Transcription
But there was nothing like that; that even when you go through the Q course, really you're graded on rapport, but you're not really taught rapport.
Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds fair. I mean, you got at least you guys—I mean, well, the jobs by doctrine are different. There is no Q course in the SEAL pipeline. I mean, you guys are the experts in FID for sure and the buy-with-and-through. I mean, technically I'm supposed to be an expert in hydrographic reconnaissance. I am hydrophobic, actually. I'm done with the water in every form except for ice cubes at this point.
Yeah.
And then, of course, all my deployments were somewhere where there was not a lot of water or opportunity, thankfully, for hydrographic reconnaissance. But yeah, it's that's an interesting—it's great that you guys—you could easily, though—I'm thinking about the pipeline. There are so many opportunities even in a—a requirement that would be a tactical performance requirement. You could still use that to center yourself, remind yourself of who you are.
Yeah.
Bring that self-confidence back up to the top.
Yeah. It's a different—it's a different utilization of the same tool, just because of the differences of the pipeline, but wild application.
Well, I mean, if you think about it like the instrument that we use for our—the—the execution of our duties, whether it's, you know, surgical lethality or engagement, you know, the—the instrument has—needs to be in a certain, you know, state management, right? Like, what state are you in? In some cases, you want to be in that elevated state, in the red, slightly sympathetic, you know, but—but in most of our work, we want to be in a parasympathetic state, but don't—we don't really train how to drop into a parasympathetic state. Um, I think there's a lot of work we could be doing, Andy, with our guys—um, after—after traumatic events where we could integrate—um—um breath techniques like, you know, tactical breathing, recovery breathing, um, where you basically metabolize a lot of the—the trauma right away, you know, um, just through breath work. And we're—I'm, you know, I—I don't work around the soft community as much as I used to, but I am showing this a lot to law enforcement and first responders, EMTs. Think about my God, like, you know, their day, you know, I mean, just—just a—just a good breath sequence uh in between calls—Lord have mercy—that's, you know, that—that just gives them a micro reset so that at the end of the day they don't have that cumulative load.
Yeah, I think there's—there's a ton of work here that—um—is available to—um—our most high performers that they're not getting, and—and it's showing up on the other side.
Yeah. I mean, even in this soft world, again, I'm not connected either, but there's a really good chance you're probably on an extract platform of some kind. I mean, what a great opportunity if you're sitting on a bird or a vehicle, whatever it is, you know, you could do that as your transition from actions on to going back. You're still going to have to hit your after-action afterwards, but there's—there's plenty of opportunities to hit those active things, and I think in totality could—I really do think it could help round the edges that don't express themselves until years later.
Well, you know, exactly, because a lot of what the work I'm doing now in corporate America, for example, with a lot of client-facing people, I'm not messing with their pitch, you know, the—the thing that they do to influence somebody or sell somebody. I'm not—what I'm actually working on is how they prepare to walk in the room.
Yeah.
The way that they keep themselves intentional and focused during the engagement and then how they recover and bring their energy down afterwards.
Yeah. You're tuning in so they can be more effective.
Yeah. And—and the cool thing is there's a whole body of work out there on that in other spaces, but you know, just because the nature of what we do, we don't really come across that. Even in corporate America, they don't get exposed to that, but yet it's the very thing that's kicking their ass.
Yeah. One last question for you, to be uh respectful of your time. Looking at uh a 10-year horizon, anything that sticks out that scares you the most? Somebody who used to do what we do and now you're sitting here like, "Oh boy, here we go."
Yeah. I think—I think we're going to experience another October 7. I think it's going to be—um—at a scale that—that October 7 in Israel is going to look like a dress rehearsal.
You think it'll be multilocation coordinated?
Yeah. Man, that's a heavy one to think about. I'll leave you with this. I was uh at the SF convention in 2024. And I was speaking on Pineapple Express, but more importantly, I think I was speaking on what we've been hearing over the last four years, staying, you know, different veterans on the phone, like what's—what's bubbling up. And there—a lot of those same individuals were sitting in the room at this convention. Maybe 700 of them—uh—dating all the way back to Vietnam, but mostly GWOT guys with a lot of understanding of unconventional warfare and that kind of thing and a lot of understanding of what our Afghan allies have been saying. And I asked them, I said, "How many of you think, you know, localized complex attacks, multi-modal, um—what's—how many of you think that's likely in the next 18 months?" Every hand in the room went up in like a second.
That's not a good statistic.
Nope. You know, on the other side of that, I am glad that there are so many veterans that did experience combat post-9/11 that are out. And you know, this is an example of—they will run towards the sound of the guns. Like, yes, it's, you know, like where I live, I think you actually get arrested and have a ticket if you don't have a gun on you. You know, I'm not saying everybody knows how to necessarily use that gun, but really where I live, it's actually—it's interesting. It's a very GWOT-heavy retired community.
I've heard that.
I'm not saying that.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that they're Supermen. I'm not saying they wear capes, but you want to talk about capable people who are able to respond and pull on two decades worth of training, come get some.
100%. And in fact, in the Gathering Storm, I wrote one of the last things I wrote about because communities, you know, communities are asking, sheriffs are asking, individuals are asking like, "Yeah, I—I see that the border's been open for four years. I—I—I'm not an idiot, you know, like what—but what should I be thinking about?" And one of the things that I have—I have advocated is just what you said—is I call it the GWOT X factor. Um, is that over the last four years consistently 100% of the time when institutional capacity has been exceeded, GWOT—particularly—they—they go right to it, and guess what—they're quite good—like they—we—we spent 20 years—we spent 20 years sorting out ambiguous complex problems, oftentimes with remote comms in a self-organizing bottom-up fashion, and so to me, wouldn't it make sense if communities could get maybe some connection to some of those guys? And when you have conversations around hurricanes, emergencies, include an October 7 scenario.
Yeah.
And even just let these guys give you some perspective on what it's like to fight five dudes who are willing to die, right? Let them talk to you about what happens when a suicide bomber goes off in a place you don't expect it or a mass casualty. And you know, then you could start to have some conversations on just like you said, if those guys spontaneously rushed in, imagine if it was somewhat thought out and facilitated.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's tough to explain to people what it looks like, you know, a complex situation initiated by a suicide vest to enact a certain response, but there's already another, you know, mousetrap getting ready to, you know, basically a complex ambush. That is—uh—those are scary conversations to have. But, you know, the fact that all those hands keep going up. I think those conversations need to start working their way to the forefront.
There's one other thing that I would say to your question about what scares me is that it is—I studied in the Gathering Storm book. I studied nine case studies on localized complex attacks from the Beslan school siege to Mumbai to October 7 and others. The common denominator in both—all of them, Andy, two—institutional hubris or arrogance that it can't—it can't or won't happen to us, and two was systemic institutional paralysis at every level. Like whoever was in the kill zone was in the kill zone for a prolonged period of time on their own.
Not survivable.
Yeah. So that's where the GWOT X factor I think plays a major factor. And the prudent thing would be for like law enforcement, emergency operation planners to start to have conversations with some of those individuals and—and say, you know, if that were to happen, how might we facilitate you guys playing at your best level? I mean, if you—if you're paralyzed, it—like, what—I mean, you know, if you think about what JOC does best, it's because oftentimes they're—they're—they're fully facilitated to do what they do. Um, so to me, it's like we're at an unprecedented point in history where—why not—why not have those conversations at a local community level? Um, because they're going to happen anyway, so why not have a conversation on how to pragmatically facilitate it in a private-public way if the worst happened?
Yeah, I agree, man.
Damn. Well, Scott, thank you for your time, man. I really appreciate the uh conversation and the insight.
Yeah, it's great talking to you, Andy. I hope we stay in touch.
Yeah, for sure, man.