Joe Rogan Podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan Podcast by
night. All day. What's up, Bill? How you doing,
Joe? Good to see you, bro. Good to see you. This
might be one of the coolest things anybody's
ever given me. So you gave me this knife. Explain
all this. All right. So, I mean, there's a larger
explanatory reason behind this. My brother and
I grew up. My father died when I was five. My
brother and I grew up doing these things called
rendezvous. Have you ever heard of them? In what
way? What is a rendezvous? So there you go. So
what a rendezvous is, is it's not, you know,
you go to those like, I don't even know what
they're called, but people do like reenactments.
Oh, okay. Like Civil War reenactments? It's not
like that. So that's the closest thing, approximation
to probably what it is. You get invited to them
or these days are easier to get to. But my stepfather,
the guy my mother remarried. Brought us to them.
All you do is camp, but you're only allowed to
camp and no one comes to the camp or sometimes
they might have people at the end. But while
you're in the camp, everything in the camp has
to be 1840 or prior. So there can be no modern
appurtenances, nothing like a refrigerator or
nothing like that. 1840. Why that year? At the
end of the fur trapping. That was considered
like Jeremiah Johnson time, like peak fur trapping.
So there's people, you know, they dress like
either. you know, revolutionary, like American
revolutionaries, or they dress like mountain
men, or they dress like Indians. How'd you guys
dress? Mountain men. So while we're there, you
learn all kinds of stuff while you're reenacting.
Like I learned how to brain tan hides. I learned
how to traditionally art or do traditional archery,
stuff like that. So anyway, this knife was a
knife I had actually started working on with
my brother a while ago. I do more of like the
brain tanning. And when you say brain tanning,
you talk about using brains to tan animal hides,
right? Yes, yes. Using animal brains. Yeah. What
does brains do? Why does brains work? It softens
the leather in a natural way. And what's cool
about it is every animal, no matter what animal
you kill, has the exact amount of brain needed
in order to tan the hide. So you don't need any
additional, like people use egg yolks or mayonnaise
or something like that. All you do is you take
the brain out of the cavity, you grind it up,
you mix it into some water, and then after you've...
After you've cleaned the leather and you've scraped
it clean, you stretch it. I usually use like
a dull shovel. You stretch it over the dull shovel
and then you soak it in the brain water mixture.
And then you just keep repeating that pattern.
And the leather gets like a really nice soft
feel to it. What is it about the brain? Is it
the fat? It breaks down the leather. I'm not
sure if it's the fat or I haven't gotten that
deep into it But it breaks down the leather and
just makes it feel really soft really nice. So
anyway this knife here I started I killed that
bear so the jaw is made out of two Bear jaws
or out of one bear jock split in half so That
was a bear. I killed in Canada in 2017. It was
my biggest black black bear and So we split the
job put that together It's Irish linen threading.
Then that's a knife that my brother picked up
that was from 1860. It was totally rusted. We
had to grind it back or he had to grind it back
down. And then the sheath is traditional. The
cool thing about doing rendezvous and the cool
thing about this is you could have a DeLorean
and drop that in 1840 and somebody would pick
it up and think it was made yesterday. And so
everything on there has been done traditionally
from the quilling on the beadwork is made from
porcupine quills. The backing is buffalo brain
tan. And then the front is beaver hide or beaver
tail. I'm sorry. And then the sides are horse
and turkey hair hanging off of it. And these
are bear teeth? And those are bear teeth, yep.
From the same bear. So when I was thinking about
what I was, because I wanted to give you something
for inviting me on because it's still a shock
to me that you did it. Even though we've been
talking for so long, I just never imagined a
scenario where you'd want to have me on here.
Well, you're an interesting dude. I thought,
what could I give this guy that, you know, money
or people or whatever couldn't get you? And so
I thought this is the right thing to do. So it
went from a me project to a you project. And
my brother Aaron. helped me out with it tremendously.
So how did you find this knife from the 1860s?
Well, he found it. My brother is even more esoteric
and odd than I am, believe it or not. And he
collects this kind of stuff. I mean, the guy
who dated it said 1860 to 1890 is what they figured.
And you can tell by the way that like around
the hilt and the way that it's the pitting on
it and stuff like that and the way that it was
made that it fits that era. I mean, it could
have been somebody redid it in 1900, but it's
definitely that old. The type of steel and the
way that it was worked and the way that it is
around the hilt around the bottom there. Wow.
And so it's at least, you know, 130, 140, but
most likely 160, 170. It actually fits my hand
perfect. Yeah. So that's also something my brother
and I talked about, about how long it was going
to be. And we made some educated guesses. put
it all together so yeah i mean like i said not
something you can just go pick up somewhere or
something that will you know hopefully mean something
not saying it's practical like it's not something
you'd be gutting an elk out with but um well
if we get attacked by zombies in the studio it's
a good thing to have on the desk yeah i mean
if you're gonna make a last stand you know that's
a pretty good that's a pretty good knife to make
your last stand with it's a good way to go out
yeah exactly that's awesome man yeah so the rendezvous
um We did those from... How long do they last?
They vary from a week, and then some go up to
three weeks. And what do you do for food while
you're out there? So inside of your lodge...
So there's two types of rendezvous. At most rendezvous
inside of your lodge, you can have a cooler.
As long as it doesn't leave the lodge. So I have
like a 20 foot teepee that I take to these things.
And inside of my teepee, you can have a cooler
and some modern appurtenances. Did they have
any kind of coolers in the 1800s? I mean, they
had ice boxes and like steel ice boxes and that
type of thing, but nothing like we have today.
You know, stuff was getting dug out, buried in
the ground or put into the ground, like cool
areas of the ground or digouts. And they dried
everything. So pemmican would have been the,
you know, everyday. thing to eat that's just
dried so did you bring your own food or did you
have to hunt for food So you bring your own food,
but there are other rendezvous that are kind
of invite only. And I don't even think a lot
of people who do rendezvous knew about these.
But there's ones that I think they're called.
I think I might be speaking out of school. Somebody
might send me an email after this, but I'm going
to talk about it anyway because I never got read
the right act. They're called juried. I think
they called them juried Southerns. And I've only
been to one of those. And that's where everything
in the camp has to be pre -1840. You meet down
in the parking lot. You put everything on the
back of a mule. When I did mine, it was up in
the... I think it was the Bighorns. So, you know,
you talk to a rancher, get everything packed
up. You go into the back of the Bighorns, and
everything in camp has to be pre -1840, as close
as it can get. They'll even look at your stitching
and say, oh, that was sewn with a sewing machine.
You've got to take that off. And it's always
these weird, like, eccentric history teachers
that run them, like guys who. you know, uh, teaches
history at Berkeley or something like that. There's
other places and they just really enjoy living
like this. And at those ones, if they're in season,
you can hunt whatever's in season. You're hunting
with traditional archery and it's really good
for kids. Like the internet wasn't a problem
as much when I was a kid. I was certainly into
computers. I have been since I was a child, but
you could just detach. Everyone's running around
crazy. You're sitting around the campfire at
night. People are singing songs on the guitar.
You're learning how to do things like this. You're
learning how to brain tan. You're learning how
to live traditionally. And it's an eccentric
cult kind of. It's not a cult. It's an eccentric
group of people. It's a lot of fun. People take
it very seriously. There's more advertising surrounding
it now than there used to be because numbers
are kind of dwindling. But I did my last one
last year with my brother. So if you go on my
Instagram, there's a picture of my brother, my
son and I doing, I think, our second rendezvous
together. And we're just dressed like, you know,
I've actually got an awesome war shirt. I can
show you the picture. I've got an awesome war
shirt that a friend of mine went to war with.
He was half Native American. His grandfather
was Ojibwe or something, Chippewa, something
like that. And he was. I don't remember what
his role was, but anyway, we deployed to Iraq
together, and his grandpa made me this war shirt.
Oh, there, you found it. Jamie? He pulled it
up. That's my lodge. How much do you enjoy a
shower after you get out of here? I mean, as
long as you keep, you know, they have showers
in camp. They've got a showering area where it's
just like pallets. That's the inside of my lodge.
So there's a cooler at this one. This is not
a juried rendezvous. And so you can shower while
you're in. Some of them, they call them hooters.
They'll be like a latrine in a shower area in
camp. But also like some of them, I don't do
it at all. This is wild. And so there's no reenacting.
Like there's not like civilians walking around.
It's not like Renaissance. Yeah, exactly. It's
just more like I want to act like it's 1840 for
a couple of weeks and not look at my phone one
time and not worry about the news. It's amazing
after a week here, you really forget about the
world. And you don't even know you're supposed
to be stressed out about things. You're just
out there doing your thing for a couple of weeks.
And you just cook over open fire. Everything
gets done traditionally that way. And did you
bring your own meat? Yeah, you bring your own
meat and stuff in the cooler. And then there's
also cooking classes where they teach you all
the recipes to do with a Dutch oven, like an
old cast iron oven. They do gambling at nights.
So you'll walk into like a huge, they call them
marquees, but it's like a huge 100 -foot square
lodge. There'll be three gambling tables in there,
girls in like the low -cut shirts and dealing
cards and smoking cigars and just having an amazing
time. And you go by camp names while you're in
there. Nobody uses their real name. Well, some
people use their real name. I'd say 60 % of people
don't use their real names. What was your camp
name? This is embarrassing. It should be. Yeah.
So I got my camp name. I got christened with
my camp name in the big horns when I was 14 or
13. And it was talks a lot. Talks a lot. Yeah.
And Sue, it was pronounced Iota. Just because
you talk a lot? When I was a kid, I talked a
lot. Actually, as an adult, I don't talk that
much unless I know you. But as a kid, I would
never shut up. I had really bad ADHD. They kind
of diagnosed me with having some low -level version
of Asperger's. And I was a rapscallion in class.
Just never shut up, never listened, never did
anything. Those are the people that are the most
fun. Well, they didn't enjoy me in high school
or in grade school. I probably would have been
your friend. But, yeah, they called me Iota.
And, you know, we got christened. And it was,
you know, it's a... One of the things we're kind
of missing in culture today or something that
I'm trying to reinvigorate, especially with my
son and with other young men that I run into
is kind of like coming of age rights. Yeah. Something
to say, you're a man and I'm going to start treating
like a man from this moment forward. Like, you
know, what does that there should be structure
to that. You know, we're tribal. And it's important
to me. So I think that is really something that's
missing from society. I think that I used to
think it was silly when I was young. And then
as I got older, I realized, oh, I went through
that. I became a black belt and I started fighting.
And you had a group of men telling you, you're
at this level. We're going to treat you like
that. If you fall from grace, we're going to
remind you right away. And we just don't do that
with young men. And we have a society now where
young men act like young men until they're 45
or 50 or 60. And sometimes never stop. Yeah.
And, you know, women, nature imposes itself on
women. They become fertile. They're able to have
babies. And they've got to seek security or find
a husband or a really good job that will supplement
whatever a husband would provide. And they've
got to start acting like a woman, whereas men
can sit in a basement. You know, and it becomes
very dangerous, especially men that never have
children. Yeah. They they're perpetual children.
Yeah. And if you don't impose nature on yourself
by undergoing those types of rights and understanding
what it means to become a man, nature will impose
itself on you by either a you're never going
to have children and therefore you're dead forever
or B, it will kill you because you're fat and
in your mom's basement, you get diabetes, the
foot chopped off and you're 35. And, you know,
we just don't tell men we don't have a the military
did it for me. I had really put off responsibility
or seeking meaning or any of those things until
I was in the military. And like I said, my father
died when I was five. So I really had no central
male authority until I was about 13 or 14 when
I met this guy, Steve. And he kind of initiated
some of those rights for me and held me to account.
But it was really the military, which was a.
turning point for me where there was a standard
and I was expected to hold it. I think there's
a reason why most ancient cultures and a lot
of ancient religions have these rites of passages
where you are like now officially, officially
a man. Officially, you know, you're responsible.
You have to think of yourself as a different
thing now. Whereas if you leave it up to your
own decision, men sort of... dwindle into this
perpetual state of childhood yep and it's not
about you anymore it's about other people like
that that for me having children i've got four
kids um really you know the military was kind
of the first inkling of responsibility but then
having children and realizing this isn't about
me at all right and i need to be willing to break
my back for these people who depend on me um
there's this weird second primal feeling that
you know you're responsible for these like very
vulnerable little people that you love more than
life itself. It just changes everything. It just
kicks you into gear. But for some people, it
doesn't. Some people that are so stuck in that
perpetual childhood thing, they just wind up
deciding it's too much of a drag and they get
divorced. And then they fuck up the kids. Yeah.
God, we have so many rabbit holes we could go
down on this. But I mean, it was, you know, growing
up in the 80s and the early 90s, it was really
like a divorce culture. And I obviously understand
that if you're in a bad relationship or an abusive
relationship or, you know, there's certainly
there's a threshold where marriage should dissolve.
No question. But I kind of feel like it are the
central thrust of a lot of culture at that time
was about like divorce or not getting married
or, you know. discovering yourself and that type
of thing, which in some ways is good. There's
goodness there. But when it becomes a central
thrust or a central narrative and divorce becomes
very easy or it's happening everywhere, it's
super normalized and it's normalized. It's super
destructive. Children are the ones who suffer
the most on it. And I think the data is clear
on that. When you look at, you know, single parent
homes or no parent homes or being raised, you
know, without an authority or an abusive step
person or abuses. And that is, you know, when
you look up the stats on that, like remarriage
and having a new family. Like that becomes the
single most likely vector of abuse in a young
child's life is that new person, right? Because
now they're raising someone else's kid or whatever.
I mean, that's in every old movie, the evil stepmother,
you know, or evil stepfather. But in the old
movies, it's always the stepmother that abuses
the girl. Yes. And so, you know, I kind of. I
kind of resented that part of that time that
culture was I shouldn't say when I was a child
I should say as I got older because I wasn't
a single mom home and the guy that my mother
remarried right after my father died was abusive
and you know he really got hard on my younger
brother and you know my mother moved us out almost
immediately but when I re -examined that time
it really was you know I don't know how to describe
it but you know there are no rules when it comes
to relationships and family and every family
special in particular in its own way. And they
all need to be venerated. And there's of course,
some truth to that. We shouldn't deride someone
because they come from a broken family, but we
shouldn't elevate it. Like it's at the same level
as a unified family. Um, and, and that's a tricky
line to, to walk, but also the people who are
making those movies and that culture came from
the fifties and sixties where divorce was just
not in the cards. And so that was a, you know,
Hook's law, as you, bend any object, it wants
to return back to its natural state. And Hooke's
Law kind of played there where nobody could get
divorced in the 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.
And then you had the baby boomers who kind of
culturally said, you know, actually, it's not
as bad as we think, but then it overcorrected.
And then it became kind of part of that cultural
zeitgeist. That's kind of what humans do, right?
We always overcorrect. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we
go in one direction until we realize it's destructive,
and then we overcorrect until we realize that's
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I would say this isn't a political thing. This
is just the reality of it. That's mostly what
makes me conservative in nature. is i agree systems
need to change but they need to change slowly
and pragmatically so we because you know any
social um any social scientist worth their salt
will know a social experiment almost never has
the outcome that we thought it was going to have
in other words we thought doing something to
society would form society this way but almost
has the the inverse the anti -pattern like we
talked about before and almost ends up propagating
itself and so that makes me i'm still a proponent
for change but it should be slow and and thought
out and and done in pockets first yeah kind of
you know federalism let's do little changes here
let's let california be crazy for a while and
see how that works out for them but let's not
nationalize the craziness let's learn from what
they learn there and there'll be goodness you
know hot baristas that make great coffee and
cool art and let's take those parts but how about
the rampant homeless let's find out what caused
that and and solve for that and you know that
was kind of the founders intent with federalism
they're really federalist minded state minded
and there's you know even for that being as 250
years ago there's a profound amount of profanity
in that like let's change things slowly and let
social experiments take place and adopt the best
parts of those things and then integrate them
to the culture overall as we move along but you
know let's not throw the baby out with the bath
water yeah I think In this country, one of the
primary problems that people have is a profound
lack of respect for discipline and how important
discipline is for your life. And discipline is
associated with conservatism. And because of
that, like a lot of people think that I'm, I
don't think I'm anything. I think I have. politically
or ideologically, I have a lot of everything
in me. I don't think I identify with one side
or another. But if one thing that I agree with
conservative people on, conservative people lend
more towards the importance of discipline, hard
work, discipline. Don't complain. Get things
done. Deal with the hand that you've been dealt
with and just sort it out and get to work. Don't
cry. Don't look for other people to save you.
They're not going to. And this is not something
that's celebrated in society. It's thought of
as a cruelty that if you say that you need discipline,
that you're not treating these people that are
victims of circumstance with the proper respect
or with the proper empathy. I think a certain
amount of empathy is probably not so good for
you at a certain point in time. There comes a
point in time where you're letting people wallow
in their bullshit and just make excuses for why
they're not getting anything done. And in that
sense, I think California is – that is a giant
part of what's wrong with California. What's
wrong with California when it comes to crime?
What's wrong with California? The way they address
crime and the way they address homelessness and
all these issues that they have, they don't put
their foot down. At a certain point in time,
you've got to realize like – What Gad Saad calls
suicidal empathy. Society can suffer from suicidal
empathy. And at a certain point in time, you
got to enforce rules and you got to make it so
that people have to get their shit together.
Yeah. And that suicidal empathy becomes a way
for the person who's imposing it on someone else
to feel good about themselves, which makes it
even trickier and even more insidious because
they're feeling good from the weaponization of
other people's lot in life. The thing about that
is none of the rules that you're going to impose,
especially as a legislator or as somebody in
a think tank, you'll never feel the repercussions
of them. You'll never have to actually deal with
it day to day. You're just imposing it on someone
else and saying, I better understand the structure
of reality and the fabric of the world. And you
can't help but be this way. It's the system that's
done this to you. So let me give you pittance
that I'm going to take from someone else. And
and that makes me benevolent. I get to feel good
about that. That's a giant part of government
for sure. That's a giant part of what's the problem
with like liberal governments. Liberal governments
should they should get paid based on whether
or not the city does better. or worse financially
than when they were in office. If their policies
lead to greater domestic production of goods
and services and GDP does better and everything
does better, then you should get paid more. If
more real estate sales, more people are making
more money, medium income raises, less homeless
people, you should get paid more. And you should
get paid less if homelessness goes up, if crime
goes up, if there's more destruction, if there's
more assaults and home invasions. You should
get paid less. You're doing a shitty job. And
if you did that, I think they would impose laws
that made it safer and healthier and made it
better for society. Yeah. And then they would
just inevitably change the ways that we track
and measure those things. And pay themselves
more. Well, they shouldn't have the opportunity
to do that. Then you need some sort of an oversight.
I'm being cynical. You're right, though. You're
right to be cynical because that's what they
do about everything. Someone was explaining to
me yesterday that one of the problems with cleaning
up fraud is that fraud is responsible for a giant
percentage of GDP. And if you have hundreds of
billions of dollars of fraud in this country
and you eliminated that, you actually lower GDP.
Because you actually lower the amount of money
that's in circulation. That's interesting. I've
never thought about that before. He was explaining
to me and I was like, oh my God, that is crazy
that a giant percentage of our GDP is fraud.
And if that was somehow or another eliminated,
it'd be like one of the things that they do when
they raise jobs, like they increase GDP. We've
added 200 ,000 jobs to the market. What are those
jobs? Like, what are those jobs? Are these government
jobs? Because the government is a giant percentage
of our GDP. Government jobs. It's way bigger
than it should be. Way bigger. And those jobs,
a lot of them are bullshit and waste. A lot of
them. Yeah. You know, and that was some of the
stuff that was uncovered during Doge. You know,
the limited amount of access that Doge had to
it. Just the... beginning of it where you got
to see the curtain pulled back and get to see
exposure of so many of these fraudulent supposedly
charitable organizations that were really just
money laundering they're really just funneling
money into these people's hands like like the
homeless thing in california oh my goodness it's
a bonkers situation where they've spent 24 billion
dollars they cannot track it they've tried to
audit it the the government has vetoed these
audits And they have no idea where that $24 billion
went. And yet homelessness went up. Yeah. But
you've got a giant machine that is this homeless
establishment, this homeless industrial complex.
Yes. That is being funneled money into that.
And that actually aids the GDP, which is kind
of crazy. Yeah. I mean, it was one of the things
my last three years in the military. I was advising
a colonel and a two -star general, and they were
in charge of all of the offensive cyber development,
ethical hacking, offensive cyber development.
I was their technical advisor. And one of the
things I kind of learned about government at
that point was these systems have their own incentive,
and the incentive is not the output of their
purported mission. The incentive is the growing
of the organization and the execution of budget.
So while they're in there, I've never seen a
field grade officer get dressed down more than
when he didn't spend all of the money that he
was budgeted for for that year. Isn't that crazy?
He would go to the Pentagon. And they'd be like,
well, you didn't execute $300 million of OCO,
of Overseas Contingent Operations funds here.
And they would dress them down for an hour. And
what people don't understand is if you don't
spend that money, your budget for the next year
will be lower because there's no need to have
a higher budget. Instead of tying it to mission
to say, did you achieve your mission objectives?
Right. We started the year agreeing from the...
President's framework, the NIPF, the National
Intelligence Priority Framework, we wanted to
achieve these effects. What you would want to
hear is, we achieved them and we saved 25%. But
instead it's, we achieved them, but we didn't
execute all of this money. Well, you're fired.
And I literally have seen that happen. I've literally
seen that happen. What a sick society. Yeah,
and that kind of shifted my thinking in that
these systems have their own incentive to exist
and to grow because those guys that were holding
that general officer, that 06, that colonel's
feet to the fire, they also have an incentive
because they were part of that trickle down.
And they've got bureaucracy that surrounds them.
And if they didn't execute it, that means they
didn't execute it. And that means they have to
go to whomever. This was during the Biden administration.
I believe Hegseth, for everything we could say,
has actually tightened this up quite a bit. And
he's kind of rehauled the way development works,
especially on the offensive cyber side. But they
have bureaucracies. And the incentive of the
bureaucracy is to make sure that we grow. And
that's it. And then then you think about that
for a minute and you're like, well, it's no longer
a question why we have 30 trillion dollars of.
debt. 39. 39 trillion. And then what, like 150
trillion of unfunded liability. In other words,
we've promised people money for the next 30 years.
And it's debt that, you know, I don't see how
we'll ever escape that debt. And it's the thing
about it is, and I don't want to be pigeonholed
because I'm actually quite liberal when it comes
to my politics. are like yours in that I'm kind
of a man without a home. But they also change
at different levels of analysis. I'm very liberal
with my family, and I'm very, like, communist.
I protect them. I give them everything they need.
I'm trying to give them structure. And even in
my community, I'll help someone out out of pocket
or do something for them that's a strain on my
time or might hurt something else because there
are really no solutions. There's just tradeoffs.
That's supportive for the community, though.
That's how people are supposed to do charity.
And I'm also very nonjudgmental in someone how
they care. I don't care what they do in their
house. I don't care if it's a Roman orgy on the
weekends. be a predictable, productive person
Monday through Friday and go do your Roman orgy
on the, on the weekend. I don't care. I won't
judge you. Like I don't, I really have enough
crap in my own life. As long as someone's not
getting hurt. Yeah. As long as no one's getting
hurt, consenting adults. Like I have enough problems
and I screw up enough and people have, have,
there's a laundry list of things that people
could say about me, how I've screwed up in my
life. But then as I graduate and get higher and
higher, more conservatism takes place. And, and,
and that's a result of just, You know, having
an engineering mindset when I'm looking at life
and understanding that it's just not Republican
or Democrat or leftist or rightist or liberal
or or classically liberal. All of these monikers
don't work for me because they break down. At
some level of analysis. Right. And I think that's
the problem. I think the problem is these ideologies
that people subscribe to. We have a predetermined
pattern of thinking that you're supposed to adopt.
Yes. You're supposed to adopt these opinions.
And some of them just don't fit. And that's how
people get pigeon. That's like people on the
left. They get pigeonholed into weird stuff that
you can't really, really justify, like trans
women in sports. Like, what the fuck are you
doing? Like, you know, we're being inclusive.
Like, no, you're not. We're loving the borders
of Ukraine while hating our own border. Yeah.
Fucking bonkers. Yeah. There's so many crazy
things. There's so many crazy things that people
just adopt that don't make any sense. And when
you subscribe to an ideology, the problem is
if you define yourself as this person, I am this.
I am a hardcore right -wing blah, blah, whatever
it is. You immediately close the door to all
the very productive and interesting things that
the other side thinks. Yeah. And you're also
making yourself into a tool of propaganda. Mm
-hmm. if I if someone if I meet someone and they
just say I'm this right it's like well I could
reasonably predict everything that's going to
come out of your mouth. That's not entertaining.
I don't want to have a conversation with that
person. I can't seek to learn from them because
I could just pick up the Communist Manifesto
or Mein Kampf and have a pretty good understanding
of who I'm dealing with and therefore a conversation
is not relevant. It's not needed. A lot of people
are afraid of social ostracization too. So they're
afraid of straying outside of the narrative,
whatever side they're supposed to be on. groups
are really good at making you feel like dog shit
if you don't agree entirely with even things
that don't even make any sense. So that's why
people go along with stuff that's illogical,
like open borders or whatever it is. They go
along with things that's not in their best interest
because they're scared. They're scared of being
ostracized. They're scared of being cast out
of the kingdom. They're scared of being excommunicated.
Yeah, I dealt with a lot of people first when
I retired from the military. And then more recently,
leading up to the last election where, you know,
I was entertaining the deal of doing some work
for government, believe it or not. And because
I'm as we talk more, you'll figure out I'm pretty
anti institutions. I'm really against those types
of things. But I really felt if you would have
asked me three years ago how I felt about the
Trump election and all of that stuff. I was very
excited because he was saying a lot of things
that I wanted someone to say. Trump fits a pattern.
And this is what people I think kind of lack
when they, my whole life is built around pattern
analysis. I really enjoy patterns and exhuming
and looking into patterns. And there's a pattern
of like a, you'll laugh when I say this first
part of the pattern, but then I'll make it make
more sense later. But he fits the pattern. Well,
first he's a Jacksonian and in that he's a pragmatic.
person, the way that he governs, which I liked,
or at least I did. And, you know, there's some
things he's done recently that I don't enjoy.
And, um, but he's also a, an outsider or a, or
a savior type all, uh, you know, I don't remember
the movie, but the magnificent seven back in
the day, I don't remember the actor's name. There's
this group of, you know, there's this Western
town, everything's going to shit. These seven
guys walk in. I think Chris Pratt remade it with
Denzel Washington or someone else. Oh, really?
I think so. I can't remember. But there's an
old one that I used to watch with my grandpa.
God, there's too many movies. Yeah. And there's
this pattern where you wouldn't invite these
guys to a dinner party. You wouldn't want them
in church on Sunday. But when a system is so
corrupt and so horrible, you have to rely on
these types of people to come in and be a check
to the system. But then also you don't want them
to stick around when the system is reset. So
there's a scene in the movie where he says, you
know, man, these seven guys are talking. They
said, man, these people must have really wanted
us. Like, it's crazy. They must be happy we're
here. And I think it's Gary Cooper or someone
or one of these guys looks at him and says, they're
going to be even happier when we leave. And Trump
kind of fits that narrative. Wolverine from the
X -Men would be another one who fits this narrative.
Is he going to be at the X -Men Christmas party?
No, right? Is he trying to hit on Scott Gray's
wife, Cyclops? I'm a comic nerd, so I'm sorry.
Is he trying to sleep with Cyclops' wife? Yes.
Did he chop a guy's head off and throw it at
a car? Yes. But we're about to go face Galactus,
and we're going to need him. And so we have to
put up with all of this other stuff because we
understand that when the system is corrupt at
every level, you need someone who's outside of
the system to come in and set the system right.
It's a Western pattern as well. Other people
who fit this would be like Patton, right? Married
his cousin. Slap soldiers. Did he really? Married
his cousin? Yeah, I think it was his third cousin.
How many... Cousins removed, does it become okay?
I don't know. Is it third, fourth? If there's
blood. Have you never met them? I'm Icelandic,
so I really can't say anything, right? They literally
have apps in Iceland. Like my grandparents and
my great -grandparents are all from Iceland.
They settled in Manitoba, Gimli, Manitoba, which
is this Icelandic community. And they literally
have apps in Iceland to make sure you're not
dating your cousin. Is it such a small community?
Less than a million people on one island. So
you're trying to prevent that stuff. But anyway,
Patton, yeah, slapped soldiers who had tuberculosis.
One of them probably had shell shock. It got
in the newspaper. They wanted his head. And thankfully,
the generals were like, no, he's the guy that
we need for the moment, right? He had the ivory
pistols, and he dressed not like a general. He
didn't talk like a general. veneer of a general
but we knew he was the only guy we could have
at the battle of the bulge like the germans talked
about him like he was already a mythic legend
in his own in his lifetime But part of this pattern
that people should understand or when they examine
this pattern is it never ends well for these
antiheroes. They're always killed or defamed
in the final analysis. So when Magnus and Seven
come in, they'll go to another town and all get
killed. When Patton retired, he died in some
weird Jeep accident. Wolverine, he's the only
guy left. on this desolate world where the Hulk's
in charge and it's a horrible existence. Pat,
or not Pat, Petraeus is another one. I briefed
Petraeus. I worked for, not for him, but for
people who worked for him in Iraq. And he was
the guy that got us through with the surge. But
he was really a weird guy when you would talk
to him. You knew that he knew something you didn't
and that he was seeing things that you weren't.
But even for myself, as being like a chief warrant
officer at that time, a low -level technician,
he would ask questions like he got it. He didn't
act like other generals. Like other generals
would have their three things they want to talk
about, then they'd want to get out of Dodge.
He would ask questions that really had implications.
And he is another one of these outsiders who
came in to write a system that was not working
vis -a -vis Iraq in 2006. And then what happens
to him when he leaves? They put him in charge
of the CIA. They knew he had been screwing around
with this woman. And they're like, OK, we he
served his function. Now he needs to get out
of Dodge. And then he now he's, you know, got
tried for all these things and sleeping with
someone while he wasn't married. And, you know,
there's it's not a ceremonious end for these
types. Is that really what happened to Petraeus?
That's how he ended? Yeah, he was sleeping with
some girl that was writing his book or something
along those lines. That's it? While he was married?
Yeah, I'm not saying that's the end of him. All
I'm saying is history will remember the pattern
as ending unfavorably. You know what I'm saying?
And so when I examined Trump, I said, yeah, I
don't like what he says. I wouldn't want him
around my daughters. I don't want wouldn't want
him at a dinner party. But he seems to be saying
these things like he's going to reset this system.
You know, I think it was Chappelle was on your
show or another show or someone like that where
he talked about Hillary saying, you know, something
about the tax loopholes or whatever. And he just
hit right back at her and said, well, you're
the people who are funding your campaign. Take
advantage of those same loopholes. And if they're
there, I'm going to take advantage of them. I
wouldn't be a pragmatist if I didn't. When he
started saying stuff like that, it seemed to
me like he was going to upend this system. The
jury's out on that because I don't know how I
feel these days. We can get into that if you
need to, if we want to. He's an outsider personality,
and I thought he was going to really reset the
system. And there are good things that are happening.
If I were to grade him, I would probably give
him a C plus or a B minus. He's certainly better
than what was happening under Biden. I was still
in the military when Biden was in charge, and
it was awful, to say the least. What were the
problems? Oh, my goodness. Books that general
officers were being told to read and that I,
as an advisor, were being told to read. Books
like White Rage, like understanding why you're
a problem. You as a white man are a problem in
the modern day military because this whole thing's
built on systemic racism. You have built implicit
bias that you can't escape even if you wanted
to or you recognized it. It's woke politics.
Yeah, it was woke politics. And it was, you know,
I would sit there and say, you know, all of the
people that I know who've died during this war,
not all of them, but. 80 % of them. And the numbers
bear this out when you look at them. They're
all white guys from the middle of the country
who were on their farms or, you know, not all
of them, 80 % of them. I think the numbers bear
out about 80 % of them were these guys from the
Midwest or these places where they didn't really
have a lot going. And they went off to fight
a war that we probably shouldn't have been fighting
in the first place, especially in Iraq. And they
died for their cause. And now you're saying that.
Those people who make up the majority of the
combat deaths are somehow part of this problem
and that other people aren't benefiting from
it I don't believe race to me is disgusting even
to talk about someone's race even you know on
both sides of the spectrum When they were you
know electing that Supreme Court justice? I can't
remember her name right now at the top my head
just because I'm a little nervous still She was
black and they were tangy brown jacks. Yeah,
they're talking about how it's historic because
she's black and Biden had said he's going to
hire a black woman to do this job. If I had worked
my whole life to do something, but now I'm only
being elevated to this next position because
of my gender and the color of my skin, I would
turn that job down so fast because that's not
what I want to be known for. These are immutable
characteristics that I'm not in control of. I
didn't choose to be born white or with blue eyes.
I didn't choose to be born in a trailer park
in the middle of nowhere without a dad at five.
I didn't choose any of those things. I don't
see how I benefit from these things at the individual
level. And, you know, the individual level of
analysis for me is really the only way to evaluate
someone for their pluses and their minuses. And
anything beyond that to me is discriminatory
on its face. Of course. It's just a great way
to control people because you pit people against
each other that way. And it's just an awesome
way that they can stay in control and make everybody.
walk on eggshells and think that, you know, they've
victimized people in order to get to their position
and they have to be shameful of who they are
that they had no control over. It also gives
people an easy rubric to judge other people.
Yeah. Because nothing's easy, really. And it
gives them, like, white guy bad, you know, black
guy good, Chinese guy, as long as he's not applying
to the college I want to get into, he's good.
Right. And it gives people, people want easy
answers. Really, at the end of the day, they
want to be told the easy rubric to navigate life
because really none of it's easy and it requires
discipline, like you said before, and thought.
And so it was that stuff in the military. I remember
getting told in an equal opportunity briefing
we were getting, it doesn't matter what you meant
when you said what you were saying. It only matters
what the person felt when you said it. They said
that in a military briefing? It was a military
equal opportunity briefing. So, and the example
they gave was if a woman walks into the, like
we worked with a lot of civilians at this military
organization where we're developing these offensive
cyber capabilities, a lot of civilians in there.
And so if, you know, woman X walks in today and
she's got a dress on and the thought in your
head is, I'd like to get my wife that dress or
something like it or find out where she bought
it. And you just say, that's a nice dress. Anyway,
here's the TPS reports. If she heard. something
sexual or didn't like the connotation or whatever,
there's going to be an investigation. You're
going to be pulled out of that office. This is
all going to happen despite what you meant. So
the idea probably was good. We want to prevent
sexual harassment inside of the office. But it
was weaponized. But it was weaponized and it
was carried out in a way where it's only about
how people feel and not what a reasonable person
standard would be in a particular situation.
And from the time I joined the military, Until
that time, we had been at war. My entire time
in the military, we were at war. I deployed throughout
my career. And I wouldn't say that I was a war
horse. I was not a long tabber. I was not a cool
guy kicking in doors. It was my job as the guy
with tape over his glasses to point out the door
for someone else and say, bad guy's in there.
So I was not a super badass in that regard. I
was a nerd for super badasses. But we also all
engaged in gallows humor. And we would, you know,
the jokes and stuff. Even someone who had recently
died, we would make a joke about. It's because
you have this tremendous pressure. And comedy
is the relief valve for that in a lot of ways.
Yeah, of course. But then someone would overhear
that joke or something. And now you're looking
down the barrel of a 15 -6, which is a military
investigation. And all of these things that could
permanently impact your life in a way and give
you a scarlet letter. To where you could never
be employed again or do anything ever again because
you were simply trying to relieve some pressure
or you were trying to find out where to buy your
wife the next dress. And now your life's being
ruined. And I know guys who suffered under that
sword. Like I wouldn't name them, but I know
guys who, you know, their career met a terminal
end because of a dumb joke or something. It's
like you can't be expected to go out and shoot
people in the face and then be sensitive to someone's
feelings. an hour later. Right. It's just, it
doesn't, it does not work. Now, should you talk
to that guy and say, Hey, you know, you made
woman X feel so -and -so be more cognizant of
that whenever you're around her in the future.
Well, you should also have a rational discussion
with the woman. Yes. And what did he ask you?
He said, where did you get that dress? It's very
lovely. I'd like to get one for my wife. Why
were you upset at that? Like, what does this,
is this rational? Like how you can't be in an
office if you're that sensitive. It's one thing
if the guy said, I'd like to get you out of that
dress. Well, for sure. Now you're in a different
world. 100%. 100%. Right. But if someone says,
you look great. Have you lost weight? You look
fantastic. That's a compliment. Yes. And if someone
gets upset, I felt sexually objectified. I felt
harassed. Like, okay, he just said you look great.
Yeah. That's it. Healthy. It's not you look great,
I'd like to get you naked. Now we've crossed
the Rubicon, right? Yes, for sure, for sure.
But just you look great or I like your dress.
That's like if you said that to a man like hey
great suit. Yeah, he's like I need to file a
complaint Yeah, I need to file a complaint. Yeah,
you've trimmed up Joe. You're looking great bill
like oh my god. I'm being harassed I need it
like complaint that would have worked during
the body that is fucking crazy. That would have
worked That's so crazy and the other thing that
they were doing this briefing Which is where
I kind of you know the last couple years my military
career I got in trouble a couple times or I should
say called down. I was a senior I was a CW4.
I was one rank from the top. I was advising two
-star generals, colonels on very important matters.
I wasn't high in the dominance hierarchy, but
I was adjacent to people who were as an advisor.
And the amount of, in this briefing in particular,
they had gotten into, you know, it's bad that
there are so many white people. I'm doing high
points here, but we need more diversity. I was
part of an accepted career program that they
were starting to call like the old white boys
network because most of the people. So the requirements
for this network were you had to speak a couple
languages. You needed an engineering degree or
some kind of demonstrated engineering background.
You had to have deployed. They wanted you to
speak the language very well. They wanted you
to be able to go through these engineering courses,
these other things. And what happens naturally
is you now need people who are interested in
engineering. All right. So you've got somebody
who's maybe more constrained in their thinking.
You need somebody who speaks languages. Well,
now they also need to be kind of, you know, speak
French, speak Russian, whatever it was. So they
had to have studied or lived in an area and done
this. And they need to be able to go through
these crazy tactical and strategic types of courses.
By virtue of those things, you're going to get
men. And there were lots of women, but then there'll
be more white men. And it's not because the pool
presented itself that way. Now you have to extract
from that pool. And so in this briefing, when
they were talking about like the old white boys
network or how we need to change things, I said,
you know, do you realize that most men have more
in common? um than most women or like if there's
a if if i if i say i need more diversity in a
particular room if you said diversity of thought
i'd be fine with that but but joe and you know
random black guy in the in the same program in
the same office have far more in common than
the white woman But what you're saying is these
people need to have all separate different colors
and different – like all of this needs to be
this way. It's going to naturally present itself
that way because men in the military generally
are disagreeable. Men in the military who like
engineering are generally hyper -disagreeable.
And the only difference between these two people
is the pigment of their skin. So this fake diversity
quota that they're putting on top of us doesn't
achieve anything other than giving some officer
a bullet on their OER. And, you know, I got pulled
into the office afterward. I said way more than
that. But essentially afterwards, they're like,
hey, chief, you can't say that in those briefings.
Like the way that you were getting animated in
there and what you're saying, what you're doing,
like, yeah, this is not going to fly. And this
was like 2018 or 2019 or something. Just being
rational. Yeah, just trying to be rational and
say that there's more difference in groups than
there is between groups. And that the similarities
and the way that things stack up, you recruit
from a pool of volunteers and candidates. If
I'm recruiting from a pool of volunteers and
candidates who are 80 % male and white, I have
to expect that the selected individuals are going
to be male and white. The majority of people
who join the military. I don't control this.
I'm just, as an engineer, I'm looking at statistics.
Also, if you want a highly functional, productive
group, it's got to be based on meritocracy. Yeah,
for sure. Anything other than that is literally
a threat to national security. Yeah, you're denigrating
lethality. The role of the army is to deter war
through exuding superior military fighting and
technology. And when deterrence fails to win,
that's it. Those are the two things that we need
to do with our military. It needs to look like
the guy in the playground who you would not muck
about with. And if you were to muck with him,
he will beat you senseless. That's it. Now, whether
or not we should be using that all the time or
how we use it, that's a separate question. But
the entity itself needs to comport itself in
this way. Otherwise, you are endangering this
truly special experiment, which at least in its
beginnings valued the individual. It valued individual
rights and states' rights and the founders. And
this was another thing I said in that briefing
was the founders knew, yes, they were all slaveholders,
but they knew that the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights and the Declaration of Independence
would eventually lead to a system where we had
to acknowledge these people as people. And we
fought a civil war where a million white dudes
died. And to see this experiment through, the
scaffolding was there. You have to look at the
things, the zeitgeist of the time. If they had
just said, nope, everyone's going to be free,
there will be no slaves, you would have never
gotten ratification through the southern states.
But they knew that there are, and when you read
the Federalist Papers, they knew that they were
erecting this system. When you look at Thomas
Jefferson and some of these other great thinkers,
yes, he owned slaves, I get it. They knew what
they were building and they knew that what would
ultimately terminate in. And then we had a civil
war where we destroyed our country from the inside
to see this dream come about. And now we're just
going to all go back and say they're all slave
owners. Like, I know this has all been said here
a million times, but this stuff animates me because
it's built with blood and treasure. Well, it's
also you can't judge people from the past based
on the standards of the present. For sure. Because
culture changes people. understand things better.
We have a much greater recognition of what was
wrong with things 100 years ago, 200 years ago.
And I'm sure in the future, we're going to look
back on today with the same lens. It just always
works that way. Did you know Joe had a gas -powered
car? Exactly. That kind of stuff. Yeah. Did you
know that? You consumed more, you flew more,
you ate more meat, you did whatever you did.
You were a problem. He was a problem. Yeah. And
now why would we ever, like I'm voting to get
rid of the Joe Rogan experience from the National
Archives because he drove a gas car. You know
what I mean? Like someone stores your stuff for
profundity's sake for the future to hear about
this. I've always loved your podcast, Joe, and
it was because you're a genuinely curious person,
and I'm not kissing your ass right now. You're
a genuinely curious person that was saying things
that were not in the current zeitgeist at the
time, and you refused to apologize for it. And
it led to a lot of great things, but it led to
an updating of the system. And you did it with
dialogue, with the dialogos, with two people
trying to learn things about each other. And
it led to an updating of a system. I think it's
very important for culture to have free and open
dialogue so we can update our system. So bad
ideas can die so we don't have to die instead
of our bad ideas. Because if I can't express
a bad idea, I have to act it out. And if I act
out the bad idea, it could kill me. And the celebration
of good ideas. And the celebration of good ideas.
And it's just really there's just been such a
weird inversion in politics where the free hippie
loving liberals of yesteryear are now the ones
telling you what words you can use. There are
no borders. All of these crazy things. And I
always say to people, I said it to Andy on my
last podcast with him. I'm like a 1996 Bill Clinton
Democrat. If you go watch State of the Union,
he talks about lowering debt, getting out of
debt, actually working with Newt Gingrich to
get out of debt, securing the borders, making
work and education freely accessible. I'm voting
for that guy. I know. Isn't it crazy that I mean,
that's why the problem of labels doesn't work.
ideological labels. Because if you go back far
enough and look at Clinton, for example, he's
one of the best ones. And by the way, did balance
the budget. Yeah, he did. He actually did. We
had a surplus when he left the office. Yeah.
Amazing. Did a fucking amazing job. So he got
his dick sucked. Yeah. Who didn't? Back then,
that's the other thing. Judging people by the
standards of the past, you know, JFK doesn't
look so good in the Me Too movement. Right. Exactly.
I mean, he would have got canceled. Yeah. It's
like you have to recognize that. This ideological
bubble that we find ourselves in, left versus
right, Bill Clinton does not fit in that. Bill
Clinton is securely on the right in terms of
1996 standards applied to today. He would never
want to hear that. No, he would never want to
hear that because he's kind of shifted with the
zeitgeist because that's what you kind of have
to do if you want to stay in your party and be
protected by your party. Yes. But he's essentially
– he had a lot of the – I mean we've talked about
this before. played clips of Hillary Clinton
from 2008 and she's more MAGA than MAGA. I know.
You know, her take on the border was like hardcore.
Yeah. It was hardcore. If you've been convicted
of a crime, get out. You know, if you stay here,
pay a stiff penalty and you have to get in line
and you have to learn English and everybody cheers.
Yeah. Like, that is a hardcore right -wing 2026
perspective. Obama did it too in 2012. Yes, absolutely.
And Obama deported more people than Trump did.
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it's just, I'm not saying, like, my thought is
I'm always updating, I'm always updating my systems.
I'm always getting told things. I always have
a pre... prescribed way of looking at the world
that I'll have a good conversation with someone
and I'll update my system. But generally my principles
are in place. And when you watch these people
who get into their thirties, forties, fifties,
and sixties, and their core foundational principles
are changing, that really should give you cause
for concern. Because like you were saying this
at this time, and now you're saying this at that
time. It's like generally my rubric that I don't
think will change about myself is I'm fervently
for the individual. And I'm fervently for truth
and that we can – that the world – you should
measure it and look at not what your intentions
are but what the outcomes are and then evaluate
the system and how it scales based on those outcomes.
Those are, that's principally, if you, I try
to live that standard up to myself. I fall short
of that standard all the time. It's part of being
a human. I try to live by that standard. And
I feel like that will always be me even into
my 90s. Unless something goes horribly wrong,
right? Right, right. And I've pretty much been
here since, you know, the past seven or eight
years or so. Like even into my 30s, I wasn't
quite sure who I was as a human. And, but I'm
pretty, you know, steadfast in that. And the
amount of opportunities and the amount of goodness
in my life and my children and my home and the
things I've been able to do have really been
born out of that last seven years of the truth's
going to be the top of the decision matrix for
me, the top of the hierarchy for me. I'm going
to try not to cut corners whenever I can and
help good people around me. And the truth is
the way that I'll organize and function myself
in life and that I will try to only judge people
as individuals. And the world, you know, these
are Christ's teachings from 2000 years ago. And
but the world for me has just opened up in a
way that I could have never predicted using a
very simple rubric. It's not easy, but it's simple.
And this isn't me. I didn't come up with this.
This is the result of watching a bunch of experiments
go bad. But if people just adopted that very
simple thing and just tried it for three months,
you'll feel better about yourself. You'll feel
better about the world. You feel better about
the people approximately around you. It might
make you hate the government more. If you don't
hate the government, I think you're not paying
attention. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean – When
you were working in cyber defense, like what
– Cyber offense. Cyber offense. What was the
primary function? Like what did you do? So in
the beginning – I have no short answers and I
apologize. In the beginning – I don't like short
answers. Yeah. I just – I always feel like I'm
– I like a good long answer. Don't worry about
that. Okay. When I joined the military, I was
in signals intelligence and essentially learning
the ins and outs of radars. how radars work,
what they do, how they function. Did you guys
ever see any weird shit, like UFO shit? I wish
I had. I really do. I wish you had, too. Yeah,
I really do. I was more in the signals intelligence
side of the house, focusing first on electronic
signals or emanations from radars, mapping them.
so that if we were going to go do the ground
invasion and there was going to be some air support
going in first and blowing shit up, we would
tell them, hey, there's a man -packable SA -7
here, there's a SA -10 here, there's this here,
there's there, and then telling these pilots
so they didn't get shot out of the sky. Quickly,
when the war kicked off, that became irrelevant
because there was no... surface -to -air missiles,
surface -to -surface missiles in Iraq. We had
knocked them all out in the first few weeks.
So then it shifted to communications intelligence.
So I kind of retrained on communications intelligence,
and that was at that time off of cell phones,
off of push -to -talk radios, repeaters, long
-haul networks, terrestrial networks, extraterrestrial
networks, and what I mean by that is satellites
in the sky. and doing analysis on those to try
to inform what we call the common operating picture
of the battlefield for a combatant commander.
So a combatant commander wants to know where
the bad guys are, what they're doing, what they're
saying. To the amount that we could, my job was
to come up with solutions and conduct passive
and active signals analysis on these things and
then inform the commander so that we could mitigate
risk. It was all about mitigation of risk. This
is 2008 or so. I'd been doing this for about
seven years, eight years. And from there, it
shifted to the phone's getting smart. And essentially,
it went from you walking around with a 2G phone
or a 3G phone that had limited compute capability
to now there's robust compute capability with
the advent of like the iPhone. And now it's like,
well, now we've got to get after guys who are,
you know. essentially walking on with a computer
we could never have envisioned 20 years ago in
their pocket with all this capability. Because
the military and our forces that we're fighting
against, it all comes down to our ability to
shoot, move, and communicate. Communication being
the part that I was focused on. So as the advent
of the iPhone and those things came out... The
Army realized we didn't have a computer network
operations MOS. We didn't have an offensive cyber
component. We didn't have a defensive cyber component.
So we kind of – I was there at the ground floor
when we were building out these new MOSs now
that are all over the military. But at that time,
there was a thought going into, you know, we
need to have people who know how to be on -net
operators. Ethical hacking, as paradoxical as
that sounds. That's how the lawyers called it
that. So it's hacking at the end of the day,
but ethical hacking because you – got the backing
of the U .S. government. And so we set up that
framework and really started launching into operations,
you know, 2006, 7, 8, all the way into my last
deployment in 2017 or 2017. It was all focused
on computer network operations and how they lash
up with terrestrial networks. How do we exploit
all of that was one facet of my job. And your
question was, how did I? Yeah. Get into all of
that. And that was that. That was the. How do
you get into it? What was what? What was like?
What was the operational aspect of it? Like,
how did you actually what did you do? So, you
know, there's there's I'll stick to terms that
are more generally understood by the public,
but learning how to do things like war driving.
collecting on networks Wi -Fi you know endpoints
cell phones understanding the ins and outs of
them understanding how to do forensic analysis
of them so after there was an operation and a
bunch of gorillas have been sent in to kill a
bad guy we could derive maximum intelligence
value from the hand from the handset to plan
other operations and so you know it would be
passive monitoring of networks to inform the
intelligence picture, which would lead to either
combat operations or active computer network
operations, where now it's like, well, there's
an Iraqi or an Afghani router that hasn't been
patched in three years, and we think we can either
write or find a zero day, which is just an exploit
of those routers, where we can muck with their
router in a way where they think they're getting
a good information and they're not or they're
or erecting other things um to uh mitigate risk
for the commander and so um that really you know
exploded at that point and between that and human
intelligence which is kind of the um the actual
gathering of intelligence from other people you
know you would call it spy or you know james
bond but that's james bond was a horrible spy
um was he I mean, yeah, you know, your job's
to remain anonymous and you're walking into a
casino and there's Goldfinger calling you by
your first and last name. It's not a great look.
You know, generally, you don't want to be sleeping
with your sources or, you know, using a real
name or whatever. So human intelligence. And
then my focus for the last 10 years was how does
signals intelligence computer network operations
become a force multiplier for people conducting
overt and clandestine operations? um throughout
the theater at that time uh my you know my deployments
and my time was spent in iraq afghanistan um
africa northern africa and then a lot of people
don't know it but we were in active combat operations
in the southern philippines as well for a fair
amount of time i want to maybe say seven or ten
years we were doing combat operations when was
this in the southern philippines my first deployment
to the cell from southern philippines was uh
2007 Who are we doing operations against? So
there were terrorist elements down there that
were traveling back and forth from Pakistan and
Afghanistan. And there was a terrorist organization
down there called the Abu Sayyaf Group. And there
were other ones as well. Jamaah Islamiyah, I
think, was the name of the other one. And they
were conducting their own terrorist anti -Christian
operations in the southern part of the Philippines.
In the southern part of the Philippines, I don't,
can I say it? Can I say the word? What do you
mean? Jamie, can you pull up a map of the Philippines?
Can you pull it up? Oh, say that? Say that term?
Yeah, pull it up, Jamie. I've been listening
to it forever. So there's what's called the autonomous
region of Muslim Mindanao, which is the southern
part from a place called Zamboanga down to Hulu
or Holo Island. And there's a... It's a funny
joke because if you zoom into Zamboanga, which
is... God, look how many islands there are in
the Philippines. I know. Go down to the south
there. Go down right there. Zoom right there
on that island. Now move to the southwest. See
that penis? Mm -hmm. At the tip of that penis
is called Zamboanga. Mm -hmm. All of our combat
operations. Now if you zoom out a little bit
more and pan more south. And zoom out just a
little bit more so the joke hits. All that sperm
south of the tip of the Zamboanga City, there
are terrorist operations in here. Now, if you
go to that main island called Sulu, there's Holo
Island. That's where I was on this tiny island
out in the middle of nowhere. And on that, there's
a mountain. That's all the Philippines? Well,
no, I mean, this is all the Philippines down
here. Yeah. Wow. So this is called there's a
mountain in there. I think it was called Mount
Tumatoc or something like that on the near on
the eastern part of the island called Luke. It's
called Luke. Yeah. So there's mountains. There's
a mountainous region there. There are a bunch
of terrorists up there. They were killing people
in the area, conducting bombings. They're getting
trained. In fact, there was a guy and I believe
I'm going to get his name wrong, perhaps. But
I believe his name was either Insulon Haplon.
Or, oh, it's Jamar Patek. Jamar Patek. He was
actually arrested outside of Osama bin Laden's
compound the day after he was killed. We were
trying to kill him on that island. Or in and
around that island is where we were trying to
find him and kill him. So they're terrorist facilitators.
They did the USS Cole bombing. Zoom back out.
I want to see the Philippines one more time.
Like all the islands. When you zoom all the way
out. It's so nuts how many islands there are.
It's so big. Up north in Manila is mostly the
Christian population. And as you get down south,
it's the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao.
And that is all of where these terrorist operations
were happening. And I believe that mostly pulled
out of there, there might be still some people
in Zamboanga. I'm not sure anymore because it's
been five years, four years since I retired.
But yeah, we were doing counterinsurgency operations
down there and guys died down there and their
combat operations. And I was out there. I was
in a tactical military intelligence battalion
and I was attached to the first special forces
group. And we were down there a couple of times
and a lot of people don't even know about it.
So, yeah, I never heard about it. Yeah. So anyway.
I'm sorry. No, no. It's a sidebar, but I'm so
stunned at how many islands are in the Philippines.
It'll spread out. Yeah, it's it's insane. And
the thing about it is, is I go to all of these
little outposts in these out islands. We're always
debriefing these guys. And I'm going to get these
terms wrong. So I'm sure there'll be people in
the comments. But I think they're called bonger
eyes or something like that. But they're like
these mayors of each one of these little islands.
And there would be terrorists in and around those
areas. And we'd try to make friends with these
guys so they'd give us some information. And
every one of those places was absolutely beautiful.
Like you'd go there and be like, man, Hilton
could turn this into something in a short order.
Right. You know, when you're out of these places,
beautiful beach, beautiful, lush. jungles the
best swimming water nicest people too oh filipino
people are some of my favorite people man like
you want to talk the guys that we worked with
out there they're uh scout i think they're called
scout sniper scout rangers and they were special
i think they were like their special forces we
go to the range with these guys and show them
stuff and they're the most um ride or die type
of guys you'll ever meet in your life like you
know so -and -so said this about you last week
and i could kill him it's like no dude it's cool
it's like don't worry about it like fun fact
there's some of the best pool players on earth
too oh really great some of the greatest pool
players of all time came out of they're just
great people i mean i just the people down there
were fantastic and it was awful because those
guys would be bombing churches christian churches
and stuff like that and uh they're doing counter
operate like i said counter um um intelligence
operations out there doing intelligence operations
collection to inform that battle picture. But
those guys had direct links with Osama bin Laden
and other people. I had no idea. Yeah. Right
after we, like I said, I think it was, I think
if you look it up, I think his name is Patek,
P -A -T -E -K. And he was arrested outside of
Osama bin Laden's compound. And we had been chasing
him in the Philippines. Wow. Because we thought
he was still down there. There was another guy
that we, I believe we killed him. His name was
Al -Bader Parad. But yeah, my job was not, I
always say this on podcasts because the veteran
community is wild right now. They love to cut
each other down right now. There's something
weird going on where, like obviously lying, yeah,
call the people out. I prefer to call people
out face to face. But I always make sure people
know I was not a cool guy. Like sometimes I got
to dress like one. You know, for a few years
I didn't wear any uniforms and I got to grow
my beard out and act like a cool guy. But I was
really a nerd for cool guys. I've literally got
pictures of myself. down in the holo or in Afghanistan
or anywhere else and tape around my glasses and,
you know, Pez dispenser and my radio and collection
equipment looking like a true blue American nerd.
But I was not the guy who kicked the door in.
I was always the guy who pointed the door out.
So I'd be safe in the Humvee in the back, you
know, eat an MRE and somebody that looked like
another gorilla, you know, like an Andy Stump
or Tim Kennedy or someone like that. I'd be like,
is that the house? I'd be like, pretty sure that's
the house. You guys might want to be safe, but
go ahead. I'll be in the Humvee. I'll be out
here or I'll be in an airplane above, you know.
And yeah, it was it was being born in North Dakota.
And and, you know, my mother, single mother,
after she left that first guy trailer house in
the middle of this little town called Cavalier,
North Dakota. I had no options. I was a horrible
student. And what did it's crazy that you're
so smart, but you were a horrible student. I
wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't. I call myself curious
before I'd call myself smart. But. You know,
my mother, you know, I don't know if you remember,
you would remember this, but maybe other people
my age, you know, you get these scholastic book
order forms that you bring home from school and
you can order books. There always be on the back
page or it always be like little cool stuff like
you could get like, you know, a pair of gloves
or a hat or something. Anyway, one time there
was a coil radio. that you could order with an
earpiece and you put this coil radio together
and with an earpiece no battery it was just the
electromagnetic radiation would would would um
activate the coil and the coil would you could
listen to radio chatter really with no battery
yeah yeah just tiny little little radio how did
it what was the power the electromagnetic radiation
and you would just kind of like a record of uh
like you know how you You hit a record. Electromagnetic
radiation would hit the coil and the coil would
feed up to an amplifier or up to an earpiece.
And the earpiece, you could hear chatter. Did
the earpiece have a battery? I don't think anything
had a battery on it. I think it was just a...
Wow. I could be mistaken, but I don't believe
it was. Powered by electromagnetic radiation.
Yeah. I mean, you can look it up, Jamie, if you
want. Sorry to say that again, but... Tighten
that thing down. That thing's driving me crazy.
Yeah, sorry. This thing. Like here or here? Right
here. Look at my finger. It's right here. Yeah,
I've been meaning to do that, like, literally
when everybody uses this fucking thing. It's
wobbling around, ready to fall off. Yeah, but
if you look up coil radio with small earpiece,
I could be wrong. I don't remember there being
a battery on it. Electromagnetic radiation powered
it. That's bananas. Yeah, so kind of like a...
Same thing with, like, you know, not the same
wattage, but a microwave, right? Sends power
through the air. Right, but it uses... Or DC.
But it uses power to, like, send it. Yeah, but
I could be wrong. But at any rate, that was the
first time I... I got a radio and I was hearing
things and I'd put it together and I'm listening
to things. Like what kind of things? HF radio,
VHF radio, people talking, that type of stuff.
And then I found out how to get an antenna to
make the antenna larger and started ordering
auxiliary pieces for it. And then what really
changed me was my mother and I would clean houses.
She was a waitress, but we also would go around
and clean houses. And there was a lawyer that
we worked for. His name was Phil Culp. And he
had an old 286SX IBM. And it was just sitting
in his basement. And I told my mom, I was like,
hey, if I clean for like a month, can I have
that computer? Like he doesn't use it. He's got
a new 486 up in his place here. And he instantly
said I could have it. And then that started me
down the computer networking realm. And like,
look, how could I get this 286 to act like a
386? Or how could I force it to run Windows?
Or how do I update the memory? How do I do these
things? In this little town, Edinburgh, North
Dakota, there was a guy who had a computer store
in a basement of an old general store. And his
name was Jeff Munsobraten. And I would go there
and ask them questions about computers and just
start learning, like, ins and outs on how do
I update the RAM, how do I get memory better,
how do I augment the storage, how can I force
this thing to run Windows 3 .1 so I could have
a GUI instead of using a command line. GUI mean
graphic user interface? Graphic user interface,
yeah. Yeah, sorry. That's okay. And so that kind
of started me on that. For me, like I said, I
had all kinds of problems with attention deficit
disorder and not being able to pay attention.
That was the only time I would go for it. I don't
believe in ADHD. I might be wrong. I think it's
a superpower. I mean, it's certainly, I remember
I would spend two days working on a problem and
not sleeping. That's what I'm saying. I think
it's a superpower. I think it just keeps you
from being interested in things you're not interested
in. Yeah. I have a theory on that too that I
can get into after, but that started me down
that road. But in school, I couldn't pay attention.
Me neither. There was this teacher. I always
tell this story. It's a great teacher. She's
still around. Her name is Connie Trenbeth. And
she was my English teacher or literature teacher
or something like that. She might not even remember
the story, but here I am telling it on your podcast.
I remember it. She kept me after class once and
she goes, you know, I knew your dad, Bill. And,
you know, your uncles were all smart. My great
uncle has an engineering wing of a school named
after him out in western North Dakota. And she
goes, all these guys were thinkers and your dad
did all this great stuff and built all this stuff.
Essentially, what she was telling me is you're
a waste of life. Like, all you do is you come
in here, you disrupt the class, you upset people.
No one can talk. Sounds like me. You're trying
to dominate every conversation. But when, you
know, you had written one paper on something
that interested you, and I don't remember what
it was. And she's like, that was a wonderful
paper. She's like, if you could just do that
every time. And I was not hearing it. Like I
remember the conversation because I actually
remember, I think she said waste of life. I think
she actually said that. Like you're wasting,
like you're obviously, my CPU clocks high. I'm
always thinking even when I'm not thinking and
even as we're sitting here talking, I'm thinking
about other things or stuff I want to do when
I get back to my computer or stuff I want to
do for my business. And so I joined the military
and the absurdity of life is this. I joined to
be a military policeman. which I absolutely would
have hated. All of them got turned into infantry
people or would stand gate guard, which is a
needed function in the military, but it doesn't
apply to my personality. But when I went to the
recruiter station out in Minneapolis, I think
it was, I was a bonehead and I forgot my driver's
license. And they're like, well, and I was supposed
to leave. And at this time I had dumped my girlfriend,
told everyone goodbye. I'd wiped the dust off
my boots, like left Cavalier, North Dakota. I
was like, hey, I'm not going back. So whatever
we got to do right now. And he's like, well,
we can you can go home, get your license because
the MEPS station was in Minneapolis. Was it Fargo?
Doesn't matter. It was five, six, seven hours
away. And they're like, well, you're not leaving
today without a driver's license. So I looked
at my recruiter and I was like, I don't know
what job you need to get me into, but it needs
to be a different job. And they're like, well,
you scored. you know, exceptionally high in your
general technical part of your ASVAB, which is
like understanding machines and objects and stuff.
So we could get you into this like Intel job.
where you'd learn about radars and stuff. And
that immediately clicked for me. And then he's
like, well, we got to go brief you in this SCIF
room. There's a, you know, secure compartmented
information facility. There's only one guy who's
got a clearance and he can brief you on the job.
And if you want that job, then you can leave
tomorrow. I instantly started hearing like the
James Bond music, you know. And so they walked
me in this back place and, you know. nothing
super crazy and briefed me up on the job. And
I went back out and I said, yeah, this is actually
the job for me. So the absurdity of life is me
forgetting my driver's license. When I was 16,
I was 16 when I signed up, um, maybe 17. No,
I was turning 17 that December when I signed
up for the military. Um, I can connect with a
string to forgetting my driver's license to being
here with you today. You can, you can. sign up
when you're 16? I think I was turning 17. You
can sign up when, I didn't even know you could
sign up when you're 17. Yeah, I had signed my
delayed entry program thing and I left a little
bit before my 18th birthday. So I just graduated
from high school. But yeah, you can sign up when
you're 16, I believe, as long as your parents
sign the waiver. My mother signed the waiver.
She was happy to get me out of the trailer. So
yeah, I was 17, almost 18 when I left. You can
make a radio out of that. Yeah, right there.
So that's all the pieces. They call it a crystal
radio. Yeah, I was going to say crystal controlled.
That's a radio? What? There it is. That's actually
the exact thing. That is almost exactly what
it looks like. Slinky made it? Well, they bought
the Slinky brand now. What? There's a bunch of
these all over the internet, yeah. Wow. Make
your own working radio without batteries. Yeah,
and I was going to say crystal controlled radio
because it uses a crystal diode on it. Would
you say Tesla coil, Jamie? Yeah, it's a Tesla
coil. This guy's explaining it. So this thing
has a kind of cool tool. Let me find this thing.
A rocket radio, they called, which is like further
development, this thing. It attached to a phone.
So you plug that onto a phone cable. There's
a picture of it somewhere on here, but it explains
like you're picking up. There you go. Wow. No
power. No battery or current needed, hence no
operating expense and long life. Yeah, this is
almost... It fits onto a phone. What year was
this? Man, this is old. Yeah. So it also shows
here, this is like you're picking up power from
a radio tower. Yeah. Wow. And they're powerful,
the signal. This is more like what they're paying
for with the FCC. The more powerful your radio
tower, the longer and more people you can reach.
Crazy. That has no battery. And that's also why
some radio signals come in very well on your
radio and some don't. They sound like dog shit.
Yeah. Weak power. Yeah. And then the frequency
modulation, like amplitude modulation isn't as
efficient as frequency modulation when it comes
to for the voc order to produce sound. Amplitude
modulation travels farther, but it doesn't have
the. The amount of information, it's not modulated.
The carrier wave can't be modulated with as much
information as you need, whereas frequency modulation
is much quicker, megahertz, and you can amplitude
and add more sound or more information, which
is why it sounds better. So FM sounds better,
but it doesn't travel as far. Right. AM sounds
worse. When I was training people in the military
on this, I would use the analogy of if a party
is happening next door, you can hear the bass
music, but you can't hear the treble. You can
hear the bass music because... that frequency
travels farther because it's lower in their frequency
band. But you can hear the treble because, or
you can't hear the treble, I'm sorry, because
it's higher frequency and there's more modulation.
And so it disperses quicker and you can't hear
it as well. And it's the same thing with like
VLF comms coming off of like a submarine can
travel underwater for a very long ways, but you
can't put as much information in them as you
could if you were doing, you know, VHF or UHF
comms where there's lots of modulation. So it's
the dispersal. And a lot of my mid part of my
career was explaining this stuff to military
guys who were trying to understand like here's
how a cell phone works and this is how frequency
works and this is how we send information and
just kind of demystifying how a GSM network works.
One of the things that I wanted to ask you about
that is when new technology is emerging, how
– How do you stay ahead of the ability to extract
information from this technology, hack into networks
before people understand the capability? You
really can't. You really can't? And that's the
beauty of the free market is that the innovation
to perform the function that you want someone
to pay for will always move faster than your
ability to exploit. the technology. Then how
do you explain things like Pegasus? Well, I mean,
something like Pegasus, well, first off... Explain
Pegasus to people that don't know. It was a persistent
implant on cell phones for people. Initially,
you had to click it. It was a clickable exploit.
Initially, it was a click, and then it became
a non -click exploit. So in other words, you
had to interact with something on the phone in
order to initialize and install the implant.
But the reason why it was so good is because
it wasn't stored in the usual areas that you
would want a persistent implant or where you
would have a persistent implant. For instance,
you might want to put it in the application layer
of an app or something like that where there's
a binary that can run and execute commands or
functions. And so I won't get into the very specifics
of where and how they did this because I'm not
sure if I got this information from the government
or not, so I won't say it. But they stored it
in a place where it wasn't normal. And you can
read papers on your own and look at the forensics
of it and how the actual implant was executed.
But it essentially allowed people to own your
phone. the kind of implant I only dreamed of
when I was helping develop my own plants implants
in the military, mostly what we would rely on
is, um, you know, zero day architecture and looking
for something in a phone that either they hadn't
patched or that the phone that you were looking
at hadn't been patched. So phones, as they have
their own red teams are going through the phone
for their own cause they want to sell a product
that people will use and people won't use stuff
that can get hacked. So they'll do their own
red teaming and they'll discover like, Oh, you
know, we, On this router we developed, we left
this port open and it shouldn't have been open.
So now we're going to write a patch that will
close that port so that this port is no longer
accessible by a guy like me. So I can't go in
there and do something to this particular type
of router. Another great thing, I'll say something
good about the administration. They're doing
some stuff right now to make sure that we're
getting rid of Chinese technology and Chinese
routers. And there's a widespread network of...
The PLA has a, and I can't remember the name
of the botnet, but they essentially implanted
a bunch of old unpatched routers to get access
to government and business proximal people. And
it was widespread and huge. And it looked like
to me, I haven't read this anywhere, but if I
were looking at this implant and how it was done,
they were trying to really cause some trouble.
It was being placed at critical places. Think
power. Think energy. Think banking. Like they
really wanted to cause some ruckus. And I have
not been part of this administration, so I'm
not saying anything classified for those of you
who are listening. And so but there was a decision
to say, hey, we need to make sure that these
things get patched and also that we're not bringing
in. architecture from the overseas because they
don't play by the same rules that we at least
say we play by. That's why they banned Huawei
devices. Oh, yeah. And ZTE. Yeah. Huawei had
a phone that I was really interested in back
in the day. They had a Porsche design, had partnered
with Huawei and made this insane Android phone
with like the best camera, the best battery.
It was like really high level. And I was like.
going to buy it. And then all of a sudden they
banned all the Huawei phones. And I was like,
what's going on? And then, you know, I'd heard
some people say, oh, they're just trying to stop
competition. It's like American companies are
trying to stop it. And then I went into it deeper
and I said, no, it seems like there's third party
input on some of the routers and some of their
network devices that they had engineered in order
to be able to access them by third party. And
this Because of whatever, lack of understanding,
lack of knowledge of how these things are constructed,
the people that purchased them weren't aware
of them. And these things had gotten into place.
And they had gotten into place in universities.
They got into place in military establishments.
They were using them in cell phone towers that
people had inadvertently bought from China. And
that's really I mean, I can tell you firsthand
from having done some other forensic exploitation
on this stuff. Another large part of my career
I didn't talk about was just on mobile forensics
and media forensics, which is essentially you
think of like CSI Miami or CSI, whatever the
city was. There's a crime. Someone was killed.
You have forensics that are doing forensics on
like blood and fingerprints and blood splatter
and all that stuff. There's a whole another part
of that same forensics branch that focuses on
media forensics. What was deleted off this phone
at one point? What remains on this phone? What
was it being used for? I would do this in the
military so that when we did do an operation
and I was part of some of the largest ones ever
done out in Afghanistan, there would be treasure
troves of phones and all of these computers and
stuff like that. And it was my job. And I had
a great team that worked for me. In my deployment
in 2015, we would go in afterwards, gather up
all of this stuff, and the task force commander
would literally be standing by, and we'd say,
here's the intelligence that we've derived. Here's
the multi -point analysis. It was on this hard
drive. It was here. It was here. There's a bad
guy place out here. And those guys would be rolling
within moments after the last operation. Some
operations we'd do where we'd be rolling one
after another target because we were getting
really good at media forensics. and the intelligence
that was there, and then getting into active
media forensics, which is a different discipline,
but essentially, I can get into that later if
you want to, but launching and doing these follow
-on operations off, dumping the binary from a
phone and examining it at the ones and zeros
level to say everything that was going on with
this thing, or if it was a really high, like
the organization that I worked for at that time.
did the analysis of the Osama bin Laden media.
And on that media, we're doing far more than
we would for another piece of media in that we're
X -raying it and we're looking at maybe what
the disk looked like before or what was destroyed
or reconstructing things, spending millions of
dollars on that intelligence analysis because
we wanted to fully understand everything that
this guy was involved in and what he was doing
and where he was and who he was talking to. And
so that was another part of my career that I
did for about five years or so. What was going
on with the Huawei phones? Like, what were they
doing with them? I mean, some of them were coming
out implanted. In other words, there was access
built in for a foreign actor. And then in other
terms, other places with routers, with the ZTE
stuff, there were just things that you would
patch or that you would fix. As a company who
is trying to protect the consumer and create
a product that would people you would use and
they weren't doing it. So they were creating
persistent backdoors either by actively placing
code on there that would allow, you know, root
access or they were leaving things open, especially
in Africa. Like the work that, you know, I was
working in Africa. The Chinese were just owning
Africa. They were just giving them communications
infrastructure. And they were doing that because
they wanted their resources and they wanted to
know what these people were saying. and what
they were doing. And so I'm as free market as
a guy can get. I want the best people building
the best products, and I want everyone to be
able to compete. But in that case, I would never
own a Huawei or a ZTE or anything else. On a
consumer level, what were they doing with those
phones? Like if they had imported them to the
United States, if they didn't have that ban,
what would have been the issue? Getting access
to, you know... any number of people that the
Chinese really want access to everybody, but
you could start at the topical level of just
saying, you know, getting Joe Rogan to use his
ETE would be, that'd be my wet dream as a guy
who used to do this work back in the day. Cause
you're talking to the president or you're talking
to this guy or that guy. And I can build out
a network of understanding who you're in contact
with, who you're talking to, what's being talked
about, but then also finding out. you know, this
person's phone number and now doing a deep dive
on there. So it's really about, you know, getting
all of that data and constructing an analyst
notebook, essentially outline of who's talking
to who, who do we need to implant. But it's for
business as well. Like they're really trying
to go, they would want this in the hands of somebody
who's in charge of a business because they want
their IP. They would want this in soldier's hands
so they would know deployment dates or who's
going where and who's doing what. They want this
in routers because routers are usually the most
unpatched piece of technology. in that, especially
these days, they're more automated patching.
But back in the day, you had to manually update
a router. And if you didn't, well, then you had
potential exploits that were sitting on that
router where I could gain access to the router
in your home, or I could gain access to a BGP
router, which is like a border gateway, which
is moving all of the internet data, or I could
get access to a microwave terminal. If you look
at a cell phone, they've got the microwave terminals
on there that are sending information in between
them. If those are Chinese that are either being
used for the processing, the CPU, or the physical
infrastructure of that. The products that they
were putting out would give me direct access
to the information that's being passed on those
terminals. So you're getting system -level, root
-level access through machinery, through communication
devices, and through things like routers where
you can know everything you want to know about
your enemy. Wow. And so as far as today's technology,
I see you use an Android phone. Like, is there
a phone that is more secure or a platform that
is more secure? It all depends. Like, I always
take this from Thomas Sowell. There are no answers.
There are only tradeoffs. So there's like the
way to answer that question would be is like,
who are you? What are you trying to do with your
life? What are you talking about on your phone?
What are you doing on your phone? You know, most
of these phones, if you're just an average everyday
citizen who's just going about your job. You
know, the phones today are pretty secure, especially
versus a few years ago. If you're a reporter,
now the nexus is do you trust the government
and do you trust Apple? If you trust the government,
you trust Apple, then Apple is probably your
best bet for using, you know, there's lockdown
mode on an Apple phone. They used to call it
back in the day, I think it was called reporter
mode, but there was ways to encrypt the devices
and to encrypt the chatter and the tunnel coming
out of the phone, the RF coming out of the phone.
What is lockdown mode? I don't know if that's
exactly what it was called or not because I've
never really used Apple just for my own personal
reasons. What personal reasons? I don't trust
Apple. How so? They are more interested in monetizing
people's data than they are providing them capability.
So every time you take a photo, every time you
upload a document, every time you talk to it,
every time it asks you about your, you know,
you'll get these questions where it says. If
your password's lost, you can back up your password
in these ways. Tell us where you were born. Tell
us your mom's maiden name. Tell us your mom's
this, your mom's that. Lockdown mode is an extreme
optional protection. It can only be used if you
believe you may be personally targeted by a highly
sophisticated cyber attack. Most people are never
targeted by attacks of this nature. When iPhone
is in lockdown mode, it will not function as
it typically does. Apps, websites, and features
will be strictly limited for security, and some
experiences will be completely unavailable. Yeah,
so when I was advising guys back in the day,
on going out and doing a high -risk source meet.
So they're going to go meet a spy for another
country, and you're a military guy, and you're
debriefing someone or doing something. I always
tell them to use lockdown mode. I knew that it
did those things. I didn't know if that was the
term or if I had thought that up. So can you
still send iMessages? You can still text and
call. Text and call, that's it. Yeah, but there's
other things that you can't do. Well, like Meta
just recently announced they're no longer encrypting
your DMs. Why would they do that? Well, they
said that... It's for protection or whatever
to make sure that people aren't doing bad things.
I don't know. See what their explanation was.
I'm sorry. Meta recently announced that they're
no longer encrypting your DMs on Instagram. And
a lot of people are up in arms and they're stopping
using any DMs on Instagram and any of that stuff.
And the idea is that other people can read your
stuff now. Now, whether it's Meta can read your
stuff or who. That's what I mean. I said, why
don't you trust Apple? It's the same reason I
don't trust Meta. They're not interested. The
dangers behind Meta killing end -to -end encryption
for Instagram DMs. Meta blamed users for not
opting into the privacy -protecting feature.
Experts fear the move could be the first major
domino to fall for end -to -end encryption tech
worldwide. That's a horrible narrative. Yeah,
it seems. So, oh, you've read your last free
article. Oh, my God. Give me money, motherfucker.
But what Apple and Meta want to do is like they're
trying to build these new neural networks. They're
trying to, you know, humans and we can get into
this too later if you want. Humans are the only
thing, in my opinion, and I'm happy to have you
disagree with me and I love to have this conversation.
In my opinion, we're the only ones that are.
After May 8, 2026, announced plans to discontinue
support for end -to -end encryption for chats
on Instagram. If you have chats that are impacted
by this change, you will see instructions on
how you can download any media or messages you
may want to keep. Social media giants said in
a help document, if you're on an older version
of Instagram, you may also need to update the
app before you can download your affected chats.
When reach for comment, this is what Meta had
to say, very few people are opting for end -to
-end encrypted messages and DMs, so we're removing
this option from Instagram in the coming months.
Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end -to
-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.
But WhatsApp is a little squirrely, right? WhatsApp,
yeah. I mean, they're all squirrely, and that's
the problem. And so you asked me why I don't
trust them. It's because they want to use – so
humans, in my opinion, and some animals, are
the only things – that have the ability to project
consciousness. And projecting consciousness is
how you train a neural network. And it's how
you train all these large networks. A lot of
my time also in the military is spent in art.
I was doing artificial intelligence in 2012,
2011. Before it was even a catch term, we were
using artificial intelligence to map dynamic
networks and to do other things, more pragmatic
uses of it than how it's being used today with
large language models or convolutional neural
networks. But they need consciousness to train
their models. So when Google offers you meta
or Instagram or whoever else offers you photo
storage, it's because they want your face to
train neural networks. If they're going to pay
for the compute, if they're going to pay for
the storage for these things, they're doing it
because they're going to use the data. If you're
getting a free app, in essence, any free app,
if the product's free, then you're the product.
So when Google is allowing you to use a Google
Drive and get a gig of storage, they're going
to use those photos to train neural networks
to do better facial recognition. What if you're
paying for Google Drive? I don't know about their
terms of service now. That is one of the best
things that I use with large language models
is any product I download, I have the neural
network examine the terms of service. And then
you can pretty much understand. Here's my focus.
Here's the 40 -page terms of services document.
When you click that link that you got, what are
they able to do with my data? So that's how I
sign up for apps. And that's one of the great
uses of a large language model, in my opinion,
is to quickly understand how these things are
being used. And that's why I say with Apple,
with Meta, with all of these large information,
you are more the product than the products the
product. And that is because they're trying to
build the most powerful, capable. artificial
intelligences, which I think is a misnomer. And
again, we can get into it later, but they're
trying to build these hyper -competent artificial
intelligences. And you need two things for that,
really, is training data and you need compute.
And that's why you start seeing them coming out
with like Meta's building its own nuclear engineering
facility or something, nuclear facility or something
like that. And they need more, they need more
training data. So if I want to build a, you know,
a replica of Joe Rogan that I can make hyper
realistic AI videos for, I need every picture
of your face from every angle. I need every wince,
every squint, everything you've ever done so
I can. Introduce more training data to better
train that neural network in order to generate
more hyper -realistic versions of yourself. And
so when a company is offering you something for
free, and it's fine. Like if people are fine
with that idea. then by all means, download all
the free apps that you want. But if you're downloading
a free app, it's because you are the product.
They either want to see how you type. They want
to see what you're saying. They want to see how
you're thinking about things. They want to understand
your political biases. They want to look at your
photos. And this isn't because they're a deep
-seated nation -state actor. They can become
that. But it's because they're trying to build
the best products because the big money is in
AI. That's where the biggest money is. So anytime
you're doing any of these things, it's just been
obvious to me from the on, not from the onset,
but pretty close to the onset that. Yeah, this
is a good example, right? Pokemon Go players
built a 30 billion photo map. That's how training
robots deliver your pizza. There you go. So they
view – and they can say they don't. And maybe
if someone from there catches this podcast, which
they well could, they might put out a statement
saying that's not what they're doing. But I'm
telling you as a person who has done media forensics,
who has done computer network operations, and
who has trained artificial intelligence models,
that is precisely what they are doing. And what
is the difference between using Apple and using
– Android. Well, Android will do the same things
and Google will do the same things. It's just
that I can root my phone or I can install a custom
operating system like Graphene or something like
that, which I'm not doing right now. I had to
make a sacrifice when I started my company, Spartan
Forge. And the sacrifice was I had to be the
face of this product. And so I never had a social
media until I started the company. And I didn't
upload things to the cloud until I started this
company. And it became just like I have to sell
a product. I have to, you know, and I'm actually
selling a product, not people's data or people's
photos. I have to sell this product. I have to
let people, people often don't know who is the
company or who is the organizing principle and
what do they care about in the company. And I
just made that trade and said. I'm going to have
to become a public person and start putting things
out there. And so, you know, I started a company.
We started our first Instagram and I started
my my marketing team started my first Instagram.
And I had to start uploading things and talking
about how I felt about things because. I wanted
people to know that this company was not going
to be like the other companies that are out there.
We don't sell their data. We don't sell emails.
I can make a half million dollars off my email
list tomorrow. And I've been offered that money.
You know, we've got millions of emails from people
who have signed up for our apps. Other companies
who are starting companies, they want to go out
and reach marketing people. So if you're starting
another hunting app, maybe for cameras or for
a call or a tricky call or an out call or something,
and you... found Spartan Forge and you said,
man, think about 2 million emails. I could pay
them a half million dollars for that $2 million
and start some top of line marketing, top of
funnel marketing. and go blast them. So they'd
pay me a lot of money for those emails. I will
never do that. I'll never sell my company's emails,
the people's emails. I'll never do any of those
things because the product is the product for
my company. It's not the people. So the reason
why you use Android over Apple is the ability
to root it and install things like Graphene?
Yeah, custom OSs. But yet you don't use it. Not
now, but what I still can use and what I still
do use is Android also publishes their framework
in an open source fashion where you can look
at the – it's called AOSP, Android Open Source
Project. So the basis of Android, the nuts –
think of it as the nuts and bolts. I'll try not
to talk. Two technical terms here. But the basic
framework, think about it like a car. The frame
and the engine makeup is published so you can
look at how things work on the inside. Apple
goes the opposite way and they don't publish
any of that. You can't see any of that stuff.
I'm for the free and open version because at
least if I'm worried about my phone having a
problem, I can actually dump binary or I can
create an EO1 file and exhume. I can look at
the binary and say, is my phone acting like it
should or doing what it should? Or is there some
kind of persistent implant? I wouldn't be able
to do that. I would have to trust Apple and Apple's
ecosystem and whoever they're McAfee or whatever
they're using. I would have to trust them, which
I don't. So I like the Android. Is that option
available for the average consumer that's not
that learned in computers? Well, the great part
about large language models now is if you wanted
to dump your own phone. Today, you could follow
along with a large language model and do it,
your own Android. And how would you do that?
Well, you would have to buy some expensive –
there is something – you'd either have to pay
a firm to do it or you could download things
like Celebrite. You could get a Celebrite. or
there's other things called forensic toolkit,
other things like that that allow you to examine
your phone at a deeper level. And is this an
app, forensic? They're products. Products. They're
products. So it's a physical product that you
dump your phone into? Yeah, and there's software.
And there's connecting and all that type of stuff.
Tools I used throughout my military career, Celebrite
was one of them, but they're Israeli -owned.
I've got nothing against Israel. I've just got
everything against foreign actors. Just if they're
not an American company, that automatically kicks
them down a level for me. So anyway, there's
all kinds of, Android just makes it much easier
to examine your phone or to understand if you've
got something going on that's funky than it is
on Apple. So for the average person, like for
me. You're not the average person. Well, let's
pretend I am. If I got an Android phone and I
wanted to examine my phone, what would be the
process? You would download some of the software
that I talked about. You would jack your phone
into it. You would open your phone, and then
it would start carving the binary of everything
in your phone. You could create a one -to -one
emulation of your phone if you wanted to, and
then you would be able to get under the hood
and examine the apps. You would be able to examine
the binary. What's the executable code? You'd
be able to look at all of those things and then
determine, because Android open source project
is published, you could do a one -for -one and
say, well, at the kernel level, there's this
weird code that's not in the Android build. So
what is this code? And then with a neural network,
you could probably – I've never done it, but
I'm sure you could figure out what the intent
is of that code even for a layperson. So I could
take that information and I could put it into
Perplexity and Perplexity would lay out what's
going on with it? Ostensibly, it would be able
to, yes, unless it was some type of weird code.
I don't know if – I haven't used Perplexity,
so I don't know if they have something like ChatGPT's
Codex. I sort of just tried just to be like,
can you help me examine what my Android phone
is doing, looking for any malicious actors? Yes,
I can walk you through structured non -destructive
check for malware or other shady activity on
your Android phone. A first, what are you noticing?
Before tools, commands, quickly check for common
warning signs. Sudden big battery drain, you're
not using the phone. Unusual data usage, particularly
in the background. Apps you don't remember installing
or icons briefly appearing and then disappearing.
Lots of pop -ups, redirects in browser or new
default search launcher. Strange calls, SMS messages
you didn't send yourself. If any of those ring
a bell, we'll focus on them in later steps. So
this is just something that you could do with
an Android phone that you just can't do with
Apple. Yeah, Apple's not open. What are the reasons
you don't trust Apple? Well, could I ask, can
I do one thing before we, remember that question
because I don't want to forget it. Could I give
you a prompt? Sure. Because I want to answer
your first question that we've already gone past.
Can you bring perplexity back up, please? Do
you want to go in addition to that or start a
new one? No, this is fine. Just say, my friend
helped me carve. An EO1 file. Echo Oscar EO1
file. And he says that there is code in there
that doesn't comport with the rest of the Android
system. Yeah, P -O -R -T. The rest of the system.
Could I dump that code here and could you tell
me what it means? I'm sure the answer is yes,
but I just didn't want to answer it because I've
never done it. Could you tell me? Could you tell
me, Jeremy? Could you tell me what it means here?
Get the you out. Get the you. Tell me you. Could
I have some of your coffee, please? Yeah, absolutely.
It's for you. Okay, let's see what it says. Yes,
you can pay suspicious code here and I can help
explain what it means what it appears to do Line
by line and whether anything looks malicious
before you paste a few important notes Remove
or redact anything that looks like private data
using like that's keys Tokens IPS email addresses
phone perplexity is our sponsor I love that because
you'd never get that from chat GPT. You'd want
all that information. He's the shit and So you're
not sharing personal or case sensitive information.
Wonderful perplexity. If it's very long, send
in chunks. Tell me chunk 1 -3 chunk 2 -3 etc
so we can help keep track I can do static analysis
here read and reason about the code, but I cannot
actually execute it in a sandbox, right? So this
is more like a careful forensic read -through
than a full dynamic malware analysis go ahead
and paste the code snippet your friend flag does
not fitting with the rest of the system and Tell
me in a sentence or two where in the eo1 It came
from, example, app folder, system partition,
random file path. Yep, exactly. So, yeah, I thought
that would be the answer. I've just never done
it. And so you can do a forensic examination
of an Apple, by the way. I'm sorry if I misspoke
there. But you can't do it to the level that
you can with... Because the Android open source
project publishes all of the code, I can get
an understanding of the very inner working. So
if something's being done, for instance, at the
kernel, or you could think about it as the lowest
level of the phone, something that wouldn't normally
get caught in a forensic examination, I wouldn't
be able to do that with Apple. And the nation
state actors are doing things at very low levels
in the code framework. For that exact reason,
because most people who aren't very deep into
forensics would miss that. It would be like the
fingerprint under the couch cushion or something
like that. And what is the difference between
what someone can do with an Android phone with
the standard Android operating system versus
graphene? So that gets into, you know, if you
wanted to war drive or sample Wi -Fi networks
in an area or if you wanted to run a barrage.
attack on a Wi -Fi endpoint, you could work that
in there to do things with the phone that you
couldn't otherwise do with a standard Android
operating kit. But as far as on a consumer level,
what protections do you have by running Graphene
that you don't have by running Android? You're
much more in control of the ecosystem. You have
a firmer understanding. And again, you could
use a large language model to do this to understand
exactly what's being run on the phone. You control
the background services that can be run on the
phone. So if you're getting hot mic'd or if your
camera's taking pictures of you and you're not
looking or it's listening to you for advertising
content, stuff like that, you would be in control
of all of that in a way that you're not in control
of on a native Android app. In control of how
so? Would it alert you that this is happening?
Or just the functionality wouldn't be there for
it to take place. Right, because the functionality
is only designed for the standard Android operating
system. And I haven't installed Graphene in a
while, so all of this updates, and I could be
saying things that are incorrect. I stopped doing
this about three years ago. I know that there
was, I forget what country it was, but they were
focusing on people who use Google Pixel phones,
for example, because that's one of the phones
that are more commonly rooted. Yeah, it's easy
to do. And you could do it with a large language
model. You could sit there and be walked through
on how to do it, which is a great part of that.
Is it complicated for a person like me that's
not that astute? No, it's not something I would
do with a phone that you care about the first
few times because you're going to jack things
up. You have to get the bootloader and essentially
the starting mechanisms of the phone that launches
all of the other things, you have to get down
to a level and unlock that so that you can...
Is that available for all Android phones? No,
not all Android phones. Lots of them lock it
down, so you can't do that. Is that available
for Samsung phones? No, not this one. So the
question has to become, can you unlock the bootloader?
And that is the starting, think of it as the
starting engine of the rest of the phones. Why
is that only available on Google Pixel phones?
I'm not sure why they do it that way. I haven't
looked into that. It's just Pixels and the older
Samsung's made it available. Older Galaxy S7s,
S10s, you could do more. than you can with like,
and I've got the Galaxy Fold here, and you can
do almost none of that on here. That is fucking
sweet, though. Yeah, I love this phone. But like
I said, I went away from doing all that, A, because
it was work, B, because I'm not working in national
security anymore, and I'm not, you know, I haven't
written an exploit in years. I don't do this
type of work anymore, and I need to sell a product.
And it just, you know, working with other employees,
like... Would that run my Instagram or assistant
going through my email and all those other types
of things? It just wasn't pragmatic anymore for
me to keep doing that, and I had to give up that
part of myself. Does Spartan Forge, your app,
run on graphene? Yeah, well, it could. Yeah,
it would. You have to sideload the app. But again,
a large language model could walk you through
doing that. So we haven't gotten to that level
of... Does it make sense here that this says
it's easier because Google makes it easier? Yeah.
He was just asking me why they make it easier.
I don't know that answer. So the process is officially
supported in the Android settings under developer
options, allowing users to toggle OEM locking.
Simple fastboot method. Pixels use standard fastboot
commands that work consistently across all models
to unlock the bootloader accessibility. That's
what I was talking about. So, yeah, I don't know
why they do it. It might be people can – well,
the Android open source project exists. So it
would stand to reason that you would want a way
for someone – because what you want is people
interacting with that code and red teaming it
and making the code better and then offering
bug bounties so that you can tell Android, like,
hey, you've got a critical flaw in your system
architecture here. And then they'll pay you $20
,000 for that. I've got friends who do that.
You and I talked about – Prince's phone yes that
which is so the the narrative is that that is
an unhackable phone yeah it's just by virtue
and look Eric's a wonderful guy and he's the
principles that he used for the first instantiation
of that phone are the correct principles, which
is we need to get, if you want, if you're security
focused at all, you should get away from these
big, large conglomerates because none of your
data is private. That's a correct principle.
An incorrect principle, and I'm going to get
shit about this, but I told you in the beginning,
I care about the truth and I do care about the
truth, is that when you're using a PKI. subsystem
that relies on Microsoft, then you're not in
control of the PKI certificate signing and Microsoft
could cause a bunch of problems and they were
using that. So the other thing being, if you're
building on the Android open source project,
that means the code that you're using as the
engine, let's just call it that of your phone,
is examinable by the public. So you're relying
on Android to publish these. you know, updates
to the phone and you're relying on those things
to be as good as possible. Now you might harden
it some more, but as long as the code is out
there, it can always be mucked with. As long
as people have to interact with the device and
type and you have to see what you're typing,
a phone's going to be, it's going to have Swiss
cheese. So when people say something is unhackable,
as you said, that's just not true. Yeah, it didn't
make sense to me. Which is why you and I talked
about it. Yeah, we talked about it quite a bit.
Like I said, great guy, done lots of great things
for the country. And it's just, if they had just
said something along the lines of, it's hackable
as any phone is hackable, because by virtue of
you having to interact with it, it's hackable.
It's just like, if I came up with an app that
had a, you know, look at the TikTok terms of
service on the first TikTok. Oh, it's bonkers.
With those terms of services, I will own your
phone. And I'm not saying you can install TikTok
on his phone. But what I'm saying is by virtue
that you have to interact with the phone and
see what you're doing and type passwords and
you've got those kinds of terms of service, I
could easily put a key logger in that. And now
I know your signal password or your signal pin
or, you know, I get you, you know, you're going
to China. So I stop you in secondary. And while
you're in secondary, I've got a CCTV on you and
you unlock your phone. Now I know how to unlock
your phone. And now I'm going to lock you up.
secondary at customs in China or in Canada. And
I'm going to separate you from your phone and
I've seen you unlock it. Well, now I'm going
to get in there with NCase or I'm going to get
in there with FTK or I'm going to get in there
with Celebrite and I'm going to dump your phone.
And just by virtue of it being built on the Android
open source project, that's a great thing. It's
a good thing. Just don't call it totally unhackable
because a guy like me. I don't need but a week
or two to tell you on this current build, like,
here's the hole in this Swiss cheese. Now, is
it far better than having a Google phone with
standard firmware and standard OS or an Apple
phone? I don't know about Apple because, again,
you asked me about Apple, and I said, I don't
know Apple. I don't know what's happening at
the top of that company, but I know that they
like to monetize people, and that's pervasive
in my mind. And using data that people don't
know is getting used, even though it's in a 40
-page terms of services document, is pervasive.
So I just don't know at that highest level of
analysis. And that's why I said to answer your
question about the safest phone, I would ask
you what you're using it for, who you are, and
what are you doing in the world is the best way
to answer that question. So me, like what would
you recommend I use? I mean, I wouldn't want
to. I mean, OK, I'll tell you generally what
I would say, because you might ask me that question
one day because we go back and forth about a
lot of tech. I know specifically what I would
recommend for you to do. And I'd even tell you
to hire someone else to do it, not me, because.
That checks and balances is what I would want.
But for you, I would say you should take something
like a Raspberry Pi and you should run WireGuard
on your phone and you should route all of your
internet traffic through something like a home
terminal at your house through a Raspberry Pi
using something like WireGuard, which is a VPN
that I use that's very good. Everything should
be routed through that. And if you trust Apple,
continue using Apple. If you don't trust Apple,
then use Android. And you could use a pixel and
do graphene and you could use signal on there
and those other things. You're going to be relatively
safe. But again, if I'm a nation state actor,
I can create circumstances where I'm going to
get access to your shit and I'm going to lock
you down. And some of them are more expensive
than other methods to do it, but I'm a pragmatist
and you can always come up with a method to get
a hold of somebody's shit. You can always create
the circumstances, especially if you're a nation
state actor, to get a hold of somebody's stuff.
That would be the very high level of things that
I would recommend to you just out the gate. Yeah,
it's very concerning because it seems like these
things keep getting stronger and more capable.
Yes. Like the Pegasus 2 being a non -click exploit.
Yes. So all they have to do essentially is just
know your number. Yep. Just make yourself a difficult
target would be my best recommendation. When
you're going to answer questions about password
reset, don't answer them honestly. Write down
in a physical journal or something how you answered
those questions. Don't answer them honestly.
You know, all of these things we think are added
for layers of protection. For instance, you used
to get that pop up on your phone where it said,
you know, there'd be like blocks. And it would
say, click all of the pictures with a traffic
light in it. I was just going to say that, a
traffic light in it. Part of that might be for
security. The other part of it is they're using
the information of what you're clicking to train
neural networks. You're a product at that point.
You think you're getting security out of it,
but you're a product at that point because you're
helping to educate a neural network on what traffic
lights look like and how they can look and all
those different instantiations of traffic lights.
We have to separate causality and intention and
outcomes in that the companies might do this
because they want to create the greatest AI ever.
But when you're issuing someone a 40 page terms
of service document on everything they can do
with your thing that you paid $2 ,000 for, it's
just, you know, we need more ethical people.
At least what Eric Prince was trying to do was
right, which was we need to off ramp from some
of these big things because the way that this
government is going. I'm very worried about the
rights of the individual now and going forward
because we have an uneducated class of people
for all of the reasons in the world. Like if
you want to just focus on your family and you're
not thinking about these things, I don't hate
that for you. But the idea of individual autonomy
and rights has been so shit on in recent years
that when we get more uneducated and we rely
– large language models are great. but they're
not a foundation of learning. In other words,
we have a lot of people with access to information
but no wisdom. It's like when your parents would
say, learn how to do addition and subtraction
on paper before you use a calculator. Understand
how to do research and cite sources and understand
how to conduct really good analysis before you
just use a neural network for everything. Because
as we lose focus of our civics, And what our
founders are trying to do and the uniqueness
of it, which is truly unique, which is, you know,
when I joined the Army, I joined the Army to
get out of North Dakota. When I reenlisted in
the Army, it's because I believed in the experiment.
And that's another five -hour podcast. The foundation
of the experiment is good, but we've eroded it
in so many ways over the years and given up so
many individual rights in the name of security.
I'm sure it's been said on here before, but Franklin
said anybody who gives up their individual rights
in the name of security deserves neither. Your
freedoms in the name of security deserve neither.
And it's some of the ways that they've done it
have been really above the surface. And it frankly.
Blows my mind that we let the government get
away with some of these things that we let them
get away with, where you even explain it to people
and like, I don't see it. Like, I don't see how
that was a big deal. And I'm like, it was a total
recalibration of the system that allowed the
Democratic Party and the Republican Party to
usurp your rights in a way that if you knew any
better, you'd probably be protesting. Like some
of the ways that they've done this, you know,
we can go with the easy stuff like the Patriot
Act, right? In the name of security, we're going
to start collecting on Americans. And the Biden
and Obama administration, I will say this, at
risk of getting in trouble because I used to
have a clearance. They had a massive vacuum cleaner,
and they knew what it was vacuuming up. And they
kept vacuuming it up anyway in the name of security.
I'm not saying they were going after American
citizens, but they certainly knew they were.
And they just vacuumed shit up. and collected
it and stored it in a database. In case they
needed it. In case at some point we needed to,
you know, come up with a narrative or get rid
of somebody who's inconvenient or whatever else
that just flies in the face of individual American
rights and American autonomy and is really, in
my mind, the anti -pattern to freedom. It's just
really, really bad. I mean, I'll give you one
that people always crap on me whenever I talk
to them about it, but there's two that really
bother me, one of them being, like, the 17th
Amendment. Do you know the 17th Amendment of
the Constitution? I don't. So when the founders,
when you read the Federalist Papers and the Federalist
Papers, I really love reading the Federalist
Papers. I love reading how they informed the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration
even. John Jay, James Madison wrote these documents
explaining the framework and the 17th Amendment,
essentially how the Senate, the Senate, right,
the 50. people there that are supposed to be
representing us, was originally constructed was
a state would have legislatures. And the state
legislatures and the governor would appoint the
senator. The reason that the founders did that
was because the state governments had to give
power to the federal government to exist. Back
with the Articles of Confederation. Confederation,
is that right? Articles of... I think it's Articles
of Confederation. I'm blowing up. Sorry, I'm
going nuts. Back before there was a strong centralized
American government, we had problems with money.
We had problems with interstate commerce and
those types of things. And those articles eventually
turned into what is the Constitution. But the
states had to grant that power. And the signers
of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
knew that the states needed to be those small
projects that we talked about before where if
California wanted to go nuts, let them go nuts.
But it shouldn't impact what's happening in Texas.
It shouldn't impact what's happening over in
New England. It shouldn't impact what's happening
in the Midwest. But if that goes nuts and it
fails, it needs to fail. So the state senators,
I'm sorry, the state legislatures would come
together and they would vote for a senator. They
would elect a senator. And that senator's job
was to go to the federal government and protect
the rights of the state, not to protect the rights
of individuals per se, and certainly not to embolden
the federal government. But with the 17th Amendment,
what happened was the House of Representatives
function was to be the petulant children of government.
So their job was to come up with crazy ideas,
crazy laws, all of those things. The more liberal
version of government jurisprudence would be
the House of Representatives, your crazy ideas.
And then you had state senators who were supposed
to be between the House and the president who
would say, well, here's a good idea, but the
rest of this is retarded, AOC. Like, we're not
doing all this. That's crazy. Or whoever else.
name a Republican who's an asshat as well. We're
not doing these things. And that's because it
would erode the state's rights and the state's
constitution and what made this state great.
Because what the legislatures would do is say,
hey, Joe Rogan, you've made a lot of money and
you've got a big podcast and a big voice and
you've learned some lessons around the way and
you were able to do that in Texas and you decided
to come to Texas because we had all of these
things that California didn't have. We need you
to go to the Senate. for three years or six years
or seven years, whatever it was back then, and
represent those same principles. So when Obamacare
comes through, you can say not only no, but fuck
no, like I'm not voting for this thing. And it
was to protect the state. But what the 17th Amendment
did was it was redundant with the House of Representatives,
which was... In the founders' eyes, the only
popular vote part of the American government
was the popular vote. And then you had the way
the president gets elected through electors,
but you had the state senate, which was appointed
by the states. So the legislatures, and I'll
use North Dakota where I'm from, you'll have
two big cities, Fargo and Grand Forks, North
Dakota. It's where the universities are. It's
where your crazy kids are. Crazy thought exists.
hyper crazy ideas, but some of them are useful.
The rest of the state's agriculture, right? So
all of those legislators from all of those counties
or those legislative districts would get together
and say, we're going to put Bill Thompson, that
would never happen, but in charge of, he's going
to be at the Senate representing North Dakota,
but he has to represent the whole state. In other
words, you can't do things that will help Grand
Forks or Fargo because that's where the universities
are. That's where all the crazy politics are.
You also need to be thinking about the guys out
in the western counties, Lemoore County in North
Dakota or way out west. You have to protect agriculture.
You have to protect small businesses. You have
to protect families. What the 17th Amendment
under Wendell Wilson and how they really usurped
the Constitution and made the Senate a redundant.
They made it a redundant House of Representatives
and using the popular vote. So now we use popular
vote for that. But if you want the popular vote
in North Dakota, 85 percent of the population
is in Fargo and Grand Forks. So now you've got
if I want to run for Senate in North Dakota,
I'm just going to spend all of my time in Fargo
and Grand Forks. Because if I can repeat back
to those people all the ideas that they want
to hear. I'm going to win that vote and I don't
have to represent those people out in the rest
of the state in anything. Right. So they created
a redundant house of representatives. But another
reason why it happened was they wanted popular
vote because there is no amount of money that
you could stick into a legislature out in the
western part of North Dakota. You can't bribe
these people. But the DNC and RNC now can say,
look, these two senators are running. We like
this guy. So we're going to this guy will do
whatever we tell him to do. And it has nothing
to do with the state or representing the state's
rights or the rest of those legislative districts.
We're going to pick this senator and he's getting
$300 million for his election bid. And this other
guy, he's a slower moving constitutional conservative
who might be a free market absolutist and a classical
liberal. He's not being funded. But under the
state architecture. You might have been a better
representation of the state, and that's why the
legislators had to vote for you to put you in
as a senator. You had to represent the whole
state. But now, all that someone who wants to
be a senator needs to do is go to the Republican
National Committee or the Democrat National Committee
and say, I'll do all the things you tell me to
do, fund my campaign, and I'm going to go stump
in Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota, and the
hell with the rest of the state. It's very important.
There's a very important sleight of hand. And
when that happened, you made a redundant House
of Representatives and the state no longer was
protected at the federal level. And what happened
was all of the power. from all of these states
and these legislatures and these individuals
got sucked up into the federal government. And
then after that, you see all of these things
that would never have been passed by a state
getting passed. Things like Obamacare, things
like the Patriot Act, certain war resolutions,
all kinds of things where it just further erodes
the power of the state. And federal government
wants that because it puts all of the power up
in the federal government. And people always
say we need to get money out of politics. No,
we need to get power out of politics. That power.
they've taken you know over the last 130 years
or so used to exist at the state and local levels
because they wanted these thought experiments
happening where we could pluck the best things
out of them and forget the rest but all that
power has now gone up to the federal government
and the federal government won't ever release
that power and they only want more budget and
more spending to execute that power. And that's
also because the interest groups that want to
go, they don't want to have to go and convince
a whole state of whether or not something is
good that people are going to vote on. They just
want to go take a lobby and go up to the federal
government because they want all of the power
up there as well. And the federal government
wants all the power up there as well because
they make $300 ,000 a year before they become
a politician. And they're worth $30 million when
they're done being a politician because all of
the money has to go to the federal government
because they're - in charge of light bulbs we
can use, computers we can use, flush toilets
we can have, how our roads are going to look,
what our medical care looks like. None of those
powers are explicitly written in the Constitution
of the United States, and they use things like
the Commerce Law and other things in order to
create things like Obamacare, where really we
want competing states. Texas comes up with a
great way to do health care and North Dakota's
isn't so great. They can look at that experiment.
They can adopt the principles and they can have
it at that level. But it's much easier to get
change at the local level when the power is derived
from the state and the individual. Because if
I want to change the way that my state does health
care, I have one of two options or three options.
I can run for office. I can support someone who
is going to go into office and do what I want
or I can move. But when everything's centralized
at the federal government and everything flows
from the federal government, all of the money,
power and gravity is up there. And the individual,
the 300 million of us or so, have really no power
now. to exercise either states' rights or individual
rights at the higher level. I hope I'm elucidating
this correctly, but it's a real usurpation of
individual and state autonomy that really got
rid of state power, which was, if you read the
federalist papers, was so important to the founders
that there was this state, that the state's needs
were organized because the state was where the
founders wanted these thoughts. You read Thomas
Hobbes, Leviathan or John Locke or Montesquieu.
All of them talked about this great experiment
that was being set up and how it was built on
all of this Western politics and everything that
had came before it on how we could have a government
that was forced to respect the rights of individuals
and allowed for these competing think tanks of
ideas and that the power would never rest at
the federal government. But the 17th Amendment.
was a way that a lot of that power went from
the state level and the state legislatures. And
now to become the president, they want to do
a popular vote. And under a popular vote, you
would just have to campaign in New York and LA.
You would get the popular vote out of the likely
voting people. And now the rest of the country
is not. And that would be another, you hear all
these people saying, we need a popular vote.
We can't have the electoral college. We can't
have. All of these things, everything needs to
be pure. Pure democracy allows 51 percent to
rule 49 percent. And that was another thing the
founders were working fervently to. get away
from and that's why we had an electoral college
and it's actually quite beautiful when you actually
read about it and examine it it's why we had
the state senate and state legislatures and this
is why we had the house you had all levels of
the things of government that the founders cared
about being represented in this body politic
and it was a beautiful thing and i could go on
for 15 more things about that i won't do it for
the sake of your listeners because i'm I doubt
this is what they wanted to do, but similar things
happened with the Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison,
and allowing the Supreme Court to have judicial
review. That was never a thing that was in the
Constitution in the Supreme Court. If you like
the Supreme Court, being able to have the power
to describe everything as being either constitutional
or unconstitutional, then you're not ruled by
a democracy. You're ruled by an oligarchy. You've
got eight people in robes that are going to tell
you whether or not laws are good or bad. And
that's not the founding of this country. It's
not how it was intended to work. And that all
started back in Marbury v. Madison with Thomas
Jefferson and these writs of mandamus that were
the Supreme Court, long story short, essentially
granted itself the power to conduct judicial
review under the old system or the old system.
The system that was ratified and that the founders
approved was if a law was deemed unconstitutional.
it would go before the Supreme Court and they
would rule in favor of the person. And then eventually
the government would figure out, oh, this law
doesn't work. But it was never on the Supreme
Court to say constitutional, unconstitutional.
You would get arrested for some law and it would
get appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme
Court would say, we're not punishing this person.
This is against the Constitution. But the government
would have to keep arresting people. They'd have
to keep going in front of the federal government.
So what I'm saying is, and I'm sorry to go off
on this, we can go back to tech, but all I'm
saying is, the core of the American experiment
in individual rights and what makes this country
so great and why I was willing to die for it
after my initial enlistment and why I have such
love for this is because it was the only experiment
where the value of the individual was held at
the top of the hierarchy and that people could
truly be allowed to flourish. And in 250 years,
we did more than any society could have hoped
to have achieved in tens of thousands of years.
Not that it's been around that long, but in thousands
of years. Everything tends towards... and everything,
power always gets centralized. And we had a framework
to do that, but we were willing participants
in our own demise. And now we're scratching our
heads and wondering why there's no individual
and why there's no individual autonomy. Why a
guy can't smoke weed on the weekend or why a
guy can't do X, Y, or Z because we have centralized
the authority and the power and the decision
-making structure. And we're allowing them to
be, there would be no problem with money in politics
if the federal government had only the powers
that were outlined to it in the constitution.
I think that's very well said, and I could have
never said it the way you said it. I think there's
a lot to absorb here. I'm sorry. No, no, it was
great, dude. It was great. This is one of the
things that I love about you. You're very thorough.
Yeah, thorough is one thing. My friends always
say Bill's tism is starting to show. You got
a touch of the tism, but I think that's good.
Like I said, just like ADHD, I think it's a superpower.
A lot to absorb. I think we'll wrap it up right
here. But thank you. This was an awesome conversation.
I really appreciate it. It was really great.
Yeah. We could do this again, too. I'm sure we
could probably have 30 or 40 of these. We didn't
even get to AI. I wanted to get to AI because
I think I have a very anti -pattern to AI and
how you understand it. But if you want, we can
save that for another time. Yeah, we'll do that
for our next one because I think that's another
four hours. Yeah, probably. Yeah, for sure. And
by then, who knows where it's going to be. Jensen
Huang from NVIDIA. recently declared that we've
reached agr yeah so i would i would yeah i could
yeah i just couldn't disagree more and i think
i could in the same way i just elucidate you're
not the only one there's quite a few people yeah
yeah i mean it's consciousness projection and
i'll sum it up in a minute at the end of the
day um neural networks are mathematical functions
they rest in you know weighting neurons based
on training data and applying power to train
models it's all mathematic There's no sense of
knowing there in that, you know, Penrose, I've
read a lot of on his or if people want to read
about that, I won't explain it. Or orchestrated
objective reduction and how the mind works in
these fleets of consciousness that we have, these
shimmers of consciousness that we have based
around what he describes in the microtubule.
We get conscious thought. And that conscious
thought we project into things. AI is very good
conscious projection, but it will never have
consciousness or knowing because it has no system
of values. And if we were to instill values in
it, it would still be consciousness projection.
You saw my dad's cabin. My dad died when I was
five, but I bought it back and was working on
it. And inside of his cabin, I got to learn a
lot about my father by working on the cabin that
he built. He would measure things and cut things
right on walls and that type of stuff. That's
all consciousness projection that allowed me
to get to know him away. I might not have even
known him if he were alive, but I got to re -experience
and understand my father and his thoroughness
through that cabin. AI is consciousness projection.
It's projected consciousness. It's getting very
good, but on a calculator, you could get the
same thing that you get out of a neural network
if you had sufficient time. I could present you
a question just like you did on propensity. I
could sit here with a rule book, and I could
type in a calculator. It might take me a million
years, but I could do it and I could give you
the same answer that a neural network would give
you. That doesn't mean consciousness or knowing
or AGI is present. It relies on its training
data. It can only give you what the training
data gives it. It needs human consciousness projection
like we talked about with the CAPTCHAs or we
talked about with uploading photos to Google
Drive. It needs that training data. And to me,
it's just really fancy, clever math. And having
trained these networks for a dozen years now
and working with them, they're just really clever
consciousness projection. And so, yeah, that
is four hours and we can do that next time. We'll
do that next time. Definitely. But if people,
you mentioned the app. By the time we do it next
time, who knows what the fuck is going to be
going on with AI too. But if people want to learn
more about me or my company, if I can say that.
Yeah, please. It's spartanforge .ai. We're built
under the rubric of individual freedom. I want
people. outdoors. I want people hunting. I want
people experiencing nature. I want people providing
for their families. The best part of my day is
when my kids are eating a backstrap of an animal
that I took. And I want to enable people to go
out and do that. Even though it's paradoxical
through an app, you can get lost. You've got
to conserve time. You've got to e -scout. You've
got to learn things before you go out there.
So we built this company under that. It's one
of my... I've got three other companies that
I'm doing, but Spartan Forge is the one that
I'm working on. It's an awesome app. Well, I
really appreciate that. We've put a lot of work
into it, and we've got a lot more coming over
the summer. So if people want to support us or
want to get out there and get some hunting done,
please check it out. And I answer all the Instagram
DMs, so if you have a question for me. Good luck
with that now. Well, I try to. I spend about
two hours every morning doing it. Good luck.
Thank you, Joe, for having me. Thanks, brother.
Appreciate you very much. Yeah, I dig that. All
right, you too. Bye, everybody.