0:12

you know, we're really happy that you're able to join us and and have a good conversation today.

0:18

I think there's a lot of people in the Jewish community, especially

0:21

that love to hear your thoughts and and want to know what's going on with you.

0:25

And, and I think you have a great story to tell about,

0:28

your upbringing in the through the military and time as director.

0:32

So I, I was hoping maybe we could start there about what you could tell us about

0:35

how you how you got into this crazy world of ours.

0:39

I don't know if it's a great story. It's certainly a story.

0:42

Right. And, I have said this, certain times,

0:46

if you knew if you know Admiral Stavridis

0:49

just by reputation, you know, retired as a four star.

0:53

He wrote a book called The Accidental Admiral,

0:57

and, I cringed. It was a great book, a great read, but I wanted that title.

1:04

Right. Because I, I think if you look at his career versus my career,

1:08

I truly am the accidental admiral.

1:11

much more so than he. I think he was destined to be an admiral.

1:15

but, you know, I spent 34 plus years in the Navy.

1:20

34 years. Three for four plus years.

1:22

All that time in the intelligence community, you know, as a naval intelligence officer.

1:27

I only signed up for two years,

1:29

and, I just kept staying.

1:32

And every time I take another set of orders,

1:34

my wife would hold up two fingers and she say,

1:37

it's been a little longer than two years, mister.

1:40

but I stay just because of the people, you know, and and the things

1:46

that I was able to do and changing jobs all the time, it was it was truly a joy,

1:52

you know, and, and a great life.

1:56

Yeah. that's that's interesting.

1:58

You mentioned that, you know, you did. You signed up for two, but then you kept going.

2:02

you mentioned some of the people were the driving factors, like what?

2:07

What were some who are some of the people that made you,

2:11

make a decision like that? How did they influence that?

2:15

Yeah, I'll I'll give you a, somewhat abbreviated

2:18

version of my career in the Navy.

2:22

And, at one point, I had the the pleasure of working

2:26

for General Jim Mattis when he was the Central command commander.

2:30

And I was the commander of the jet there for Intel Center.

2:34

And, he was a great customer.

2:38

Very appreciative of Intel, but, he always wanted to hear

2:43

potential adversaries, his competitors.

2:45

Formative experiences. Right.

2:47

And so I kind of share my formative experiences.

2:51

And when you get older, you have to chunk your career out in blocks, or else it just becomes long, boring.

2:57

Right. So I came in, I was a law school dropout, for one thing.

3:03

And I had a brother who was, enlisted in the Navy.

3:07

He was a slick 32 operator on the USS Arkansas.

3:11

And, he was an electronic warfare technician.

3:14

And he said, hey, Bobby, you should think about going in the Navy because you're a college graduate.

3:19

And and, you could go in as commissioned officer.

3:23

but because I was a law school dropout, I didn't want to overcommit,

3:27

which is why I signed up with a short, commitment.

3:31

But it was two years active and then four years active reserve.

3:36

and I came in, just after the

3:39

the Ronald Reagan buildup and near the end of the Cold War.

3:43

So I came in as a naval intelligence officer, went through officer

3:46

candidate School, went through basic Intel School.

3:49

And at that time we learned all about the Soviet Union

3:53

and all source operational intelligence.

3:55

We even had instructors that would dress up like Soviet naval

3:58

officers and like, strut out on stage and talk about their their strategy

4:03

and how they would defeat the evil empire of the United States.

4:08

Because I was only signed up for two years.

4:10

I also wanted to make sure that I, I got some operational experience

4:15

in the fleet to see if I would like doing it longer.

4:19

So I was, I received orders

4:22

to the USS Ranger kV 61,

4:25

and I always tell the youngsters when you Google it,

4:27

it's not the wooden ship with sails. Try to see an aircraft carrier.

4:32

And I joined them on deployment.

4:36

So I somehow made my way out to Diego

4:38

Garcia and jumped on board the Ranger deployment.

4:41

And we were on something called Gonzo stationed up in the North Arabian Sea.

4:45

And it was a Cold War era, right?

4:48

It was Soviet ships

4:52

in close proximity, intense situations.

4:55

They had Intel collectors trying to collect off of us.

4:58

They would fly reconnaissance aircraft out and we would intercept them.

5:04

And when we finished the deployment, we came back across the Pacific.

5:07

We went through something called the Bear box,

5:10

because the Soviets would launch

5:12

long range aviation bear aircraft,

5:16

both strike aircraft and anti-submarine aircraft, and we would launch goose

5:21

and MAV off the pointy end of the Ranger

5:24

and, go try and intercept at 200 miles.

5:27

Right. Which was their weapons range. Right.

5:29

And I thought that was going to be my experience in the Navy

5:34

and I enjoy I was enjoying that.

5:36

But in our turnaround cycle, while we were preparing

5:40

for the next deployment, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

5:45

And as, a stellar until last year,

5:48

I was scratching my head saying, Who is Saddam Hussein?

5:51

And where in the world is Kuwait, right?

5:55

But it was, it was a lesson

5:58

in expect the unexpected, right?

6:01

And adapting to new situations.

6:05

So we we came up to speed as fast as we could,

6:10

and we made a shortened turnaround cycle,

6:12

and we deployed early and,

6:16

chopped in through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf

6:20

the day before Desert Storm.

6:22

Right. And wow, that was a formative experience for, for then Lieutenant J.G.

6:28

sharp. Right. Because it was constant strike operations,

6:33

working with the aircrew before they went on their missions, after

6:37

they came back from their missions, we had a Tarps, F-14, Tarp squadron.

6:41

So we were doing tactical reconnaissance, and, it was a hook for me.

6:47

And, this will come back to play at the end of my career because after Desert Storm,

6:53

the Navy looked at itself hard and naval intelligence and said, hey,

6:57

we need to invest in some deep expertise in some specific skill sets,

7:03

that are really important to how we do,

7:06

naval aviation and strike operations.

7:10

And those were figuring out how we leverage machines better.

7:14

Right. So some computer equipment, sort of savvy individuals,

7:18

we wanted to have people who were smart in collections.

7:23

Right. So how do you how do you make the national intelligence

7:28

community know and respond to tactical edge requirements?

7:34

Right. How do we tap into that system of system that's out there?

7:38

it was in the early days of using, imagery afloat.

7:43

Right. And we were just testing out a brand new system

7:48

that allowed us to receive three images in one hour

7:53

afloat. That's kind of the the technology we were dealing with then.

7:57

And then we said we need to, expert in targeting.

8:00

Right. Which is really bringing that together and working with the aircrews,

8:05

telling them what they need to do to have effects, working with the combatant commands.

8:10

Right, and getting information off.

8:13

And, to me, targeting was all source operational intelligence.

8:18

Right? It's it was built off of what I had learned

8:21

thinking about finding Soviet platforms that didn't want to be found.

8:26

And, I really wanted to do that, you know?

8:28

So, I said, I want to be an air wing target here.

8:32

And it was the first of three times where people

8:35

said, screw you don't want to do that.

8:38

It's, you know, it's something new.

8:41

It's not, the standard career path.

8:45

and it may put your progression at risk.

8:50

And I mentioned that because it was the first of three times

8:53

that people told that me that in a career.

8:55

And each time, thankfully, I was stupid enough

8:58

just to say, well, this is really what I want to do.

9:01

But, in hindsight, you know, people that give you

9:04

that sort of advice in your career do so from, from Hobart.

9:10

Right. They're they're trying to, to look out for you,

9:13

but quite often they're looking in the rearview mirror and

9:17

they're looking at what works yesterday as opposed to maybe thinking about

9:21

what's going to work tomorrow, what what's needed tomorrow.

9:25

And, that kind of played out through my career.

9:28

So, you know, the Cold War era,

9:32

the next stage of my life was really that targeting.

9:35

And I went back to see as a target here for Air Wing two.

9:39

I was stationed in Fallon, Nevada, when Topgun moved from Miramar up

9:44

to to, Fallon and we we merged Top Gun, Top

9:49

Dome and Navy Strike Warfare Center, and I deployed on the USS

9:53

constellation, CV 64

9:56

and really enjoyed working with the aircrew.

9:59

Being a little more senior, you know, and a little more experienced this time afloat.

10:03

So I got to do some mentoring and and leadership roles.

10:08

And I like talking to you so much that I decided I wanted to do it again.

10:13

Right. And that was the second time that somebody told me, oh, you're over specializing.

10:18

And I said, yeah, this was tactical targeting.

10:21

I either wanted to go to a combatant command

10:23

or the Joint Staff, and I took orders to the Joint Staff,

10:27

and they said, you're over specializing, but it was

10:31

it was a great experience, and it was my first,

10:35

tour in Washington, DC,

10:38

my one and only tours in the Pentagon

10:41

and my first exposure to the national intelligence community

10:46

and the tremendous talent

10:48

when they, you know, when they were sorry, when,

10:52

when, when they were saying this to you that you're over specializing

10:56

is the orthodoxy within the ranks of naval officers

10:59

to kind of just get a mix of experience

11:03

and then, you know, so you've done this wide breadth of things.

11:06

But if you say, you know, I've been in this lane the whole time,

11:10

then you're less likely to get that that next,

11:14

the next promotion. Yeah. Well, it's it's, you know, there's always this, this,

11:19

debate on whether or not you want specialists

11:22

or you want generalists within the intelligence community anyway,

11:26

in the Navy, in a lot of the other professional fields, like when you're

11:31

if you're driving ships or flying aircraft or,

11:35

or driving submarines,

11:39

there's a very set pipeline where you're

11:41

you're mastering that platform, right?

11:44

There's a little bit more flexibility in what we do as intelligence professionals.

11:48

But we've had this debate, historically generalist versus specialists.

11:53

And at the end of the day, we always come to,

11:56

you know, after we're exhausted from debating this from all sides, we

11:59

we kind of come down in the middle saying we need general specialists and we need special generalists to it.

12:05

Yeah, they're both of those are valued right now on the specialist.

12:10

It's one of the reasons we've been expanding

12:12

our warrant officer program within Naval Intelligence.

12:16

Right. Well, I think I think it's good to master something.

12:20

Right. If it was, you know, as a genuine person,

12:24

you know, we've always had the debates with the all sorts of people, right?

12:27

It's like, oh, you're just looking at a bunch of stuff.

12:30

But really what they're doing is mastering the art of fusion, right?

12:33

In the art of intelligence. Fusion. Yeah.

12:35

And it's you know, I think it's a critical point.

12:39

Yeah. Also. And that was my first exposure really to the Geo Winters because on the Joint

12:43

Staff, my door opened up to what was the name spaces.

12:50

Right as, as NCA was becoming NCA.

12:53

And just like I became a target here based off of lessons from Desert Storm.

12:57

And gar was born out of lessons from Desert Storm.

13:01

Right. And while I was there, while I was on the Joint Staff is when they created Nema,

13:05

eventually NCA and then just to finish my career real quick

13:10

targeting became post 911 counterterrorism operations,

13:14

which is targeting which is all source operational intelligence.

13:18

And when I started deploying with special operations

13:21

instead of being afloat as much, that was a third time.

13:23

People told me, hey, maybe you don't want to do that.

13:26

and then as I left, you know, NCA,

13:32

it was a full circle back to strategic competition, right?

13:37

Not the Cold War, not the Soviet Union.

13:39

Right. a different strategic competition, but it's a full circle for me.

13:45

And it was, it was a perfect way

13:48

for me to culminate my career being an NCA.

13:51

You know, I was a target here.

13:53

I had been around, Geo Winters my whole career.

13:58

And when I got to NGO, I told them, you are my people.

14:01

Like, this is, You are people I have worked with, deployed with,

14:07

been around. And I love earth sciences and earth observation.

14:11

So, after that, I was like, I'm complete, right?

14:16

My career was complete at that point.

14:19

That's kind of a perfect circle from cold, where

14:22

Cold War, you know, era all the way back to

14:27

the world's a crazy place now, but it does seem

14:30

to be kind of back to the, you know, confrontation of major powers.

14:34

Right.

14:38

but so I guess I guess there's probably a lot of lessons there.

14:41

We can, we can ask you about, but,

14:44

I, I'm curious about your time as director of NCA.

14:47

I always have this, thought of, you know,

14:51

what is it actually like to wake up and and not, you know, to

14:56

to just have that much responsibility of an entire.

15:00

It's not. And so people understand it's not just

15:04

that you're leading the National Geospatial Intelligence

15:07

Agency, you're also leading the national geospatial strategy as well.

15:10

So there's a lot of different components to that.

15:13

I'm just kind of curious, like what the what is the day

15:16

what was the day to day like and like, how did your perception changed?

15:21

change. once, once you started kind of getting comfortable with that role?

15:27

Yeah. that's a good question. And it did change over time.

15:30

So I was having discovery every day.

15:32

And, I still, you know, I, I'm, I'm believe in the,

15:36

the value of life, you know, life learner.

15:39

and I always encourage people to grow

15:43

every day professionally and as leaders.

15:46

And even though I had been around the agency

15:48

quite a bit, I still didn't know everything.

15:52

The agency and the enterprise was right,

15:56

which kept me very motivated.

15:58

Right. And excited about what the team was doing.

16:03

And for some of your listeners that may not know the agency, you're right.

16:08

The director of NCA holds, more than one role.

16:13

he or she is responsible for running, the National Geospatial

16:18

Intelligence Agency, which is, you know, a little shy of 15,000 people,

16:23

globally distributed, right?

16:26

About 50% of it is in Virginia.

16:29

about a quarter of that is out in, two facility out at Saint Louis.

16:33

But the other 25% is all over the place

16:36

for an NCA support teams and co-located

16:39

with customers and with teams and all the other Intel agencies.

16:43

We all combat commands, with international partners.

16:47

And it's very connected and collaborative by nature.

16:50

And that's a strength of the agency itself.

16:53

Sure. But the director is also

16:55

the functional manager for all things geospatial intelligence related.

17:00

Right? So for the US government and with in cooperation with international partners,

17:06

that in that role, you're helping to set standards

17:09

to push the envelope with new technology, tactics, techniques and procedures

17:15

and to make sure that everybody's getting what they need to do their jobs

17:19

leveraging, geospatial perspective and geospatial technology.

17:26

so it it can be, you know, if you think of that, it's pretty complex, right?

17:32

And it operates a very complex system

17:35

of systems around the clock and around the globe.

17:38

Understand people's requirements to go out and cast

17:42

a bunch of system of systems or data sources to help meet those needs.

17:48

and it has a very complex, sophisticated IT infrastructure,

17:52

right, designed to ingest,

17:56

process, store, make sense out of data

17:59

and turn it into products at all kinds of different classification levels.

18:03

And all kinds of different formats, and disseminate that on multiple different

18:09

communication systems around the clock and around the globe.

18:13

So the, you getting to be the director,

18:16

you have to you have to empower to make something like that work.

18:20

You really have to drive decision making down to low levels.

18:24

And, just point,

18:27

you know, the proper direction, kind of give strategic

18:30

direction, empower people, provide resources, remove barriers.

18:36

Right. And be be wowed by the amazing talent that we have.

18:41

more tactical. You know, I, I still went in every morning early.

18:48

and it was funny because my wife at one point called me out on this.

18:53

She said, hey, throughout your career, you've been saying

18:56

that you need to go in early before the boss, right?

18:59

So you could be prepared when he or she comes in through the door and she's like, aren't you the boss now?

19:05

I'm might. Yeah, I am, but, you know, for me, it was quiet time.

19:10

It was time before the day started where I could,

19:14

I could read, I could calibrate, I could think,

19:17

before the day happened, every every day

19:21

starts with, an ops Intel briefing.

19:25

Right. Which is designed to to level understanding of what happened

19:32

yesterday, what's happening today, where we need to be focused.

19:35

it's it's recorded.

19:38

Right. So that people who are on different time zones can still come in and at,

19:43

it was run by my director of operations.

19:46

It wasn't run by myself and the deputy.

19:48

It was really run by the director of operations,

19:51

so that there was some level of,

19:54

you know, shared consciousness,

19:58

and direction.

20:00

and then the day happened. Right. And then we'd come back and do it again.

20:05

But it was designed to make sure we were meeting customer needs and properly focused.

20:08

And it's not unusual. That's not, I mean, most of the agencies do something like that

20:15

throughout my career. All that the tactical operational unit, you do something like that.

20:21

And, that was probably the joy of my day.

20:25

I tried to split my time between,

20:27

getting around and interacting with customers and,

20:32

disaggregated team.

20:34

Right. And my guidance to my planners was I wanted to have my head.

20:40

I wanted to be home at least 50% of the time,

20:43

which I defined as having my head actually on my pillow

20:48

right next to next to my wife sleeping in the same bed.

20:52

And I think we did a pretty good job of achieving that balance.

20:55

But it's a it's a busy job, demanding job.

21:01

But the the agency is just

21:03

full of tremendous people and the, the partnerships that tenga

21:08

and all the other agencies have are truly are our strength

21:13

as an intelligence community.

21:15

And it was a joy to to be either in the building or out on the road.

21:21

with members of the community, on a regular basis

21:25

in three years, three plus years went by and, right.

21:30

And I well, you mentioned that, you know, the day just kind of happens, right?

21:35

And, you definitely had some days.

21:38

I mean, you were there during Covid, which is

21:43

at least a mile. I don't think we've had a pandemic like that in 100 years.

21:47

Right. ma'am,

21:50

and to navigate that,

21:52

and the role that you were in, and to see kind of where it's

21:56

where it's at now on the other side, is interesting.

22:00

that was that was that experience.

22:03

Yeah, definitely something different. Right.

22:05

And, I think from a positive perspective, I had been the director

22:10

for just over a year at that point.

22:15

You know, if I had come, if I had dove

22:17

right in and like within the first month

22:20

we had done that, that would have been hard.

22:22

But I knew the agency knew me, and I knew my leaders.

22:26

And we had established a really strong working relationship,

22:31

relationship both at the agency and within the enterprise.

22:34

So that played, to our, you know, to our strengths.

22:40

But I tell you, it was it was different than anything.

22:43

And the thing that that struck me the most was, well, I guess two things.

22:49

One was kind of a panic,

22:52

you know, that was right. That was going on.

22:55

Not not unique to to Banga.

22:59

Right? It was happening everywhere.

23:02

and the different nature of it, as opposed to

23:04

all the other crises we had dealt with, was that it?

23:08

It impacted us at home.

23:11

Right? It had, it had, tentacles reaching into homes.

23:17

But with the panic initially,

23:20

I had a lot of people were saying,

23:23

hey, we need tell us exactly what to do.

23:27

And I mentioned earlier that I believe in empowering people, right.

23:32

And driving decisions down to the lowest level.

23:35

And I had to tell them, I'm not going to tell you what to do

23:38

because we're too complex, right? Everybody's home situation is different.

23:43

We have different jobs. We're all over the place.

23:46

I said, but we I'll tell you what needs to be done,

23:50

right? And early on, we came up with the phrase we will take all actions

23:55

necessary to protect and preserve our force and our families,

23:59

while continuing to meet mission critical needs of the nation.

24:04

And then when people would say, well, what about let's say

24:07

I said again, my last all actions necessary, right?

24:11

Protect and preserve, meet mission critical needs.

24:14

That's that's our left and right limits.

24:17

And we will figure this out together.

24:20

And, it took us about a week to re postured the force

24:24

because once again, this was very different.

24:26

This is a workforce that when there's a crisis in a community,

24:30

right, when there's a crisis, right, they're packing their bags,

24:33

they're coming into work, they're like, where do you need

24:37

I'm ready to go wherever. And at this point we were telling them, hey, we need you go home.

24:42

Not everybody. Right.

24:44

All right. Or else we can't meet that that balance.

24:46

But we need a lot of you to go home.

24:49

and and what we said, everybody we met.

24:52

Everybody. Right. And there's complexity in the workforce of uniformed

24:58

government civilian contractors.

25:01

Sure, but they're all part of the team.

25:04

And there's there's different,

25:08

rules and regulations as to what you can or can't do.

25:12

But we committed to to figuring that out for everybody.

25:15

Right? So it took us about a week to get people convinced that this was the right thing to do.

25:20

And then it took us, probably another couple of weeks

25:24

to really get people connected and to push tools down

25:27

at the unclassified level and to really get our feet underneath us,

25:32

thinking about how we're going to do business differently.

25:35

And once we got ourselves re postured, I, in my discussion with leadership

25:40

and the team writ large, I said, I want us not only to survive this pandemic.

25:46

I want us to use it as an opportunity to come out stronger and smarter and better, right?

25:51

To think about doing things differently that we hadn't done before.

25:56

And, I was pretty proud of the way that the team took that

26:01

that idea and really ran with it.

26:05

I think Covid was like a it was like a shock to the system.

26:08

Yeah, not just as like our, our national system, but,

26:12

you know, like the way that the intelligence community works, right?

26:15

I mean, it was it was like, oh, wait a second.

26:17

This is really difficult to do this on these, these networks and

26:21

what are some other things we have. And I think

26:24

and I've always I believe this for the last, I don't know, maybe 20 years

26:27

that the, the unclassified production of intelligence is where things are moving.

26:32

And I think that's pretty evident now.

26:34

But, and it really helped us, you know, we benefited from having,

26:39

you know, robust high side sort of network,

26:44

decent collateral network and unclassified network.

26:48

And we had already had resources to improve,

26:52

you know, already identified to improve some of our networks.

26:55

We were going to we were about to focus on our collateral networks, but we shifted that to the unclassified.

27:00

And we pushed push tools down. And I think uniquely out of the intelligence community,

27:06

the geospatial realm lends

27:08

itself more, you know, easier

27:11

to doing unclassified work than some of the other agencies.

27:15

Right? Right. We we found processes.

27:18

Now, if you are, you won't find this surprising.

27:20

But we found processes where we are taking unclassified data.

27:25

We are moving it up to high side systems doing things.

27:28

Do it. We are moving it back to unclassified systems and using that for dissemination.

27:33

So there's a lot of room for process improvement for sure.

27:39

it still is. but I think today, people kind of get it right.

27:46

They're like, okay. Yeah, this is kind of silly.

27:49

And I actually had a podcast with Keith Mars back and he mentioned

27:54

this phrase, which is just stuck in my, my brain is that there's a fetish fetish.

27:58

I can't even say the word. There's a fetish with classifying over classifying things.

28:04

Right. yeah. But I think it's, it's, it's a natural reaction,

28:09

like when you're, you know, you're in the business of

28:12

a part of your business is protecting secrets, right?

28:15

Stealing shirts and protecting secrets and.

28:17

Sure. And providing information. So it's it's ingrained in you like to to make sure you are security conscious.

28:24

And we never want to lose that. Right. That's why.

28:28

But we also shouldn't be afraid to question why we're doing things certain ways

28:32

and to adapt how we do business right.

28:37

And every day people should be saying, how do we get better?

28:41

Sure. Yeah.

28:44

I was curious, you know, if there was any,

28:47

any moment or lesson learned, like during that time

28:50

that just really just sticking with you, the pops, the top of your head?

28:56

Yeah, I it was funny because as a, you know,

28:59

as we were getting into the pandemic, early days,

29:03

thankfully,

29:06

you know, we had good communications between other agencies.

29:09

We were sharing,

29:12

best practices at the director level, deputy director, chief of staff.

29:16

We're talking, you know, down throughout the organizations.

29:21

and one of the things,

29:25

that had come out early on was

29:28

the McChrystal group had had turned to and put out

29:32

some information on leading through something like a pandemic.

29:37

And, you came out with it's it's still I think you can find it still on their, their website.

29:42

And I think they may have turned it into something more formal.

29:46

but it was I had already, you know, I worked for general McChrystal

29:50

early days, doing counterterrorism and,

29:53

and so had, Major General Charlie Cleveland.

29:56

Right. And a number of folks throughout the organization.

29:59

So as, as, as they were coming up with their guidance,

30:02

we looked at it, we were like, check, check.

30:05

We're doing that. Yep. We're doing that. Right, right.

30:07

but it really it really showed the importance of,

30:11

not only communicating but over communicating.

30:15

Right. And a loving connect over, over communication is my thing.

30:19

I believe you got to just you gotta it just shows that you're comfortable

30:24

and where you're at that you can you can be wrong, too.

30:28

When you're over communicating. But if you're

30:30

if you're keeping it flowing, that's actually you could be wrong.

30:33

But it's it's okay to be wrong also.

30:35

And it's totally fine. People know and I, I would tell people I learned something new

30:40

every single day, sometimes from the most junior person in the room.

30:44

I'm also wrong. Every day.

30:46

And once again I would tell them, if you don't believe me,

30:49

you can call my wife and she will tell you he is indeed wrong.

30:52

Every day I try not to be wrong about the same thing, right?

30:55

Sure. but I think that that, connectivity

31:00

and communications was a key to our success.

31:04

And, I think, you're aware, Nick, that

31:08

that, we were doing weekly virtual town halls.

31:11

We were sending out, daily updates,

31:15

from from myself.

31:18

Right. Or from the leadership team out to the, the enterprise.

31:25

And I think it it allowed people to we were very transparent

31:29

about how we were handling the disease, right?

31:32

How we were, how we were, safely and responsibly bringing people

31:37

into workspaces to make sure we were taking care of force and families.

31:41

Right, right. And, we were we were also able to, to show people,

31:45

even at the unclassified level, that they were still getting the mission done.

31:50

And that was really important. And one of the things I started doing,

31:53

I told people I had to get through this myself,

31:57

you know, I'm going to take time every day to laugh

31:59

and I'm going to take time every day to be human and to laugh.

32:04

You know, we we would run, different aspects of,

32:08

joking around and r ops until near

32:10

the end and early on, we had repositioned General Cleveland

32:15

over to work from the Pentagon just spreading this out.

32:18

Plus, then we had senior presence in the Pentagon and early on

32:21

I started a segment of our ops until we called.

32:25

I will make we will make a sailor out of you yet Charlie Cleveland

32:28

and I would teach him nautical terms and he would banter back.

32:31

And when it was the Army's birthday, he ran a segment.

32:34

We will make a soldier out of you, Bob Sharp.

32:37

But taking time to laugh a little bit during stressful times is important.

32:42

And then to be human. I was doing daily buddy checks and I would I would carve out time on my schedule

32:47

to call somebody, I had worked with and I consider a good friend

32:52

and check up on them and their families, but also talk about leading

32:57

during a pandemic and sharing best practices.

33:01

And then also, it was good for me to check on how the how the joint team was doing

33:07

and continuing to provide support to the pandemic,

33:10

and I would share feedback from those discussions

33:15

with the enterprise during the next day's ops Intel. And,

33:20

I think that connectivity,

33:23

like hyper connectivity was really important.

33:27

the second aspect, I'd say, is it allowed us to push

33:30

the envelope in being creative and innovative.

33:35

and you may recall this, that

33:38

almost I mean, really early in the pandemic,

33:41

when we had gotten people, we postured the, Department of Defense

33:46

and the government said, hey, we need everybody's plans for how you're going to

33:51

recover and reconstitute, right?

33:53

How do you how do you bring people back if this thing's over tomorrow,

33:56

what's your plan for for quickly

33:59

reconstituting, recovering.

34:02

And we started we we were starting to do that planning.

34:05

And then, we checked ourselves and we said,

34:08

hey, we said we're going to change, right? We said, we will come out of this smarter and better, stronger

34:15

if we just plan on coming back and doing business the way we did before,

34:20

we'll have lost all that opportunity to learn.

34:23

So we our plan was called reimagine, reconstitute, recover.

34:28

The three R plan. And it generated some some great discussions because early on,

34:34

I was getting feedback from the workforce and from the leadership at all levels,

34:39

and they said, hey, that that the team is really excited

34:43

about the word reimagine, but they want to know what you mean about it.

34:48

What do you mean by that? My response was no. What do we mean?

34:52

Like at every level, right?

34:54

Everybody is is empowered to reimagine.

34:57

And that could be an admin process, an operational process.

35:02

You know, anything we will.

35:04

And we came up with a way of of looking at those ideas,

35:08

evaluating them and making sure that we

35:11

we adapted and made that

35:13

part of the way we started doing business coming out of the pandemic.

35:17

Right. What I think you know, what sticks out to me, about your story is,

35:23

one of the things I've always,

35:26

I think is the cornerstone of any good leader is humility.

35:30

And I just think that you're a humble person.

35:33

You've recognized that. I don't see that in a lot of people, a lot of leaders

35:37

that you could just tell that they think when they walk in the room, the

35:41

the sun and stars are there for them.

35:44

but I think humility is, is very critical.

35:47

And I think you just you exude that, right? You're not going in there saying,

35:50

this is what we're doing, this is how we're doing it. You're saying, I'm here to listen, learn.

35:55

We'll make a good decision together. And I think I think that's

35:58

what people really admire about you is you have that humility and like,

36:01

you're as as the director of a of a major intelligence agency

36:07

to come in and listen to that lowest echelon person and, and learn from them.

36:11

So I think that's I think that's a critical thing.

36:14

And, I think that's why people like you so much.

36:17

I appreciate that, Nick. And,

36:22

you know, it's I always tell people I've never been burdened by brilliance.

36:26

That's one of my strengths is, which is why I'm humble.

36:30

Because I need to be humble. Because I'm not all that impressive for one thing.

36:34

And the other thing is, my strength is

36:37

is recognizing the strengths that other people,

36:41

and and helping them just achieve what they're doing and, and team building.

36:47

and I've always been,

36:49

fascinated and excited about working on teams.

36:54

So one of the things I really enjoyed about the,

36:57

the culture at Nar, I lost count of the time.

37:00

Every, every single time I would, I would recognize somebody,

37:05

right? And I'd say, hey, Nick, great job.

37:08

I really appreciate that. Sure. To a person they would say, hey, thanks, sir, but it wasn't me.

37:12

It was the team, you know, and it's it's,

37:16

it's a recognition of really our strengths, which it's not one individual.

37:21

And then, talking about, humility

37:24

as an important characteristic of leaders.

37:28

At one time, I was I was the,

37:31

J2, the Intel director for special Operations Command.

37:35

And it was my second year. And General Joe Battelle, who's a phenomenal leader,

37:41

was the commander there. And we were just having a session talking about leadership.

37:45

And my deputy at that time is is a good friend

37:48

and one of the best leaders I've been around, Keith Lawless,

37:52

United States Marine Corps, 30 years in the Corps, and then a senior civilian.

37:58

And he said,

38:01

hey, all the great leaders I've been around

38:04

have three characteristics.

38:08

One is honor, right? They, it's never about, you know, it's

38:13

they will do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.

38:16

Right? They are. They are people of honor.

38:19

It's humility. It's like you said, it's never about them.

38:23

It's about the team. And then it's.

38:25

It's humor and, humor.

38:29

You know, your attitude is something that you get to choose for yourself.

38:33

There's so much about your day you don't get to choose,

38:36

but your attitude, you get to choose. And as a leader

38:39

or as a person in general, but as a leader, certainly it's infectious,

38:43

right? Very positive ways or negative ways.

38:46

And General Votel had one of his leadership

38:49

principles was be a happy leader.

38:52

And when he he said, when I tell people that they they kind of chuckle.

38:55

He's like, no, no, I really mean it. I mean,

38:59

I mean, be a happy leader, right?

39:01

Because your energy transfers to your people, right?

39:07

It sets it sets the tone.

39:10

so I try

39:12

and remember that, you know, throughout my day.

39:15

And one of the leadership tips I give to to, leaders as they're

39:20

stepping up in their roles is,

39:23

take time every day to walk around

39:25

a little bit and interact with your people

39:29

and take time deliberately out of your day to make at least

39:34

one person that works for you know how special they are,

39:38

right? And that they're doing a good job. And at the end of the day, you can have like a horrible day.

39:44

But if you do that, those two things,

39:47

on balance, you're going to have a good day every day.

39:51

I think that's interesting what you're saying about humor, because

39:56

it seems it seems to me that humor plays a critical role.

40:00

The more serious the job is or the more serious the role is.

40:04

You know, like like the Seals are notorious for having like,

40:08

you know, this six sadistic sense of humor, which which is great, right?

40:13

Because you can't imagine being in the conditions that they have to work in.

40:17

And I think it's the same for,

40:20

you know, working in intelligence. Right?

40:23

Everything we do is critical and time sensitive and, and super important,

40:27

and we try to be as detailed as humanly possible because

40:30

we want to make sure that ultimately, the the people that are in acting,

40:35

on our information are,

40:38

you know, have the best possible knowledge.

40:41

And I think it's interesting and I think probably eye opening

40:44

to some people that you mentioned humor as a key thing.

40:47

I don't think it in normal for a normal person walk in the street.

40:51

Thanks. Oh, the director of an intelligence agency.

40:53

Yeah, he's probably a pretty funny guy, but,

40:57

you know, I can attest Bob. Bob does have a good, a good sense of humor.

41:01

this is a great saying.

41:03

calm breeds calm.

41:06

Panic breeds panic.

41:08

Right? Right.

41:11

that sort of mentality. And it really is. You see it in, a lot of high performing teams that are in stressful situations.

41:19

There's a balance, right? I mean, you're focused when you're in those stressful situations, but time

41:24

sometimes just a little bit of humor can can defuze the stress, right?

41:30

That's right. It's in the room.

41:33

So during it up, you know, being focused and,

41:37

and everything is, is really important.

41:40

And then in between it's, it's good to relax and recover.

41:43

You mentioned the Navy Seals. I worked with, quite a few throughout my career.

41:48

And there were there were two that were commander, deputy commander

41:53

and had known each other, you know, grown up forever and,

41:56

one of the things they, they always tried to do was sneak rocks

42:00

into each other's like, rock rucksacks or like, baggage stuff.

42:06

It was like a ongoing,

42:09

go about it you had with.

42:11

Right, right, right. Yeah. Make the pack a little bit heavier. carry around.

42:15

that's a good one. we used to do that in Army as well, but I'm sure we'll say

42:20

that the Seals probably had bigger rocks, so I'll just throw that out.

42:25

so, you know, you talked about your career come start to starting in the,

42:28

in that Cold War era and then, you know, all the way through Covid and, and kind of

42:34

now we're back in this, kind of same strategic warfare type of position.

42:40

and I want to ask you about that, you know, based on current events

42:43

a little bit later. But, I'm curious about what what are you up to now?

42:47

So you you leave the agency?

42:49

you know, I know you've had some,

42:53

some things happening in your personal life that are, you know,

42:57

add contacts. but, what are you up to today?

43:00

And, like, what gets you out of out of bed now?

43:03

It's funny, what gets me out of bed?

43:06

every morning now is my Australian shepherd

43:10

right there because she.

43:12

She's like an alarm clock, and she's getting old.

43:15

She's, like, 15 years old now, and, she's one of the pets.

43:19

My my wife acquired. She had a my wife had a, knack of acquiring pets.

43:24

If I went on long deployments and come back and,

43:29

so she she got the Australian shepherd. I was two years and a company over in Bahrain, but,

43:34

although she's getting old in the morning, she's a puppy again.

43:37

She wants to go for a walk. And, so that gets me up.

43:41

Move in. my. I'm,

43:45

you know, make your bed. disciple of of actually, I'm a craven.

43:49

I had the pleasure of working for him directly as a sitcom commander,

43:54

and then also deployed with him out in Afghanistan

43:57

and as an, as an entail career Intel officer.

44:01

You know, I always I've always been an early riser.

44:03

I'm a morning person. Like, obnoxiously happy morning person.

44:08

So, getting up nothing that is obnoxious.

44:10

That's the most innocuous when people are so happy in the morning.

44:13

And I can be like that sometimes. But I think for the most part, it's like I'm struggling.

44:18

You know, it takes me a second to get the wheels spinning

44:21

at the Office of Naval Intelligence. I was there and we were having a family day,

44:24

and one of my O6 commanders met my wife and and he said

44:29

he said, hey, man, this is the ever like this every day.

44:31

And she said, yes, he is.

44:34

And it can be exhausting. but but

44:38

what, what motivates me throughout the day?

44:41

You know, I like to tell people these days, I'm, I'm dabbling.

44:44

Right? I, I work for for me, you know, I started,

44:48

llc b sharp Global Solutions.

44:52

Well, my, my strategic vision is to help people

44:55

who are trying to make the world better succeed.

44:59

a shorter version of that is just to continue helping

45:02

great people do great things.

45:04

And I'm doing a combination of,

45:08

of some consulting

45:10

with a number of the established companies.

45:13

Right. I signed initially with Quest Advisors and,

45:16

and, knew some of the people working with them.

45:20

The other principles that I really liked,

45:23

I stayed connected with Saint Louis

45:27

because I'm really passionate about

45:30

what is going on in Saint Louis.

45:33

It's happening out there in it. Yeah. Leveraging leveraging the investment of, replacement construction.

45:40

Right. the the area is doing a great job

45:44

of growing themselves as a leader in geospatial technology.

45:48

Isn't that interesting, too? Because, I mean, in Saint Louis, you know, and Jay's been out there forever,

45:54

but it seems like this just getting a new building is like, has made it.

45:58

Wow. Hold on a second. What is going on over here?

46:01

And I think, yeah, I think over the last, the last decade more, more,

46:06

the more that the technologies improved and made it more accessible,

46:10

I think people are like, oh, this is cool.

46:13

And not to mention the

46:15

the information that can be derived or you're starting to see that

46:18

more businesses are leveraging Geo went for different things.

46:22

And it was it's really cool to see Saint Louis kind of like grab a hold of it.

46:26

And I know, you know, Saint Louis has some issues.

46:28

You know, I was out there for the the symposium, a few

46:32

it was a couple years ago. Or was it last year, last year, last year, and then the year before that.

46:39

The the driver from the airport, he's like, oh, you guys are here

46:42

for the conference. You're the only people that have been downtown in the last,

46:46

you know, month. but I think, I think something like that could really

46:52

spur, spur innovation in the city and, and drive businesses there.

46:56

I know that there's businesses that are starting to invest more heavily there.

47:00

So I think it's a great thing all around.

47:02

Yeah. So, I think you're tracking I'm a, I'm a fellow a research fellow

47:06

with University of Missouri, Saint Louis, the public university out there. And,

47:12

we're helping them stand up a geospatial collaborative

47:16

and not only given certification and degree programs within the university,

47:21

but then also using it as a hub for a multidisciplinary research.

47:26

and then the Chancellor wants to help be a thought leader in K-Through-12 K-12.

47:31

Sure. If you're 16 or,

47:34

developments and so on the people side.

47:39

And, you know, I'm, I'm passionate about people and future workforce generation and those things.

47:44

So it, it keeps me connected out there.

47:47

And then in between those things, I'm working with a bunch of, smaller,

47:53

great companies that are in the business and doing

47:56

either some startups or some that are have been in the business.

48:00

I'm working with a great company called Geo Al.

48:03

You may. Oh yeah, I know them. I hear they're I hear they're great.

48:06

no, you've it's been great to have you and, obviously getting,

48:11

getting a chance to know you a bit more and, and learn from you.

48:16

I'm kind of curious like that.

48:18

You know, you mentioned you're working with some startups.

48:23

You are. We've been around for a little bit. I wouldn't I wouldn't consider us quite a startup.

48:26

Consider a startup either. I think more like I think you're.

48:29

Yeah, you're in transition, though.

48:31

Sure, sure. Absolutely, absolutely.

48:33

but what's that like, working with startups?

48:36

you know, that's that's like flipping the switch.

48:39

That's day and night between, you know, going from, military

48:43

service into, oh, I'm in the startup world now.

48:47

Yeah. It's, it's been an education for me.

48:49

For one thing. You know, I learned I've been learning a lot, and I'm finding that I can have way

48:55

I can have impact in ways that I couldn't while I was in uniform,

48:58

which is exciting to me. One of the things I really loved about being in the military

49:03

was changing jobs every couple of years, right?

49:06

Right, right. It may be a little, internal ADHD that I have when I like,

49:11

I like constant change.

49:13

And, it was actually Keith Moss back and some others

49:17

who I've been talking about to about,

49:20

you know, this next phase in my life that recommended that

49:22

I carve out some time for startups and, it's exciting.

49:27

Let's go. And, I, I'm trying

49:31

not take on too much and kind of spread the portfolio.

49:34

So I'm helping out companies that are in different, aspects.

49:39

But, it's, it's exciting to, to be on small teams

49:43

that are, that are kind of young in their journey

49:47

and to helping to advise them

49:50

as to how they can be successful.

49:53

And so I'm working with,

49:56

you know, some companies are doing remote sensing, some companies that are doing

50:00

artificial intelligence, machine learning, types of things,

50:05

working with quantum computing company and,

50:08

you know, it's, it's amazing stuff like the technology that's out there.

50:13

And I think, us as a nation

50:17

and like minded nations

50:20

figuring out how we,

50:23

adopt

50:25

new technologies in these, these emerging disruptive technology areas

50:31

and how we figure that out is at the core

50:35

of strategic competition, right?

50:38

Technology is just technology, and it can be used for good or evil.

50:42

Right? Throughout history, we've demonstrated that.

50:45

And I just think that there are some the,

50:49

the, proliferation of sensing,

50:52

like knowing what's happening, where the availability of data sources,

50:58

quantum computing and artificial intelligence, machine learning,

51:03

partnering with machines, all those things individually

51:08

are game changing, but they don't exist individually either.

51:12

No. Right. They're interconnected and and we need to make sure we're in a race,

51:18

which is which is why you're you're well aware that,

51:21

you know, all of these director AI issued, moonshot challenge.

51:26

We stood up moonshot labs. We were very deliberate about harkening back to the 60s space race.

51:33

because I think we're in kind of one of those times in history

51:36

now where we're in a, we're in a competition of consequence,

51:41

one that we're not winning in every area.

51:44

And it is in the best interest of the free world that we win

51:50

100, 100%. That's that's a great segue, because I wanted to talk about

51:54

some of the things that are happening in the world and, and obviously

51:57

the emergence of technology seems to be on everybody's mind.

52:02

Unmanned. Right? I mean, unmanned.

52:05

Well, now that, I don't can you say unmanned anymore, like it's uncrewed now,

52:09

I don't, I don't, I don't even know whatever UAS, those are cool.

52:16

I'm curious to know, like what? What your perspective is on, you know, some of the things you've seen,

52:21

working with startups and working, in the military of, like, what?

52:27

What do you think the next phase of artificial intelligence is?

52:31

I think in my perspective,

52:35

I think AI is going you mentioned that convergence of of technology, right?

52:39

It's it's a compound growth of of new technology.

52:44

All happening at the same time. Right? It's just getting better and better every year.

52:47

And it's getting better at getting better every year.

52:51

I think there's so many things that are beyond

52:55

beyond what we can even

52:57

figure out between the two of us. I think there's things there's just going to be like, what?

53:02

you know, they're going to be mind blowing,

53:04

but what what are some interesting things that you've witnessed or that you can kind of see,

53:09

on the horizon in as far as technology is concerned?

53:15

It's to me, the, the easy one that's already occurring at some level.

53:19

But it's just we're just scratching the surface of the utility of it is just

53:25

partnering with machines and automating

53:28

things that that our people do right now.

53:30

And I can tell you that while I when I came to to Enga,

53:35

there had been some sort of disruptive changes

53:39

from my predecessor on, on trying to move down that path

53:42

of becoming more data enabled and digital and partnering and,

53:48

and there was still,

53:51

I wouldn't say suspicion, but skepticism, I guess, would be the right word.

53:55

Right? Right. But as soon as you start to show people that, that you can change the way we do

54:01

business workflows and, and what used to take somebody

54:06

eight hours takes them 30 minutes.

54:08

They become, believers right away.

54:12

And that's an everything we do.

54:14

So I think the, the early opportunities

54:17

are, are just in that automation and continually looking at processes

54:23

and thinking how we do things faster, smarter, better.

54:29

and then the the next step I think is looking at that

54:33

from an integrated fashion.

54:36

Right. And, it's one of the things you and I have talked about before,

54:39

and I talk to a lot of people about this.

54:42

I'm excited about not only what individual companies are doing,

54:47

but what they perhaps could and should be doing together.

54:51

Sure, partner, to figure out things for

54:55

for the nation.

54:57

And I think we need to create that environment

55:01

that also, once again, why we were talking about the 60 space race, right?

55:05

Because we found a way of coming together

55:08

between government, industry, academia,

55:13

nonprofits, international partners, right to figure things out.

55:18

And I think that's going to be

55:20

a key aspect of how we

55:25

how we stay at the,

55:27

the, the forefront of figuring out how

55:31

we can leverage some of these technologies to to greatest effect.

55:36

Like I said, I think you're you're definitely on to something in terms of

55:41

getting companies to work together, because you see a lot of these

55:43

AI companies that are popping up now, they have different types of data

55:48

in different, you know, different ways that they work with data.

55:51

different standards that they use for their own

55:54

stuff, different, ways of,

55:57

of collecting the data, different ways of distributing the data.

56:01

But it seems like a lot of these companies, if you could just smash them together with two, you know, two other ones,

56:06

they would just be like, oh, you know, the things that

56:09

that are the art of the possible.

56:13

I think I once heard that creativity is really just the art of putting two things that are dissimilar together.

56:18

You know, that's really what it is. and I think that that when it comes to technology, creativity

56:25

is actually going to be the, the thing that gets us, to the promised land.

56:31

I say promising gets us where we want to go with this stuff, you know, and I think, I think creative creativity.

56:37

Right. An innovation is, comparative advantage that we have as a.

56:43

Absolutely. And so that's our innovation. So,

56:48

yeah, the United States, I mean,

56:51

look, we we have our problems. We, we we, we, we know that,

56:56

but there's there's not a day or a week that goes by that,

57:01

I don't read about some new things,

57:04

a new company that's started or some,

57:07

you know, new technology that's that's coming up.

57:09

That's interesting. And, and I try to read a lot of a lot of news, and I'm always,

57:15

I'm always seeing it like, okay, a new company here, a new company here.

57:19

And, that, that is our strength.

57:22

You're right. Like, just being able to the fuel to the fire.

57:26

Right? It's like if you don't have any,

57:29

any wood going into the fire, it's going to it's going to burn out.

57:32

But that's the that's the fuels, the innovation.

57:35

So I think, the more we lean into that the better.

57:37

That's right. And, you know, our strength is our people

57:42

are right and our partnerships and partnerships.

57:45

So I'd, I'd always tell people we we not only have good friends, we have friends that are really good

57:50

from international partnership, but part of that partnership

57:53

is working together between commercial, you know, private,

57:58

public, at a, at a different level

58:02

in this creating the environment where we can think through things.

58:06

Two things, based on you know, just,

58:10

following through on a couple of things you said there.

58:12

One was that creativity, like, combining things was one of the things

58:16

I really loved about the Trident specter,

58:20

demonstration series was the technology.

58:23

And it wasn't the individual technologies.

58:26

It's when technologists who are in close proximity and they start saying, yeah,

58:30

I think we can combine these things, right? That

58:33

that I think is very powerful.

58:35

And it's it's part of, who we are as a nation.

58:40

And I may have shared with you we've this, this story, but,

58:44

at one point, you know, I was working at a combatant command, right?

58:49

And the four star general had all the three stars and all their staff sitting around,

58:56

big map. Right? And because everything's geospatial and we're

59:00

talking about some of the challenges we face, and he turned to all his leaders

59:04

and he said, we come from the land of Thomas Jefferson.

59:07

We will outthink the sons of bitches.

59:10

And it's it's time that we create that environment

59:13

where we just unleash the creative genius in our people, right?

59:17

And and challenge them

59:20

to help us make sure we're at the forefront of figuring out

59:24

how we adopt and adapt,

59:27

using these emerging technologies and,

59:30

and how we, we leverage technology to great effect.

59:34

So I, I think we're up to the challenge.

59:37

It's just, you know, if if we're not successful, it's

59:41

because we're holding ourselves back.

59:44

Yeah. Well, I think there's,

59:50

There's there's a lot that can hold us back. especially over the last few years.

59:55

What are your what are your thoughts on. Well, before we get into, like, kind of what's what's happening in the world,

1:00:01

I was curious to know

1:00:04

you actually served under President Trump and also President Biden.

1:00:08

And I'm not asking. This isn't a political question here.

1:00:11

This is just was was there a shift in tone

1:00:14

that you noticed from one executive to the other?

1:00:18

Like what? Like what were the major differences that you noticed

1:00:21

from your, your role as, as the director?

1:00:24

and like, like how did you I'm curious to know

1:00:28

how that how that impacts things because, you know, as you hear this,

1:00:33

you know,

1:00:35

you've heard this, this, term the deep state, right,

1:00:39

which is just this cabal of, of bureaucrats that are

1:00:44

supposedly controlling government. And and there's a bit of that. Right?

1:00:47

There's it's a big government. I'm just curious to know, like when the president

1:00:52

changes. Right. Is there is there how does that impact something like an intelligence agency?

1:00:57

Like is there the president coming in there say, oh, you're all wrong, Bob.

1:01:01

You know, we're doing it this way now or is it.

1:01:04

Yeah. It's they listen to you. You know, that's a good question.

1:01:07

And, you know, certainly throughout my career,

1:01:09

I worked for a bunch of different presidents.

1:01:11

Right. Sure. And, and through different, administrations,

1:01:18

you know, as you become more senior, you,

1:01:21

you feel it a little differently, recognizing you may be,

1:01:26

either directly involved in some of those changes or not,

1:01:31

you know, and more so than than, than a president,

1:01:36

changing. It's also the, the change of cabinet members

1:01:41

for a change in the team and,

1:01:45

at multiple different levels, the,

1:01:50

the continuity, you know, that occurs, some of that is, occurs

1:01:54

just by the, the challenges that we're facing don't change.

1:01:59

Right? Right. Just because a new president comes in,

1:02:02

it doesn't mean like the world hasn't changed.

1:02:05

Sure. National security perspective, there may be different

1:02:08

perspectives as far as priorities.

1:02:11

Right. And and things. But those aren't those aren't

1:02:15

normally I haven't experienced those in as really drastic

1:02:19

changes, especially,

1:02:21

being within the intelligence community when

1:02:25

the the demand to know what's happening, where to make informed decisions.

1:02:29

Sure. It's kind of universal, right? It's right.

1:02:33

So, you know, I, I live my career, you know, putting political,

1:02:40

personal political leanings on the side, or at least,

1:02:44

you know, keeping close to my heart and, when the election's done,

1:02:49

I just, I pray for whoever is in leadership to be successful.

1:02:53

Right. Because it's our it's our nation and our planet.

1:02:57

And I focus on making sure we provide those individuals

1:03:03

the best information, continue to provide those, individuals

1:03:07

the best information to help them make informed decisions.

1:03:11

Right? Yeah. The big picture, you know, Nick, sometimes is how people consume

1:03:18

information, right? That's and that's not unique at that level.

1:03:23

It kind of happens at every level.

1:03:25

When you're in this business, there is a very big difference.

1:03:29

When, when I started as the Intel commander for the,

1:03:34

joined Intel Center at Central Command,

1:03:37

first I worked for General Petraeus, and then I worked for General Mattis.

1:03:41

Were very different humans, right.

1:03:43

The way they process information was completely different.

1:03:47

And you have to be able to adapt to,

1:03:50

to understand, like how they how they what

1:03:54

their requirements are, how you can provide that information

1:03:57

that's going to be in the right format at the right time to help them

1:04:01

make decisions. So I think that's the biggest change for somebody comes in is figuring out

1:04:08

how they consume information, what are the right decision points

1:04:13

where you can have impact, and that sort of adaptation?

1:04:20

That's that's pretty interesting. I, I think it's it's very patriotic as well.

1:04:24

I think it's probably one of the, the biggest misunderstandings of the intelligence community is that

1:04:29

there's a lot of people that just like you, they're

1:04:33

they they want they want the president to be successful.

1:04:36

I think the president's a polarizing figure.

1:04:38

I don't care who it is, because half of our country votes one way.

1:04:40

They have the votes the other way. And I don't know about you.

1:04:44

I mean, I'm sure you're the same way, but I

1:04:48

you know, I want the president to be successful.

1:04:51

I mean, look, I'm not voting for Joe Biden.

1:04:53

I don't think there's no mystery there, but I want him to be successful.

1:04:56

As in, I want him to make good decisions. I want him to have wins because it's good for the country.

1:05:01

And, yeah, you're right.

1:05:04

Exactly. The fail. Yeah.

1:05:06

And and and the crazy part, of course, is that this,

1:05:11

this sense of patriotism,

1:05:14

which is that you want America to do to do good no matter what.

1:05:17

Because even that's become political and polarizing now, which is

1:05:22

mind blowing. Right?

1:05:24

this there's been a, a shift

1:05:27

to, I don't know, in the last five years.

1:05:31

It seems to me,

1:05:33

at least on the far left,

1:05:37

a shift to

1:05:39

denounce patriotism, which is to say, yesterday

1:05:43

I saw, you know, the Palestinians, they took down the American flag.

1:05:46

They put up the Palestinian flag on the, a college campus.

1:05:50

I think it was NYU or something in New York. Right.

1:05:52

but crazy stuff happens.

1:05:54

There's crazy people there. They're usually a fringe minority, but

1:05:59

it's just it seems like it's getting it seems like it's growing.

1:06:02

It seems like that anti-American sentiment is growing.

1:06:08

And I never want that to be in the intelligence community.

1:06:11

I want I want the intelligence community to actually believe in

1:06:15

what this country stands for. And I think for the most part, that that it does, I think I think it does.

1:06:20

It is something that no matter what your political affiliation is and your

1:06:24

your beliefs, we all raise our hand and, and take the same oath, right?

1:06:29

To support, defend the Constitution. United States against all enemies, foreign, domestic.

1:06:34

So I think it is something that unites us.

1:06:37

yeah, I thing I think about our business, you know,

1:06:41

I think I may have shared this with you. I call it my great American theory. Right.

1:06:45

And I truly believe that people in our profession

1:06:48

don't wake up in the morning saying, I hope I suck today and I do something meaningless

1:06:52

today. They generally, you know, want to do something that really matters

1:06:57

and they want to do it exceptionally well.

1:07:00

And it's important for us to keep that

1:07:03

in our minds, right, so that we assume good intent,

1:07:08

with our with our colleagues and coworkers

1:07:12

and yeah, I do think that at this time

1:07:18

there is,

1:07:20

disproportional

1:07:22

hearing or a voice given to both extreme left and extreme right.

1:07:28

based off of the way news reports,

1:07:31

you know what is, what is being covered.

1:07:34

And then also the way that that the internet kind of functions,

1:07:39

I think of, of I think there's more,

1:07:43

similarity than dissimilarity in beliefs,

1:07:48

especially especially on the what, what issues need to be challenged.

1:07:53

Right. And then you get into discussion and debating, like how do you how do you attack those problems.

1:07:58

So there's definitely a difference in how we prioritize things.

1:08:03

You know, how we legislator don't legislate.

1:08:06

That is things. it's one of the things

1:08:09

I love about taking Ubers around is, especially in the DC area, is

1:08:14

I get to interact with a lot of sometimes like first generation Americans, right,

1:08:20

who are very appreciative of, being in this country

1:08:25

and what this country represents or, you know, from time and military

1:08:29

and traveling around the world, you get a good appreciation for,

1:08:33

you know, despite faults that we have.

1:08:38

Right. And no country is perfect, right?

1:08:41

We got a lot of positive things that go along with being

1:08:45

a citizen of United States of America.

1:08:48

Right? If you don't think so, you should go to some of these other countries.

1:08:52

And in and see what it might look from a different perspective.

1:08:58

then yes, try holding drag Queen Story Hour inside of Gaza.

1:09:02

It's not going to go very well with, the fact that we can be very tolerant

1:09:06

the second we can be critical about our country is is a blessing.

1:09:10

Absolutely. But freedom of speech, that's it seems to be more and more.

1:09:15

I think I was listening to Joe Rogan the other day.

1:09:18

They're talking about a,

1:09:21

European country that is really,

1:09:25

you know, they want to lock people up for

1:09:28

hate speech, you know, and this is a very European thing.

1:09:33

I think that's why when this country was founded, they said,

1:09:36

no, we're not going to do that. You know, this is you can talk here.

1:09:40

Elon Musk is getting into hot water with the Australian prime minister

1:09:45

because because, you know, he's allowed this

1:09:48

video that is violent, does depict violence, but it's it's real.

1:09:53

It's a real video. And, you know, they want to one of the officials

1:09:58

in Australia was like, oh, we got to throw Elon in jail. I was like, okay.

1:10:02

But you know, I think you got a freedom of speech.

1:10:05

Is is there's a reason that's the First Amendment.

1:10:07

You know, it's the most powerful thing in the world.

1:10:10

It's how you hold people accountable. It's how you let bozos air out their dumb ideas.

1:10:14

And you can identify who the bozos are.

1:10:16

we can all be a bozo sometimes, right?

1:10:19

Me included. I think it's.

1:10:22

I think like this, this moment in time

1:10:25

is is a time when we we really need real leaders that believe in America.

1:10:30

I believe in the United States, believes in the First Amendment and these values

1:10:33

that and by the way, that means that if you want to,

1:10:36

you know, raise the Palestinian flag, go for it.

1:10:39

But don't expect

1:10:41

to expect my adulation or anyone's adulation.

1:10:43

And certainly don't expect anyone to say that you're right.

1:10:47

Right. it's just it

1:10:50

seems it seems wild what's happening on some of these college campuses?

1:10:53

what it is. But you're getting college students, right? And you can.

1:10:57

Sure, sure. Absolutely, absolutely.

1:10:59

And that's, you know, that's the X factor. And I think sometimes in the news they take they take it a little bit too

1:11:06

serious, like, yeah. Well you know I was done when I was in college too.

1:11:10

yeah.

1:11:12

I mean sometimes things are going bad.

1:11:15

I think the whole issue, you know, they don't they don't want to go to a campus

1:11:19

where you're having peaceful protest and dialog,

1:11:22

but that's happening in our country as well. And.

1:11:25

Sure. And we we went through this, also earlier during the pandemic and

1:11:29

in some of the riots after, right, right. And,

1:11:36

one of the things when I was, you know, I was still doing, you know, weekly town

1:11:39

halls and I told my, my team just, you know, where I stand on things.

1:11:44

I, I completely support the right

1:11:48

to protest in this country peacefully, 100%.

1:11:52

I do not support the, the right to,

1:11:56

you know, destroy property

1:11:59

or block traffic. Can I just say that blocking traffic is one of the worst things

1:12:03

that is not peaceful protest. You know, if you're stopping people from getting to work on time

1:12:06

or picking up, put down on a different level, though, then like busting windows, stealing, right?

1:12:12

Absolutely. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I support I support law enforcement.

1:12:17

You know, I come from a family of law enforcers.

1:12:20

I don't support law enforcement officers who break the law.

1:12:23

Right. But the the the percentage of law enforcement officers that break the law

1:12:28

is, is small compared to those that don't, very small.

1:12:32

The the percentage of protesters that loot

1:12:37

right and and destroy is very small compared

1:12:42

to those who are trying to actually protest peacefully and, and,

1:12:46

you know, use their, their rights to do so.

1:12:50

And it's, it's important for us to keep that in perspective.

1:12:53

It's smaller numbers on the fringes that people point at.

1:12:57

And then I would tell people, I think whatever you

1:13:00

I think whenever you see, I think they're all blank are blank.

1:13:03

You're probably yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm saying if there's a role in terms, I will say that's a what was that?

1:13:10

After the George Floyd riots, there was, was that $20 billion worth of damage done to these cities?

1:13:16

So I don't think that I don't think that that was a fringe minority.

1:13:18

I think there was a there was a, a fuel of hatred there that was causing

1:13:24

a lot of people to do damage and the riot and loot and do all these things.

1:13:28

I still think it was a minority of protesters, number wise.

1:13:33

Sure. I mean, maybe, yeah, maybe in the the totality of it all.

1:13:38

but I don't I don't think that that's a helpful way to think about it.

1:13:41

Right. You, you're there's this term, mostly peaceful protesters.

1:13:45

Well, that doesn't

1:13:47

that doesn't matter when the building's on fire and there's, you know, looting happening.

1:13:52

It's like, okay, well, I don't know.

1:13:55

yeah.

1:13:57

So the owner of that business, it doesn't really equate.

1:14:00

Right? Right. you know, you could say that

1:14:04

October 7th was a mostly peaceful day.

1:14:08

Oh, except for those, you know, 1200 Israelis that were killed.

1:14:12

so I did want to ask you about maybe not necessarily that,

1:14:16

but about some of these conflicts that are happening in World war.

1:14:18

Like what? What your general thoughts are on how we're handling them.

1:14:21

and we could start with that, with Israel and Palestine.

1:14:27

Yeah. I just, I feel like I feel like I've.

1:14:32

I'm like having deja vu, you know, I there seem to be a period

1:14:36

when Israel and Palestine were okay, you know,

1:14:40

like it was okay if things have kind of calmed down there, whatever.

1:14:43

And then obviously October 7th happened.

1:14:47

and then

1:14:49

it has kicked up the, the hornet's nest of,

1:14:52

you know, Lebanon with Hezbollah and,

1:14:56

obviously I ran now

1:14:59

shooting whatever they're trying

1:15:01

to shoot at Israel, drones and missiles and things like that.

1:15:05

What are your thoughts on how we're handling it? And from maybe from an intelligence perspective?

1:15:12

what are your general thoughts on what's happening there?

1:15:15

Yeah, a couple thoughts on it. You know, I would,

1:15:18

I would, tell the team when I was still director of energy and Park as well.

1:15:23

Hey, the good news is you have job security.

1:15:26

The bad news is you have, like, way too much job security, right?

1:15:29

Like the complexity, some of the security challenges that are facing the world.

1:15:35

Right? And. One of the

1:15:39

the dimensions that are, that are important

1:15:42

or the aspects of the challenge that we're facing

1:15:45

are they're not local problems. Right?

1:15:47

There's no such thing as local problems anymore.

1:15:50

Anymore that cross national boundaries and regional boundaries.

1:15:53

This global dimension to them.

1:15:56

Nor do they exist in isolation.

1:15:59

So some of the security challenges that we're facing

1:16:02

really are interconnected in complex ways, right?

1:16:06

So it's hard for us to to fully understand them.

1:16:10

And then there's a there's a desire for,

1:16:13

for simple solutions to complex problems.

1:16:17

Right. That's it. One man that is that is it right there, isn't it?

1:16:21

Yes. There's so much in nuance, you know, I know it's going.

1:16:27

Yeah. So it's it's really easy to criticize, right,

1:16:30

when you're looking at some of these challenges and, and,

1:16:34

but it's really hard to come up with what, what anybody can do

1:16:39

just to completely address

1:16:42

and diffuse the situations.

1:16:45

All right. So, from the intelligence community, I think, the,

1:16:51

the community is, is doing a good job in,

1:16:54

in collecting, understanding,

1:16:57

you know, warning those sorts of things.

1:17:00

you know, warning is a tough job.

1:17:04

And you saw the Israelis be very self-critical on, on themselves.

1:17:09

Right. Which is part of, of the business.

1:17:12

Right. Going back and thinking about how good where you have,

1:17:17

how not good are you and how do you get better at things.

1:17:21

but you know, from a I'm an

1:17:24

optimist by nature, so I'm, I'm pretty happy with the fact

1:17:29

that that the conflict right now hasn't spread further,

1:17:33

right, that they're even though they're interconnected, as you said, it's

1:17:38

really complex because it starts to evoke

1:17:41

emotion and, and problems

1:17:44

where were or areas where you could be

1:17:47

in a hot conflict in a heartbeat as well.

1:17:51

And I'd say right now,

1:17:54

you know, the the conflict is,

1:17:56

is fairly contained,

1:17:59

but I think it's, that's a day to day thing, right,

1:18:02

where it could change in a moment's notice.

1:18:06

I've, I've always had this, this thought about

1:18:12

these types of, I don't know if you want to call them

1:18:16

wars that we have with these other countries, but,

1:18:19

you know, you mentioned the term hot conflict, which to me is

1:18:23

two countries had, you know, boom, boom going at it right?

1:18:26

I think most people agree with that. That's what that is.

1:18:29

But when you were dealing with countries like Iran and they're just they're funding things right now.

1:18:35

No, check this out. Right.

1:18:38

They're funding Hezbollah, they're funding Hamas, they're funding

1:18:42

these terrorist organizations. Who knows what they were doing with ISIS or whatever.

1:18:49

At the same time, we're funding Ukraine, right?

1:18:53

And I'm not I'm not putting those on parody.

1:18:55

Ukraine was invaded by Russia.

1:18:58

And they have, you know, they have a certainly

1:19:01

a right, a will, and they should defend themselves.

1:19:05

but isn't that like it's like

1:19:09

we use the way money is used to enact war,

1:19:14

but somehow could keep the person that gave the money, you know.

1:19:17

Oh, sorry. We just we just we just gave them money.

1:19:20

We're not actually into this. We just gave them $200 billion worth of stuff.

1:19:25

we're not actually in this war. And

1:19:29

I just. I don't understand

1:19:31

how any world leader could be, like, not hold that country accountable.

1:19:35

Right? If if we're attacked, let's say

1:19:41

911 is a perfect example, right? We were attacked. The 911.

1:19:45

We know for a fact that a lot of those,

1:19:48

terrorists were trained by or at least funded

1:19:51

by Saudi Arabia.

1:19:55

or people in Saudi Arabia, I should say not necessarily tied to the government.

1:19:58

I don't I don't know enough about that.

1:20:01

but it doesn't seem like there was any accountability

1:20:04

there, like what happened there at the same time,

1:20:08

Iran can fund Hamas

1:20:11

and Hezbollah and we don't we don't hold them accountable.

1:20:14

I don't I don't understand that.

1:20:17

And then, you know, here we are funding Ukraine justifiably,

1:20:22

for funding that to, to the extent that it needs to be for peace first.

1:20:27

But, to get there, sometimes you need to have a little muscle.

1:20:32

but this,

1:20:35

I don't know, there's a discrepancy to me between.

1:20:37

Oh, it's just money and boots on the ground.

1:20:41

To me, it's like

1:20:43

the same, you know, $200 billion is a lot of money you get.

1:20:48

I mean, that's a that's a lot of money worth of stuff

1:20:51

that we're giving to Ukraine. And I just I think I had this conversation two years ago, whatever.

1:20:56

But are we not involved, like, are we not involved in a war right now?

1:21:01

We're just luckily not sending our sons and daughters,

1:21:06

especially in Ukraine. Like, what are your thoughts on this crazy kind of economic

1:21:10

funding of warfare? Yeah, that's that's the complexity of of,

1:21:15

how much how you how you provide support.

1:21:18

Right. And you can probably recall, early days of after Russia

1:21:23

invaded Ukraine,

1:21:26

in some of the discussion, debate

1:21:28

as to what sort of support would or wouldn't be provided and,

1:21:32

and, a discussion and debate as to

1:21:36

what sort of weapons systems would be.

1:21:38

Okay, right. To provide and, discussion, debate on

1:21:43

is it a defensive weapon system, is it offensive weapon system?

1:21:47

so I think there's the right discussions to have.

1:21:51

Right. Those are the right.

1:21:53

that's why it's so hard to to pass

1:21:57

support for funding.

1:22:00

and some of the stipulations,

1:22:03

and that's, that's our democracy and

1:22:06

in operation. Right.

1:22:10

is getting into those details on that, but I, I guarantee you

1:22:14

that it would be a whole level of different discussion if,

1:22:17

if all of a sudden we said, hey, we're going to send forces in there,

1:22:21

right? It's I agree, they're related. Right.

1:22:25

But if I'm Russia, I just I this is the part I don't if I'm Latimer.

1:22:29

Putin. Right. Latimer Putin who all agrees

1:22:34

you know he's obviously

1:22:36

he has support from his people. I know we tend to make these comic book,

1:22:42

expressions of people, but he's evil.

1:22:45

He's an evil human. I mean, just look at what he's done over his lifetime.

1:22:49

how how is he not saying.

1:22:53

Yeah, we're at war with the United States. Like the. How is that any different? Right?

1:22:56

I just don't, that's so much.

1:22:58

We're giving them so much stuff. Like, there seems to be

1:23:03

like, that's a provocation

1:23:06

beyond just, you know.

1:23:10

The norm. That's a 200. Oh, man. I don't know how much money we've given them at this point.

1:23:13

It's probably $300 billion or something like that.

1:23:17

Worth of there's been military equipment that have gone in there, Victor.

1:23:21

You know, Russia's also receiving,

1:23:24

equipment right from other countries. And.

1:23:28

That's right. That's right. We're at war with them.

1:23:31

So I just I do think it's the complexity of, what is conflict?

1:23:36

What's competition? What's conflict, you know, what is

1:23:40

and it's there's a it's kind of a continuum.

1:23:43

And I think that,

1:23:46

that we've decided we're comfortable in doing certain things

1:23:51

and not doing other things right, which continually gets,

1:23:56

evaluated and be evaluated.

1:23:58

And you're right, sometimes we we we are critical

1:24:02

of, of support that Russia would receive.

1:24:07

But we're throwing rocks from a glass house, right?

1:24:11

We right forget that we're doing the same thing with with Ukraine.

1:24:16

Well, we also support Russia, by the way.

1:24:19

Just, if if you look in there, if they're missiles, they have components

1:24:23

from Texas Instruments and all sorts of American made components

1:24:27

inside of their, their, their weaponry,

1:24:31

you know, that gets sourced through third party countries

1:24:34

and makes its way to trickles in through non, non attributable, sourcing.

1:24:40

But we are 100% in a weird kind of way also.

1:24:44

are providing stuff for Russia.

1:24:47

you're mentioning China here without without saying China.

1:24:51

But obviously China is a critical,

1:24:55

you know, the most the most

1:24:59

realistic,

1:25:01

I think, threat to the United States over the next 50 to 100 years.

1:25:05

I mean, you just look at what they're doing from buying farmland next door military installations to

1:25:11

walking thousands, tens of thousands of

1:25:14

Chinese nationals across our southern border, which is happening

1:25:17

like they have their own Chinese camps and stuff like that, through,

1:25:22

you know, that surpass the Darién Gap down and in Central America

1:25:25

and make their way up through, up to California.

1:25:29

not to mention their the amount of Chinese nationals

1:25:32

that are in our universities, they're known.

1:25:35

They're known, Belt and Road Initiative, the

1:25:40

their entire strategy for stealing our intellectual property.

1:25:44

I mean, this is this is a country that is, you know, got bad intentions.

1:25:50

what are your thoughts on on China's like, what?

1:25:55

What could we do as short term

1:25:57

thinkers like, I want to say this because

1:26:01

our our leaders, they're there for four years.

1:26:04

You know, the the the president of United States

1:26:06

is there for four years, maybe eight, if they're lucky.

1:26:11

but this President XI guy, he's not leaving, right?

1:26:13

He's not he's going to be around in 20 years, 30 years.

1:26:16

And so they can enact these kind of long term strategies.

1:26:20

And that's what the Belt Road Initiative really is all about, flexing this economic

1:26:24

muscle in parts of the world, to gain influence and control and, and ultimately,

1:26:29

to dominate those, those markets and,

1:26:33

pull that money back, back to China.

1:26:37

what are your thoughts on China? What are your thoughts on,

1:26:40

we could go more into semiconductors in Taiwan,

1:26:43

but what are your thoughts on, on China?

1:26:48

Right. I think that is or or pacing competitor.

1:26:52

Right. And that,

1:26:55

just as with other competitions, when it's nation, nation, it's not that

1:26:59

the citizens of that nation, it's, it's the government.

1:27:04

Right. Sure. The different worldviews that are represented,

1:27:09

between China

1:27:12

and what we believe in as a, as a people,

1:27:15

right, that are fundamentally at odds with each other.

1:27:18

so that's, I mean, that's that's at the heart of competition

1:27:22

and competition of consequence and talked about and that's

1:27:25

where I focused with the, with directors intent when I was a director of NCAA,

1:27:30

was to let people know that we're in a competition of consequence.

1:27:34

And it's not a tomorrow competition. It's a ongoing competition.

1:27:38

As a matter of fact, we were we've probably been in the competition longer than we even realized.

1:27:43

Right. as we,

1:27:46

as we had, as we largely focused

1:27:50

and concentrated on trying to,

1:27:54

to cooperate and partner with China,

1:27:58

thinking that they would be something that they're not.

1:28:02

Right. As a, as a Communist party.

1:28:06

so I think that that is at the, at the core of,

1:28:10

of our competition that that's the core of,

1:28:13

like protecting information and intellectual property.

1:28:16

And that's at the at the core of figuring out

1:28:20

how we make sure that we don't

1:28:23

lose the race for,

1:28:26

developing, implementing, setting the rules

1:28:30

for how these new disruptive technologies are going to be used

1:28:35

right within, within the world. So

1:28:38

that's that's where we need to be focused

1:28:42

as a as a Navy.

1:28:44

Admiral, what are your thoughts on on Taiwan?

1:28:49

Obviously, you know, the waterways there are, are the game, right?

1:28:53

That's the game. what are your thoughts on,

1:28:57

you know, if something were to happen, should the United States

1:29:00

defend 100% of boots on the ground, defend Taiwan?

1:29:06

you know, how critical are

1:29:09

these semiconductors to the United States

1:29:12

over the next, you know, 5000 years?

1:29:15

you know, or is it does that is that the threshold?

1:29:19

Is that. Oh, they're going into Taiwan. That's a we're there. maybe not boots on the ground.

1:29:23

Maybe you have, flippers on the ground.

1:29:25

Maybe that's what we'll have there.

1:29:27

But I think, you know, it's one of the things is, you know, you

1:29:31

you fund and you field militaries and support them for two reasons.

1:29:36

One, you know, first and foremost, to prevent conflict.

1:29:40

Sure. And then second, to win decisively is called upon to do so.

1:29:46

So I do think that that, it is of significant national interest, for the U.S.

1:29:54

and for a number of nations

1:29:57

for China not to invade Taiwan.

1:30:00

Right. That would be something that would that would require

1:30:04

some level of response, you know, and whole of government sort of response,

1:30:09

and that we should not be precluding

1:30:12

military options as part of that.

1:30:15

You know what? We're what we're thinking about, what we're planning for.

1:30:19

you know, and it would depend on the situation.

1:30:23

But, you know,

1:30:25

first and foremost, we need to make sure that that every day

1:30:29

that China is waking up and saying is, today we do something like this.

1:30:34

They say, no, today is not a good day to do that.

1:30:36

And you talk about the Navy and,

1:30:41

the maritime sort of aspect of the competition that we're in.

1:30:45

a few years ago,

1:30:47

before right before I took over in, there was,

1:30:50

a Chinese naval admiral

1:30:53

who was part of their their think tanks and, first,

1:30:59

strategy division that had come out openly and said,

1:31:03

critical of the United States in our resolve

1:31:06

and in his his comments.

1:31:09

The gist of his comments were, I don't think the U.S is as strong

1:31:14

as people think they are militarily and in their resolve

1:31:19

to protecting the sort of the waterways out here in the South China Sea.

1:31:24

And he suggested that that maybe they should test

1:31:27

that resolve by sinking an aircraft carrier or two.

1:31:30

And at that point, when I was speaking on different platforms, I would

1:31:36

I would talk about these comments and I said, I take that personally, right?

1:31:40

Because that sure ups it's not too big chunks of steel.

1:31:43

That's a lot of humans, 10,000 shipmates right from.

1:31:50

So we need to make sure that, that if they're waking up

1:31:53

and they're saying, hey, we should test the U.S. resolve, maybe sink a carrier that they're their decision

1:31:58

process, like today would not be a good day.

1:32:01

And for us to to to make them say today would be a good day

1:32:06

means we need to have a a strong and capable force.

1:32:09

Right? And if they make the mistake in saying today was a good day,

1:32:14

we need to have the capability to quickly

1:32:17

make them realize that today was not a good day,

1:32:21

right? So that needs to meet the focus of where we're investing.

1:32:26

And, the capabilities that were

1:32:30

were building in the, in the Navy and the Joint force,

1:32:34

I think I think it's such a it's such a wild situation, isn't it?

1:32:37

It's just like this one company on this one little island is making

1:32:42

the things that power our modern, you know, everything in the modern world,

1:32:46

you know, and you know, the next company making

1:32:50

semiconductors is so far behind.

1:32:53

it's not even. It's just it's a crazy thing.

1:32:56

It all comes down to this one little island. If you look at, you know, map people got a beautiful map behind you.

1:33:01

I love it. So we're just, it comes out as one little island that could really be

1:33:05

the the catalyst for things outside.

1:33:09

If you're working at the the Taiwan was at Taiwan

1:33:12

Semiconductor Company or whatever it's called, TSC.

1:33:15

I'm I might be wrong about that, but the name of the company but

1:33:20

are you thinking, oh man, if the Chinese come in, I'm going to put in my best my best effort tomorrow.

1:33:25

You know, I have the feeling there's got to be

1:33:28

some of the people in Taiwan probably would be pretty opposed to,

1:33:33

you know, the Chinese coming in and saying, make chips for us.

1:33:36

again.

1:33:38

But if you have a gun to your head, you're going to do what you're going to do.

1:33:41

I don't think they're going to just go, you know, willingly into work

1:33:45

the next day and say, sure, China, you can have whatever you want.

1:33:49

You know, there's got to be a little bit of that.

1:33:51

And not to mention our response to,

1:33:57

how we would, you know, attack China, essentially, or should

1:34:02

I say, attack how we would react to something like that?

1:34:07

China is relying on us and we're relying on them.

1:34:10

And this weird type of

1:34:12

this weird type of dance, you know, like, I think Walmart is, like,

1:34:15

the most popular store in China or something like that.

1:34:20

and obviously we get a lot of a lot of goods from China.

1:34:23

so it's it's just it's crazy.

1:34:26

It's just crazy that all these entangled, relationships

1:34:31

from trade,

1:34:35

can kind of fall into play here on this one little island

1:34:39

and, you know, and their desires to what, take back the island?

1:34:42

it's just it's it's wild to me.

1:34:45

It's just seems like the most

1:34:47

right in their mind is not taking back. It's it's part of China, right? Right.

1:34:53

Yeah. It's theirs belongs to us. It's mine.

1:34:56

but, and, you know, I was, I had, I did not visit Taiwan until

1:35:01

I was out of the military, and,

1:35:05

I visited just a little bit over a year ago.

1:35:07

I went out with, the German Marshall Fund, I think tank

1:35:12

out of Harvard, and I was part of,

1:35:15

a a U.S., European Union European delegation

1:35:21

with five delegates from from each.

1:35:23

And we met with the president, we met with cabinet members and,

1:35:27

and,

1:35:30

I learned a lot while I was out there.

1:35:32

Great. And, certainly bolstering there.

1:35:36

Anything you can share?

1:35:38

I mean, bolstering your own defensive capabilities, right, so that they.

1:35:42

Right. They're not taking over

1:35:45

by military means. There's certainly some that they are interested

1:35:49

in that we are interested in.

1:35:54

That's, and then going back, I think that my conjecture is, I mean,

1:35:58

we just we we need to be looking at where we have vulnerabilities

1:36:01

and and that's a massive purchase.

1:36:04

Yeah. I mean, massive cereals.

1:36:07

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's almost my mind boggling that it's

1:36:14

allowed the it got to this point where they're that company is just so far ahead.

1:36:19

I mean that we don't have the science.

1:36:22

We don't have the engineers, we don't have the, the trained

1:36:26

labor to produce, you know,

1:36:29

the quality and numbers of these semiconductors.

1:36:32

it's like, man,

1:36:34

come on, Elon, we need you to figure something out here.

1:36:38

Get get something wrong. But we're we're way behind.

1:36:41

and then you say the complexities of the relationships.

1:36:44

I think a lot of nations are

1:36:47

are starting to realize that

1:36:50

what at one point looked like a really good business deal

1:36:54

in, in right, partnering with the Chinese

1:36:57

as longer term negative consequences.

1:37:02

Right. So sure, I think there's,

1:37:05

they want conformity realization of this.

1:37:08

And I was I was with one of our most valued partners

1:37:12

and talking about maritime infrastructure.

1:37:15

Yeah. And one of them said to me, I'm, I'm sorry to say that

1:37:20

our business community has bartered us into a very precarious position,

1:37:25

because, yeah, because of some of the, the deals that were made there.

1:37:29

But the good thing is people are starting to realize that,

1:37:33

that it's to some challenges, right?

1:37:36

As opposed to being,

1:37:40

having blinders on.

1:37:44

you mentioned you mentioned, nuance earlier.

1:37:46

I mean, nuance is really what it's

1:37:49

what's what it's all about. You know, I think what's cool about these, about podcasts in general,

1:37:54

is that you can kind of talk through these things a little bit

1:37:56

and kind of get more detail as to, okay, why is that an issue?

1:38:00

I think I think a lot of people don't understand,

1:38:03

at least in the United States.

1:38:06

What? Like what what's happening? Like, why is Taiwan an issue that, you know, I think if you ask

1:38:11

the average person on the street, they'd be like, What's like why?

1:38:14

So it's very simple explanation really. It's just there is there is some nuance there.

1:38:18

And obviously. And your response to that, we would have the a potential Chinese,

1:38:24

takeover would be a nuanced, you know, required nuance thinking.

1:38:29

And it seems to me like a lot of things in the news or whatever, they're so

1:38:33

simple, right? It's just everything's so simplified and made to be digestible.

1:38:38

But the world is complicated.

1:38:40

You know, there's a lot of nuance there. You got to know what's going right.

1:38:44

it's interesting you should say that, because in

1:38:46

with some of the European nations that were part of our delegation

1:38:49

and we were having the same sort of discussion,

1:38:51

and how do you how do you raise the awareness that

1:38:54

that Taiwan is important,

1:38:57

that Taiwan isn't some small island off the coast of China,

1:39:00

that Taiwan is a is, a liberal democracy?

1:39:07

is it in potential risk? Right.

1:39:09

And and what it means to the world

1:39:13

and how once again, it's it's not a local problem.

1:39:16

Right. the, the complexity of it crosses regions and really has global implications.

1:39:24

Yeah. super cool.

1:39:27

Bob, I really appreciate you being being on and chatting with me.

1:39:31

thank you are one of the, one of the treasures of the giant community, I should say.

1:39:37

And it sounds like, you know, you have a lot of experience as an all source, you know, targeting and,

1:39:42

and kind of these different types of these different types of roles.

1:39:46

So you're not just can just pigeonholed you.

1:39:48

And to do it, you are a generalist, Bob.

1:39:51

So let's see how we got to the generalist.

1:39:53

I'm a general, so I'm, I'm a special generalist

1:39:57

and a special generalist.

1:40:00

very cool. Bob, thank you so much. really appreciate it. Great to have you.

1:40:04

And looking forward to maybe one day we do this, in person in the studio here.

1:40:09

There'll be a lot of fun. Great. Very good.

1:40:11

Well, cool. Appreciate it.

1:40:14

Make sure you subscribe on YouTube.