only done this once with bin Laden, and how does that compare to historical precedents?”

The conversation touches upon the rarity of burying enemy combatants at sea, drawing parallels to fictional representations like the Transformers movie where Megatron was dumped in the ocean.

Notable Quote:

• DJ Shipley [35:12]: “From my understanding, too, based off of the religion, they have to be buried within 24 hours. So that was kind of, from my understanding, a respectful way to, you know, kind of honor his religion.”

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3. Personal Challenges of Being a SEAL (02:05 – 06:11)

The trio delves into the personal toll of being a Navy SEAL, particularly focusing on the difficulties of maintaining personal relationships. Robert shares his experiences of prolonged separations and the strain it places on marriages, highlighting a high divorce rate among SEALs.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [04:29]: “Unless you want me to surrender in.”
• DJ Shipley [04:34]: “Normally you're gone at least 300 days a year over, probably. We're terrible at communicating.”

The conversation underscores the necessity of compartmentalizing personal life to remain mission-focused, often at the expense of family life.

Notable Quote:

• Robert O'Neill [06:46]: “I married a unicorn. That's the only reason I was an idealist.”

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4. Camaraderie and Rivalry: East Coast vs. West Coast SEALs (41:19 – 44:46)

A lively discussion ensues about the perceived differences between East Coast and West Coast SEAL teams. DJ Shipley and Robert O'Neill share anecdotes illustrating the tight-knit nature of East Coast teams compared to the more dispersed West Coast counterparts.

Notable Quotes:

• DJ Shipley [41:19]: “It's a much tighter knit on the east coast because it's not so spread out in San Diego.”
• Robert O'Neill [42:42]: “Every place you go to eat, you look around, you just know everybody. So it feels like you're in one big family.”

The segment highlights how geographic locations influence team dynamics, with East Coast teams exhibiting stronger internal bonds due to proximity.

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5. Secure Communications and Technology (28:05 – 33:18)

The conversation shifts to the use of secure communication platforms like Signal and Silent Circle within SEAL teams. Robert recounts an incident where a National Security Advisor’s Signal group was inadvertently joined by a reporter, illustrating the human element in maintaining operational security.

Notable Quote:

• Robert O'Neill [28:05]: “It's just a group chat, you have a signal thread. I'm sure you're on them too, that if that thing gets leaked and the photos that you share with your old buddies, something you don't want out there, it's the same thing.”

The discussion emphasizes the balance between leveraging technology for secure communications and the inherent risks of human error.

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6. Leadership and Loyalty in the SEAL Teams (52:28 – 57:07)

Robert reminisces about his esteemed platoon chief, Barrett Johnson, whose exemplary leadership set a high standard for the team. Barrett’s dedication and embodiment of SEAL values left a lasting impact on Robert, reinforcing the importance of leading by example.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [52:28]: “He led by example, but he was one of those guys that, I mean, he really embodied... I'm never going to ask you to do anything I haven't done.”

The segment underscores how strong leadership fosters loyalty and elevates team performance.

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7. Mental Resilience and Focus During Missions (17:23 – 24:26)

DJ Shipley and Robert discuss the mental strategies SEALs employ to maintain focus during missions. They introduce the concept of "dials," where personal life aspects are compartmentalized to ensure undivided attention to the mission.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [23:07]: “Dials not switches. Every time. So switch meaning, you know, I joined the Navy at 17 years old... You have to operate on dials.”
• DJ Shipley [24:26]: “Being able to dial down family dial work up 100% I think too. It's a sacrifice wherever your goals are and wherever you want to go.”

This approach highlights the extreme levels of discipline and self-control required to perform effectively under high-stress conditions.

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8. Future of Warfare: Technology and AI Threats (70:51 – 112:12)

A substantial portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing the evolving landscape of warfare, particularly the integration of advanced technologies like AI and robotics. The guests express concerns about autonomous weapons and the potential for AI-driven conflicts, drawing parallels to popular culture representations like Terminator.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [97:05]: “It's almost like you're in a defensive posture. Like, we've prepped for everything we know right now. We have contingencies for the unknowns.”
• DJ Shipley [112:12]: “It's been impossible since there's a war being going on to be able to mine them.”

They debate whether technological advancements have outpaced defensive capabilities, emphasizing the need for continuous evolution in military strategies to counter emerging threats.

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9. Transitioning to Civilian Life and Mental Health (125:07 – 139:03)

The discussion turns to the daunting challenges SEALs face when transitioning to civilian life. Both DJ Shipley and Robert O'Neill share personal experiences dealing with PTSD, rebuilding relationships, and reinventing their identities post-service.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [125:07]: “I never had that opportunity. I would love to have that.”
• DJ Shipley [134:52]: “We did the psychedelic treatment down in Mexico through vets and that was a great reset.”

They highlight the importance of maintaining routines, seeking supportive communities, and prioritizing mental and physical health to navigate the complexities of post-military life.

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10. Current Ventures: GBRS Group (136:22 – 140:36)

DJ Shipley introduces their entrepreneurial venture, GBRS Group, established in September 2019. The company focuses on developing tactical gear, training programs, and other products tailored to military and civilian markets.

Notable Quotes:

• DJ Shipley [136:22]: “We have a number of hard goods, soft goods, branded T-shirts, hats, subscription apps, workout, Patreon and training.”
• Robert O'Neill [138:30]: “We wanted to pass on that knowledge... not having to reinvent ourselves.”

GBRS Group's growth to nearly 40 employees underscores the successful transition from military service to business leadership, driven by a desire to share tactical expertise and support fellow veterans.

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11. War Policies and Political Leadership (123:07 – 130:01)

The conversation delves into the impact of political leadership on military operations. Robert expresses strong opinions about President Trump’s diplomatic approach, emphasizing that effective leadership is characterized by action and results rather than mere rhetoric.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [125:07]: “If Trump was president, Russia would have invaded Ukraine.”
• Cole Fackler [131:57]: “What do you think about people that are telling the news or they're working for CNN or Fox or MSNBC or NBC?”

They discuss the importance of non-partisan loyalty and the critical role of leaders in shaping military success and national security.

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12. Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts (140:00 – 140:56)

The episode concludes with heartfelt acknowledgments of each other’s service and business endeavors. DJ Shipley and Robert O'Neill encourage listeners to support GBRS Group, emphasizing their commitment to fostering resilience and excellence both in and out of military contexts.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert O'Neill [140:40]: “Cover everything from flat range shooting, mental health, mental resiliency, physical education.”
• DJ Shipley [140:52]: “There's something special about fighting for America and our freedom.”

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Key Takeaways:

1. Mission Focus Over Personal Life: SEALs employ extreme compartmentalization to maintain mission focus, often at the expense of personal relationships and mental health.
2. Leadership by Example: Strong, exemplary leaders like Barrett Johnson are pivotal in fostering loyalty, discipline, and high-performance standards within SEAL teams.
3. Technological Advancements and Future Threats: The integration of AI and robotics in warfare presents new challenges, necessitating continuous evolution in military strategies and defenses.
4. Transition Challenges: Moving from military to civilian life is fraught with difficulties, including PTSD, identity crises, and rebuilding family relationships. Support networks and structured routines are crucial for successful reintegration.
5. Entrepreneurial Ventures: Former SEALs like DJ Shipley and Robert O'Neill successfully translate their tactical expertise into business ventures, providing valuable products and training to both military and civilian communities.
6. Political Impact on Military Operations: Effective military outcomes are heavily influenced by political leadership and policies, underscoring the need for non-partisan loyalty and decisive action.

Conclusion:

Episode 573 of the PBD Podcast offers an unfiltered glimpse into the lives of former Navy SEALs, highlighting the immense sacrifices made in service to the nation and the ongoing evolution of warfare. Through candid discussions, the guests shed light on both the camaraderie and the personal struggles inherent to their roles, while also addressing pressing future challenges in military strategy and technology. Their transition to civilian life and entrepreneurial success serves as an inspiring narrative of resilience and adaptability.

For more insights and to support their initiatives, listeners are encouraged to visit GBRS Group.

Transcript

[DJ Shipley]

No, I've never said that on camera.

[Cole Fackler]

Really? Do you remember where you were when we heard that Osama bin Laden was caught, conducted an operation? He was killed. Killed.

[Robert O'Neill]

Osama bin Laden.

[Cole Fackler]

May 2, 2011. And then we hear the story that the body's being dumped in the middle of the ocean.

[Robert O'Neill]

And if you do that, you end up making him a martyr even more and growing his following even more. Like, look what he sacrificed for the cause.

[Cole Fackler]

Was it ever a point where it was so close that if this thing happens and this triggers this, we could be in a World War three overnight.

[Robert O'Neill]

Potentially. Potentially.

[Cole Fackler]

I want to believe that our military is already ready for the 2045 war. Not the 2025 war. What new threats are we gonna have 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now?

[DJ Shipley]

We've seen it. Terminator.

[Cole Fackler]

When I heard that, I'm like, it's a little weird. I'm questioning it.

[Robert O'Neill]

And I'll be honest. Trump tanked us when we were on the ramp getting ready to go. He solved it, however he does, whatever he does. He called and literally stopped us on the ramp.

[Cole Fackler]

Who would love to be on those phone calls? Just to hear what he says.

[Robert O'Neill]

It'd break the Internet. I hate when people badmouth the President.

[DJ Shipley]

There's something special about fighting for America and our freedom.

[Cole Fackler]

How was it for you with your father? He was a seal. So was he. Gone all the time. And you still had a relationship with him?

[Robert O'Neill]

Gone.

[Cole Fackler]

But it still made you want to be a seal.

[Robert O'Neill]

That's the only thing you know.

[Cole Fackler]

What is it with this occupation that makes it so difficult to. To keep your marriage intact?

[Robert O'Neill]

You can take that one. Unless you want me to surrender in.

[DJ Shipley]

Town long enough to get in a fight, then go out of town. Forget about it. My space ruined DJ's life.

[Cole Fackler]

My space.

[Robert O'Neill]

What happened to me?

[Cole Fackler]

Dude, the way you're talking, did you ever think you were making Adam? What's your point? The future look looks bright.

[DJ Shipley]

My handshake is better than anything I ever saw.

[Robert O'Neill]

It's right here.

[Cole Fackler]

You are one of one. My son's right.

[Robert O'Neill]

I think I've said this.

[Cole Fackler]

All right, listen, we're getting started. We started off with, you know, when you're around military guys, they're typically talkers, jokes, prank, the whole night. But anyways, today we have a special treatment podcast. DJ Shipley and Cole Fackler, so. And you're not brothers, just to make that clear, right?

[Robert O'Neill]

Kinda. As far as we know. Might as well be.

[Cole Fackler]

Might as well be. Right?

[Robert O'Neill]

We grew up in the same area. I mean, separated. A Couple miles from each other's high school, joining Navy at the same time.

[Cole Fackler]

How long have you guys known each other? Since what age?

[Robert O'Neill]

I met him when I was 18.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, 22. Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

So since 18.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

But you guys didn't know each other, like, and you grew up two miles apart?

[DJ Shipley]

About 20 or so. I mean, we met in Buds, and we, weirdly enough, had a very mirroring career the entire time.

[Cole Fackler]

Like, were you guys typically stationed at the same place or.

[DJ Shipley]

No, same team, same command, same everything.

[Cole Fackler]

So that's the part that's like Seal Team 10, 17 years. Like, same hat, same watch. Like, best. Best buds outside. I mean, obviously, buds is one thing, but best of buds as well. Friends and in business together, roommates.

[Robert O'Neill]

Been each other's best man multiple times now. Thanks, Nicole.

[DJ Shipley]

He's been mine twice. You know, I had to try a.

[Cole Fackler]

Couple out, but you kind of got it down now. You feel pretty confident about this one.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, she's actually outlasted both of them combined.

[Cole Fackler]

Really? So what is it with that, by the way? You know, my friend was when I was in the Army, I wanted to go. I interviewed at 18 Delta to be an 18 Delta at 5th group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And I wanted to go Sears and go to DLI because I spoke five languages. So they said, you're going to go to, you know, Fort, or that's where the DLI was back in the days, you know, they called it. What was it called? The Planet or something like that. Right. I think it was in Carmel. And so the orders come back. I decide to get out. He gets the orders, he leaves. He ends up becoming Delta for 12 years. Loves it, the project, operations, all this stuff. I don't talk to him for many years. I thought something happened to him. Finally, we link up. He tells me what's going on. I said, let's meet up. We go to Madrid. We meet at El Clasico. Soccer match between Messi and Ronaldo. And I think at the time when I met him, he was on his third marriage. What is it with this occupation that makes it so difficult to keep your marriage intact?

[Robert O'Neill]

You can take that one unless you want me to send it. I barely squeaked by.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, I think the schedule's super challenging. Normally you're gone at least 300 days a year over, probably. We're terrible at communicating. Great at bottling everything up in town long enough to get in a fight, then go out of town, forget about it.

[Cole Fackler]

In town long enough to get into a fight with your wife, and then.

[DJ Shipley]

You leave yeah, yeah. So you never settle anything. You just kind of rinse and repeat. And I think again, the schedule, our entire time in the military was all war. So you're losing friends, that kind of stress. You're a single mom, working mom, and you kind of travel like a rock star.

[Cole Fackler]

So you, you travel like a rock star while they're behind.

[DJ Shipley]

Well, I mean, when 20 of us that look like us walk into a bar, attract some attention.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay, so do. Cuz when I went through the recruiting, the guy said to me, says, go interview three guys before you even think about doing this. I said, okay, no problem. So I go in. First guy says, you want to get married and have kids? I said, yeah, absolutely. He says, this not the career for you. I said, why not? He says, because this is your wife, your career. You're going to be gone, you're going to be traveling, you're going to be there. Go to the second guy. Do you want to get married and have kids? I do. Well, this is, you're not going to be able to do well. So they're scaring you away from being, getting married, building a family. Is that also what you guys went through, orientation wise, where some of the guys are telling you about getting married or they're saying, no, support it, get married, it's fine, it's going to work out.

[DJ Shipley]

No, I mean, there were definitely rock stars. And you look back at some of the guys, they've been married 20 plus years. DJ Patsy hitting over 15.

[Cole Fackler]

Like you've been married 20 plus years.

[Robert O'Neill]

15, 15 years.

[DJ Shipley]

So I mean, there are definitely guys that have solid families. It's like, I don't know how they did it, but then there's kind of the reverse where they get divorced a lot. But the support family, family definitely say came first. But I think the hard, hard part for us was switching it off. That's what we kind of talk about dials and switches. The work required you to be 100% on all the time, and everything else took second.

[Cole Fackler]

How'd you make it work?

[Robert O'Neill]

15 years, I didn't. I married a unicorn. That's the only reason I was an idealist. You know, I grew up in the SEAL teams. My dad was a seal. The only male influence I had my entire life were Navy seals. And most of them were divorced. And that was just the culture. This thing comes first. You come home, drop off a bag of dirty laundry, grab new clothes and leave again. And that's exactly what I did. I just, I got really fortunate because my wife was already married to A seal. Unfortunately, he was killed. So she'd been through the entire gambit already. And I think that was a lot of my hesitation is I didn't want to stop doing that job. Training so hard, it's so long, it's so arduous. You don't ever want to leave it. It's like, you know, you're playing professional sports. I don't want to take any time away. I don't. As soon as I leave. I can't give you any bandwidth right now because it's not going to help me overseas. You have to start compartmentalizing. And that just builds up a resentment time and time again. And when you come home, you're so stressed out. I mean, two hand texting, you're in the group chat. I've got to get ready for this trip. You're missing ballet recitals and anniversaries and birthdays because none of it truly matters at that point because you're trying to lay a foundation. And unfortunately, you realize you're never going to have that foundation you want. You just keep adding layer after layer after layer, and you never build in time for them. So that's why we do talk about dials. You know, if you're brand new, brand new guy gets on the team and you have no external commitments, no wife, no family, no picket fence, no Labrador, I can roll that dial all the way to a 10 and I can be that Kobe Bryant. I can live this one thing at 100% until I do have a rock solid foundation. Then I add in a girlfriend that turns into fiance. But I have to operate on dials. And for us, we just rolled that whole thing over and never backed it off. Now we just started stacking stuff on top of it. And it's really hard to. It's really hard to split your time and focus. And a lot of them, they're just not meant to do it. Guys marry their high school sweethearts. You've never been apart for two weeks before. Now you're gone for nine months.

[Cole Fackler]

How do you do that? I mean, it's the.

[Robert O'Neill]

You love that job so much, you literally just wallow it off. You don't even think about. I never thought about it.

[DJ Shipley]

You just compartmentalize it. Both of us are our firstborns. We both left on separate deployments three weeks after they were born. And both of those deployments that we were on were probably our worst. So we came back to a five month old and just super kind of torn up from the deployment too. And, you know, not easy how was.

[Cole Fackler]

It for you with your father? If he was a seal, so was he? Gone all the time. And you still had a relationship with.

[Robert O'Neill]

Him all the time? Gone.

[Cole Fackler]

He's still your hero, though.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, up until a certain point he was. I mean, when he graduated buds, my mom was nine months pregnant with me. So his entire time in the SEAL teams, I was with him. But he's just gone. I mean, I think he did like 13, 13 deployments, each one six months long, and there's no break in between. Six month workup, home for a while, gone, gone, gone. And then all the training trips in between. Everyone's a two or three week trip. You're home for two days, geared up, send it again, send it again.

[Cole Fackler]

From the day you were born till you were, you know, 13. How often would you see him?

[Robert O'Neill]

If you went combined total, less than three months out of the year.

[Cole Fackler]

Less than three months out of the year. You see him, but it still made you want to be a seal.

[Robert O'Neill]

What's the only thing you know? And when you come home, you have him, you see all the guys and, you know, you've seen a movie, Navy seals with Charlie Sheen. That was my childhood. That is exactly what I grew up with, and I loved it.

[Cole Fackler]

Who was Charlie Sheen?

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, he was one of the officers, but I mean, just not everybody. Everybody that was in that movie that represented what the 90s Navy SEALs were like. Drinking, partying, training, deploying, just over and over and over again. And it became infectious. Like, I mean, to us. I mean, I'd walk right past the Rolling Stones or some high level athlete just to get near a commando. Like, they just have such a polarizing presence. You just can't get away from it. So when you grow up with it your whole life, that's the only thing you want to emulate. I just want to look like that. I want the tattoos, I want to look like that. I want to be able to perform like that. And that's just what you chase your wife.

[Cole Fackler]

Her first husband passed away. He didn't make it. So was she part of a family? Military family growing up. How did she marry two seals?

[Robert O'Neill]

Her dad was a seal.

[Cole Fackler]

Oh, so that. Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. So then you know, you know what it reminds me of? You ever seen a movie with Mark Wahlberg where he's. It's him and Jennifer Aniston. I think he's a rock star. And maybe the movie is called Rock Star. What's the. Is it called Rock Star?

[Robert O'Neill]

It is.

[Cole Fackler]

And then they have the two buses. And the other wives are training her on what it is to be married to a rock. Remember that whole scene, you're like, look, here's what's gonna happen. This is normal. This is what it's like. Sometimes you're gonna wake up, it's gonna be weird. And then there's this one scene where they wake up. What do we. But I don't know what happened last. Is it almost a little bit of that where you have to know who you're marrying to know what comes with the territory? Like some of these things that come with the territory, I think.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. Because a lot of the guys. You know, Cole married one of his high school sweethearts too. She's never been exposed to it. So when you get in around those people, they knew you when you were in high school. They knew you when you were 21 years old. Now you leave for four or five years, you rekindle that marriage, and you are a completely different person. Your mannerisms, the way. The way you carry yourself, the people you associate with. Everything else is different. And they don't know how it happened. And a lot of them, they don't see it until it's too late. Like, now we are married. This is not the guy. He was in high school. He can't be. You can't be. Because the job you have, you have to elevate and you have to transform. You can't be that same guy and do that job at 100. There's no way. It takes too much.

[Cole Fackler]

That is wild. So what advice do you guys give when guys are coming to you? What do you tell them? Do you say, get married? Do you say, don't get married? What do you tell them?

[Robert O'Neill]

Don't get me.

[DJ Shipley]

Don't get married.

[Cole Fackler]

You tell them, don't get married.

[Robert O'Neill]

I tell them, don't get Married until past 30. You've done at least four years. Optimally, you've done eight years. Four of those completely single, just isolating, polishing your craft. Now you find her, you test her out, meaning you make her do a couple deployments as your fiance. That way, if it doesn't work, there's no divorce, there's no strain on the.

[Cole Fackler]

Force, the fine doesn't work. How do you check if it doesn't? Because I remember in the army, like, if you're in the army, there was a. Stories you would hear where guy would go, come back nine months later, he finds that his wife's with somebody. And, hey, the. The. You leave the broom outside. There was this Whole, I don't know if you remember these different things. I don't want to kind of give some of those stuff away. And guy would come out one day, this guy, I won't say his name, but I clearly remember this. You go to the hotel, he walks in and he sees it, he's devastated, he's going through suicide watch. He's not talking about it for 30 days. How do you test it out? When you're gone for that long, what do you do? Do you have a friend come and check him out? Do you say to the club owner, was she at the nightclub? How do you. How do you. How do you check them out? MySpace.

[DJ Shipley]

MySpace. Ruined DJ's life.

[Cole Fackler]

MySpace?

[Robert O'Neill]

What happened to me, dude?

[Cole Fackler]

What happened with MySpace?

[Robert O'Neill]

Same thing. I was dating my high school girlfriend, went over to Iraq, you know, I'm 19 years old, we're storm tripping through Baghdad doing the whole thing. And I didn't have an email account at the time. I mean, I set up a Hotmail in 2005 when we were over in Iraq. And then MySpace popped up, made a little profile, nobody knows what it is. The social media is not even a thing yet. You type in different names. I type my sister's name, it pops up. Type in random people's names, they pop up. I type my girlfriend's name, hit enter, it pops up. She's got a profile. I'm like, oh, this is cool. It's got a little bio. Like, this is my name. I'm crazy. My boyfriend, his name's Brian. Like, my name ain't Brian. Like, looking around like, what is.

[Cole Fackler]

You're joking.

[Robert O'Neill]

No, the whole thing. She'd been dating a guy living in my house the entire time. I was.

[Cole Fackler]

Stop it.

[Robert O'Neill]

Oh, no, really? So what do you do? Call them. Better pack your shit and get out of my house right now. Never talk to you again. But it's the same thing. Like, they'll start complaining about the deployment cycle being gone. You're not making enough time for me. I can't. I don't have WI fi. And then it just becomes a huge burden. A huge mental taxation. Is this improve my performance overseas? No. Well, I got to get rid of you. Get away. Or you marry a unicorn like my wife, who's just an absolute gangster. She gets it. And I can count the times on one hand.

[Cole Fackler]

That's tough to marry somebody like your wife, whose father was like, it's like, marry, you know, a guy. I'll never forget my wife, we're getting married. I take her to meet different wives to shape the mindset of do you know who you're really married? And the best person that she sat down with was our pastor's wife. Okay. And she goes on, spends time with them and she says, are you ready to share your husband with the world? And she says, what do you mean? Says, well, look, I run. My husband runs a church with 20,000 members. Guess what? Everybody wants to talk to him all the time. Call this person died funeral. This is that wedding. This. Are you ready? Because that's what's happening with you. He says, well, yeah, I guess I'm okay with that. So let me tell you my 10 affirmations. And she starts kind of going through the affirmations. And then, you know, sometimes your husband's going to come home, you're not in a mood to do anything if you ask for it. You got to find a way to make the time to please her. All these things that she's going through, she comes back, I said, so how did it go? Well, she said this, she said that. I said, this is a rock star wife. This is great, right? It's like shaping the mindset of it, right? She had it. But it's tough to find somebody like that.

[Robert O'Neill]

It is. And you really saw in the old school garden, you know, I say the wives that really cut their teeth during gwat during the early days, no support, brand new. In the war, we didn't know what was going on. Deployment cycles just kept increasing over and over. So you've got this batch of, you know, a couple hundred wives that are really, really bought in, and then you get this new generation starts to spill in and they've never seen it before. It's really nice to be able to bounce it off the. So you check in as a brand new guy and you got your platoon chief with seven deployments and he's got his wife who's done nine total. She's like, this is what it is. He's never going to tell you what it's really like. This is what it is. You are on your own the entire time.

[Cole Fackler]

Did you ever meet Brian?

[Robert O'Neill]

I didn't meet Brian, but I did. Yeah, we'll have to talk about that off camera. Yeah, I played a little prank on Brian.

[Cole Fackler]

You did play a prank on br. Okay. I think some apple were Brian. Well, listen, thank you MySpace for the recon and the private investigative work you did. But so question. Since I wasn't expecting us to start off with a topic at three topics start off with we're going into marriage, right? Off the bat. But question with this. So you're doing your job, okay? And while you're doing your job, you know, you hear the phrase signal versus noise, right? Focus on the job. Focus on signal noise. What's going on with the family? What's going on with the wife? What's going on with the kids? I'm gone nine months. What happened here? What are they doing over there? What are you doing with. To be a SEAL and to do what you guys do. How do you stay locked in to not allow the noise to rattle you? Because in that moment, while you're supposed to stay focused, you're thinking about something else. How do you mentally get yourself in a state where you stay focused on the mission?

[DJ Shipley]

You block out the noise. It doesn't matter. You are 100 committed and locked in.

[Cole Fackler]

But how do you block out the noise?

[DJ Shipley]

You don't communicate. Like, you don't intimately open up. Like the emotions are. Are second to the family, everything else.

[Cole Fackler]

Is that what they tell you to shape your mindset that way? Or is that like a cultural thing? Is that what it takes? Is that the part of the job?

[DJ Shipley]

I think it's 100% what it takes. Because if you're not on your game, the results could be you die, you drop something, and somebody else gets killed for it. The repercussions and results of not being locked in and showing up 100% on your game are deadly. And there's no question about it. And the motion of the patriotism and what you're doing and what you're fighting for just outweighed it. There was nothing.

[Cole Fackler]

But now let me ask you, were you like that in high school? Like, were you an athlete in high school? Did you play sports?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, yeah, I was an athlete in high school. And yeah, it was definitely compartmentalization on the noise. To be hyper competitive and perform at a super high level, it took discipline and dedication. And where do you want to take it? And I wanted to take it as far as I could.

[Cole Fackler]

I guess my question becomes. My question is, do they recruit guys who are already like that, or do you come in and after you make it through bud, the training, everything that they have, then you become this person. Which one is it? Is it finding the person and identifying. I said, this guy has what it takes, or is it. No, we're going to shape your mindset into this.

[Robert O'Neill]

I think, I think you find that person just through the initial process. It's so hard to get in the buds. It's so hard to make it through that selection. You're already a little bit selfish anyway. You have to be. In order to just prepare to go to buds, you really have to live in isolation, and then. It's not really a team sport. I know it is. But going through selection, it's individual performance. You have to be able to perform the entire way. And anything that is a distraction, you just naturally block it out. You just have to. You roll an ankle, you get this, you get an injury, you just override and just keep going. And you do that. It becomes your routine. If you don't like the way things are going, you just block it out.

[Cole Fackler]

If you. Have you ever been on a mission where one of your peers maybe was getting distracted and allowing the noise to get to them, how did the team handle it when someone went there Becomes a big issue.

[Robert O'Neill]

They remove you. Like, it's very common. If guys are going through a. If guys are going through divorce, it's so common. I mean, the SEAL teams are well over 100. I mean, they have been my whole time. Over 100. Divorce rate. If it becomes nasty to where you can't make a deployment, you can't make trips like you're in court, custody battles, they just remove you.

[Cole Fackler]

They remove you.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. They'll remove you, put you on the sidelines for two years, clean up your divorce, figure it all out, and then come back.

[Cole Fackler]

Wow.

[Robert O'Neill]

They'll put you in a training slot, or.

[Cole Fackler]

How common is that?

[Robert O'Neill]

Pretty common.

[Cole Fackler]

So sometimes if they put a guy in training slot, it's not a favor, it's not a promotion. They're putting you there because you're going through something like, look, go handle your stuff in personal life. Then when you're ready, come back to it as well.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean, you've put in so much time and energy to get to the organization. You're so critical to its overall performance right now. If you're not at 100%, they have to pull you out and put in somebody else.

[Cole Fackler]

So how do you view that? Let's just say I go through that and I'm put there for me to come back. And there's four of you, and I'm the fifth one coming in. Are you guys a little bit worried whether I've changed or not or I'm still. I still have some of the old tendencies, or. No, you. You allow me to show up and represent and show you guys that I have changed. How. How does that work?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, you definitely get a chance to come back and perform. I think everyone's pretty open at that. It happens all the Time, but they're watching you. You got to earn your seat there every day. And there are mistakes you cannot come back from. And at such a high level, either you'll get kicked out or they'll. They'll set you out and, and let you be 100% when you come back. You can't be 98%.

[Robert O'Neill]

It's the exact same thing. And with injuries. We have guys with some colossal injuries. They just, they override it. And you ever been at like a bull riding show, you ever seen the guys get taped up, taping their shoulders in place? You'd be surprised. You see a. A special operations, you know, team room. The injuries, these guys are able to just push through kt, tape all over their body, cortisone injection, just everything to get through because they don't want to get pulled off. And eventually those injuries stack up so bad, you can't hide it anymore. I mean, we're doing some brutal physical activities, and you cannot keep up. You got to get surgery. And they don't want to, like, they don't want to jump off that train. And sometimes you have to push them off the train, go get surgery, do six months of rehab and come back here. I can't have you at 45 right now. I can't. You got to go the whole way, go get surgery. I was one of those guys. He's been that guy. Like, you have to get surgery right now, okay?

[Cole Fackler]

Due to an injury, due to whatever that happened, due to on a mission. So slowing somebody down. So that would be enough. But that part, to me makes sense though, right? It's like sports. Hey, you. You're not given your best right now. Go do the surgery. I don't want to do the Tommy John surgery. Look, I. You got to do it. You're going to sit down a season or Achilles, whatever that happens. I can see that part. But the noise versus signal. There is not a formula. Like, is there a formula or you just something you do? Like if you were to talk to right now, 100 corporate executives that are money managers who have a billion dollars under management, they're going on the road all the time. They're traveling here, traveling. They're going. Meeting with this client, meeting with that client, and they have the wife and the kids and all that stuff and say, hey, man, guys, I'd love for you to give me a formula on how to stay locked in. I want to find a way to get locked in. I'm a performer. I work my ass up. But I got a wife and Two kids. How do I stay locked in? So when I go into that meeting to negotiate a deal and roll over that money, I'm going to get it. What would you say to me?

[Robert O'Neill]

Dials not switches. Dials not switches. Every time. So switch meaning, you know, I joined the Navy at 17 years old, Cole. 18, 19 years old. I just flick that switch. Navy Seal, it's the only thing I care about now. You start stacking on all the other stuff and you can't give it equal bandwidth. And that's where the resentment comes in. So I imagine a literal switchboard. I've got my family dial, I've got my. I've got my, my operational, my. My passion, my profession, whatever that is. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I'm powering down the family dial all the way. I'm not thinking about you when I'm driving in, not thinking about picking up kids off the bus. None of that matters to me right now. All I'm thinking about is my next two hours. As soon as I complete those two hours, I reoperate my dials, recalibrate. Whatever I have to fully focus on.

[DJ Shipley]

I think it's a mindset too. They definitely will pull it out of you. And if you ultimately don't perform, you won't be around there. But yeah, the dials and switches for sure. Being able to dial down family dial work up 100% I think too. It's a sacrifice wherever your goals are and wherever you want to go. If you're good just being a big fish in a small pond, cool. If you want to get out of that pond and become a small fish in a bigger pond at a higher level, the sacrifice, you may have to leave the work 100% on and then honestly be able to turn that back off. But realize you're sacrificing time to reach your goals.

[Cole Fackler]

You got two daughters, but you got three boys, right? With your boys. Are any one of them super athletic? Where they're playing like sports, where they could go to the next level.

[DJ Shipley]

They're, you know, young. They're 12, nine and six. The two older ones are super passionate about soccer. The oldest one is getting ready to start travel soccer. And I'm all about supporting them wherever they want to, take it, however far they want to. I grew up swimming on a competitive club team year round, and I had aspirations to take it to the Olympics. I got burnt out and I just want to support my kids if they want to take it all the way. I'm happy to go over with them, the sacrifice and what it'll take to get there, but ultimately it's on them. I just don't want to push them and burn them out.

[Cole Fackler]

Do you. Do you. Would you support. If they come and say, dad, I want to go, but I want to be a Navy seal, Would you support that or you. Would that be like, oh, my God, I'm so proud. My kids want to become Navy SEALs or no. Whatever they want to do, they do.

[DJ Shipley]

I'd 100% support them. I want them to be happy with whatever they choose. But if they wanted to do that, I'd support it, but I'd give them a very honest conversation of what they're getting into.

[Cole Fackler]

Got it. Get married right off the bat, you know, marry your high school sweetheart. You know, make sure you befriend a guy named Brian. Stay off my space. Maybe use, you know, TikTok instead. It's so funny when you're going through this stuff when you're in it. It's so interesting watching how everybody handles it with business. You know, you're coming up, you size everybody up. You're like, dude, I thought that guy had it, but I thought he. He's more mentally tough than. That's such an interest. No way in the world. I thought it. That whole competitive side where you don't know. Sometimes it just takes time to see how they're going to handle themselves. You know the movie Fury where the new guy comes in and then Brad Pitt, whoever he's playing, and the guy starts peeing. I says, you know, you remember that scene was like, hey, you lock it up. Like, get in, get in place. And he was panicking. He was worried. Sometimes you're never going to know until you're in that situation to see if they got it or not. But you talk about communication. So yesterday we get Ward and I want to get your thoughts on this. Yesterday's story comes out. Rob, if you want to pull this up, the whole signal gate, whatever they want to call it, right. The Signal chat with Pete Hex said, you know, Pentagon inspector general opens investigation into exit signal chat scandal. The White House said this week that the case has been closed on the signal scandal. The Pentagon's inspector general opened it back up. And then. Rob, is this the one where six people got fired yesterday? Can you go. That's a separate article. That's this one right here. Trump fires six national security staffers after meeting with far right activist Laura Loomer. This is who the Guardian Trump ally presented with the opposition research against a Number of officials that said she followed their disloyalty. Can you go a little bit lower up to see who it was Fired six national security team. The firing encompassed four staffers who were fired overnight after the meeting and two who were removed over the weekend. Created extraordinary situation. Loomer appeared to have more influence than the national security advisor, Mike Waltz. Okay, so now this is what they're going through with communication. Mike Waltz is creating a group chat on signal where they're communicating about a decision that's being made. And then accidentally the individual that gets added to the chat, Rob, is somebody from. Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic. From the Atlantic. He gets into it accidentally. He's in it. Some are saying, you know, the way that it happened, it is what it is for you guys. You're out there. How are you communicating yourself? What apps were you using when you're communicating, what apps are being used today? And maybe what different angle do you guys have here that maybe we're not looking at.

[Robert O'Neill]

The fact that everybody in there is a human. We use signal, we use silent circle. We add all the same thing. And people do get. People have the same name. And as soon as I first saw that, we were on the gym talking about them. That looks like you're a normal person scrolling down on the phone and you click one wrong name and you don't realize there's two. John Davis is in your phone. That's what it looked like to me. Nobody sanity checked it and you start communicating. We've launched out really detailed stuff on signal chats. I mean business stuff. I mean all kinds of stuff. Things happen. I mean there definitely but some checks and balances. Something needs to be sanity checking that. But that's. That's real world. That's what they do. That's what everybody does. You have a. You have a group chat, you have a signal thread. I'm sure you're on them too, that if that thing gets leaked and the photos that you share with your old buddies, something you don't want out there, it's the same thing. It's just on a huge public scale now. That seems very normal to me that someone messed up a signal. Group chat at that level. Well, no, you know, you shouldn't have it at that level. But at the end of the day, people are human. They're brand new into that job. They haven't done that. I mean, he didn't have any experience doing that before. Like how many people are in that? I don't know. I don't think it was malicious. By any of those guys. I don't, most certainly don't think anybody would add a reporter into a signal chat and start talking about business knowingly.

[Cole Fackler]

No, for sure, not knowingly. To me it's, it's more, you know, one, how it happened to do I trust signal? Three, if a mistake like that happens, that could lead to something with the enemy finding out before we're doing something that's massively problematic. Right. And what should the punishments for some like this happen? Like if that happened in buds, is there, is there a high level of not buzz? If that happens, you're sealed, you're, you're on, you're out there, you're talking to each other, you accidentally add somebody else that gets leaked to the market. One, did it ever happen? And two, if it does, how do they handle that?

[Robert O'Neill]

I can't remember time for it actually happening. Like a, like an actual thing, you know, business being leaked out to anybody.

[Cole Fackler]

Nothing.

[DJ Shipley]

Pre. Always post.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, nothing.

[Cole Fackler]

Pre. Always post.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah. Nothing previously before something happened, but definitely after.

[Cole Fackler]

What did you guys do? Like when you're being added to group chat, like was there. Especially nowadays would they train you to say anytime you're being added to this, first look at this and look at that and look at this because like right now, emails for us. Guy sends an email, one of our guys respond, this literally happened two weeks ago. That person wired $100,000 to somebody. That was fraud. This just happened to us. We just lost 100. We're never gonna get this hundred thousand dollars back. It's happened two weeks ago. Why? Here's the email. It looks like a legit email. Change the password, they log in, Boom, boom, boom. 100k out. Two or three weeks ago, this happened to us. Right. So these types of things happen. And you train when you're getting an email, when somebody says this, actually check the email. Do you guys get trained on that or no? It's pure common sense. They leave it to you.

[DJ Shipley]

You get trained on it? Yeah, you get trained on it. And there's definitely been some occurrences where human error or malicious will happen. And then pretty quick fix on the.

[Cole Fackler]

It catches fired or not fired on.

[Robert O'Neill]

Depending on what it is, you definitely get fired.

[Cole Fackler]

So in a situation like this, somebody's getting fired.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay.

[Robert O'Neill]

Something like that. Heads are gonna roll.

[Cole Fackler]

So Mike Waltz, what you're saying is Mike Waltz's favorite song on repeat right now is I'm Only Human. He's listening to that, hoping he doesn't get fired. But at that level he might get fired.

[Robert O'Neill]

I'll date myself. It was probably 2011, 2012. It was either silent Circle or Signal when it was first coming out. And it was literally everybody sitting inside the team room. Everybody. Because you can't bring your phones upstairs. Everybody get on stairs. We're all going to download Signal. That's going to be our new unclass or, you know, unclass chat for the whole group. So if we have to pass anything, movements, you know, training trips, whatever, we'll put it out on Signal. That way we get in real time. It's not just A and Apple text communication. These guys have Android and Apple, all the other stuff. So, yeah, I mean, we transitioned over to Signal for a lot of the stuff, but, I mean, yeah, I mean, you have IT guys making sure everybody's above board, but, I mean, there's always issues with it. Who owns Signal, who owns the backside, all that kind of stuff. It's. Did you trust it?

[Cole Fackler]

You guys trust it?

[Robert O'Neill]

I trust it for stuff that me and him are doing. I wouldn't trust it at that level.

[Cole Fackler]

So what they use now at that.

[Robert O'Neill]

Level, I'll be honest, I would have thought there was some proprietary thing that Elon Musk has come up with now by now or something. The fact we're just downloading something off a regular app store on that level kind of surprised me, if I'm being honest.

[Cole Fackler]

I agree with you, bro, but I actually agree with you.

[Robert O'Neill]

But I also know a bunch of guys who were in the Beltway, Senators, congressmen. That's how they normally communicate. Yeah, they just have, you know, an unclass. We'll just call an unclass chat. Me and Cole are texting back and forth, and we just do everything on Signal. That way it's. It's secure.

[Cole Fackler]

So even you guys, when you guys don't text each other, you signal on everything.

[Robert O'Neill]

We normally text, but we all. I'd probably have 50 signal chats from trainings we do, you know, SWAT teams. We're going to go train. Everything's on a signal job.

[Cole Fackler]

So out of all of them, you trust Signal more than some of the other guys. Telegram. WhatsApp.

[Robert O'Neill]

Definitely more than WhatsApp.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay, got it. So Signal is at the top for you. Okay. So for some people that don't know, what tours have you guys been on they can share with, like you said earlier, Baghdad. But what other tours have you been on? What places have you guys served?

[Robert O'Neill]

All over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Middle East.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah. East Africa.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah. Okay, so I got a list of topics. One of the ones that really, you Know, up till today, I have a hard time with is the following. I want to see what you guys going to be saying about this. So do you remember where you were when we heard that Osama bin Laden was caught? You know, he was killed? I think it was. If I'm not mistaken, Robert O'Neill is. Is the story that we always hear about. We've all seen the podcast, We've seen the stories. May 2, 2011. And then we hear the story that the body's being dumped in the middle of the ocean. Do you guys remember where you were at when that story was released?

[Robert O'Neill]

Yep.

[Cole Fackler]

Yes. Okay, so what do you think about when we are told that Osama bin Laden's body is dumped in the middle of the ocean at northern Arabian Sea? Did you guys at all sit there and say, it's kind of weird? Did you just say, no, this is kind of. Okay, makes sense.

[Robert O'Neill]

At first glance, you would think it is weird. And then you think about the reality. Are we going to bring his body back to the US and do a John Dillinger where he post up photos of him? They're not going to do that. And if you do that, you end up making him a martyr even more and growing his following even more. Like, look what he sacrificed for the cause. Don't do that. Like, do you want a Tombstone in the U.S. do you want some. Some new Mecca where all the other crazies kind of go to pay homage to him? I don't. I don't think that benefits anybody. So I think putting him in the ocean is exactly what they should have done.

[DJ Shipley]

From my understanding, too, based off of the religion, they have to be buried within 24 hours. So that was kind of, from my understanding, a respectful way to, you know, kind of honor his religion. Not saying they're honoring him, but just honoring and respecting the religion. But, yeah, not having a grave. But since he was moved out to that ship.

[Cole Fackler]

Burial at sea, she know when I heard that, I'm like, it's a little weird. I'm questioning it. So I said, guys, why don't we do this? How many times can you pull up ChatGPT, right? How many times in the history of us have we dumped a body of the enemy in the middle of the ocean? Okay, how many times the history of us have we dumped a body, an enemy's body, in the middle of the ocean? In the ocean? Okay, so it's got to be 50 times, 25 times, maybe 18 times, maybe twice. No, only once. And it's only Osama bin Laden. And we've had a lot of other bodies now. Then I sat there and I said, okay, let's have some fun with this one here. Okay. In our family, we love the movie Transformers. It's a great movie. Okay. And can you type in the Transformers where Megatron gets dumped in the middle of the ocean? Okay, which. Which it's in 2007. Okay. Where in 2007, film transformers, Megatron's body, along with the remains of other Decepticons, was dumped into the Laurentian Abyss, a deep sea trench, in an attempt to keep them dormant and prevent them from being revived. That's 2007. Right. And then four years later, in May of 2011, we're dumping Osama bin Laden's body in the middle of the ocean, something we've never done before. Makes the average guy who kind of wants to question some of this stuff and say, yeah, it's a little strange because they could have buried the body in different places, but to do something like this. And we've killed a lot of different people in the history of America, but we've never done this before. Is there something that happened with the body? Is there something that we don't know the timing of? It's a little bit weird. I mean, if they were inspired by it, at least. What I could say is whoever came up with the idea to put the story out there, I give them credit because they have good taste in movies. At least they like Transformers. You got to respect that part of it. Right? But for me, I'm still skeptical about this. Right. When, you know, you guys were in the. You're in this world, you guys talk to each other and, and based on what you're saying, you're saying it was a faith based thing, that they dumped it because that. Respect that at 24 hours. And you're saying it was a way for them to not give any more. Martyr bringing it back here. But what do you think about this comparison, the four years apart? I'm sure you've seen Transformers 1 when Megatron's being dumped in. We all watch Transformers 1, of course, for the movie, definitely not for Megan Fox, but it was a very good movie. But what do you think about this coincidence? Coincidence?

[DJ Shipley]

Nothing. Tying it.

[Cole Fackler]

Nothing. Zero.

[DJ Shipley]

Zero.

[Cole Fackler]

So you think his body's gone, he's dead. He's good. Do you guys have a relationship with Albert O'Neill? Like, are you guys friends or you guys pals?

[Robert O'Neill]

He was my team leader.

[Cole Fackler]

He was your team leader. Okay. Were you guys involved in this or no, you were not on that mission at all.

[Robert O'Neill]

I was not.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay.

[DJ Shipley]

I was.

[Cole Fackler]

You were. You were there. What was that like?

[DJ Shipley]

I'll say my role. I didn't. I really didn't do much. I was there.

[Cole Fackler]

There was four of you.

[DJ Shipley]

No, no. I won't get into the specifics, but I wasn't in the assault team. But I was part of the team, so.

[Cole Fackler]

Did you see a dead body also? You did see a dead body. Was it in pieces?

[DJ Shipley]

No.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay. But it's dead. Do you want to say anything else?

[DJ Shipley]

No.

[Cole Fackler]

The way you're talking, it's like, so. Yeah, but so now.

[DJ Shipley]

I've never said that on camera.

[Cole Fackler]

Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because what. What's the. I mean, Robert's been very open about the whole story when, you know, he goes through the whole thing and what happened? What is the process when that happens? What is the process is it. You take the body, you ship it back, you take it with you. What is the process at that time? If it's not like an explosion, a bomb explosion where the body's all over the place, you're not going to go pick up body parts. When it's something that you see a shot, boom, done. What's the proper procedure there?

[Robert O'Neill]

Leave them.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, leave them. I mean, they wanted to bring them back for DNA test and confirmation.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, we used to take DNA swabs back in the day, depending on who it was, depending on what they look like. But I've never personally taken anybody off. I've never seen it.

[Cole Fackler]

Rob, how far is it from the place he was killed to where he was dumped in the middle of the ocean? Can you find out, like, how far is that distance?

[Robert O'Neill]

Do you Wonder how many US Navy sailors we've buried at sea?

[Cole Fackler]

2, 5, 9, 6 kilometers?

[DJ Shipley]

That is a good question.

[Cole Fackler]

Can you check that, Rob, show. How many Navy SEALs have we dumped?

[Robert O'Neill]

How many sailors, how many sailors. Yep. Have been killed overseas? And we buried them at sea because you can't get them back. You can't fly them all. Before there were helicopters, before you could do all that.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah, but that was on land. And then they dumped them in the middle of the ocean. That doesn't make you.

[Robert O'Neill]

Not a bit.

[Cole Fackler]

Well, look, I mean, if there's some. If you're there and you saw him dead, you know, so no matter what we're saying, you know. Oh.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, if there's a question whether or not we actually killed him, there shouldn't be a question about that.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, there should be a question.

[Cole Fackler]

But if there's a Question about whether we still have the body or we dump them. That could be a question because you weren't there for that.

[DJ Shipley]

No. Wasn't there?

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, I hope he's not in Area 51 with all the aliens hanging.

[DJ Shipley]

Out with Biggie and Tupac.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, Just hanging out. He's in Vegas somewhere.

[Cole Fackler]

That's a whole different conversation right there. Okay, so let me transition to the next story here. So what is this? East Coast, West Coast, Navy seal. You know, the. The. You know, the West Coast SEALS are soft, and the East Coast SEALS are, you know, tougher. And, you know, like, the Biggie, the Tupac, the whole thing, that's. Is that. Is that a real thing? The East Coast, west coast seals?

[DJ Shipley]

A good camaraderie, rivalry we were talking about earlier, you know, just being able to bullshit and have thick skin and not take stuff personal. I definitely would say that there are amazing west coast team guys. Some are just a little. Little sense a little thinner skin. So you can't. You can't joke with them how you would with the east coast guy. It's a much tighter knit on the east coast because it's not so spread out in San Diego. And so it's like we see each other kind of 24, 7. Really? Same neighborhood, same. Same kids school, and you shit talk.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, I mean, like, on the east coast, there's nothing to do. Like, in San Diego, you can do anywhere. You can mountain biking, go to Red Rocks, you can do Vegas, you can. Scott, you can do whatever you want to. In Virginia Beach. Outside of being a Navy seal, there's not a whole lot of extracurricular things to do. And that means you just spend more team time. In my opinion, every time you go to the west coast, you're like, hey, everybody want to grab a beer? They're gone. They live so far outside because it's so expensive. Virginia Beach, I mean, everybody's 15 miles of each other. Every place you go to get your haircut, there's four or five guys in there. Every place you go to eat, you look around, you just know everybody. So it feels like you're in one big family. And I know a bunch of west coast guys, and we have guys that work with us now that have transitioned over the East Coast. They say the same thing. They're like, man, everywhere you go, the boys are here. There's nowhere else to go. It's like, you really. You really feel like you're part of the team on the east coast because there's nothing to distract you from It. Which isn't a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah. I just typed up who are the most well known West coast seals, right? You got what seal 1, 3, 5, and 7. That pops up. Chris Kyle, who is no longer with us as I had his wife on a podcast. We had a great conversation together. Jocko Willink is a West coast guy. He's done very well for himself in business.

[Robert O'Neill]

He started on the East Coast.

[Cole Fackler]

Did he? So he started. So OG is East Coast. Then he went to West Coast. Better lifestyle.

[Robert O'Neill]

He was an enlisted guy on the East Coast.

[Cole Fackler]

Did you guys ever serve together?

[Robert O'Neill]

He served my dad.

[Cole Fackler]

He served with your dad? Wow.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

What was that like the stories your pops would say about him?

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, he was a new guy back in the day.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, which is ironic for me because most of the guys we went through training, mostly instructors I knew, like, I grew up with them. Like, I remember when they were new guys. And now I'm, you know, now I'm getting my. I'm getting pushed in on the beach with these dudes. And I've known him my whole life.

[Cole Fackler]

Who was an instructor that maybe the rest of us would know. Okay, Got it. So it's not like some of the bigger podcasters and business guys today. Okay, Got it. Then it says David Goggins. Okay. Sealed. He's a West coast guy. Okay. He's done well for himself. He's. Podcasts are speaking. I see Rob O'Neill, who was. He's a West coast guy. You're talking shit about your guy.

[Robert O'Neill]

I don't think he was a West coast guy. He was at Team Two with my dad.

[Cole Fackler]

Six. It's your SEAL team Six. It says West Coast.

[DJ Shipley]

All evens are on the East Coast.

[Cole Fackler]

All evens are on the East Coast.

[DJ Shipley]

Odds are on the West.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay? So then guess what?

[Robert O'Neill]

Chat.

[Cole Fackler]

GBT got it wrong.

[Robert O'Neill]

Exactly.

[Cole Fackler]

So this.

[Robert O'Neill]

Just like that.

[Cole Fackler]

That's it, buddy. We can't trust this thing now. Okay. All right. So we got. We got Marcus Luttrell. Is he a West coast guy or is he east coast guy?

[Robert O'Neill]

Hawaii guy, then West Coast. Now he's living in Texas.

[Cole Fackler]

What would you. So Hawaii. Is Hawaii considered West Coast? Right. It's a nice place.

[Robert O'Neill]

That's about as far west coast as you can go. Yeah, as far as you can go, brother. You got Hawaiian T shirts, magnifying mustache.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

You see this last one here? Mickey Mansoor, Monsoon.

[Robert O'Neill]

Mikey Mansour.

[Cole Fackler]

Mikey Mansour. He's. So who are the east coast guys?

[Robert O'Neill]

Nobody. Nobody. Knows everybody on the East Coast.

[Cole Fackler]

Really?

[Robert O'Neill]

I don't know anybody.

[DJ Shipley]

Famous east coast guys.

[Cole Fackler]

Who are the famous east coast guys now? I'm just kind of curious.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, I'd say Rob O'Neill.

[Cole Fackler]

Oh, by the way, the first one that comes out.

[DJ Shipley]

This is fun.

[Cole Fackler]

Can you type in east coast guys and see what comes up? First one comes up is D.J.

[Robert O'Neill]

Shipley.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay. The second one comes up is Cold Fan.

[DJ Shipley]

So they preloaded that.

[Cole Fackler]

So did you tap in East Coast? I did. It's so funny. I tapped in west coast and he came up. Rob O'Neill came up as a number six on my west coast. Number four, my west coast. So I see Matt Bisonetti, Mark Owen, Eddie Gallagher, which I think we've done something with Eddie in the past.

[Robert O'Neill]

Before Eddie was a West coast guy.

[Cole Fackler]

Eddie was a West coast guy.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. He actually trains with us now. He's a great dude.

[Cole Fackler]

Oh, wow. Very cool. Yeah, Eddie's. He really enjoy my time with them, sort of a guy. So. So it's more of a fun part. It's not a. It's not nothing. Just purely for shits and giggles. You guys talk to shit to each other.

[Robert O'Neill]

It's the exact same training, the same workup cycle, same dude sitting around the same team room tables. It's just. Yeah, like East Coast, west coast rap. Just something to make fun of.

[Cole Fackler]

Let me ask you this. So you know the. You hear some of the stuff that comes up where. And this is within every space. Happens to me all the time. Guys make videos about, hey, let me tell you what Patrick did and how he made his money and what. It's a very normal thing. The moment you get more eyeballs, you're going to get guys that are going to be targeting and saying things about you. How. How competitive is it where sometimes you know the combative side? Well, let me tell you, he doesn't really have the stories like I did. He didn't serve like I did. And this guy didn't like that because we see that and we don't know that. How much of that happens in your world?

[Robert O'Neill]

Hey, what's going on, guys? DJ Shipley and Cole Falcon, GBRS Group, want to talk to you real quick about my neck.

[DJ Shipley]

Retired Navy Seals entrepreneurs and co founders.

[Robert O'Neill]

Of GBRS Group cover everything from flat range shooting, mental health, mental resiliency, physical education, anything you guys really want to drop into search on the Neck, find us on there. And love to connect with you guys.

[DJ Shipley]

Look forward to hearing from you.

[Robert O'Neill]

Appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon.

[DJ Shipley]

We don't really get into it.

[Robert O'Neill]

Exactly. We don't play that game, but it happens a lot, especially now with veterans. It seems like a lot of veterans just attack each other all day long. And we just, you know, kind of made a silent oath that we were just never going to do that. Like we're never going to hold anybody's hand under water. We're just trying to make everybody better than we are. And we say it quite a bit. Like if we're holding baseline, if we're holding the minimum standard and you're all better than us, we're on a super team.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah. I mean, if we're comparing who did what or, you know, who's got the bigger dick. Sorry, I have to edit that.

[Cole Fackler]

I mean that you just got it.

[DJ Shipley]

But yeah, what we're doing now, it's like, it means a lot to us and, you know, affecting people's lives and pass on the knowledge to talk what, what we did or didn't do or someone else did 10 years ago doesn't define any of us.

[Cole Fackler]

I wonder how united. How united? Because, you know, when, when I was part of this one insurance company, nearly half the company, they were Mormons and they were so united. It was so amazing watching how united they were. And sometimes in a Christian community, you would see kind of Christians kind of take shots at each other. And obviously, of course, Mormons are an element of being Christians, but non denominational, you would see Mormons, they were like this. And one day, this is when I realized these guys have issues in a both positive way and a crazy way. One day a guy comes out, this lady says, the best movie of all time just came out. The guy's gonna win an Oscar. I said, really? This guy's gonna win an Oscar? He's gonna win an Oscar. Who is this guy? This movie came out called Napoleon Dynamite. I'm like, napoleon Dynamite? Yeah. This may be the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life. She's saying this to me and I'm a movie guy. So I said, listen, you better have credibility with movies. I'm going to go watch this movie. I go watch this movie. It's the worst movie I've seen in my life. I'm like, I'm so. I come that back the next. I said, can I ask you what was unique about this movie? This movie was horrible. What was so special about it? Oh, he's. What are you talking about? He's gonna win an Oscar. Later on that afternoon, somebody told me the main actor is a Mormon. I'm like, okay, I got it. So you guys are supporting each other. I can respect that. You know, hey, this is the movie. This is that. So is that the vibe in the seals? Is that kind of how it is with seals, where everybody kind of backs each other up and defends each other?

[Robert O'Neill]

I'll tell you what, when you're in, it most certainly feels like that to a certain extent. You know, the brotherhood is real for a little bit. And I feel like it ebbs and flows. Some. Some years it is so strong. My God, it feels like you can get through anything. And in some days it really feels like it's unraveling. And I don't know if it's a cultural thing, if it's an age thing, a maturity thing. I think you saw the best of the teams at the height of the G1. And then, you know, I don't want to say around the Obama administration, but kind of towards the tail end of the war, we start talking about pulling out. You really saw a cultural change and some guys just really weren't on board with it.

[Cole Fackler]

Interesting. So recruiting, when you guys were in, who was president when you were in? Bush, Bush, Bush when you went in and then Bush, Obama, Bush, Obama, Trump, Bush, Obama, Trump. So when did you ETS? When did you get out?

[Robert O'Neill]

2019.

[Cole Fackler]

2019. So Bush, Obama, Trump. Was there a in. I was an E4. So for us it was just. I'm a regular enlisted guy. You know, I was in. When you. Some guys, you see how they feel about the president. Well, he's there, he supports us. He's this, he's that. And you see recruiting going up and down and all this other stuff. And sometimes you see raises being given. I think at one point on, under Obama, like the enlisted got a raise of 1% over like four or five, six years. There wasn't a big raise that was being given. But for you guys, specific to seagulls are you. Do you care who's president? Does it impact you at all or because of the unique position you guys are at, where there's only a few of you, Obama, you know, president, left, right, Senator, doesn't matter. We have a mission. We're going to go get our job and we're not affected by the president. Is that kind of how it is with seals?

[Robert O'Neill]

Your political views do not matter whatsoever. I don't care if you're Republican or a Democrat, as long as you're not trying to use the military as like a social experiment or trying to decrease funding. That's really where it gets Upset because the job and the threat don't ever change. But now you look at pilots, now they're chopping flight hours. You're not as good as you were five years ago. Do you still need to be as good as you were five years? Absolutely. The threat doesn't change. So when you see that, it really does take the wind out of your sails a lot, because you're sacrificing everything for this one thing. You're like, we need more money. We need more manpower. We need this. You're not getting the support. And the mission set doesn't change. But, no, I mean, that is the one thing I call. It echoes the same thing. I know it. I hate when people badmouth the President. I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat. That is a dude sitting at the pinnacle of the greatest country in the world. And if you are not supporting him right now, what are you doing? Just stop. I never heard anybody in that team room ever talk bad about the president, no matter who was in it. Never.

[Cole Fackler]

I love that. And there was Democrats and Republicans.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. Everybody's really, really diverse. And at the end of the day, the only thing you can control are the guys inside of this room. That's it. Anything external to that, you're never gonna meet him. You're never gonna have a chance to bend his ear, break his will. So it doesn't matter. You can't change the outcome. You can only control what you can control. That's the only thing you focus on. Focus on the team right now.

[Cole Fackler]

So does it. Is it at that level? So you know. You know the saying of, I'm willing to run through the wall for xyz, Right? Is it a. Did you have a leader in when you were a SEAL where he said, I'll run through the wall for this guy? Did you have somebody that you work with that you have. Who would that name be? Who would that person be for you?

[Robert O'Neill]

My first introduction was probably Barrett Johnson, who's our third platoon chief. So me and Cole did three deployments to Iraq, back to back to back. And my third platoon chief came over from development group with him, and it was like the second coming of Christ. When he cleared that threshold, I got goosebumps. I got super emotional. I didn't even shake his hand. I wrapped my arms around his neck like, I've been waiting for you for eight years, dude.

[Cole Fackler]

Why? What made him so special?

[Robert O'Neill]

He was everything you ever wanted to see. Looked apart, acted a party, got in the flat range, outshot everybody when he did cqb. It was the best you've ever seen. His jumping was better than everybody else. He held the standard. When you saw it, it was like watching Kobe Bryant on the court. You're like, my God. You have every reason to let your foot off the gas, and you haven't for 20 years. Like, how long can you maintain this? The entire time, he never let his foot off the gas. And it showed everybody who's 19, 20 years old, like, you can achieve mastery in this sport if you just keep going. And he did it. Man. I wore. To this day, I do anything for that guy. Anything. I've had phenomenal leaders. That dude was my first taste of seeing what a pro is, and it changed my entire existence.

[DJ Shipley]

He really raised the bar, and he provided resources and skills and training for the. For the entire team to. To meet that bar and really raised kind of the performance, elevation, culture, environment.

[Cole Fackler]

What was his name? Barrett Johnson.

[Robert O'Neill]

Barrett Johnson. Barrett Johnson.

[Cole Fackler]

Is he. Is he a known guy or no? Like, the average person doesn't know who he is.

[Robert O'Neill]

No, no, you'd never find this guy. I mean, he's got a historic past. I'd love to be able to sit down, do an interview with him. His mindset changed everything.

[Cole Fackler]

Is that him?

[Robert O'Neill]

That is him.

[Cole Fackler]

Can you zoom in on the picture, Rob? Is he a big boy?

[Robert O'Neill]

Probably like my height. Yeah. 5 10, 180 pounds. Just.

[Cole Fackler]

What was his style of leadership when conflicts would come up? Like, was he more of a guy that he led by example, or was he the one that could get you to do things that others couldn't get you to do?

[Robert O'Neill]

He led by example, but he was one of those guys that, I mean, he really embodied. I'm never going to ask you to do anything I haven't done, I'm not currently doing or I'm not willing to do. And then he did it. Okay. Like, you walk into the gym, he's in there before you, he leaves after you, you go to the range. He's already been there. All right. This guy sees the importance of this, because a lot of times if you don't have that example, you kind of adopt a 9 to 5 mentality. Like, I show up, I do train with everybody else, even in the seals. Yeah, I mean, like, it's a normal. It's a normal job. I mean, you wake up 5am you're doing fitness, you're lifting, you're fighting, you're training, you're eating, training, eating, going home, rinse and repeat every single day, over and over. Well, there's guys that show up earlier and they stay later and they do more polishing. And on the weekends they're training, they're messing around with kit, they're developing new tactics, new procedures. Just trying to make the overall collective better. And I thought he just did it better than anybody else.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, you really had a sense and feeling that he had your back. Like no one was going to come between him and us and the team. Even if we made mistakes and failed, obviously he held us accountable. But it was very much coaching and making us better and grow.

[Cole Fackler]

What does he do now? Can you pull up his LinkedIn profile? I'm curious.

[Robert O'Neill]

I'm sure he's doing some consulting now. I was texting him the other week.

[Cole Fackler]

But go a little bit lower to see what is his most recent case of program manager. Tulum, Director of canine operations. Because contract, independent contract. Go a little bit lower. He doesn't put his military stuff probably there. Go a little bit lower.

[Robert O'Neill]

Probably not.

[Cole Fackler]

No, he's not going to put his stuff there. Wow.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, so he was doing guided hunts for a little bit. That's what the hunt is. Yeah, there it is.

[Cole Fackler]

Senior chief, 22 years.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, he was at, he was at team two with my dad too.

[Cole Fackler]

Wow. Wow.

[Robert O'Neill]

That's kind of cool. Just full circle.

[Cole Fackler]

Now is. Is in. In. Is the. Do you feel the loyalty is whatever he says? I do. Or is it more president, Commander in chief, man, I'm willing to run through the wall for this president now. I'm willing to run through the wall by chief. It's more chief Chief. Okay. Because it's a day to day guy.

[Robert O'Neill]

It is. At the end of the day when you're out there alone, your political views don't matter. Your religious views don't matter.

[Cole Fackler]

Do you guys watch politics when you're out there? Do you? Because when I would talk to my friend who went to Delta, you know, he would say, we would watch the news and we would say, why are they lying? That's not what's happening. We're here right now. Did you, did you guys watch the news at all? You're like, nah, we're not funded.

[DJ Shipley]

Nah, not really. No. We watched a lot of episodes.

[Cole Fackler]

Watch a lot of episodes?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah.

[Robert O'Neill]

Tv.

[Cole Fackler]

Really?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Not politics and news at all. What did you think about people that were, you know, telling the news or they're working for CNN or Fox or MSNBC or NBC? Did you have an opinion of them? You're like, nah, it's just we mind our own business.

[Robert O'Neill]

Did you see it for what it is, you're trying to push an agenda. You know, a lot of you, trying to breed fear into people, trying to make it seem like it's something that's not. And, yeah, I mean, you're over there on the ground. You're watching it on TV in real time. Okay. And then your parents start calling you wives. I'm seeing this on the news. What's happening? None of that's actually happening.

[Cole Fackler]

So, you know, one of the ambassadors, I don't know who it was, Rob, that was here yesterday trying to negotiate on behalf of Russia, Ukraine, all the deals that's going on behind closed doors, and, you know, the peace deal, you know, Zelinsky, all that. He's in town. I think he's in D.C. yesterday. I don't know what his name is, but Tony knows who it is. If you want to text him, actually, just go to news, Type in Russia, U.S. peace treaty. That's not. That's not the guy. Russia, U.S. peace Treaty. D.C. type in D.C. yeah, let's see. And then go to news. Zoom in. You know, some legends. I'm opening. Seriously, you answer ceasefire. Okay. So, you know, just. Just have him text it to you for you to know. So during the 17 years you guys were in, was there ever a moment where you guys were so deep that you had intel where we were this close to possibility of a world war, something really nasty? Was it ever a point where it was so close that if this thing happens and this triggers this, we could be in a World War three overnight? Was there ever a moment like that in your 17 years?

[Robert O'Neill]

There were a couple scenarios. Under the Trump administration, right before I retired, we were spinning up to do a couple things that if they would have went potentially. Potentially. And I'll be honest, Trump can't us. When we were on the ramp getting ready to go, he solved it. However he does whatever he does. He called and literally stopped us on a ramp.

[Cole Fackler]

You vividly remember that?

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, we spun up to go. We were gonna go do the thing, and got in midair and got ready to do the whole process, and we got canceled and spun around and came back home.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay, so this has got to be 2016-2017-2018-2019. This is that time.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

And if this were to happen, I.

[Robert O'Neill]

Mean, potentially, I mean, could have been an active engagement with a bunch of Russians. Could have been dicey. You just never know.

[Cole Fackler]

So you're on the ramp, you're ready to go. Everybody's, you know, strapped. You, boom, get the phone call? Nope, it's quarter. We're not going on it.

[Robert O'Neill]

Huge letdown. Huge letdown.

[Cole Fackler]

You wanted it.

[Robert O'Neill]

Oh. I mean, everybody wants it. Everybody wants to go. And you start to think about the ramifications, like, what if this goes south? What if this does spike off the whole thing? And now we're stuck here, we can't get back home. What if it. What if it does go nuclear? Now everybody's back home, and we're stuck here in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it gets dicey.

[Cole Fackler]

But. But is. Is it like. Okay, so maybe let me ask a question a different way. Is. Is it like. You ever seen. You've seen the movie Hurt Locker? I don't know if you. With what's his name? Who's in his phenomenal. Jeremy. Jeremy Reiner. Reindeer, some name like that. Right. What's his name? Jeremy Renner. Renner. I'm sorry. Jeremy Renner. Yeah. Phenomenal actor. And you watch him just go up, and he shows almost the addiction with the adrenaline and the life on how close. You're always on the edge, and he always wants to go back. Every time he comes back, he's around his wife, he's like. He just wants to go back and doesn't know how to be a father. Is it like you're. You're always itching for something to be a part of, like, give me the next mission for me to go on?

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. And what Jeremy Renner does in that movie is he's operating on switches and not dials. He's flipped it. He fell in love with it. He gets a taste of the adrenaline. You can't get it out of your system now. Now you just chase it. We call it chasing a dragon. You can chase the entire time. Be careful what you wish for. You'll eventually find it. But a lot of times, they spend your entire career chasing the one thing, and they never stop to. You don't enjoy it.

[Cole Fackler]

Was this mission to take somebody out?

[Robert O'Neill]

I can't get into all the specifics, but yeah. I mean, it was a. A lot of people going through international waters that shouldn't have been potentially, possibly carrying some stuff they shouldn't have been. We were going to intervene, and he solved it, which is a good thing and a bad thing, because you want to go to work, you want to do the thing.

[Cole Fackler]

But the way it was presented, that was solved. Was it like, Yeah, I made a phone call. I spoke to him. Did he publicly say how he solved it or. No, this was all. So this is not even anything that publicly has been disclosed.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean, we don't even get a phone call. Just. They literally turn around, like, can't get going back home.

[Cole Fackler]

Was Barrett. Was. Was he your commander at the time? The chief at the time? Okay, no. So he got out in 2024. No, 92 is to 2014. So, no, he wouldn't been in. I thought he was 92 to 2014. 22 years and a month, I think. Yeah, he would. He wouldn't have been in. He got a 2014. 22 years and a month. Yeah. So. Okay, interesting. So today, what we're seeing right now, right? You. And maybe let me go while we're still on that topic there. Ghassam Soleimani. Do you guys remember Ghazam Soleimani? And when that. That happened, that was a. Were you guys part of that at all, or. No. Do you guys know Friend. Okay, so you obviously have peers that were part of this who were on this mission. This was a crazy one. No, I mean, this was a. January 3rd, 2020. We take out Ghassam Soleimani, who is the guy who manages all the, you know, Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He's the guy that's dealing with all the proxies. He's the guy that's dealing with Houthis, with Hezbollah, with all those things. And he could potentially be the guy that's running Iran. When this happened, were you guys like, holy shit, this could turn into something? Or was it like, okay, this is a statement. Knock it off. Stop. Don't do anything. And if you do, this is what the US Is capable of doing.

[Robert O'Neill]

I see that as, like, a show of force, like how committed we are, how far you're willing to go for the whole thing. No different than the Israelis after Black September. I don't care if it takes a decade. We're gonna go the entire way. And I think we've shown that as a country a lot. Take us 10 years, 20 years. We're gonna keep going the entire way just because we said we would then. It's what it is. You can go wherever you want. You can hide as much as you want. Your tradecraft can be phenomenal. We just have people that are gonna sit in this room all day long, do nothing but hunt you, and we'll find you.

[Cole Fackler]

That's a superpower that we have.

[Robert O'Neill]

You have people just sit in a room all day long, do nothing but just pick you apart. They'll unravel your entire existence. Right now, it's all they do. And there's endless manpower of them.

[Cole Fackler]

Us.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean, anybody we have to go after any target we have. I mean, there's just, there's people. That's all they do.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay, so let me, let me ask you this question. So, you know, I lived in Iran almost 11 years. So I was born in 78. We left July 15 of 89, went to Germany at a refugee camp, and then we came here. So. But I'm in. I live there. So I know the environment, the climate, how it is. And when you're in business, you have enemies, you have a lot of competitors, and you have to know whose threats are real threats and whose threats are just, you know, hot air, I want to do this too. I can do nothing. But if that guy says, I'm gonna do something to you, like, hey, listen, we have to pay attention to this. You guys sit there all day, watch tape of who the enemies are. You study Iran, you study, you know what happened with Yemen. You study what happened with, you know, Gaddafi or, or Saddam Hussein or Putin or all that. That's the business model, I'm assuming. I'm just speculating. I'm not in it. That's your world. And do you guys talk about, yeah, those guys are not going to do nothing to us. Their threats mean nothing. Or to say no when that guy says that, listen, we have to really be ready that they're capable of doing something. How did you guys. 17 years. You're tier one. How do you view when Iran makes threats?

[Robert O'Neill]

For me personally, I look at it just like Osama bin Laden threatened it for a long time, said he was going to attack the homeland and didn't take it serious. And I think after that, you got to take every threat series. You just have to, especially now, open borders. There's so many people pouring in this country, and if they want to spin it on and turn it on, they can. Really, really fast. So I think now after 9 11, I think everybody is taking every threat seriously. At least you should, because they proved it. I mean, we've had to adopt a lot of cultural changes since 911 for the good. I think it's made us better overall. No, I mean, you can't look at guys like that and just, oh, he won't do that. Well, we've already said that before. We said that multiple times. We said that as long as I can remember. We said that through World War II. We said it with Japanese. We said it with everybody. They won't do that. Yeah, they did. Yes, they did. They drew. They flew his plane straight over here, crash him in a Pearl harbor and then kicked off the whole thing. They will, they will do that. Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Now, so don't, don't underestimate the power.

[Robert O'Neill]

Of any threats, especially not threats that have actual money and resources.

[DJ Shipley]

I think after 911 it was a complete switch that you can't just pass off threats. And the communication technology that's evolved across the world on intel and I think there's different ways to defeat them, even if it's not a missile. But I don't think they're missing any of it now. I mean, they're catching everything and they probably got AI involved as well. And you know, part of the problem, for my understanding with 911 is none of the intel were talking to each other. And now it's like all the intels are talking to each other.

[Cole Fackler]

All the intels are talking to each other. So.

[DJ Shipley]

Like all the different intelligence agencies.

[Cole Fackler]

Whoever'S collecting, picking out from different countries or. Okay, so you're saying like a. More of a united front of a CIA, Mossad, MI6 than it was before?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Or you're saying more at your level?

[Robert O'Neill]

Definitely at our level. Definitely at our level. Then our interagency partners and all our allies, like our closest allies.

[Cole Fackler]

That's what I'm saying.

[Robert O'Neill]

So, yeah, yeah, we're all pointing the exact same direction, which is the source of our strength really, is how good our allies are and how much we really do support each other.

[Cole Fackler]

Got it. So when you say that, like, you guys, you. Do you see Delta as a team? Do you see 18 Deltas as a team? Do you see Delta Force as a team? Do you guys see each other as equals? You do. So, okay, was it more competitive pre 911 where it was a little bit more lax? And now it's like, listen, no one's going to ever do a 911 again under our watch.

[Robert O'Neill]

It certainly felt like the 90s. You know, I wasn't active duty in the 90s, but I grew up in the 90s. A lot of it was training. You deploy to Germany, you do interagency ops with Poland. All their. All your European counterparts, they deployed a. They do cold weather training in Alaska for six months. I mean, everything was just a big training mission waiting for one big thing to pop. And now that it has popped and we've seen it, we've come so far tactically, technologically, in the last 20, 25 years, but I think now we're in such a good spot to defend the nation and now with our allies too. I mean, 911 was the worst thing that's ever happened to us, but in a lot of ways, if it wouldn't have happened, we'd be in the Stone Age still. I mean, you look at body armor, AI, just digital communications, everything that had to elevate and grow so fast. If we wouldn't had 9 11, we wouldn't, we would have stayed the same way. And I look at it like, and this will sound messed up, but if you look at Blackhawk Down, October 393, look at the gear they're wearing. And then looking when they stepped on the ground in Afghanistan, not much change. Same body armor, same carbine, same helmets, Nothing really changed because they didn't have a reason to evolve. Now you step foot on Afghanistan, like, oh my God, this is not the same. This is very, very different. Then you teleport that same crew in Iraq three years later. Oh, wow. Oh, no. Like, these IDs are a serious issue right now. They're detonating them 50 different ways. Like, we can't stay ahead of this. How are we going to do it? Engineers attack this problem over and over and over. EOD everything you come across. Pump us the info. We've got to be able to solve this. And that's what they did. I mean, we think about it like if we only would have hit Afghanistan, no Iraq. There are so many lessons we learned from Iraq that if we wouldn't have invaded, we wouldn't have had them. Like, we would not have evolved to where we are right now if we wouldn't have hit them both. I'm not saying we should have hit them both, but I'm saying the benefit of doing them, it really, I mean, the learning curve, tactics, techniques, procedures, just everything, it really, really evolved during the height of the war and all our allies really benefited from it.

[Cole Fackler]

Let me, let me ask you. So has, because technology is advanced on all levels, right? So the way they did 9 11, you know, and now afterwards, like, whoa, no, it's not going to happen again. What, do we make a mistake? Boom. Communications. Okay, great. So we knew we had science. Yes, we knew what's on. Okay, Airport. Who was able to get in? The enemy. Their technology is advanced as much as us. Our technology is advanced, Right. Is it easier for the enemy to the level of advancement to be able to conduct another 911 in a more creative way? Has that advanced more than our ability to prevent it from happening? What do you think has advanced more?

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, I think with growing and technology threats, I'm not going to say that you can't keep up with them. It's Kind of, like I say, hacking. You're always stepping up that code to protect your systems, but as technology evolves, you're always kind of playing that cat and mouse game of maybe the technology hasn't evolved as fast, but your defense is higher and kind of vice versa. But I think they're always evolving every year in the new threats.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, it's no different if you and me are both professional boxers. You're doing your training camp. I do a secret training camp with some ninjas, and I'm just training in isolation. You have no idea. There's no training footage leaking. You have no idea what I'm doing. I step out, bell rings, and I hit you with something you've never, ever seen before. Okay, now I have to go back to the drawing board. Now, everybody else sees that. I think a lot of this time it sucks. But you're almost in a. You're almost in a defensive posture. Like, we've prepped for everything we know right now. We have contingencies for the unknowns, and if they happen, this is how we're gonna. This is how we're gonna combat it.

[Cole Fackler]

So which one are we, though? Are we the one that's trained and improved without anybody seeing it, or is that the enemy?

[Robert O'Neill]

Both.

[Cole Fackler]

Okay, so that's. That's a little bit intense.

[Robert O'Neill]

It is, because. Yeah, I mean, it's spy on spy. I mean, you're training, you're perfecting, advancing as much as you can, but you have to do it in secrecy. And that's where a lot of the general public, they want to know everything you're doing. The Area 51s, release all the documents. We want to have full open source to everything the military does. You can't do that. You shouldn't have any right to do that, because if you know it, everybody else knows it. Well, they're doing the exact same thing. Just a lot of time their tradecraft is better. Like, they don't have cell phone communications. They just do it in straight isolation. They bring in all the parties from all the other countries and train them up on bomb making and all this other stuff. Now they're doing isolation. They're not putting out propaganda videos, so you don't know how far ahead they are. You hear rumor mill, there's.

[Cole Fackler]

There's a community that said, hey, you know, Trump, his first four years when he was president, there was no wars. ISIS was gone. You know, a bunch of different progress that took place. And a Biden comes in. Ukraine, Russia, you know, you got Israel, Hamas, all These things that are taking place all over the place now. Trump is in day one peace, you know, deal between Ukraine and. And Russia. Day one, we're going to have Iran, Israel is going to be done. That's. It's not going to happen. You know, Hamas, boom. Okay, great. Now it's a slightly different energy. If you do this, we're going to do this. Okay. And you better release the hostages. They don't. You better release the hostages. They don't. You better release the hostages. They don't. What is your position? Because some are saying I'm a fully anti war. If Trump. I swear to God, if Trump goes out there and we go to war, I'll be the first one to come out and say that I make the biggest regret of my life ever to, you know, vote for Trump, and I should have never done it. We cannot be going to war, and we're getting closer to war. What's your position with that? Just putting it on. You call.

[DJ Shipley]

I'll say the limited foreign policy that I somewhat know. You know, we've always helped fund our partners internationally to protect, whether it's just a partnership or there's a mutual benefit between those, and we. We become kind of taken advantage of on that, on how we help support and fund those, and where the countries kind of just depend on us no matter what. I appreciate Trump's approach on kind of getting or trying to get those wars to stop understanding both sides of why they're angry, why they're fighting. I don't know the conversations that go on behind closed doors on how they get. Trump pushes them to get the treaties. But I think it's great. It would definitely be something different if we were attacked here and we were having to attack a different country, but really trying to minimize and stabilize the countries and environments. And I say there's always a winner in war, but it's like no one's winning. I mean, both sides are losing people. So it's not strategic. And, I mean, I think it's just good that he's able to try and create peace on those.

[Cole Fackler]

What do you think?

[Robert O'Neill]

I think if you haven't fought in the war, if you haven't given up your children to fight in the war, I don't really care about your opinion, and I know that sounds bad, but we've been doing this for a long time, and if I didn't think it was a worthy cause, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't. And if. If Trump did a recall right now and I had to slap it all back on, I'd go because I think it's worth it. I watched him for four years, avoid all these major conflicts. He is not one of those dudes some warmonger just trying to push. He's not. If he was, he would have done it. He had every reason to do it. Most powerful dude in the world. If you wanted to spend your first four years just laying hate and waste to everybody, whoever did you wrong, he could have done it. He didn't do it. I watched him be really diplomatic and solve a lot of issues with just a phone call that I hadn't seen before. I mean, yeah, I mean, my foreign policy is not as good as it probably should be. I mean, there's a lot of backdoor conversations that are happening. But at the end of the day, if you say you can't ever do that thing ever again, and they continue to do it, at what point are you going to send it? Going to go the entire way. That's where it gets dangerous. You call their bluff. If you don't release hostage, I'm doing X, Y and Z. They don't release them. Well, now I've kind of painted it all in a corner, and that's where it gets kind of dicey. Well, you have to go now.

[Cole Fackler]

You have to go.

[Robert O'Neill]

You have to go. And I don't know what he says on these phone calls to get them to change their mind. I have no idea. But it's working. I mean, he's done it successfully multiple times. I don't want us to go to war. I definitely don't want us to go to war with China, with Russia, with any of these people. But at a certain point, we cannot. You can't give them an inch. If you do, it'll take a mile. I think a lot of times, just like Cole said, we become the blanket of coverage and support for everyone else. And Ukraine's a perfect example. We have to fly over quite a few countries that are really close to Ukraine in order to give them support. And I feel like not a lot of other people are. You can always hear that, like, well, if they take Ukraine, they're just going to keep going. What are you guys going to do about it? Like, I shouldn't have to fly from our country over all of your countries and land there and try to solve that for you. We shall be trying to solve it together. And I feel like we always have to be the big brother to step in first and kind of draw that line in the sand, and it puts A lot of people against us. And then it serves up a lot of hate and discontent inside of the own country. Just does. People don't want to go to war, they want to go to war. They see this, they see that. A lot of times it's a lose, lose.

[Cole Fackler]

When you're in it and they're given a mission, they're not explaining why, they're just saying, here's the mission, go right for you. We're gonna go take out assembly money, we're gonna go take out, you know, you know, Osama bin Laden does the chief, does the, the leaders sit there and say, here's why we're doing it. Because of this, this, this, this, that or no, guys, get ready, we're leaving at, you know, 1800. Boom. I believe in this. Is that how it's communicated or do you guys ask the question, why are we doing this?

[DJ Shipley]

They always provide an intel package and why they go over it from start to finish. I mean it's a complete picture. Everybody, every contingency.

[Cole Fackler]

And then when they do say, why are there side conversations saying, I don't know why we're doing this? It's not even worth it. Or no, it's like, no, we're locked in, let's go.

[DJ Shipley]

I think the side conversations are more on the logistics and the timing.

[Cole Fackler]

Got it.

[DJ Shipley]

That more environmental.

[Cole Fackler]

Got it. You said something earlier, you said at times I felt like we were being used. What did you mean by that?

[DJ Shipley]

You mean the U.S. yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

You said, sometimes I feel like we're being used by other countries. That, yeah.

[DJ Shipley]

That they're expecting. We're always going to step in and cover their back. We're going to fund it, we're going to support them. And there's no real thought of their internal defense system. It's always like they're the little brother and they're like, I have my big brother and I know he's always going to show up and the day he doesn't, what's going to happen. But I mean, I think again, our resources, our technology are used genuinely in partnership. But some of the countries, I feel like expect it and they have no kind of responsibility almost.

[Cole Fackler]

Are you talking, because you're talking kind of like Ukraine, is that.

[DJ Shipley]

No, I, I have zero perspective on what their, their perspective or expectations of or with us. But if Russia's invading their country, that, I mean, you had 80, 90 year old grandmothers grab an AK to defend their house. I think we'd have the same if somebody, some other country was trying to invade US like, we're going to protect where we live and whether they're politically involved or not, have some political stance or they have family in Russia. I think there are quite a few stories of, you know, families fighting each other on the Russian side in Ukraine. But it's like, I, I would 100% defend my own man. I think that's what they're doing.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, do you think if I'll just ask it over to you. Do you think if Trump was president, Russia would have invaded Ukraine?

[Cole Fackler]

No, no, not at all.

[Robert O'Neill]

I don't think so either.

[Cole Fackler]

I don't think so at all. Yeah, no, I think. No, I don't think so now. Well, you kind of said, it's not the negotiation now. Now he says, give me the hostage, give me the hostage, give me the hostage. You don't do anything. It's like Putin when he's being said, if you guys do this, I have a nuclear weapon to use. If you got. Because Putin's the last few years has threatened nuclear, he's gone straight up and said that, right? That's a pretty big threat. And you said, take every threat seriously, right? So what I said a few times, I'm like, dude, you can't keep threatening and not doing anything. Either don't make the threat, or if you do, be ready that if they don't back down to your threat, you have to actually execute the threat. So use your threats accordingly. You don't want to be threatened. Every month you lose the power of the threat. So I feel like what happened with Putin kind of Trump's been put in that situation right now a little bit with Hamas and the hostages and Israel, which, you know, the slippery slope. Well, you said something, you said about the phone calls. You don't know what he says on the phone calls, but whatever he says, he gets them to do something. Who knows what those phone calls are about? Who would love to be on those phone calls just to hear what he says?

[Robert O'Neill]

It'd break the Internet. There's no telling what he's saying, but it's working.

[Cole Fackler]

What do you imagine he says on these calls?

[Robert O'Neill]

I bet he's saying, I'm just going to play golf.

[Cole Fackler]

Can you imagine, like a purely fun conversation? It's not even like a, hey, listen, I swear to God, if you do anything, your golf memberships are done permanently. Never again, Mar Lago. Done. The meatballs will suck. We're going to give you two week old meatballs.

[Robert O'Neill]

He's doing something. He's saying something on that phone that is scaring him.

[Cole Fackler]

Does a commander in chief like that make you want to fight for him? Because you just said right now, if something happens, there's a recall, you're in, no problem.

[DJ Shipley]

100%.

[Cole Fackler]

Seriously?

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

How old are you guys?

[DJ Shipley]

41.

[Cole Fackler]

Oh, yeah. You still okay? Yeah. Sick. I love that. I love that energy, though. Like, we're ready. Look at the. You have a smile like this the entire podcast.

[DJ Shipley]

I'm just thinking about you.

[Robert O'Neill]

Stay ready. You ain't got to get ready. Oh, brother. Call. Yeah, I'll throw it on real quick.

[Cole Fackler]

Real quick.

[DJ Shipley]

There's something special about fighting for America and our freedom.

[Cole Fackler]

Tell me what that is.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, patriotism. Like, I don't have to know you. We don't have to have the same beliefs, but I love this country. I love the choices everybody gets. I love the freedom, the opportunity. Like, I'll die for it today, fighting for it. Absolutely. Our kids. Our kids, kids, like, I want them to have the same choices, chances that. That we enjoy.

[Cole Fackler]

Gotta love that, man. I'm in the army first time, I'm like, I joined the army for the GI Bill originally. None of my parents were from Iran, so it's not like I went because my dad was a 99 cent store cashier. So it's not like I'm going because of that. You go in and I joined April 15, give or take, whatever the dates were. I go to. What do you call it before you go to boot camp? That one week where you get the vaccination, the air gun vaccinations line up. You know, you get a scab, all that stuff, you go, meps? Is it MEPs? I think it's MEPs. And you get to the unit and then you're in boot camp. And then Memorial Day, whatever is end of May, Memorial Day. Yes. So Memorial Day happens and there's a ceremony. And I look at these guys who are decorated uniform, everything in tears stand guys that are tough understanding like this, and you just see tears. I'm like, whoa. Say drove, sergeant. What's going on over here? Do you know what those guys did? Do you know what that guy did? Do you know his story? Do you know what happened? These guys love their country. From that moment on, 4th of July came because that's right after it. And you're just standing there, dude, this is. And then we go to our unit, Hunter, First Airborne. I get there September of 97. Can you look, Rob, When Saving Private Ryan came out, they take us. They said, there's a movie coming out about your unit. You Guys get to watch it first. We go there, 600 of us in the unit, we watch Saving Private Ryan. What year did it's got to be 97. 90. Okay. Yeah. So, so that's so weird. So movie comes out in 97. 98. We see this movie in 97 and we watched this movie. This is about your unit. This is the hunter force. It was done after that.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

The pride of wearing that, you know, the, the badge and you know, I, I, I got out because I wanted to get into business and I got one phone call. But it was a unique experience of having that pride and loving your country. Were you brainwashed? A little bit, probably. But I don't mind who's washing my brain? You know, sometimes you have to be asking yourself because you know that can go in many different ways. The negative side as well. Having the level of pride in your country, there's nothing like it. I don't know if we helped it the last four years. I don't know if the last four years we sold America and our military the way that we typically do. You're seeing the recruiting numbers that are coming up right now, which is a beautiful thing. But I love seeing your level of patriotism. Pete hacks that. Did you guys ever serve with them? Did you guys ever work with them? No, never. Never had any interaction. How do you think he's doing? How do you think he's doing? Not his hair, because his hair looks good. Okay.

[Robert O'Neill]

Hair looks great.

[Cole Fackler]

Hillary looks great. How do you think he's doing? Because when he got the job, you know, you know, out of nowhere, Pete Hex said, Pete Hex said, Pete X said, given a big job like that, how do you think he's doing?

[Robert O'Neill]

I think right now it's pretty young or pretty new into it. I think he's going to develop. Right. I think he's surrounded himself with really good people. And I think the fact that he is down to earth, he is one of the boys I just classified as that. Not a politician, not going to be bought, not going to be paid for, just. And I know a bunch of people that really, really know him and they all classify him as a dude. He's a dude's dude. He's a good guy, he really cares and he is a patriot. And I honestly, that's, that's what I want to be around. I want to do that. Walks the walk, talks to talk and really, really cares. And I think he really, really does. I think right now, I mean, all signs right now show me that he's going to do a great job. Yeah. You know, I hope the, the, the.

[Cole Fackler]

The, the, the idea of having moral authority where the guys are willing to say, this guy understands me. Sometimes a guy telling you what to do, like, dude, you don't even know what we've done. Like you don't even know our life to really appreciate and respect us. Like, I've been a sales guy my entire life. I understand the value of somebody that sells. It sucks. Gotta make the phone calls, gotta get rejected. You're gonna have days where you're not gonna make any money. You guys run a business so you know what it's like when things are not going your way. How much does that matter when the guy that's gonna be at a level like this, especially nowadays, is younger? None of the woke stuff has served before. How much does that matter to the guys that are now following his lead?

[Robert O'Neill]

I'll be honest, I never had that opportunity. I would love to have that. A guy that's actually doing PT with you, a guy that comes out, you know, first month on a job, he's standards equal across the board. I'm sick of the social experience. We if you can't do 15 pull ups, you're out. I don't care if you're a male, a female, brown, white, black, Chinese. I don't care if you can't meet the standard, you're not here. Thank God, finally somebody said it. I mean, outside of the Marine Corps, everybody basically lowered the standard. Everybody did. I'm so glad he brought it back. No more that it doesn't make us better. It doesn't to.

[Cole Fackler]

To do the di stuff that we were doing.

[Robert O'Neill]

No, weakening the force does not help anybody. It doesn't. Lowering the standard. I mean, we pulled up one the other day. I have a. We had a world class strength conditioning coach, Vernon Griffith. He's with us five days a week. Been with him for seven years. He's the world's best. And we talked about it. Just if you look at in the 40s and 50s, high school gymnasium class, what they were doing. Rope climbs, every single person, the monkey bars. O course, push ups, pull ups, sit ups, running like they don't even do a mile run in school anymore. The physical standard has dropped so far and there's no reason for it because now we have the best athletes that have ever lived. It's not a matter of nutrition science data, exercise. I mean, we have all the data here to make superhumans. And for whatever reason, we just don't want to do it. I'm not about that life. Everybody, in my opinion, everybody should be walking around looking like Dolph lundgren off Rocky 4. Your physical presence matters. When you see guys go through a threshold, you. They should be the most intimidating people on the planet.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah, it's funny you're saying this. Do you remember the clip of John F. Kennedy when he was talking about fat kids? You ever seen that one where he. You've never seen this. You got it. Rob, can you pull this up? This is John F. Kennedy talking about nothing more unfortunate than fat children. And this was a speech. When did he give this speech? Rob, I'm going to send it to you. There's two of them. I send you the first one and second one. If you can pull up the second one that I just sent. Okay, Is this, this is the first. Give me one second. I'll get. This is my man.

[Robert O'Neill]

You are so fast on that computer. God, I need Rob.

[Cole Fackler]

Genius. Rob is very quick with this, but the other one, Rob, that. If you pull up. This one's 23 seconds. Watch this here. Go for it.

[Robert O'Neill]

Hey, what's going on, guys? DJ Shipley and Cole Falcon from GBRS Group want to talk to you real quick about my neck.

[DJ Shipley]

Retired Navy Seals entrepreneurs and co founders.

[Robert O'Neill]

Of GBRS group cover everything from flat range shooting, mental health, mental resiliency, physical education, anything you guys really want to drop into. Search us on the neck, find us on there and love to connect with you guys.

[DJ Shipley]

Look forward to hearing from you.

[Robert O'Neill]

Appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon.

[D]

There is nothing, I think, more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat looking children who go to watch their school play basketball every Saturday and regard that as their week's exercise. I hope that all of you will join and everybody in the United States to make sure that our children participate fully in a vigorous and adventurous life which is possible for them in this very rich country of ours.

[Cole Fackler]

Can you imagine saying that two years ago? Fat children, chubby, fat children, offensive, you know. Is this continuing of that, Rob? Yeah, this is the longer clip. It's about three minutes. Let me just. Let's just hear the first minute. Rob, fast forward, if you could a little bit. When he starts talking, go for it.

[D]

To speak to the people of America about a subject which I believe to be most important and that is the subject of physical fitness. And I speak not only as president of the union, but also as a parent of two children who I hope will grow up with those qualities of vigor and energy which we identify with the best of America. This should be a matter of concern to us all. A country is as strong really as its citizens. And I think that mental and physical health, mental and physical vigor go hand in hand. I hope that we will not find a day in the United States when all of us are spectators, except for a few who are out on the field. I hope all Americans will be on the field. That is, they will concern themselves with the education of their children, with the physical development of their children, with the participation in the vigorous life, and then also, as their children get older, inculcate into them a desire to maintain that vigor through their normal life. Our citizens are living longer, and we want them to participate fully in that longer life. But they can only do so if they give some of their time and some of their effort to maintaining that vitality.

[Cole Fackler]

You can pause.

[D]

This is a.

[Cole Fackler]

Got to love this. How do we get to a point where now, you know where we are, where we are with physical fitness? How does that happen?

[DJ Shipley]

Entitlement, no Accountability.

[Robert O'Neill]

Low in their standard.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, we've been saying this for a couple years. There are too many kids that never got punched in the face on the playground that have now grown up and become adults, getting trophies for losing. Everybody gets a trophy. Not working for anything, expecting everything. And now it's spilling over to the kids. The parents are offended. You can't say that to my kid. I'm not sure exactly how old you are. I know you're older than us, but it's like how we grew up. It was like they weren't always here. Take this medicine. You're bouncing off the wall like you were held accountable, Schools dealt with you. They weren't just like, oh, he's their problem. Like, they can't be here. And the schools have become softer.

[Cole Fackler]

There's no question about it. I mean, you get kids that get suspended or not allowed to go to school, annual trips because they were play fighting with the kids, boys specifically. You want this boy to be a man, but you're making him soft. What are you doing? Sometimes this happens that, you know, private schools. And the challenge with that is, you know, is man. I. I read something about how boys used to be raised by men. And a lot of times now there's teachers. Most of them are, you know, purely through professions.

[Robert O'Neill]

It's.

[Cole Fackler]

A lot of them are women. So the way they raise boys is the way they would raise girls. And they think they're doing a good job, but they're making them softer. And how do you balance that out? It's a very complicated Situation where we've been in this for a long time to change. This is going to take a minute. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a minute. It's going to be the involvement of fathers being there to, you know, shape them up and challenge them and let them know, hey, this is normal. This is what life looks like. You're going to get punched in the face sometimes. It's going to suck at times. Trust me, in business, you get punched in the face every day and you don't have a choice. Sometimes you get punched in other places where your voice changes. So you got to be braced for impact when you're getting kicked. But, yeah, no, I'm with you there when it comes down to that. But it's funny that John F. Kennedy gave that speech. John F. Kennedy. Imagine, you know, like Joe is them. John F. Kennedy was a Democrat giving a speech that direct. Your kids are chubby and fat. Get your act together, parents. What are you feeding them? I can see Trump giving a speech like that. Okay. Very easily. Okay, let me go to the next story here. So PMCs, right? We've had Erik Prince on a couple times, private military contractors. And we've had that conversation with them. It's almost as if movies are portraying what's gonna happen in 20 to 40 years. Okay. And you watch them, you're like, yeah, I don't know, maybe. Seriously, that'd be crazy. It's no longer crazy. It's not crazy. It's normal.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

A movie 30 years ago, that was crazy. Wow. I even. I said that was crazy. Now I've accepted it as the norm. Huh. So let me. Let me kind of take this in a different. So I'm watching Iron Man 1 and 2. We're going through it at the Hope. We had Terrence Howard the other day on the podcast. So we went through watching Iron Man 1 because he's in it. So now Dylan is like that, I want to watch Iron Man 2. So watching Iron Man 2 in Iron Man 2, whoever is the Mitch McConnell role or the Chuck Schumer role is asking Robert Downey Jr. To give up the Iron man robot to the government. He says, I'm not going to be doing that. He says, look what Iran is doing. He shows this clip, the robots that they're building in Iran. And look what Russia's building. And look what this is building. Showing the fact that everybody is building their own form of a superhuman Iron man machine that you get to use fly travel, all this other stuff. Right? Okay. And then this guy's a billionaire, he's very wealthy, he has the ability to build this stuff. He's super smart, he's super brilliant. And then you bring it to. Today, Elon Musk has given a speech about robots. And Rob, if you can pull up the speech, he says, you know, in, in the next 10, 20 years, the average person is going to be able to buy robots for 20 or 30 thousand dollars. And I believe there's going to be, you know, Tesla's going to have 10 or 20% of the robot market. Okay. He's talking about when you're sitting there and processing future threats of military. I'm curious if this even happened or not. How much of the conversation is. That's the one. If you can play that. No, you just added Rob, the one right there. Yeah. Play this clip if you could. Is there an audio to it? Oh, perfect. Go for it.

[E]

And even the most optimistic estimates that I've seen for, for Optimus, the optimist, Optimist, I think, under, under count the magnitude of what this robot will be able to do. You know, as I said at the beginning of the, of the presentation, I, you know, I agree with the Ark Invest analysis that autonomous transport is called sort of a 5 to 7 trillion dollar market cap situation. Optimus, I think, is, is a 25, literally $25 trillion market cap situation.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah, that's not it. There was another clip that says that we have Tesla. It says it'll be $30,000. There it is. Is that the one? Play that clip, Rob.

[E]

I think, I think everyone in the world is going to want one, like literally everyone. And, and then there'll be obviously robots in industry making stuff. And so, I mean, I, I think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will probably be at least two to one. Something like that. One to one for sure. So, which means like somewhere on the order of 10 billion humanoid robots.

[Cole Fackler]

Maybe.

[E]

Maybe 20 or 30. And so then it's like, okay, well, let's say, you know, you kind of make. Let's say the build rate is. I think the build rate will be probably something ultimately like a billion a year.

[Cole Fackler]

Humanoid robots, like actually a billion a year.

[E]

And if Tesla just has a 10% sure of that, and it might be a lot more than 10%, and there's, you know, who make like 100 million Optimus units a year. I just, I mean, for reference, the auto industry is roughly 100 million vehicles per year. So the, you know, sort of similar ballpark, at least within an order of magnitude And I, I think we could make one for a cost of maybe at really high scale of about $10,000. It's smaller, it'd be less expensive than.

[Cole Fackler]

A car you can possibly. Okay, so check this out. 10,000. So for me, if I'm in the, if I'm the chief of, you know, put me as the, you know, sergeant Major of the army, you know, sergeant major of whatever, Navy, whatever the, that position is, or the four star general, whatever this is. Are my enemies to worry about officially? Governments that have to worry about, or do I have to worry about free market billionaires that are soon to be trillionaires? They're going to be able to have a million robots that they can build and deploy that. How do we regulate them? What new threats are we going to have 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now where that could be taking place? Do you guys talk about that? And when you were in for those 17 years, at what level were those conversations coming up? It was. No, it's just more here. Here's what China's doing, here's what Russia is doing. Here's what this is doing. What were those conversations like?

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, I think the worst world war that will ever happen be between us. Google, Apple, like we've seen it.

[Cole Fackler]

Terminator, like, I don't think it's unrealistic at this point for sure.

[DJ Shipley]

With AI, the speed it's evolving, I mean, everybody will have one in their house, just like Alexa or whatever. Amazon kind of, it'll be in there out of convenience. Do your laundry, pick your kids up, get groceries. They'll make it affordable owner for 5, 10 years. Lease it, buy it, get new models. It'll be a problem when they can't control them.

[Robert O'Neill]

You have short wire, kill the dog, attack one of the kids. Like you're like, no, we've all seen the movie. I don't put a whole lot of faith in that. But I mean, that is a serious concern though. I mean, he has an ungodly amount of money and if he wanted to build an entire robot army and deploy it, he most certainly could. I mean, you see the same thing with some of the drone stuff. Now they can throw out a couple thousand drones, do these huge parades and all this stuff. All they could do is put a little bit of armament on them. It's a very hard thing to combat. I mean, the robot stuff was scarce, but I mean, it never came up in conversation. The only thing we're trying to do is solve the human problem because for.

[Cole Fackler]

Our line, I think it's about to change. So do I. I think it's about to change. And yeah, because to me, the PMC side I kind of support. Right, because you need more competition, which is good. You need like private military contractors. Now if the PMC is deploying business to our enemies and us, it's kind of weird conflict of interest. So then I have a problem with that. So you're sending 88 former military, whatever guys to help Russia and to help Ukraine and to help this. So then do you sign NDAs and say, we'll do this $238 million contract with you, but you can't do with my enemy Russia for the next three years? Is that kind of how the deals are going to get done? Hey, free market. We're selling cars. I'm going to sell robots. Guess what? Russia wants to buy a million robots from us. This person wants to buy 2 million robots from us. Now there's robots that travel, there's robots that fly. Now one guy comes in, battery ends, drop, six people die. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like again, everything is about anticipating a future war. I wonder how much of us I want to believe that our military is already ready for the 2045 war. Not the 2025 war. I want to believe that. Do you believe we are working towards that or you guys are in it? What do you think?

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, we're not in it anymore, but they were always talking about the next Ridgeline. Always. Even when Iraq was brand new, they were always foreshadowing, always looking for the next obstacles that's going to come up. You know, if this happens, these two countries align, we'll be dealing with this. And you got a lot of people in the US military that are just looking at future conflicts. I have no doubt they're trying to actively combat that, but that is not going to be an easy thing to crack. Especially, I mean, people with ungodly amounts of money can just do kind of whatever they want to at a certain point. Yeah. If you don't hold them accountable, if you don't make them sign on a dotted line like, you cannot provide this tech to our adversaries. If they're not willing to do that, then I think you shouldn't be able to get support from this country.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, Lockheed Martin I think definitely didn't sell F35s to Russia, but I know they sell them internationally at least. What the article said is they don't get our version, so they may look the same, but Internally and how they perform. Ours perform better. So if we sell or they sell F35s to Thailand, they may look like the same F35 we have, but ours is more capable.

[Cole Fackler]

How certain are we of that?

[DJ Shipley]

That's the trust we have in the government and the State Department. Nitar Rob, can you pull that up?

[Cole Fackler]

Can you. Can you just search it and see? Gotta ask Chat GBT if you said Lockheed Martin, right? If Lockheed Martin sells F35s to us versus what country do we want to say? Russia. They don't sell to Russia versus Who? Anybody give a country anything versus uk uk. How different are the models or are they identical? Great question. F35 is designed to be multi stealth variants. There are notable differences between the Lockheed Martin sells to the US and the UK. The special. So the variants are three things. F35 conventional takeoff CTL used by US Air Force. F35B short takeoff vertical landing used by US Marine Corps. UK Royal Navy and Air Force. F35C carrier based version used by the US Navy. US models are F35A Air Force, F35B Marines, F35C Navy. They also receive top tier hardware software, full access to mission data files, proprietary electronic warfare, unrestricted access to source codes to deeper integration, full control over weapons. The UK models use excessively. F35 variant Queen Elizabeth. It's the only tier one partner in F35 program and has. Okay, can you ask the follow up question and say which countries does Lockheed Martin not sell F35s to? Lockheed Martin not sell F35s 2. F35s 2. Yeah, let's see what it says. Actually curious now like if the US government gets involved. Lockheed Martin does not sell F35 to several countries primarily due to US export. Geopolitical concerns, lack of alignment, countries not allowed. Russia, obvious conflict. China. Okay, good. Iran, North Korea. All four make sense. Syria, Cuba. Makes sense. Venezuela makes sense. Turkey. Interesting. That's got to be recent. Was a partner, but kicked out of the program in 2019 for purchasing the Russian S400 missile system. Seen as a security risk to the F35. Huh. Just six years ago. Countries not currently approved but may express interest. India, Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam. Saudi Arabia. Who is approved to buy NATO allies, close allies. So all the NATO and then Japan, South Korea. See that's interesting to me to have that kind of a system. To me, my question is not countries moving forward. Really isn't. You get a guy who has all the money in the world and decides to build real weapons and then the government tells him to do something. No. And then the government needs him for the products that he's producing, so they also don't want to do anything to him because the reliability is on that guy as well. It's going to be very interesting. The next 20 years are going to be potentially many of these movies we watched the last 20 years. You know, I'm saying, yeah, it's sketchy.

[Robert O'Neill]

It just like. It's so much easier fighting a human. It just is. It's so much easier fighting a person than it is.

[Cole Fackler]

That's what I'm saying, though, like, for you guys, you're like, listen, if I fight a human, guess what? I'm fair. If you kill me, you beat us. You know what? Cool. But you going up against robots. We're talking about robots. Allen Iverson would say we're talking about robots here. That's a very different situation.

[Robert O'Neill]

Just fight him on the water.

[Cole Fackler]

Do what?

[Robert O'Neill]

Fight him on the water.

[Cole Fackler]

Fight him on the water.

[Robert O'Neill]

Robots don't do good.

[Cole Fackler]

What do you feel the safest, like, for? You guys? Got families? Like, if you were to add a guy here, his name was. He's the only guy that we brought on the podcast. Back to back within a month. What was his name, Rob? That.

[DJ Shipley]

Peter Pry.

[Cole Fackler]

Peter Pry. Do you guys know Peter Pry? This guy was the expert in EMPs and nuclear weapons. Peter Pryor. We brought him two times in a month. It was so interesting. And then second time around, we brought him. The guy ended up passing away months later, if you remember that. It was such a tragic. Suddenly, all of a sudden, we're like, wait, what happened? We just had to get on a podcast twice in a month, and I asked him, where do you feel the safest to live to have your kids? You guys are military. If this is the direction that's going, you got kids, you got family, you have the resources. Where would you feel building something to feel the safest in case shit were to hit the fan? You got family? What do you do with your two girls?

[Robert O'Neill]

Move to Montana? Get off the grid?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah. Definitely. Move inland. Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

But you're not there yet. You're not. You're not thinking about it yet.

[DJ Shipley]

No. No.

[Robert O'Neill]

Now, the business on the east coast, can't leave it now.

[DJ Shipley]

No.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah, I kind of stuck there. I mean, in a perfect world, you'd be more inland.

[Cole Fackler]

So in other words, what you're saying is maybe in the next five years, you're going to employ 200 robots? Yes, sir.

[Robert O'Neill]

Put them right on the ocean. Just look out.

[Cole Fackler]

I dare you to Come in and do something here to us. Okay, so another question. Okay, the. When, when I was in Iran, you know, when we came here, they're talking about marijuana, they're talking about weed, you know, smoking weed and all this stuff. We would hear, you know, Teddyok, we would hear about opium, you know, diff opium and different things that guys would do. Right. In Afghanistan or maybe any of these other places. How much was the drug epidemic? Was there a drug epidemic going on? The poppies, the protection of the poppies. Have you seen those pictures where the poppies are being protected? You know, to pull up some of these pictures here. Were you guys ever around this? Were you, you guys ever seen any of this stuff? Why is this so important for us, the US military to protect some of these places?

[Robert O'Neill]

That's how they make all their money, that's how they do it. It's how they fund everything.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean their number one export is.

[Robert O'Neill]

That in marijuana too, dude. Fields of it.

[DJ Shipley]

In Afghanistan they would burn bricks like we would use wood for fires to stay warm. They burn bricks of marijuana.

[Cole Fackler]

Stay warm Bricks of marijuana. That here you could sell it for God knows how much.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, I mean they're probably five pound bricks easily. Yeah.

[Robert O'Neill]

Oh that and you got the guys chewing the cotton. Africa.

[Cole Fackler]

What is that right there? That's a cannabis field in Afghanistan.

[Robert O'Neill]

Bars. Yeah, I can see there's a bunch of really cool pictures. We didn't hit a bunch of those things. There's a ton of photos like Green berets, neck deep and it just armfuls of like what are we doing? They're telling you to burn the entire field. I threw a kerosene, setting the whole thing on fire. Just get upwind of it and send it.

[Cole Fackler]

Are you like you talking about second hand high at the highest level? If you're burning all this stuff, if you're angled properly with the wind coming your way.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. Set a fire, get on a helicopter over there. The women blasted out. But yeah, I mean like that's what they have to do with it. That's how they make all their money and they have endless supplies of it. That's how they're funding terrorism.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean I remember one time in Afghanistan, blew my mind. They literally had drug rehab facilities there for heroin.

[Cole Fackler]

For us or for them?

[DJ Shipley]

No, like for them in Afghanistan. Treat it like a drugstore. They just had a drug rehab place for heroin for Afghans. It blew my mind. I had no idea.

[Cole Fackler]

What is the stat, Robert, do we know any stats with the drug issues in Afghanistan?

[Robert O'Neill]

Oh, that's a good one. How much the world's opium comes from Afghanistan.

[Cole Fackler]

Wow.

[Robert O'Neill]

There you go.

[Cole Fackler]

Damn.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Holy. Are you joking?

[Robert O'Neill]

Telling you man, it's their national pastime.

[Cole Fackler]

90% 2022 cultivation Afghanistan was estimated at 233,000 hectares marking 32% increase from the previous year. However, the following the Taliban ban on opium cultivation April 10, there was a significant reduction in production. By 2023, opium cultivation has decreased by over 95%. That's a lot. That's a lot of money being lost. Despite 90% increase, cultivation deteriorates on the cultivation of 2022 as a result of Afghanistan. Wow. When you guys were there, would they ever try to bribe you? We made a video this week on blackmail. How blackmail is one of the oldest currencies that a lot of people in power use. I mean the whole Epstein stuff, you hear blackmail, all this stuff. Would they ever try to bribe you or win you guys over? The locals? When they see guys like you now.

[Robert O'Neill]

You don't have a chance. No.

[Cole Fackler]

Why not?

[Robert O'Neill]

Because there's no conversation.

[DJ Shipley]

There's no conversation. We're not there. I specifically are not there to have a conversation.

[Cole Fackler]

And not the regular guys I'm talking about specifically. Not at all. You come in to do job and you're out.

[Robert O'Neill]

There's nothing you're going to say to.

[DJ Shipley]

Saba now put your hands up, lay down or.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah, that's it.

[DJ Shipley]

We can speak a universal language.

[Cole Fackler]

How fat, how.

[DJ Shipley]

It would be interesting to go over that. When you talk about the decrease of 95% of opium. Remember what else was kind of going on around there when we pulled out and China came in and made a deal with the Taliban. They're super rare earth mineral rich. It's just been impossible since there's a war being going on to be actually, actually be able to mine them.

[Robert O'Neill]

What is that rare?

[DJ Shipley]

It ties into electric vehicles and batteries.

[Robert O'Neill]

Like lithium or something.

[Cole Fackler]

Is it lithium or is it. What's the other one? Not cobalt is it might be a.

[DJ Shipley]

Mixture, I'm not sure.

[Cole Fackler]

So I've got some estimated approximately 1.4 million times around the minerals or globally. But what specific, what specific rare earth element is it? Because if it's cobalt or.

[Robert O'Neill]

Aircraft engines, alloys, batteries, catalytic converters.

[Cole Fackler]

Makes sense. By the way, I just looked it up here in 2021 it was estimated that the opium related activities accounted for 9 to 14% of the country's GDP. Wow, that is wild for them to have that going on. That's absolutely insane. Leaving Afghanistan the way we left. Okay, you Know, that was obviously a big story here. I think it was. What was it? Was it May of 2020? May of 2020, I think it was. When, when was it? When we left, what month was it? When we left was, it says August 30th of 2021. Completed. The United States Armed Forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021. Okay, so. Which stipulated the fighting restrictions from the US and Taliban and returned to elements counterterrorism provided from withdrawal NATO from all Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. Got it. So, okay, when this happened, and you're seeing it everywhere, we're hearing about it, your initial reaction on how big of a screw up this was.

[Robert O'Neill]

Kind of devastating. Just devastating. You gotta think most of the people that joined think like the Pat Tillmans of the world. The people that just stopped everything they were doing to pick up arms and serve the nation. That's why you did it. I understand. While I don't side with those people, the guys that didn't want to get involved with Iraq, I get it. You can't tell me the same thing for Afghanistan. Just can't. When we went there, I mean, me and Cole, I'll say we got stuck in Iraq for three rotations. I wanted to go to Afghanistan so bad, I could taste it. I know he did, too. It was like that felt like that's where you're supposed to be.

[Cole Fackler]

Why is that?

[Robert O'Neill]

Because you flew planes in a trade center, killed thousands of our people. That's why. It's like we're going to get vengeance for nothing else. I'll be honest. I'm not there to liberate anybody. I'm only there to get. Get even. That's it. It's the only reason I'm there. And then when you pull out, you think about all the people that sacrifice their lives for that entire war. That's the way you're going to pull out. Like, we've already seen it before. We saw Vietnam, We've done this before. We should have done this much, much better. For me, it just seemed like all for nothing. I don't know. Yeah. Disheartening for sure.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah, it was tough to watch. I mean, it felt like there was no respect for the people that had paid their lives, the US lives and fighting there and being dedicated, it felt like. I know a lot of families that lost loved ones. Brothers, sisters, sons, fathers, daughters, moms. Like, it just felt super disrespectful. And the people that were the last to leave, you know, they felt like they were left to hang out. Yeah, like, good luck.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, you ever see the documentary Restrepo? You should watch it.

[Cole Fackler]

What's it called?

[Robert O'Neill]

Restrepo. I believe it's an army unit tapa. I think it's in a corn gall. Just a nightmare. But it documents the entire deployment when we pulled out. You should definitely watch it. You'd love it. Really, really good.

[Cole Fackler]

I'm gonna watch it tonight.

[Robert O'Neill]

They. When they pulled out, Taliban released them inside of that camp. Running on the treadmills, you know, living in their beds. We just left everything.

[DJ Shipley]

All the technology.

[Robert O'Neill]

Why? I mean, but you don't think they can fly a C130? Of course they can. They'll figure it out.

[DJ Shipley]

A couple videos of them trying.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know, man. When you come back from Vietnam, you see him pushing the. The Hueys off the edge of the ship, like it costs too much to ferry them back. We're just gonn. Why are we not just blowing all that stuff in place? I get it. Math it makes. It cost too much money to fly them all back here. We have too much in reserve. It's cool. Why are we not blowing them all up or selling them to the allies? You're just gonna leave them all for them. That makes no sense to me.

[Cole Fackler]

Why do you think we didn't?

[Robert O'Neill]

I have no idea.

[DJ Shipley]

A shitty plan.

[Robert O'Neill]

I'm a very logical per. Logically, it makes no sense. You left them all the armor, all the weapons, all the night vision. Everything that makes a superior unit gave it to him. Why? I mean, we've been training thousands of these guys. I mean, there's some serious forces in Afghanistan we've been building the last 20 years. And you just left them there? What's going to happen? They all get killed. Taliban knows who they are. They just wipe them all off the face of the earth. Just what they do. That's why there was such a big push. You saw a bunch of SF guys who were going back to Afghanistan to try to pull these families out, the interpreters and all that. It's because we dump so much time and energy into them, like they were trying to make their country better. And now we just left them, like that's not going to work. And it didn't. Yeah, to me, it was very disheartening to see that whole thing happen.

[Cole Fackler]

How do you think Ukraine and Russia is going to end? How do you think that's going to end? You think it's going to end soon? Or you think that that's going to Continue.

[Robert O'Neill]

I hope it ends soon. I think if anybody's going to end it soon, Trump will. I don't think if he doesn't get it solved by mid year, it's not a good sign. If we get into the summer months and this thing still is going on, I think somebody's gonna have to step in, intervene.

[DJ Shipley]

If Trump gets Putin to kind of withdraw and they get a ceasefire in a treaty, that would be ideal. It's definitely concerning if we get involved, you know, China is gonna get involved, and it's kind of a domino effect after that. I definitely see China backing them up, North Korea, too, but hopefully Trump's been doing pretty well at it.

[Cole Fackler]

Did you guys see what Zelensky said about Putin two weeks ago? Rob, do you have that clip? Yes. Let me find it real quick. So about two weeks ago, Zelensky is up there just kind of openly talking about, we don't know if Putin's going to be alive or not. You know, we don't know if he's going to make it or not. Is this it, Rob? I think this is it. Go for it. But it's also. It also depends on his age. He will die soon. That's a fact. And it will come to an end. It could be come to an end even before he ends his absolutely safe. Losing historically, losing life. Historically. What he said, he's just. Just play the first seven seconds and lower the audio a little bit, Rob, so we can. Because it pops, because both of them are speaking. Just play the first seven seconds again, if you could. But it's also, it also depends on his age. He will die soon, and that's a fact. And it will come to an end. Continue four more seconds. And it could come to an end even before. When you're in the military, you hear something like that. A world leader who's in war right now say something like that. How do you interpret that?

[Robert O'Neill]

Wishful thinking. I think you hope that's going to happen.

[Cole Fackler]

This is a leader of a country that's at war with Russia saying he will die soon.

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, was your take on it that he was going to die of old age or from violence?

[Cole Fackler]

How old is the guy? Putin's only 70 years old.

[Robert O'Neill]

Is he only 70?

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah, 72. I don't know how Putin is. He's not 72 years old. Yeah, and he looks pretty good. He doesn't look like he's a Biden, you know, he's 72. He looks healthy. He's training, he's doing his thing. But to Make a comment like that. See, to me, I don't know if you, you know, at. Again you said something, you said, no, we didn't watch the news, we just kind of watch shows or whatever. You said you guys just kind of hang out and do your thing. Right. I watched post game interviews more than I watch games and you hear a guy speak and I, I'm trying to catch, to see what he's saying. If they're speaking sign language, you know, and every once in a while you're like, oh, he said something. And that was. He's talking about xyz. I got it right. Is it that detailed where you kind of looking to see what a world leader is saying while a war is going on, there's an active war between the two. Are we paying that close attention to what they're saying or not really. Like it's just another media interview that's taking place. Who knows why he said that?

[Robert O'Neill]

At a high level or at a high level?

[Cole Fackler]

At your level.

[Robert O'Neill]

I'm sure a lot of guys are. I mean the media puts such a twist on things that when you're over there, a lot of times it ruins your confidence if you, if you listen.

[Cole Fackler]

To what they're saying.

[Robert O'Neill]

Yeah. A lot of times it makes you think you're there for the wrong reason. Like, wow, I'll just say it because we cut our teeth in Iraq and those are some rough deployments. I never once heard anything outside of WMDs until it was too late. I didn't care. We started talking about oil and I don't care about any of that. None of that matters to me. It doesn't stop that IED from going off. Doesn't matter. It doesn't put a tourniquet on that guy when he gets shot. I don't care why we're here. Doesn't matter because I'm here. I can't leave. So it doesn't matter to me. Your political views, I don't care. You're not going to come over here and do it for me. So right now everything you're saying is just, it's really making me second question what I'm doing. And that flag isn't to be second questioned. I'm here for that.

[Cole Fackler]

Now that you're disconnected from it and you see WMD and you're reading these things and you see the documentaries, does it change anything for you now?

[Robert O'Neill]

For me it doesn't just, I take it for someone who just, you know, put yourself in Bush's scenario, you know, reading, reading books to a couple elementary school kids, and next thing you know, they tap you on the shoulder and say they're flying planes in a World Trade Center. Now you have to act. Now you have to go. And then you have. I'll just call Saddam Psycho, known for killing thousands and thousands of people, saying he has this. Are you going to question him? That was my justification. Like, if he says he has him, better go find out whether he had him or not personally, with the information I had at the time, I didn't second question anything, say, we got to go, we got to go. But I also said that the entire time, if. If it would have been some random country, if it would have been Dearborn, Michigan would have said the entire thing. It's inside the U.S. the entire city's gone corrupt. We have to invade and take it all over. I wouldn't have batted an eye if they're all a terrorist organization. Same thing with the cartel. Okay, let's go. Like, I don't have time to. Second question. It doesn't matter to me. At a certain point, it can. I'm not there. I'm not a policymaker. It's not what I do. I'm only here for that.

[Cole Fackler]

That makes sense. Because that also matches up with what you're saying. At the beginning when you said, when Kobe gets locked in, you know, what was the word you used? The switch. Did you say the switch where you. Once you're locked in, you're in, you go. You don't need anything else feeding you to throw you off from the mission that you're on. And the average person's not going to understand that. Right. There needs to be a maniacal level of focus and selfishness on the mission you're on. Let the other guys debate it on. See, whatever you're doing, I've been told to do this. I'm just going to go do my job and I'm out. This is what I'm doing.

[Robert O'Neill]

I do the same thing. Like, I'll go out and I'll do talks or SWAT teams and performance teams. And I was talking to NHL guys not too long ago, and I was talking about the level of loyalty it takes to, like, really commit to a team. Nothing else matters. Just the 25 guys inside this room. And one of the guys kind of spoke up and he's like, it's hard when you can be drafted any moment. I get it. Same thing for us. We'd be kicked off that team tomorrow. You'd be switched positions. You can get pulled out. It's the same thing. I would just tell you to lean in and give them that loyalty because they're giving you the opportunity to showcase your craft. You're not playing for any other team. And the moment you do, they get the full loyalty. So as long as I'm wearing this, I'm fully bought in. My individual hopes, dreams, wants and wishes don't really matter.

[Cole Fackler]

Not above that post. I remember one, one time. Balin. What's Balance? First name? He's a. He's a very good content creator. Mr. Ballin. What's his first John? Jonathan. Yeah. Real nice guy. And they were doing something in Dallas that was for high level guys. Paratroopers, you know, Ranger, you know, Green beret, black. Everybody was, you know, somebody. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm air Assault or I'm airborne. No, it was like you did something right, and you were in a room. You look at everybody. Everybody looks like a stud. Like, literally everybody in the room looks like an absolute stud. Like people you'd want to hire, right? But everybody was also dealing with an element of ptsd. Okay. When you get now trying to disconnect from it that high, you're talking about in Jeremy Renner in Hurt Locker, right? And you're getting out and you're like, oh, my God, you're gonna switch all that. So you get, I want it again. I want the next rush. I want the next rush. When my friend was etsing and getting out after his 20 years, there was a moment he and I had to have a conversation together. It's like, hey, man, I really need to talk to you. Boom. What's going on? I don't know what to do. It's like, pat, it's a real thing. I'm really. And by the way, this is not a guy that would ever complain about anything. This is a g. This is a legit, real guy. This is not a. You know. But he says, I'm telling you, I'm going through, you know, some weird thoughts of me trying to make this transition. How hard is that? How long does it take? Does it ever get to a point where you're so disconnected that you not moved on? And is there a mechanism on how to disconnect from. Because, you know, when you look at sports, you know, historically, when a guy was a professional bodybuilder or professional athlete, I don't know what the statistic is, but it's pretty high. The moment they retired, they get a divorce. Because now the enemy becomes the wife. You're coming and seeing her more and more and more. Right. They don't know what to do. The etsing part, ptsd, how do you deal with that when you're leaving after you're done with your 17 years?

[DJ Shipley]

I mean, I think any transition in the military is extremely tough. We were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be doing our military transition. Middle of COVID you leave an environment that you've known so well and it's a new introduction to the world as a civilian. Everything from your schedule choice. I mean imagine doing something for 20 years. Now you have to go reinvent yourself. You have three little ones, you got an ex wife, a new wife and you, none of your family's around. What am I going to do? I graduated high school 20 years ago. And just the uncertainties, the accountability to your family, not knowing. There are some great programs out there that are really helping veterans transition and get exposure professionally. And there's a lot of really, really smart people that can add value completely outside of the industry that we're in. But it's a mentorship and showing those individuals you can have a great life afterwards. But it's extremely challenging. The ptsd, being around groups, being in front of people. I mean this, this like we avoided cameras, we avoided social media and now all of a sudden it's like I gotta be normal in front of cameras. I mean that, that's the scariest thing right there.

[Cole Fackler]

Is it? Is it though?

[DJ Shipley]

Oh yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Are you serious?

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah. It wasn't natural. The natural thing was to avoid it. And luckily we had each other going through it in the transition and it wasn't easy for us with everything we had going on. There are some different treatments that have definitely helped. We did the psychedelic treatment down in Mexico through vets and that was a great reset. I think both of us, it saved both of our lives going down there and doing it. It was a really good eye opening reset. But having a good community and support network around you is key. We were always confident in our abilities, put our heads together and not having to reinvent ourself. Being able to pass on our knowledge and what we're passionate about and our experiences on to the next generation. So you didn't have to learn the same lessons we did in blood. We wanted to pass on that knowledge. I mean that was something that bugged us Sometimes different teams would do ops and they would go well or bad, but nobody would, would talk about it. They wouldn't pass on the knowledge. And we really wanted to do that. Kind of going through that and doing that, nobody would talk about Emotions. No one would be like, hey, like, I'm going through a nasty divorce, or we're going through a low point. We started talking about it. DJs way better than me about talking about it, but addressing those kind of topics that nobody ever talked about. And the amount of people that gave a reaction of. I felt alone. I felt like I was the only one going through this. Pretty much any experience in any life outside of probably a few. So many people have gone through it, so many people go through it afterwards. But being able to talk about it, that's been a huge kind of key thing in realizing that you're not alone. And everybody has low days, high days, just managing them.

[Cole Fackler]

Dj, what would you say?

[Robert O'Neill]

I'd say that transition is so much harder than everybody makes it seem. You get these guys that get out and like, oh, my God, dude, when you get out, every job is going to pay you 350 grand a year. They just want you to sit around, they're just going to pay you because of who you. And then people get out and those jobs aren't there. That's not a real thing. And then you've left the only thing you've known, the only thing you've ever loved, you've left it. And on a Tuesday, you were out of the group chat. There's no email, there's no body armor to put on. There's no one who needs you, really. And you haven't built a relationship with your family. Now you're stuck with them. I use Tom Brady's example. Tom Brady's a Navy seal. You did that one thing at full capacity the entire time. The moment you left it, you're like, I can't leave it. She's like, you have to leave. You have to retire. No. Gets a divorce. Can't do it. Can't get off the train. Cannot do it. If you don't think. Tom Brady laid in a fetal position and cried after he fully retired. Promise you he did. Everybody does it. Some of the darkest moments have just been just leaving it in the moment. You're out, man. I don't know how to do anything else. I feel like I'm. I feel like I'm empty. I don't have anything. That's what we talk about when I tell guys now, like, my physical fitness, my. My mental health are really at the forefront of my priorities. I wake up in the morning and that's what I knock out first, because that gives me the bandwidth to take on everything else throughout the day. I feel like a lot of people lose that, they leave the military. You've been on the same structured routine. I don't care if you're on an 82nd Airborne, some SF team, a SWAT team. You've been doing the same thing the entire time. You wake up, you go do pt, you eat breakfast, fish, you go upstairs. Meeting, training, deploying, blah blah, blah. It's the same thing if you just keep that first morning routine the same. It feels so familiar that now between 10am and 5pm you can do whatever you need to now, because my first morning, it feels so repetitive. It feels like I've been doing it my entire life. I wake up the exact same time I did when I was in. I do the same fitness, hang around the same people, same protein shake, same 20 minute walk, same everything. So the first part of my morning, it feels like I'm still in the team. I mean, we're surrounded by nothing but team guys now. It feels the same.

[Cole Fackler]

What percentage of your employees are former.

[Robert O'Neill]

Vets with training cat?

[DJ Shipley]

Former vets, 35, 40% or so, training cadre.

[Robert O'Neill]

I mean, they're all team guys.

[Cole Fackler]

By the way. When, when you, when you get out. Like I remember how much money I got out with, but I wasn't in there for 17 years. I was there for three, two and a half years. When, when the average seal gets out, how much money do they have in a bank?

[Robert O'Neill]

Well, it depends. Because we got medically retired, that becomes an issue that no one ever gets you prepped for. So we'll say, you know, E7 and the SEAL teams, so you make 90 grand a year, everything, all in. As soon as you start that medical retirement board, they take away all your special pays, dive pay, jump pay, demo pay, hazardous duty, aip, you lose it all. And depending on how messed up you are and how long that whole process takes, you go to 50% of your pay. So for me, when I started that medical retirement, it took about a year. So I have to bridge that with all my savings. So when I retired, retired, like when I got it, I got electrocuted right before I retired. So now I couldn't work, I couldn't do anything. I mean, I'm laying on the bed in double slings, can't make any money. And I've ate up every ounce of my money market, every ounce of savings, put the kids through private school because nothing changes now I just don't have the income. And now physically I can't make it. That's where everybody hits rock bottom. Now you feel like a total failure, Like I've done this one thing. I've sacrificed so much.

[Cole Fackler]

This deserves a medal, bro.

[Robert O'Neill]

Exactly.

[Cole Fackler]

Holy.

[Robert O'Neill]

I put her through absolute hell. Absolute hell. Yeah. Me and her story is. Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

Wow.

[Robert O'Neill]

It's not a Hallmark movie, but it's.

[Cole Fackler]

Not a Hallmark movie.

[Robert O'Neill]

It's not.

[Cole Fackler]

And, and what business are you guys in? What do you guys do now?

[DJ Shipley]

Now, we started GBS group back in September 6th of 2019 and just over five and a half years old. Have close to 40 employees now and in house. Oh, another 1510 99s. Bunch of different verticals within the company. You know, it started from a lot of emotion and passion of passing on the tactical knowledge that we learned to the next generations and being open and honest and just really trying to pass on what we had learned and not have to reinvent ourself.

[Cole Fackler]

What's the product?

[DJ Shipley]

So we have a few different verticals.

[Robert O'Neill]

So if you go to gbrscoopgear.com it'll pull up.

[DJ Shipley]

Yeah.

[Cole Fackler]

There.

[DJ Shipley]

There's what I'll call hard goods. So mounts that, that take red dots and you put them on the rifle and a few different kind of variants in that. That's one of the mounts right there. Some tactile nylon. So gun belts, slings. But everything that we've designed, there's a number of that have patents on them now. But everything we designed, whether it was an invention or making a product better, we were trying to solve for a gap and the problems that we experienced. Super simple weapon sling. But we designed our weapon sling. Could tell you every reason why we did it. The naked eye may not look any different, but all of our products were trying to solve a problem, be 100% dependable and enable the end user. And so hard goods, soft goods, kind of branded T shirts, hats, subscription apps, workout, Patreon and training. We have international dealer network from Thailand to Poland, everywhere in between. So we've grown a lot in the last five years, going from zero employees to over 35 now.

[Cole Fackler]

That's so cool.

[DJ Shipley]

We learned. We learned everything kind of just on the fly and figuring it out. We had zero business background and just kind of figured out, got 401ks health insurance. Oh, yeah, all the fun, fun parts.

[Cole Fackler]

But that's cool.

[Robert O'Neill]

Like, the irony is that was never the goal. So I was right. When I transitioned out, Cole was doing real estate, super successful. And I was going to contract with the agency and go off and just do private military contracting. That's all I wanted to do. Just keep doing the same job. A bunch of guys that were in that same organization we had worked with before, and everybody was getting shot, everybody was getting blown up, and dudes were dying left and right. And Covid just happened to happen. I got really, really hurt. And we had a little bit of downtime. Had to get a bunch of surgeries and kind of rebuild back up. So I missed my class update. And in that process, I was still training, training with the Air Force, Teach him cqb, still skydiving, still doing all that. And we're sitting down one day and he's like, what's it going to take for you not to go do that? I don't know how to do anything else. When I have my retirement, I was like, if I could squeeze out 100 grand a year, that plus retirement, I'm done. I think we can solve that. So we decided we were going to teach CQB and flat range to SWAT team guys and, you know, military dudes and what, Three weeks later, Covid, everybody's on lockdown and now you can't make any money. So now what do you do? We all quit our day jobs and now we're stuck.

[Cole Fackler]

Yeah, man, that's great.

[Robert O'Neill]

And somehow we. Somehow we made it happen.

[Cole Fackler]

Good for you guys, man. Respect. Salute. First of all, thank you for your service. Pleasure at the highest level. Rob, can we put the link below as well? This has been a blast talking to you guys. Of course, I've seen your stuff before out there and you know the military community, highest level of respect. But when you hear the stories and specifically sit now, now, learning about you guys, likable patriots, straight up, honest, you know, values, principles, you got to love it. I'm not surprised what you guys are growing 3,540 employees. The way you guys are going right now, who knows how big this thing can turn into, right? You got two driven guys that the fire is going to go from there to here. By the way. Who do people say you look like? I'm curious.

[DJ Shipley]

A mix between Jake Gyllenhaal and Bradley Cooper.

[Cole Fackler]

Bradley Cooper.

[DJ Shipley]

They had a kid. That's what I'd be.

[Cole Fackler]

I would say, if Billy Baldwin and Sean Penn had a kid, it's you. And we've had multiple of the Baldwins on it. You know, the bald ones. These guys were good looking. Billy. Billy was in. What was the movie Billy was in? Was it Sliver? Was it Sliver? He wasn't with Sharon Stone. Is that the one?

[DJ Shipley]

Yep.

[Cole Fackler]

Billy. Yeah, a little bit of Billy and a little bit of Sean Penn. You have Cole here anyways, maybe I'm off, but that's kind of how I see it. Fellas, thank you so much for coming out. Appreciate your service. We're going to put the link below to your website gang. Go to their website, support what they do, and we will see you guys soon next time. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye.

[Robert O'Neill]

Hey, what's going on, guys? D.J. shipley and Cole, faculty from GBRS Group. Want to talk to you real quick about my neck.

[DJ Shipley]

Retired Navy Seals entrepreneurs and co founders of GBRS group.

[Robert O'Neill]

It cover everything from flat range shooting, mental health, mental resiliency, physical education. Anything you guys really want to drop into search on the nect, find us on there. And love to connect with you guys.

[DJ Shipley]

Look forward to hearing from you.

[Robert O'Neill]

Appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon.