Jasper Jeffers—Leader, Disruptor, Soldier, and Special Operations Commander Artwork

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Jasper Jeffers—Leader, Disruptor, Soldier, and Special Operations Commander

June 29, 2023 • Aaron Brown • Season 1 • Episode 5

Episode five is with General Jasper Jeffers. General Jeffers has served in the Army for 27 years, and he served more than half that time in Special Operations, both as an Army Ranger and multiple times as a Special Operations Commander. He spent the better part of his 27 years deployed to combat zones and austere environments. His final combat tour was as the senior Special Operations commander in Syria, during a period of enormous success for Special Operations. He now serves as the Deputy Director for Special Operations on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, where he advises and assists the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior most officer in the U.S. Military. Join us as we delve into a fascinating conversation with General Jeffers, who continues to shape the future of Special Operations at the highest level of U.S. Military leadership.

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We introduced you as General Jasper Jeffers, but you prefer to go by Jasper, and most all of us call you that. However, anyone who's spent any time in the military, especially junior enlisted, calling a one star General by their first name is incredibly uncomfortable, but you encourage it and you do so deliberately as a leadership strategy, and it seems to be working.

So I'd like to start there and, and ask, why do you do that? Well, for a long time as a, as a young person in the military or a younger officer in the military, it didn't really matter. You just kind of all, everybody was senior to you, so they were calling you. By your first name. There's a good chunk of my career where people didn't know what my last name was.

I've been in places where they came in, they're like, Hey, I'd like to talk to, to, to Jeffers. And they're like, well, who is that? I, I have enjoyed trying to be more informal with my relationships with, with, with everybody, but certainly with the people that I lead and with the people that, I'm peers with.

So I've seen this, I, uh, was down to the third infantry division, which was your last command at this point is the deputy commander down there. And, and I met one of your captains, , and he was calling you Jasper and he was completely comfortable with it. And that's where you start to see, I think some interesting things happen because for a captain in oh three, to call a one star by their first name to other people, I think is.

It really shows, but he did it with respect. So it was like he, it was almost like he had more respect for you, that he got to call you by your first name in instead of general. And I, I took a lot away from that. And I think these are some of the little leadership things that we'll get into that you do that I think have a, have a critical piece and, and, and you're not even doing them, , deliberately.

It just sort of flows from you very easily. So I find that really interesting. We've given you an intro, obviously before this, that, hopefully is befitting of you. But what I wanted to do was ask you. When you're at a dinner party right now and, and it's a group of people who've never met you, they don't know anything about you at this point, and someone says, Hey, Jasper, uh, what do you do?

Uh, who are you? H how do you go about answering that these days? Yeah, I, I try to stay pretty consistent with it even throughout. I mean, I tell 'em I'm in the army like I tell 'em. Uh, I'm super proud of it, super proud of serving and having the opportunity to do so and lead. And what I have generally found is people are really interested in that and want to ask the next questions or they're not, and I'm okay with the not and turn their questions back on them and let 'em kind of talk a little bit.

, I do think a lot of times they can be surprised by not just me, but I think Army people in general. Can surprise folks with the varied interest that they have. I mean, you got two ex Army people talking right now on a podcast. This is true. And yeah. Yeah. Our, our, our lives diverged. I left, , the Army prior to September 11th and, and seems you're giving a go at, , seeing how far you can stretch this thing out.

So, , very different. But yeah, I think that's true. And I fully believe when people ask you what you do, you say, I'm in the Army. , and then if they don't ask a follow up question, you probably leave it at that, which, , it doesn't surprise me at all. And. I think, you know, and it wouldn't surprise you that most people with your background would go quite a ways further to get the rest of their background out on purpose.

And, and you wouldn't do that. I don't think you would do that. We've, I've known you long enough to know that that's not your style. Yeah. I, I mean, I think it's identity is, uh, interesting thing for all of us and like how you define yourself and what, how that changes over time in your journey. I've been in the Army for 26 years, so saying you're in the army, maybe that is a little bit understated to say that at, at this point in your career, but I, I have always tried to define myself in, or at least my sense of identity now, you know, as also as a 48 year old man is much more tied up in my, my role as a dad and as a husband and, , super proud of being a soldier.

But I tend to think of that as it just, Another part of being a good dad and father and person. Well, my wife will be glad to hear that, uh, coming outta this conversation. She's gonna think I set that up. Yeah. So will my wife. We didn't No, that was, uh, right off the cuff. Mm-hmm. Uh, but even there, you did it again.

We were like, well, yeah, I was in the Army. , you're a one star general at this point in the Army. I mean, there's a, there's a freakishly small number of people, , who make it to the point that you've made it and at the age that you've made it, uh, which is just part of your story that a lot of us find inspiring.

But I'm getting to watch you answer these questions right across the table and right there you did it. We were like, well, yeah, I've been in the army for a long time. I didn't say that part, but you're still leaving out the, the most interesting parts. You spent most of your career, I think it's still way, way more than than half, uh, in the special operations community and Yeah.

Yeah. You've held, held leadership positions across many of those, , places and, and. That also is an amazing part of the story that most of us would try to get out in the first 30 seconds of conversation. We'd wanna look like we were doing it, uh, smoothly. , but we we're gonna find opportunities, uh, to put that out.

, I just wanted to know, and, you know, when you go you, uh, to places and , you want to show people, , what the army can be and, and how someone like yourself has found a home in the army or in the military in general. And, and you've gone back and forth from special operations to the conventional forces, which is not what everyone in special operations does.

Uh, and you've seen seemingly done that deliberately as well. , when you go there and, and you get into these conversations with folks, , what do you want them to feel and understand about the army That is something they maybe don't think of or don't really hear , , or see when they watch TV or the news?

Yeah. I want them to know it's ours, right? I, we own it that me and these soldiers, regardless of maybe the gap in age or experience between us, you know, I had the opportunity to lead out, uh, a conventional formation out in, uh, Tacoma, Washington, uh, uh, Stryker Brigade.

There's like 4,000, almost 5,000 soldiers in there. And most of 'em are, you know, the vast majority of 'em are pretty young. Somewhere between 1922 years old. Big gauge gap, big experience gap, life gap. And uh, I just want them to know is like we, we own this. Like you, you volunteered to serve, but we own it together and there are rules, but we get to write the rules at least as far as how the army goes.

And if, if we need to change 'em, we should be able to change 'em. And a lot of times that can get lost. I think it gets lost in the ideas like, Hey, this is the way it is. And people don't question the underlying assumptions enough. And now that, that's part of my kind of shtick, I guess, like the underlying way I would approach a leadership problem is to start by questioning the assumptions that got us there.

And I want them to think that way too. And so what I hope they pick up is that I'm a little bit different. I'm gonna approach it different and I'm gonna ask the questions about how we got here. And if it doesn't look right, then we together, me and you young soldier, we'll change it. Well, I think that's working.

, again, I, I have had a chance to meet some of your soldiers. Uh, I've had a chance to be adjacent to you in some of these problems overseas. And, , it's one thing to say it, and I think lots of people do say it, but it's another to actually do it in such a way that resonates with people who are experiencing it.

And, uh, I think it's, it's quite clear that that's happening for you. , we're still, , missing in my opinion, the most interesting parts of your career. And, and, and I know why, but you, you have some very specific, , units on your LinkedIn page, and then you have some very unspecific titles such as Leader from 2018 to, you noticed that 2021.

Uh, so I just wondered if you wanted a chance to, uh, comment on, uh, that at all, or maybe, maybe it'd be better if I did some, uh, word association and you just tell me what you think I'll say. Uh, What, what does it mean to you when I say behind the fence? Well, I was gonna go back to the gaps in the LinkedIn profile.

, I'd be hard pressed to find a a title that I'm more proud of than leader. So, , that's the way I kind of thought about that. I was like, I'm most proud of that title. I, you know, I, I, I know I talked about identity earlier, but I'm, I'm super proud of that within the army, just like leader.

And I think, uh, for the folks that, uh, know the kind of, to know the kind of things that we've done before, like it's, it's enough to know that they know. And I've never found that that has, if you've needed to use that to either gain the respect or understanding from someone that you're either trying to lead or, or interact with, that you're probably using a tool or an idea that's actually, or you're in a relationship leader led wise, leader led context wise, that's actually not great if you actually have to go there.

Well done on, on avoiding the trip wire that I put out there for you on your, your army commands. Maybe, we'll, we'll circle back to that. In the meantime, you've done a great job of segueing us to, uh, the next topic in innovation. And this is another piece of your identity. And, and I often think that the term innovation conversationally is often doing too much in, in most conversations.

People are using it in places where it doesn't actually mean what they're trying to mean, and we often misunderstand innovation. And so I just wanted to ask you, what, what does innovation mean for you in your personal identity and, and what does it mean in the army for someone who wants to serve or is serving and is thinking about how to do innovation better?

Yeah, I think a lot of folks would say, you know, like as they think about, like describing me as an innovator or coming into an organization and trying to. To bring the innovations. Uh, and I did put that, I think that's actually, that's one of the titles I did put on the LinkedIn piece of it. I mean, I, I am also proud of that idea that to the, to the degree that I've been able to do it, to come in and disrupt organizations to make 'em think differently, I think it goes back to the, what I was talking about earlier where, hey, we can change this.

These are our rules. We made up these rules. Like most of, most of what we do kind of to make the system run is an abstract. It's, it's, we, we put, uh, rules on ourselves and let's question why we have 'em. And if they're not, if they're not moving us to the place we wanna be, then let's, let's change it. I, and, and I think the way we think can be as much, uh, you know, you hate to, like I said, people, people put a lot of baggage in the word innovation, but to me, I tend to probably think of myself as a disruptor more, and the product of that ends up being organizations that, that tend to define themselves as innovative.

And, and that can take a whole bunch of different forms. And that's the, that's the part that's harder to, to describe cuz people are like, well, okay, well what does it mean? And we could talk for a long time on that. No, and I, I think we should, and your background is, is such that you've led people who are willing to be molded, , in small units or, or special operations units.

And then you've also led folks who, , I think probably also want to be molded, but just have had less experience with being molded by someone who truly means it. , I wanna go back to just briefly, you answered the, the, the previous, uh, question perfectly exactly as I expected you to, , perfect dodge, but I, you, you have actually led.

, a group of individuals who are at the absolute top of human ability. I mean, it's, it's not an exaggeration to say in terms of strategic and tactical combat proficiency. There's no one better in the world and maybe no one better in history. I'd be curious to know if you, uh, agree with that. But then also on the innovation front, a team like that is, is it's almost bred into them to be able to be adaptive.

And some commanders have also had trouble adapting that, those folks, , for different reasons. , I just wonder, have you found it easier in special operations to adapt or did you find something in conventional forces that was actually easier or, you know, it's a really, really, cuz like I get to see both, right?

And it's, and it's, uh, The, the, the experience that I had was that that leader led context that I, I got like, I described it earlier, it's like, it's kind, it was kind of always changing the, the leader-led context where the youngest building block in the formation or the, or the, the most, and in some cases the most common building block in the formation is that really, really young kid.

I mean, he's right in a lot of cases, in, in, in the brigade was a kid right outta high school. And then, you know, you compare and contrast that with the other organizations in to the organization you're describing where it was, it was really more of a peer leadership leader led context. And these folks are just incredible humans in any situation.

And then you bring 'em all together and there's a certain kind of magic there. It it, I, I guess the thing that's would be hard for people to understand is like, oh, that would be super easy, that the leader led context when you're leading a really, really. Incredible group of people is actually simpler and or easier, not simpler, easier.

I, I, my experience is like, it's, it's actually way, way, way, way, way harder. I think, you know, you think about like an NFL coaches I would imagine would have something similar to say is like when you bring those, all that talent into one spot and try to try to get them to change a little bit, like individually they may be incredibly adaptable.

Even, even maybe at the small team level, they're incredibly adaptable. The more that you scale up and the more that that whole organization, which has, has a whole bunch of different parts to it, like the NFL team may be a good kind of analog. You think about there's people that have to make those athletes, uh, they have to take care of them medically.

They have to get them to the field. There's somebody probably taking care of their human resource aspects of it. Like it's a big organization to get that to be adaptive. Uh, that's, that's not. Super easy, uh, especially if, if everybody's default is to kind of move into, , a space where you, you get comfortable operating in, in a set of rules and you don't question the assumptions that got you there in the conventional army, I think you, you, you have a different kind of resource available to you.

Those, those young soldiers are just so wide open. Like they're just wide open. They, they have tons of ideas. What they can't see through though, because of the, the structure is like, what do, how do I, how do I take that to a solution and how do I take the good idea that I may have and then do something with it?

Or how do I not get trapped in an organization that has to, has to by nature be pretty rule bound because of the, because of the risk of not, right? I mean like the, these are life and death risks and physics. You know, like could, in the third infantry division, physics plays a big role. Tanks are heavy, they run over you.

You better, you better get it right. So yeah, certainly nothing sharpens your leadership or decision making process like a 55 ton piece of machine bearing down on you. But I wanna, I wanna stick with this football metaphor for a bit. It's, it's not gonna fit perfectly, but I think it will help folks understand what it is we're talking about here.

You know, there's 32 teams in the NFL and you've coached effectively at the most elite of them. And also at some of those that are, are more in the middle. You know, they win championships sometimes, but not all the time. All of them have just exceptional talent within them. And, and the coaching is slightly different depending on how that talent comes together.

But you are now moving into a position where you're, you're more like in, in the league front office, you know, you're, you're moving up into. A managerial role where you're now not so focused on coaching individual teams, but you have to start thinking about the, the entirety of the league and, and how do you make that all work and gel together and be an effective structure across now numerous different types of teams and players and abilities.

How, how do you approach that now that, that you're in that shift? I think that's a super question. The, the moving up part, right? So every step you take up, you, if you're, if you're doing it right or you're doing it close to right, you're learning a ton, you're getting some stuff wrong. Like, I probably get a lot more wrong about how I'm thinking about this.

Uh, I, I mean it's a, it is a different kind of role, right? Like to your point, like you're moving up as a general manager more, or maybe you're, you're in the, the league, uh, You're a, a junior partner in the league front office, like where you're looking at across all the teams and trying to understand how they function, but you wanna make the league successful.

So now you got a bunch of smaller teams and you know, the, the first thing you have to, to, I think do is like adjust where you're, you're setting your horizon. And, and that could be temporal. I try to think from the end back, but I don't try to put like a timeframe on it. I try to think of it as like, how does just, just run this out to its natural end and have a couple different, like logical.

Pass that we could take and then try to start working backwards from there. And thinking about like, well, if, if that's true. If you believe, and this is why technology is such a, a big part of like, you know, I think what we'll talk about today is like if you, if you think some of these trends in the world and in technology are true, then if you run that out to its logical ends and start walking back from there, you, you can, you can make decisions about the league, right?

Like if, if, uh, if you think the, um, I could, I could probably run that NFL metaphor into the ground. So I guess probably, like I was talk about if you think people are gonna consume football in a different way, like you watch it on vr, then you're gonna, or, or you know, like you think the athletes are gonna be different or, or maybe we're all gonna be, ready player one, like wearing a suit or something and we'll all be playing football and that'll be the principle way people get entertainment from those kind of sports.

It won't be by having the best athlete. And it'll be a, , a variation of kind of the eSports of today. Um, you st you, you need to start making different choices and I, I think the, uh, the different choices, parts of it, as I think about like my role as I, as I grow up, it, it is about people , we're gonna get it wrong.

Even the, the logical ends thought palace methodology that I was using right there to walk it back, like, we're gonna get, we're gonna get it wrong. Um, I don't know what I'm getting wrong, probably a lot, uh, in general history would tell us that in the military we generally get some things right, but on the whole, we probably are not, we're probably getting it wrong and something's gonna surprise us.

So how do you build in some mitigation and margin in there? And it almost always comes down to people in talent and, and I, and you know, you think about, Being in the league front office, then how do you, how do you both develop it? How do you keep it, how do you find it, uh, the military maybe more unique than other institutions and organizations?

, we've gotta go out and find young people who want to do this, who, who are both, who, you know, both of the mindset and, , they have the willingness to, to come in and devote their life for at least a portion of their life to, to this, to this idea. Um, but also the, the, the ones that have the right kind of talent that, that we're gonna need to be successful in that future world.

And it's not all about technology. It's gonna be the people that can look at what's out there and, and be able to integrate it better and faster than the people we may have to. Fight you. You're doing a amazing job at coming at this very humbly, and, and you've noted accurately that prognostications about the future prove very often to be incorrect.

And that resting decisions on top of those prognostications is often hazardous. But at the same time, we obviously, we, we have to make some bets. The, the future of warfare is, is changing in front of us. And while I think we agree that the human aspect of this and that the social technology is gonna play probably the most critical role, at the same time, we need to think about that future of warfare and future of national security and, and start to think about the technologies that we need to go after in order to be prepared and, and, Despite not knowing what the future will hold, we, we still have to make some decisions right now.

How do you think about that? The texts, the texts that are gonna change how we have to think about the fight? I, I think the o overall the common theme of any of the application of of, of any technology that's, that, that's gonna drive how we fight in the future. It's gonna have to do with speed.

Everything is going to be faster. So whatever we do, whatever we are able to leverage, I think that's, that's one assumption that you kind of gotta put near the top. That everything is gonna happen at a speed that more or less we are not built to manage. And you have to think about what, what that implies for how you make decisions.

We're not gonna change the laws of physics. So there are parts of warfare that are, that are not gonna fit into this speed kind of category, like time and distance for the most part. I think those will remain the hurdles that they are, like, we're not gonna, we're not gonna f find ways to like, make huge amounts of difference there.

I mean, like, obviously there's a, there's a lot going on in the technology space now around hypersonics and things, but things have, none of that is like dramatically new and we're not, you know, like I said, we're not creating new physical laws, but, but the decision making aspect of it, and then how quickly in the space where the context likely to occur in the contact layer, it's gonna happen really quick and the incentive is going to be on those.

States, uh, actors, militaries to try to figure out how to do that quicker. And so then you start thinking about, uh, applications of, of artificial intelligence and network systems. And none of this is new. , it's then gonna come down to like who can do it better. And all of that will lead to at some point, if you like.

So if you run all the way out, at some point, it's gonna lead to the near complete removal of humans from the battlefield. So then you're gonna introduce the idea of like, Hey, we're gonna do most of this with unmanned systems at a distance and robotics is gonna play, , a huge role.

And whoever can do that at scale at the point where we need to combine all these, systems together, that's the, that's the person that's gonna win. And. The people aspect like I said, I tend to argue like it's more important than any of the other parts of this, but when you start thinking about the lead front office going back to the NFL again, like you gotta have some, like there's a hardware part of this.

There's like a structural part of this that's gotta get addressed if we're gonna make it work and we're gonna be, we're gonna be in the fighting shape that we need to going forward. Do you have a particular area in AI that stands out to you right now as, as most likely to make a near term difference?

Because, we've heard, for quite some time now about some of the major changes we might be able to , expect from ai. But, but a lot of them have not yet come to fruition. Driverless cars is, is the one that stands out in my mind the most. I was, , in 2019, just as optimistic, I think as anyone that those were right around the corner and I think we.

We see that the, the final 10 meters is actually much harder to close than the 90 meters was, uh, I guess I should say yards if we're gonna keep the football, uh, metaphor going. But are there any that you, you, you were optimistic about but now you're a little more, uh, pessimistic about or, or not as? Uh, I mean, integration is super hard for any technology and it's harder a lot of times in the military.

Just, just the way that we, again, the way we structure ourselves, it can be really, really difficult we are a system of systems even now. Like it's networked to Yeah, to a degree. So when you, when you try to introduce something that is going to, you know, it's fundamentally a decision making tool, it's, it's really tough where do you baseline integrate that?

And they're like, who does it for you? It is if the, if the soldiers are doing it. And I'll come back to that idea a little bit later. Like, if we're not doing it ourselves, somebody's gotta, somebody's gotta deliver it for us and. That makes it tough, makes integration tough. I, I think there's a variety of decisions that are kind of in the narrow AI space.

You know, less the general AI space, but the narrow AI space that are just kinda like, yes, no decisions that get made constantly in combat. Like, yes, shoot this down. No, don't shoot that down. And they have to be, incredibly reliable. Like basically, uh, 100% reliable. You only shoot it down when you wanna shoot it down and you never shoot it down when you don't wanna shoot it down, whatever that thing is.

And I, I think we'll find that like the, the, the computer's gonna be able to do that at speed, that the AI's gonna be able to do that at speed and if it really just has to make a yes no choice. Yes, these are, these pixels represent the thing that I was looking for in the screen or not. , I think we'll find a ton of applications for those kind of narrow AI pieces if we can integrate them appropriately.

The, the, the larger ones, kind of like if you thought about like, Hey, let's, let's use the driverless car scenario and, you know, think about the way different ways that that could manifest it. You know, logistics is really, really hard. So you have an AI that's doing all your, your logistics, whether it's moving your ammunition or your parts for your vehicles, and it's also deciding what transportation availability is there, which could be driverless, maybe it's robotic, and, and then making those choices about what gets delivered when.

And, and I could easily see a large scale artificial intelligence doing that. And, and the impacts would be higher, right? It's gonna, a lot of folks will immediately go to the idea that we're gonna use AI to make the. The hard choices, the the choices of, I'm gonna use force here. I'm not gonna use force.

And the, the AI is somehow gonna be in that loop. We, we may end up with things like that. I tend to think we'll likely not have too many of those. We'll have 'em only in the applications where we just can't make a call. Do you think it's gonna make, , warfare too easy? Is there a concern here that as we lower the consequences of having a conflict or a combat engagement, because now humans won't die and make it easier to carry out because a launch could be conducted almost solely by a computer.

If we get to that point, that now will have a, a higher risk of conflict because of it, even if it's less deadly, maybe? Hmm. I I mean, there's, it is a risk. It is a risk like the, the farther we separate. The human and the, the physical risk and the cost from war fighting, the, the greater the risk that will drift into a space where we make choices about using force when we would probably not, if the costs were higher.

, I've talked about this in other forums and I, it, it's something I worry about just that in any, you know, and I've used it to tie it back to the AI idea in the idea that like to be true to American values. So the institution that I'm most proud of, you know, in, in being part of the army, that we've always gotta make sure that we somehow keep that connection to the, the American soldier connection to the decision making process has gotta be in there.

Like we, we are likely to be in a place. You know, you put your timeline on it 20 years from now, 50 years from now, where we won't need to. And I think we need, as an institution, as we start coming towards that, to start thinking about always having a way to do it. That we always have, there's, there's a human soldier and maybe he's not in physical danger, but there's a human soldier that can make that choice an American soldier consistent with the values that we would expect to be represented by, by the ideal part of, when you think of the American soldier, like I'm not, all of us as individuals and as individual humans have our flaws, but the ideal person that is representing that institution in the, in the, the United States of America should be part of that decision making loop.

We'll have to build that into it. Cuz I think the, the trade-offs, if other actors are able to kind of get to the. Same capability, right? If, if the barrier to entry for advanced conventional weapons or AI decision making tools is equal across the world 50 years from now, it'll be a conscious choice by the American people to put that back in there.

And I, I, I, I'm hopeful that we'll do it. I'm in complete agreement with you on holding an optimistic view on this, and, and I'm also in violent agreement with you that keeping a human in the loop, having an American soldier in the loop when it comes to autonomous weapons or AI technologies that will not necessarily have the value alignment that we do is, is the right way to go here.

But I worry we have a number of adversaries out there who are developing these technologies just as fast as we are, and maybe in some cases faster. And they do not hold to the same values that we do in, in some cases, their ethics aren't aligned in the way that we would agree at all. And I think this almost is going to create, a game theory like arms race, where there will be incentive for the element to get to the fastest possible decision loop.

And oftentimes that will not include a human. And then we'll be in this, this slippery slope of values where we'll either have to decide to keep our values and keep a human in the loop and possibly risk losing, uh, or start to slowly but surely erode some of our, our value promise there if, if we want to survive.

Yeah. I think that's super fair, right? It can't all be, you can be as optimistic as you want to be, but there are gonna be realities with. With how everyone else is going to use some of these technologies. And, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to be a deep history buff to see that.

Like every time we've had a major technological adaptation that's resulted in a, in a military change, that it's resulted usually in some kind of conflict. Now, what, what does the, what does the scale of that look like? What is the, how does it play out? I think that's, a super fair concern.

I, I want to think that it, it, it is a, it's a choice we can make that the system will want to drift. Because, because it'll be perceived risk, right? It'll be perceived risk to that, that same thing that we're trying to protect in America. It be like, if we don't do this, if we don't take some of this, the, you know, the values that you're, you're continuing to kind of say, have to be in the loop out.

We won't be fast enough and here's all the examples for it, and these other actors are, are ahead of us, or they're at least more willing to sacrifice that aspect of how the technology's applied to get it, to get it what they want to do. If we don't match that, then, you know, we can, you know, we can just have our values like as we're getting beat on the battlefield.

, I think it's both a risk, a concern, and something we're gonna have to address. But I, I don't think it would change like my underlying thought on it. And, you know, and, um, man, I sound like I'm plugging the story like a n 41. Like I want to help people think through.

It was like, okay, well how are we gonna do that? You know? And in, in that science fiction story that I wrote, it was really, it was really supposed to be a conversation about, like, that, this exact question. How, how are we gonna do that? Like, as these technologies change and actors who are both hostile to, to us as a, as a nation, as a people, and maybe just, just want to change the order from what it is, revisionist powers, however you wanna describe it.

Like, how are we gonna do it? And, you know, the, the, the solution that I offer in the book is like, well, hey, we're gonna figure out a way to blend the technology with the human to take advantage of the speed. And maybe that'll be the solution, right? Or maybe it'll be something like that. I don't, I don't think that's as important as saying that it's gotta be a critical component of whatever it is that we do.

Like we can't, we can't. Be so concerned with the risk on effectiveness that we, that we take that out. So ultimately, I agree here, but, uh, I wanna push back a little bit just to ensure we fully excavate this idea, because this is a unique opportunity in that you are actually sitting in a position to make decisions on these topics right now.

And I find it really amazing that I get to ask you about them to a certain degree, before they've been made. And, returning to driverless cars for a second, as they've developed the technology for driver driverless cars, they've come in contact with a number of interesting ethical dilemmas.

One that I think many people know is this idea that you're, you're driving down a mountain road. And, uh, the autonomous vehicle encounters a child that it, either he has to strike and, and likely kill the child. Or option B is the vehicle drives itself off a cliff and, and kills the driver and everybody else in the car.

And then, and it's only those two options, right? So the, the autonomous brain of the car now has to make that decision and that decision has to be pre-baked into the technology. And how do you decide which one to choose? And, and there's a lot of different ways that this is talked about and, and giving, , the owner of the car, the choice and, and you flip that switch, uh, prior to getting into the car, or, we vote on the choice, who knows?

But when we talk about these, that same phenomenon, they will exist in combat, both at the tactical and strategic level, especially as we move towards greater autonomy. And many of those decisions will have to be made in. There won't be an easy right or wrong answer. It will be. Degrees of, of bad probably in that decision.

And that is where we'll have to really consult our ethics and values. And, and many people argue that ethics and values really are a luxury good. , this is something that the winners of a conflict get to decide what are the ethics and values. And, you can't decide to buy an iPhone if you don't have food and shelter.

Right. You have to have the capacity already to be able to make that decision, or, conversely, I think there can be strongly argued that, , a country like America often wins because of its ethics and values. Uh, but that, that certainly hasn't been decided in.

It's an argument as oldest time. So as we face this amazing scaling of technology, you know, we're coming into what I think most folks predict to be sort of hockey stick, like. Scaling on the graph, and there's just no question to me that that amazing scaling of technology is going to absolutely outpace human wisdom if it hasn't already.

And that when it does, how can we possibly expect human wisdom to be able to bake ethics and values back into technologies that we might not fully understand and, and how can we be so, uh, naive to think that we're gonna be able to do that if we just, you know, try really hard. Yeah. I, I like the, um, I like the pushback too.

Like, I think it will likely be the central question in the application of, or, and at least in terms of like how America is going to think about use of force into the future. , this will likely be the, the, the question because the, the technological curve is gonna make it so that. It will become an existential choice, right?

Or at least that's the way it'll be framed. Uh, that we will cease to exist as a people because we aren't gonna be fast enough at the time when it's needed, and that we may have to accept some risk with how we make decisions. You know, making sure that for what I'm, you know, kinda the position I'm arguing from that like, it, it has to start with how we'd apply our values and ethics first.

That we're gonna have to make some, we're gonna have to accept some risks there so that we can survive. I, I would, I would wholly agree. I, I, I think to just what we're seeing the government of China consider right now with regard to this fight, they're gonna look at their decisions through a totally different ethical lens than we are.

Maybe not totally different, but, but significantly different when it comes to, , biosynthetics and potentially human enhancement and. How much autonomy they would be willing to give autonomous weapons and drones, and if they draw their ethical line differently than us and are willing to allow those technologies to advance faster than ours, there is a feeling, and at least that I have, that we won't be able to keep up because our ethical line will hold back what we're willing to do in that arena.

And what does that mean when, when speed is, is the deciding factor between winning and losing and speed is then directly tied to where your ethical line is? We have some recent history here too, right? So you look at enhanced interrogation and we'll save the debate on that for another time. But if you just think about how quickly we went to that and that wasn't even really, in my opinion, an existential threat.

Now, granted at the time, I think folks looked at it as a pretty enormous threat, but pretty quickly did they pivot to something that I think folks questioned from a values component and now questioned even more in hindsight. And I just don't think that that was a particularly challenging one. And then on the flip side, we have, the COVID vaccine and, and we had this opportunity to do challenge trials with volunteers who could have, you know, voluntarily taken on Covid and then helped find a vaccine and they were willing to do it.

And yet ethically we decided that that was n not correct. And, and we went with randomization and, and, and lots of people probably died who didn't have to. And so I just, I, I hope that our culture is, is strong enough such that we can make these decisions when we have to make them, we'll certainly get some wrong, but, but we'll need to get most of them right.

And, and at the same time, I'm fearful that, you know, I hope there's not some kind of evolutionary. Fitness test here that that happens and, and, and were found wanting, and I go back to drones just because I know a lot about them, and I've thought about what happens when you make them autonomous and you give them missions and you let 'em go.

And I just think, , if we find ourselves in a position where the Chinese government can launch 10,000 drones, , into our country or into places that matter to us, and those drones can go on their own, identify targets, fire on those targets without really anything holding them back as far as the human goes, or, or ethics goes, and, and we decide that we're not gonna do that, and, and our drones won't act like that, that a human has to be in the loop.

How can we possibly expect to win that fight? , I worry too, I worry too, like, it, it, it, it isn't without risk. I. But the idea of the wisdom conversation and, , again, I'm coming at this from the perspective, like I, I show up in, for better or for worse, like wanting to disrupt the status quo in any, in, you know, can question the assumptions of where I start out.

And I'm still the person that is strongly arguing that even with, even with that, we lose our way if we don't make sure that this is baked into it. Now, I, I also don't want to lose, you know, I don't wanna lose. So, I mean, we need to go quickly and we need to, to, to question the assumptions about like, what would prevent us from being competitive while we're doing that.

And, and those, I don't want those two things to be in conflict with each other. I, I, and I think we can do them both now. Maybe our past performance would indicate that that's gonna be tougher than what I'm laying out. But I, I want to think we can do both. It's part, I mean, like, it's part of why, like, I want to keep serving.

Like, I think that we're gonna need leaders that are, that are willing to try to, to force that, to say like, Hey, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to be competitive here. We're gonna have to rethink how we do things. And at the same time, we can't lose our way. We can't get saying that , the dystopian outcome is, is the, is the thing that's gonna drive us to go back and take away what makes us, us.

The, the existential threat, I think is, to us, right? What's a bigger existential threat that we get wiped off the planet by, , some technology from another nation state or some actor that's, that's gonna come here and the silos are gonna like, take over.

Maybe that, that's possible, I guess. But, um, you know, he's a Battlestar Galactic, uh, reference. But, but I think it's more likely to be us losing our way on how we are gonna approach it. And now we shouldn't be slow. And that's why I don't think it has to be mutually exclusive. And it's part of like, why, why we're gonna have to have this mix of, of young people who have new ideas.

And we're gonna need a mix of smart technologists who we empower, uh, to be next to military commanders to help them make decisions. And then we're gonna need the right kind of structure and hardware and incentives to, to go quickly. But those military commanders and those leaders, the ones who are representing the, the profession they've got, they've gotta stay centered in it.

And I, I agree. It's, it's scary. Like, it's scary, like as the question gets asked, You've already sort of, uh, pushed us into, , the idea of culture, , because, this is a huge component of how do we shape these things and shaping tactics and strategy is not really easy, but it's, it's easier than shaping culture.

And I think, you know, I don't know who said it, but the, the quote that I always come back to is culture eats strategy for lunch or breakfast or something. Uh, and as we're talking about innovation and we're trying to move these big, big organizations, and, and you said this in other spaces, it really is more about changing the culture or if you can even change the culture, guiding the culture to where it needs to go.

And this also then plays into wisdom. And for military folks, when they get to pin on a star or two, they've spent their careers waiting to get to that place where then they would have this exceptional wisdom that they can confer onto. Junior leaders below them or forces below them and, and help guide them into the right place.

But as technology outpaces what the, the two star, the three star knew when they were a, a lieutenant or a captain, their wisdom will not hold up the same way that it might have when technology was not moving at the pace that it is now. And so how do you think about, uh, helping move that big ship when maybe one person in particular is not the one that's preventing it from moving?

Really, it's the entire ship that's almost alive. The bureaucracy is alive. We say this about CIA all the time. When we talk about, when we talked about innovation in cia, we, we very rarely found anybody who was against any of the ideas. But in the aggregate altogether, the entity was somehow against the ideas.

Nobody wins any prizes for removing policies. You don't get promoted for. Removing 10 policies last year, right? But, but it's those 10 policies that are preventing us from, from moving. You're more likely to get promoted from putting a new policy on top of those 10 policies. And then people, you know, you hear that quote a lot.

Uh, I think leaders, not people, leaders, like a lot of times they'll tell, all right, that's it. We're gonna go and work for a culture change. And a lot of times how that manifests is like a, there's a, Hey, here's a little, uh, written statement, or our mission statement, or we're gonna, here's our culture statement and, and we're gonna identify with these words and it's somehow gonna change our behavior.

And, you actually end up later looking back and saying like, okay, well if the, if the idea was to change kind of the norms and. Static behaviors of the organization. Did, did you do that or do you just talk about it more? Do you just use the words a lot or do you actually change anything? So the measure of effectiveness that I always kinda looked at is like, what, how do we behave?

How do we behave when we don't have to put it on the schedule? So I would submit that we talk a lot about culture and we don't actually move the needle very much. It's hard. Like I said, it's hard for large organizations to do it. So I think you have to look at ways to force the. The smaller behavior changes, and you can do some around the human, you know, most of us are, whether we want to think of ourselves that way or not, or tied, there's some amount of identity in the way we think of ourselves and what we're doing.

And, and certainly in the, in those two organizations, both in the, in the Department of Defense and in the cia, like there's a lot of identity. Whether, whether we think of our, like we think of it that way or not, like tied up in, tied up in it. And then there's the, the, the structural parts of what is the organization designed to do without thinking about it.

What is its default state in behavioral terms? And if it's not what we want it to be, you can put your culture statement out and you can change the people for a period of time, like as that leader is there. And he's, he's really focused on enforcing those words into reality. But as soon as everybody starts turning over, that usually moves with the leader.

So the way I've tried to approach it is, How do I get it so that this just becomes, like breathing for the organization. So I'm gonna make structural change and human identity change so that it's not something that they have to schedule or think about. They're doing, they just, they just behave that way.

And then you kind of know you're successful. And yeah, you can have a, you can have a big culture statement on the wall too. I don't want to, I don't wanna downplay the importance of like thinking about like how you talk about it, but I think it's, it's, it becomes fleeting and it becomes a product of a particular leader's ability to manage it for a period of time versus real change.

And so then to your point about policy, so then we just kinda like drift back and somebody else comes in and like, eh, yeah, we do addition, not subtraction. In general, , I love Elon Musk's design principles, the one he has about, if you put 10% parts into a rocket and you didn't take 10% parts out, your rocket just got heavier.

And that's, that's not a, that, I mean, you can't get to what he's optimizing for, like cost per pound orbit. By doing that over and over and over again, if you're gonna put 10% key parts in, you have to be taking equal amounts out or more, or engineering your way out of that to be successful.

And as organizations, we, we're just not, we're not incentivized to do it, and we're not set up to do it well. We're, we're horribly, , bad as humans in using our intuitions. When it comes to incredibly complex things. Our intuitions were not designed by evolution for complexity. These are. Fight or flight intuitions for better or worse that we're left with, but yet we only know really how to use 'em.

One way to look at a thing, think about it for a minute, and then use our intuition to come to a conclusion. But when in complex situations, we generally don't get it right with our intuitions, especially when it's big numbers or, you know, rocket sciences, fractions of fractions, of fractions of 1%, uh, makes the difference.

And, and usually you can't guess that you, you need to do the math. And yet we are moving into an environment where so much of what we do involves that kind of math. And many of us didn't join these jobs and these professions to have to think about that type of, uh, math or those types of technologies.

And we see this, I think in CIA to a great degree. It was a mostly human organization for 75 years, or maybe, maybe we'll say it stopped being a human organization, uh, or totally human organization 20 years ago. And. We're just now come to terms what that that means. And, and when you think about it, it's no longer just me as a, as a case officer with a, an agent on the street.

And that's, that's mostly the work. It, it's not like that, uh, anymore. Yeah. And yeah, I just wonder how do we, especially when leaders at the top have to make decisions when they didn't grow up in a space where they experienced any of these things that they're making decisions about, , a four star general who, spent their entire time in the infantry in, in the seventies and eighties and got to the nineties, not much really had changed, , their intuitions about how a maneuver element would, would go.

Were probably pretty correct. Yeah. But the second that a drone sworn becomes a reality, , that's not just a small tactical change on the battlefield, that that means maneuvering around a battlefield has probably gotta change very dramatically at that point. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, it's a great question. I, I, the, uh, Part of what I think you're getting at there too is like we're, I'm, I'm like, even me, like I am not equipped to make like really hard technical decisions and everything that I know about this.

I mean, I'm a liberal arts major from Virginia Tech, right? Like, I mean, like I know that's an engineering school where you didn't get an engineering degree. Like you have to kind of like figure, like where I was on the math grades on that. Like it was, it was, uh, I was lucky to, to get out of there with any degree, but the idea that like I, I'm, none of us are, and it, it's, it's, yeah, it's true across the military.

Like the way I got at it and it, you know, at least you can recognize that that's an issue is I had a smart person, right? I had a, we brought in someone, uh, to be the command technology officer and again, going back to identity and titles, that the important part of it was that we gave that person.

Decision making ability, like basically he had the same decision making ability for, for programs, for money, for time, which are really, and people, uh, manpower, which are kind of like, if you think about like the things that when, when the Department of Defense makes decisions at any, at any like level, you're really talking about time, people, money, and, and, and how you spend those fungible resources, not necessarily in that order, depending on what level you're at.

And the, uh, that person like brilliant, brilliant, um, young man. You may have to cut his name out later, if you're out there listening, like I'll, I'll give you a shout out. Maybe I'll just have to clear it later. But, so Tim, we brought Tim in and, and Tim had the ability based on his background, both as, a little bit of a personal hacking time and, , time and industry.

Just generally living in this space to be able to look at a problem for us and say, no, you can't, you don't go buy that. Don't go buy that. You're gonna spend a bunch of money on stuff that you can't go. And, and he had the authority to do it, you know, through me. But we, you know, we worked closely together on it.

And I think, I think he, I hope he would say this, we should get him on. You guys should get him on the podcast. He'd be, he'd be a, a great one to have on here. , I think he would say this, like, what I encouraged him to do upfront was, I got it. Get the people right first. You know, you may have to do structural adjustments, but think of them more structurally in terms of like, how, how our talent is arrayed and like what we're gonna do with that talent before you start making the choices on what we're going to then either purchase or adjust about our strategy for, for technology in the organization.

And f. He, he took that like in the super humble way he did. And, , and did it. And I think, uh, I think it, it worked. Now you're talking about a small organization, if scale that up, like it's, it's tough, but I think the idea that I'm not equipped to make the decisions, I gotta figure a way to offset that and just relying on internal subject matter experts, that's, that's a way, it's probably not, probably not the optimal way.

Um, but if you really wanted to change the culture and bureaucracy here, you would address the things that have nothing to do with war fighting. Like where we should be using the disruptive tech is in how to make the, the way we live daily, simpler. And that's the, the real disruption is letting in, you know, like the equivalent of letting engineers be engineers in, in any space where you would, you'd need somebody to work on those kind of problems.

Free up time for people to be creative so that they don't have to do ridiculous minutiae as part of their day-to-day life. And you will, you will massively change organizations if, you gave me, , an unlimited budget and said, take your technology and apply it against the hardest problems that you have right now.

I would spend almost all of it getting rid of the day-to-day stuff, uh, to allow the smart people that work for me just to think about smart, just to think about other problems, not about how to do the, the three ring binder or the, the TPS report. So I know one of the huge challenges in, in, you talked about this being a human challenge to a large degree.

A big challenge that the military is facing right now is recruitment. This is just not a place that for some reason, young people are putting at the top of their list right now. And, and the recruitment problem into the all volunteer force of the US military has been something that's challenged the, the military since it came about.

But it seems like we're in a particularly bad spot right now. So I would love to hear what you think about that, what you, or what you're, you're feeling might need to be done there. And then what would you say to someone who's thinking about coming into the military, especially more, we're talking about needing folks who are more technically savvy and maybe have some skills already that would allow them to get a job elsewhere, uh, if they wanted to.

How, how are we gonna attract those folks? Yeah. Yeah. It, I mean, I, I'm incredibly concerned about it, both as a, as an American and, and as, certainly as a, as a leader in the army, there's a. The, the numbers are incredibly interesting. It's hard to get it, like, hey, we're talking about 20, 22 numbers.

So maybe if you went back to a certain point in time, you'd find something similar. But, but like right now, only about 23% of the, demographic that you would expect to be coming into the military, you know, kind of coming outta high school is, is even in a position based on the standards we have right now to be eligible to serve.

And really only about 9% of the overall number, not at 9% of that number, but 9% of the overall number have a propensity to wanna serve. And those are, those are like incredibly sobering numbers. You contrast that with, of the ones who do volunteer, 80% of them have a, have a family member who's either actively serving or has served.

That's kind of like the data behind it and. You wonder like, it's, it's the why. Like, why, why would it be that way? Now it's, it's a part of it, I think is only, only, it's, you know, it's way less than 1% of America serves at all. So there's gonna be a lack of familiarity that's in, that's an influence there.

But are we, the two parts was like, one, are we hitting the, the people that we want and then are we also getting within some of that, the people that we're gonna need? And I think that goes to the technology aspect of this. , as warfare changes, Going back to the idea that like, hey, robotics, I think it's a pretty solid, it's, I would put it either my number one or number two assumption and maybe the number one for the army, because the army is fundamentally a applied physics game.

Like if you're gonna be in land warfare, you're gonna have to take your thing and get somewhere over land to the other person's thing. And whether that's a tank or, uh, another robot or a, some type of system or a defensive position, whatever that is. And , that requires a set of skills like at a pretty low level that look like a mechanical engineer.

Like you're almost gonna have to be building little mechanical engineers right out of your basic combat training and the type of person that it, that wants to do that or wants to function within that. If, if they're. If they're talented in it, they're probably doing it somewhere else for another company that's gonna pay 'em more money and not have the same kind of expectations that the Army's gonna put on 'em.

In terms of like how we make 'em live. And I think, I think we can, you know, and going back to the ideas, we can question all assumptions. I think we can question all that. I think we can, all the things that would maybe make it less likely for that, for that soldier or for that young person to sign up to do military work.

I think all those should be on the table to change. So like, if, if what if what's preventing them is the idea is they can't control their time or that we're gonna move 'em around every two or three years. Or they have, you know, like this, the set of requirements that we may put on 'em. I think we need to be, we should be questioning all of that and think about like, what are, what do we, I.

You know, what do we need to do to make the life, you know, more attractive to 'em, more, more willing to get, to get folks who, uh, see it as an opportunity to, you know, both to get a sense of purpose, but also use that great skill that they have or, or, or be trained in it. So I think, , you, you've, throughout your career, done some pretty amazing things, obviously, and, , I think talking a little bit about that and a little bit about what you said, uh, just a second ago, uh, with regard to give them a skill or, a way to approach life that is absolutely valuable, even outside the military.

I'm a, I'm a perfect example of that. You wrote a. A piece on small, unique tactics as a commander. And then you just referenced it not that long ago, , as a colonel, I think, uh, oh, yeah. If I'm right. Yeah. Yeah. So we we dug that up. Oh, yeah. Uh, it, it's, it was amazing. , you highlighted some of the things that I experienced as a young private or, or junior nco and didn't realize that there was necessarily a, a plan that was causing those things to happen.

Uh, and this was really amazing to me to look back on now and think about all the leadership that went into these little things that happened in my life that I wasn't really aware of when it's, it's humbling because I couldn't figure it out at the time. One that you put in there that I think a lot of people won't think about is, , road marching. It's a function of infantries forever. Yeah. And, and it probably won't go away even with technology, uh, to some extent, but I, I hope it doesn't you, I maybe hope it does. I I'm not in there anymore, but that, that's what makes you and I different.

I hope you hope road marching doesn't go away. Yeah. I spent my entire three and a half years in, in Rangers wishing it would go away. Uh, but it didn't, and there was a reason for it. And you put in there, , get the troops out there and get them walking because it's really hard to do. It's especially hard to do with weight, and it's especially hard to do over distance.

But then when you do it, you realized you have accomplished something and you, it's usually something that you've accomplished that you weren't so certain that you could accomplish it. And now you can push yourself slightly further. And this was done in Ranger regiment with great. Plume , at that time it was Lieutenant Colonel, uh, hotel.

Oh, yeah. Now, of course, general VO Hotel, I think was, we overlapped with him, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, he was very good at this. Yeah. We were on a, on a training mission at one point, and, and it was a, just like any of those, of those days, pre pre nine 11, they were too long and, and, and too hard in my opinion.

But they, they got the job done and we'd been at it for I think 48 hours or something and, and we're doing a, some kind of, uh, takedown of a city. You know, I think I, I always talk about, uh, I was part of the Bin Laden, uh, executive leadership team inside CIA as a, as a minyan. I was a, I was a water boy, but I got a front row seat to watch how that went down.

And it, it reminded me how many times that we went after. A bin Laden target on exercise. I mean, we must have done it a hundred times in the late nineties after the bomb means. And this was one of those, I think, and we got done and we're like, okay, that's done. That was hard. Uh, it was no fun. But we're, you know, half hour from getting on the birds and, and haloing out here and we'll be done.

And we walked out of the city and either at that time, Colonel Viel either was actually mad or this was part of his leadership strategy and he came back and he said, we're not getting on the hilos now. We are gonna walk another 10 miles and meet the hilos 10 miles down the road. Yeah. And at that point you've already committed to being done.

Yeah. Your mind is, is starting to shut down and now you've gotta do a 10 mile march in, in the sand in, in Florida. And you're like, I'm not gonna be able to complete this. No way. I, I tell people all the time, I, I quit ranger school three times a day, every day for the entire thing. I was just lucky that the.

Idea never actually reached my mouth, uh, to say I quit. Uh, it always got stuck there, but then when you got to the end of that 10 miles and then you got on that Hilo, you had moved yourself in both your mind and body in such a way that you built up resiliency that's gonna be in your hip pocket for the rest of your, your life.

And, and that's true for me. I got out of the, the Rangers before nine 11, uh, and I, I spent the, you know, a good chunk of the rest of my life then in cia and I wanted to quit a lot of things since then. And I know that I go back to those experiences and, and that's just made me a much more functional person, a much more successful person.

I don't think people when they join the army or think about joining the Army can really gauge the value of that. But you've obviously thought about that a lot, and you talked about if you put the food. And the warm shower. Yeah. All the incentives and the bed at the end. At the end. The end of it. Yeah.

Nobody, nobody falls out of the, the ru. Everybody, nobody. So, yeah. Like we never had anybody fall out on the way back in. Yeah. It makes sense that occasionally, once fall out on the way to the, to the training exercise. Yeah. But never just was strange how that worked out. . Yeah. Why I say I hope it never goes away.

I, you know, going back to the culture idea and forcing identity and behavior changes on formations, I, I'm, and, and let me start by saying like, I am just the legacy of the leaders that shaped me. I mean, you talk about, uh, Joe Viel Journal Hotel and that experience that we had together in the late nineties for First Battalion.

I mean, like, he, he had a huge impact on me throughout my time in the military and, and still to this day is the, these are leaders who I watched change or organizations, and I tried to learn the best from each one of 'em. You know, both learned both from what worked well and what didn't work well in how I applied leadership, but a common theme amongst all of 'em.

And, you know, like Botel and I got a chance to work closely with Admiral MCC Craven, and, also, Scott Miller, um, like all these. Chris Donahue, like these, these are people who are like, just like, I'm name dropping now. But I mean, like, it's just incredible. These are titans of industry tight.

Yes, yes. Like these are, this is the Mount Rushmore of leaders in the business and, and I got to work closely with all of 'em and see what, see how they approached, their part of leadership at during their times. But the, the idea that all of them had an element of this, that they, they changed behavior in ways that the organization didn't understand at the time.

Right. They could, it became the way those organizations lived and they had certain things that could make that happen quicker. The, the, the foot marching example is one where that, that's a great little tool and why I put it in the paper to encourage young, small unit leaders to think about it is it's, it's not an ends, it's a means.

It, it allows for, like you said, some amount of shared heart and it's shared hardship if you're doing it right, like you want to create a, a team atmosphere around a very difficult physical event where, you know, the advantage of, of this and doing a run or something like that is you're generally moving slow enough to talk.

And it, you know, as long as it is, you're not like forcing a tactical situation on em. But even in that scenario, like where I've made, I, I kind of, uh, created conditions to have soldiers walk a long way. Even if you tell 'em to be quiet, like after two or three miles in, like, they're, they're, they're absolutely talking.

So you build some mental toughness, you build physical toughness and, , you're building a feeling of team, , that. You can move an organization very, very quickly into that, uh, behavioral change state, and then, you know, you know you've got it right when you, you don't have to talk about the culture that the subordinates do.

And they just do, they just do that. I use that over and over again. I even used it as in the conventional brigade as a tool to move them quickly. I really had about a year of command out there. A little bit longer than, yeah, a little bit longer than a year. And I was trying to move 'em quickly.

And it's for 5,000 people, that's a big, it's a bunch of people to move quickly if you wanna, if you wanna adjust their behavior. Like, I, like, again, not talking, the culture is the bi is the, is the output, the behavior change is what you're trying to get. And I, I set up a, uh, we called it the ghost march, right?

The whole brigade would march, like foot march everybody, 5,000 people, five man front. And uh, and we would just go, it's, there's some great pictures of it. Because it's rare to get that many soldiers in one spot in formation. No, I'm having a hard time picturing it in my head right now with, yeah, it looked like somehow the Civil War, we did that the first time.

I, I mean, we just had quite a few folks decide that it was, you know, the, the mental toughness wasn't there, but we did it several, you know, and, and very, very quickly. We did it several times, but by the last one that we did, and it only had been a few months, uh, from the first one to the, to the last one we did.

I think we had almost no one, even, even, you know, the, like, you're always going to, there's always a chance of injury on something like that, or, or there's always the, the, you wanna manage, uh, the entire, but I mean, I'm talking about the, across the entire formation, most of them participated. It, it moved, behave the behavior, needle, needle very, very quickly.

And that, I mean that, that, that example, What I wanted to be instructive is not like, hey, everybody could put a rucksack on and, you know, grab your, uh, grab whatever office you're in and tell your office mates to like, Hey, the way we're gonna adjust behaviors is through foot marching. Although I would tell you it probably would work.

, but it, it's, they must have thought you were crazy. Yeah, well, I mean, there was, there was a, there was plenty of that. , they, but, you get to the point, like I said, when you've adjust, when, when the behavior's adjusted, like they, they just do it. When I wrote that paper as a young company commander, the rule that I had, and I'm not recommending this, like now, I just described it to people, it was like if, if wherever we were going as an organization, as a unit was farther than 12 mi or was shorter than 12 miles, we walked with all of our kit to the 12 mile point.

At that point, you could get picked up by a vehicle and taken the rest of the way, but you walked the first 12 and that for about the first four or five months was just. That you would've, I mean, that was not, that was, I was not the most popular, uh, leader, uh, about after that. Like that whole organization that that small unit, like, they took that on as part of their sense of identity.

And there was just no problem, no physical problem, no mental problem that was, that they didn't wanna jump on. As you look back on, on all that you've done, uh, over the years, and you talk about resiliency and, and how much you've done in training, you've also obviously been on some pretty amazing missions and operations.

And, and we're not gonna get into some of the coolest ones here, unfortunately, unless you want to, uh, feel free to some drop some, some, some new, uh, news here. I won't turn you down, but, uh, I understand we, we can't get into that, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about. You know, everybody gets into the, the courage stories and the, and the how did you get your Silver Star or whatever.

, and, and I do enjoy those stories, but the ones that I often think about and that resonate with me are, are the stories about fear. And, and it really is about overcoming fear in these hazardous environments and, and, and, and combat, which I never experienced. I, this is a, an interesting point about my life.

I, you know, I've been, I've been in dangerous situations. I've been around some dangerous situations, and I've been in time adjacent to dangerous situations. So I've had a lot of time to think about fear and what would I be like in those fearful situations. I hope, you know, in my heart of hearts, I hope I would've done what so many of my colleagues did that did go there.

But I can't know a great example. As I said, I left Rangers prior to September 11th, but just prior November of 2001st Ranger Battalion first platoon. Ended up going into Afghanistan immediately after September, or fairly immediately. Not quite as soon as ci but not, not that long after my, my, my platoon ended up being in one of the first combat engagements in that entire, uh, war in Tucker Garr after Navy Seal.

Neil Roberts fell out of helicopter, uh, in an engagement that they were doing up in the mountains. And First Ranger Battalion ended up, first platoon. What ended up going in as the qrf and two of my good friends from Ranger Regiment at that time were, were killed before they even got off the helicopter.

And this is just, yeah, you know, months after nine 11. And I had a lot of time to think about that, that what, and, and what the fear must have been like and that they overcame obviously, um, to get the mission done even after that. And then, uh, just another one to give you, uh, you know, a sense of how I think about this and I want to hear if you have an example that you would actually wanna share that, that you felt and how you overcame that.

But I was also the coast based desk officer for cia. And I was at Coast Base a month before a suicide bomber. Effectively, Humam Balawi who came to the base as a potential source, but ended up being a double agent, blew himself up and killed seven agency officers that I knew quite well. And, and I had just been at the base and spent Thanksgiving with them, not, uh, a month before.

And I was asked to actually stick around and help support this upcoming event. And, and I ended up not being able to for a lot of reasons. And I just think about what would I have done had I been there and survived and then had to deal with that fear. So I give that to you because it's really something that I think about a lot.

And I I, I wonder if you've ever had a situation where, you know, if people looked at you from the outside, they saw courage or, or leadership under fire. Yeah, I mean, for sure. Like I've been, I got, uh, a long list of times that I was exceedingly terrified in the business. So, But I, I think about like, where, where was I?

You do learn to grow out of it though a little bit. I I do think like the, the individual kind of physical fear aspects of it, you, you, you kind of learn to understand when it's bad and, and enough experience, I think teaches you how to kind of manage that. It doesn't ever go away, but you learn how to manage yourself in those situations where you can focus on the team and you can focus on, , the, the folks immediately around you.

Where I likely was putting on more of , a strong face than what I felt in reality. Like most of those were in the more senior leadership roles that I had. Like where you are really responsible for all of those lives, uh, at once. And You know, the right thing to do is to be steady and calm and, , try to present that to those folks you're leading.

But yeah, I mean, behind that, you're, uh, it's, uh, it's, that's, those are the, the most scared that I have ever been. I mean, the example I would use, were you thinking about going somewhere? Were, were, were you guys thinking about Uh, no. I, I would see where I, I didn't know where you were gonna go there.

I was like, oh, I'm really curious where he is going to go here. I also don't want you to put an example out there that you might have to, um, take back, pull back. But, um, I know you've got some, um, particularly you, and you can also, if you, if you wanna talk about one and, and, and sort of keep it vague what it is.

Um, but yeah, I saw you going somewhere there that's like, oh, I don't know what you're about to say next. Well, there's, there's probably two or three operations where I had more than maybe even the lives of the folks that I was commanding that were. Maybe not in my hands necessarily, but really dependent on the decisions that I made.

And you think about the times of types of operations those might be, whether, you know, in a big part of my career has been about thinking about hostage rescue and the, it, it's hard to come up with a, a mission or an operation that is more morally sound than trying to go somewhere to save a life in that kind of situation.

And so there's a great degree of like moral certitude. You feel very justified when you go on those at the same time as a leader, you take that on you, like if you, if you own the whole thing and you get it wrong, the cost isn't just the people that signed up to go and do these kind of things, which, you know, you're around the best people on planet earth to go do it.

But the cost could be the lives of the people you're trying to save. And. And it doesn't matter how well intentioned you are, at the end of the day, it's still, it's still somebody's daughter or, or son. And I had the opportunity to do at least one of those and it didn't work out. And, uh, I think about how I always wonder, you know, the fear that maybe I didn't show necessarily outside is like, I always go back.

It's like, did it, did it change how I made decisions? Did it, the worry that I had about all the people that I had to manage, both the people that I commanded and then, and then the potential lives that may have been there, I was like, how did that, did I do it right? And I think those, those kind of internal fears are different than physical fears.

But I, in my experience, maybe, well, maybe everybody's, I don't know. But certainly in my experience, like I feel that more acutely than any, any time that I may have been individually. And, and there's certain, you know, like in, in, in, you know, individual courage that, that I, I was around. People every day that, you know, uncommon valor was just a part of their makeup.

And I would never want to be put in the same category as them because the, the kind of things that they would do, the selflessness that they would display is just, uh, I mean, it's truly something that people will write books about someday, but, but the fear that I felt internally was more tied up in was I gonna make the right call when the, when the time came, because that, that's really what, going back to the coach metaphor, like, you gotta make the call, go for it on fourth down or not.

And, uh, you know, sometimes they're gonna stuff you and then you gotta figure out what to do next. Yeah. And you weren't, weren't working for a team that was used to getting stuffed at that time. You know, the football metaphor doesn't quite hold up to this one we're talking about because the football team that you played for, , was like 101 or something, or 1,001.

Yeah. On the record. I mean, we were used to winning. Yeah. Yeah. Used to winning. We win most of the time. I wish, , we had this on video cuz even, even your face as you were thinking through that was, uh, yeah, I, I could almost be right there with you if you weren't.

Wearing a Mandalorian, uh, t-shirt. Uh, it might have been, yeah. Itprobably been for the technology piece of it. Like you got a little, uh, star Wars on my t-shirt. Yeah. No, you, you're a sci-fi uh, nut. We know that, and we, we didn't get a chance to, , dive right into it, but there's a couple of other podcasts, or at least one other podcast out there where you, you talk about it.

So, uh, folks go, uh, search, uh, Jasper Jeffers in, in sci-fi. Um, you do get a, a good number of Google returns. Yeah, yeah. Uh, on that one. And, and a n 41 a a n 41. A n 41. So yeah, if, if you want to go find something interesting to read by, Now, Brigadier General Jasper Jefferson. Yeah. Cure for Insomnia. It's out there.

Uh, the, yeah, I had a lot of fun doing that, and I'm still reading a lot. I mean, like, I, I'm a big Neil Stevenson fan, so I, I just knocked out Termination Shock, which is another, I mean, like, I could drop all kinds of book recommendations on, on the podcast, but, uh, but yeah, I still, I mean, I'm still a, still a big fan in, in the, in using sci-fi as a tool to help me think through the, like how we talked about before, what are those possible outcomes in this?

Then try to work my way back. It's a great, it's a great way to get other people's thoughts. There's like a lot of smart people out there that ha are thinking the same way. They just don't get the benefit of also being a senior leader in the Army. So, but most of those end up having dystopian themes. Do you have feeling?

Yeah, I mean it seems, I mean, maybe I'm reading different ones, um, than you are, but yeah. It seems like very often dystopia accompanies, , amazing accomplishments in, in technology. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Hopefully we don't have, uh, life is, is representing fiction here in those scenarios. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's why it's super important that I, I have the same impact on those leader, you know, the only legacy that any of us have are the leaders we're gonna leave behind.

And you know, I think about that a lot too cuz like, what, what I want them, like the military as an institution, I think is gonna have a big role to play in like whether or not that plays out because I want to be, and I want them to be optimistic about the future. Like that the technology has military applications, but because we're gonna do it right, because America is gonna do it right.

That it's gonna be okay. Like, we'll be able to, we can be hopeful about the future at the same time, like being ready for the worst case scenario and, and it won't be dystopian because we'll keep the values piece of this where it should be. Just briefly, you talked about, you know, hopeful for the future and that's one of the themes of this podcast is optimism towards the future.

And I think I can say this easily without having ever actually discussed it with you. I think we both believe very strongly that we have a very, very amazing country that we were just lucky to be born into. You know, keeping the politics, uh, aside, uh, just thinking about all of the challenges we have in the world, discontent among populations who I think probably wouldn't have as much discontent if technology hadn't caused, , much of it.

And social media and ability to communicate faster than humans are designed to communicate into larger numbers than were designed to communicate. And then consuming information at a speed that's just so, so crazy. and there's just so much out there that's pessimism. But you're an optimist by design and personality. So when you think about, America and the future and, and maybe just the West in general, what gives you hope?

What's baked in there that, that causes you to think, okay, this is gonna work out. I just got up here. To DC in early, late June, early July. So I took my family to the mall to watch the fireworks cuz that's what you do when you're in DC on the 4th of July. So I, I loaded up and we did, we did it like the way that everyone warned you not to do.

Like we got into the metro at Falls Church and went, uh, down to the Smithsonian station and, and kind of got out of the mall with the folding chairs my big lesson learned was like next time I'm bringing a cooler, a beer, like a soft cooler of beer. Like that was my big, uh, you know, the ar comment cuz we didn't, and we had like some Bubbies and. You know, everybody else was just cracking some, uh, some alcoholic drinks. Anyway, the, um, as were we, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So next year, well, I was out there with at least, uh, 500,000 of my closest friends on the mall. But if you looked around there, right de, despite all the stories we tell ourselves about kinda where America is and the difficulties that we have, it was just this incredible quilt of diversity and people finding common connection.

So my daughter's six years old who were out there, and she's always running around talking to people anyway, and, and it was a, it was a large crowd. We were trying to keep our eye on her. And she's, she's out there running around and then we see her, she's over there with a few girls her own age, and then they're like playing hide and seek.

, three or four minutes later they all come over to where we're sitting fireworks. She getting ready to start. None of them speak English. Now my daughter doesn't speak Spanish. , but none of them speak and they had somehow like made this little club of friends there and then, Two or three, like folding chairs down was a family from from Afghanistan, five or six kids.

And they had come to watch the fireworks. And I just, it made me think it was like, Hey, we're, whatever stories we're telling ourselves, and maybe the content that we take in gives us a certain perspective, but what I'm observing here would at least say we should question that assumption and we can probably figure our way through this.

Whatever, whatever, whatever differences we want to say we have by, uh, by maybe looking around a little bit more and less at the technology lessen our phones. No, I think that's perfect. I think that's a great spot to end. , you've given us a lot to think about here. Uh, I really appreciate you taking the time.

, I love the optimism that you're bringing to this and, and what you're doing as a leader in the military. And, and I've learned a lot from you. And we'll continue to use some of the lessons that you've imparted to some of your junior folks, and then they've shared them with me, which has been really pretty cool.

And, uh, hopefully we'll have you on, uh, again sometime in the future and we can see if some of your prognostications have, uh, come true. I appreciate it, Aaron. And thank you for, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I am optimistic and hopeful and want all of us to finally end up in that world that, that I, I envision in my head.

And I, like I said, I'm hopeful not just for me, for my kids, for all of us, that we'll get there.