Welcome to bid rats before the Navy Middle Blogs, Communities, top bloggers,
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have missed before. That's the best way to do it. And hey,
let's go ahead and roll in today's show. Y'all may have noticed something a
little different at the beginning of the show, because that was actually our first
intro that we updated since then. Yes, we've been at this thirteen years,
but we have only recorded two intros and I wanted to put our first
intro out there because we've got a returning guest today that was with us from
the start, and actually we can assign either credit or blame to him for
mid Rats being with us. But today we're going to have with us author,
historian, teacher, and all around good friend Claude Barrabay, and we're
going to talk about the third novel in the Connorstark series. It just came
out titled The Philippine Packed, and you can find links to it on the
show page. Another Philippine Packed, we see the returning to some of your
favorite characters from the first two books in the series, The Aid and Effect
Sirens Song. He brings some new players onto the stage as well, and
as always of Claude's novels, they may be fiction, but they bring stuff
to the front, usually a little bit ahead of the news. So Claude,
welcome back to Rats is glad to have you on board. I'm glad
to be back. Thanks so much for having me, and I guess probably
the easiest way to kick things off is double listeners a bit. What is
the Philippine Pact about? The Philippine Pact is about a potential conflict in the
South China Sea and Chinese influence on the region with a specific target. What
we find at the beginning of this novel is CONNERSH. Stark, the former
naval officer turned mercenary or private security officer if you will, has his company
working with the Philippine government on the island of Balabac, which is the southernmost
island in the Philippine Islands, very small island, and during this exercise he
finds that things are taking on a very real aspect contrary to what they had
planned for. And so we find Connor with the private security folks on the
island. The two subplots to this will find the characters that we've we've seen
before. Damien Gozari is now a former Diplomatic Security Service agent and he is
in Paris investigating a human trafficking organization, and mostly at Camp David, we
find the National New National Security Advisor, Ambassador C. J. Sumner,
who we saw as one of the primary figures in the Aid and Effect and
we saw her briefly at the end of Sirensong, and she's advising the President
on how to deal with this growing crisis in the Philippines as a as a
government is about to be brought down, as a cyber attack is launched,
and as more diplomatic difficulties emerge, and strangely enough, you know you said
that sometimes these things reflect reality. And what I didn't expect when I was
writing this about a year and a half ago, when I selected Ballaback Island
and the Philippines. Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw in the
news that there were US military exercises with the Philippine government and one of the
four sites was Balla Back Island, and be frank, I didn't I really
didn't know that there was any kind of military presence on Balla Back. But
it's it's always good to see some of these names in the news and to
really tell the tale of what's going on in the high Seas, particularly with
China's growing role in the world, and how Connor Stark's company tends to find
itself in the middle of some of these small wars. Yeah, you've you've
in all three books, you've you've put the locations on major sea lines of
communication. And I assumed, I assumed that was intentional. And you've you've
carefully selected Aiden and UH, Sri Lanka and UH and the Philippines. I
talk a little bit about that. What what what when you're when when you're
sitting down you say, I've got this a series of books in mind.
I assume you had the series in mind to beginning, didn't you know?
Do you lay out this is what these are important issues, this is why
this area is important. And I'm going to base my books on that because
everybody needs to know that this these are potentially troubled waters. Absolutely right.
And I would go back to a few years ago when when the Music Naval
Cabin Museum held its first Navy Con and over the years, you guys have
both been involved with those and my intent for a Navy con was to expose
UH Navy operations that the United States does every day, issues that we deal
with every day to a much broader audience, namely the science fiction community who
actually understand naval operations, but only in terms of the you know, whether
it's the Honor Harrington series by David Weber, the Star Trek or Star Wars
series, Babylon five, etc. I just wanted to take those navy stories
and educate and inform a broader public with Navy count The same is true for
these books. Not a lot of them take place simply on land, and
if they do, it's mostly islands or island nations. And that's exactly what
I do. Eagle one is when I have an idea for a book,
I'll take a look at a general region and the criteria I use number one
it's there's got to be a geographical interest for the United States, so that
we can inform people about why is this particular region important. So that's why
the first one took place with the Gulf Aaden, and I wrote it,
you know, as Somali piracy was real expanding, and it came out the
year that I think it reached its height. And then the next thing I
do is I look more broadly at the region. Okay, which countries do
I really want to learn about? Which ones have a real impact on this,
So that's why I chose Yemen in that case. And then obviously Sri
Lanka very important in terms of maritime operations because you had the Tamil Sea Tigers,
the terrorist organization and probably one of the best efforts to develop a maritime
terrorist organization in the past thirty or forty years, and that's why I selected
that one. In this case, I still wanted to deal with China.
I wanted to deal with it closer to home, and I had to look
at the major routes. Did I really want to do something on something in
the waterways right between Taiwan and China or something a little off the beaten track,
And that's why I chose the Philippines because it has so many islands,
so many opportunities, such a rich history, such a history with with domestic
terrorism from international terrorism, from switching back and forth on who they alli with,
and to show the criticality of that nation in terms of geopolitics. So
that's why I chose this one. And you're right, the other books that
like I'm working on run right now U and the others will also have a
very heavy maritime component. And it's you know, when I write the novels,
part of it is I want to entertain. Like when I go,
you know, on in the summer to vacation, or go on a plane
or go on a ship, I want to read a book to be entertained.
But you can use that those novels to educate, uh and inform in
a broader way and to get people to think, Okay, well, yeah,
this is fiction. However, why why is this area so important?
Why are large scale exercises so important? Why is the decision making or the
personnel who are involved in some of these operations so critical? What if you
have the wrong person in charge? And what if you have the right person
in charge? So, especially with the Aid and Effect, I really wanted
to study two things beyond the geopolitics. I wanted to study how individuals who
are different behave to the same issues or challenges. So you had so I
came up with these three characters, Stark, Golzari, and Sumners. So
Stark is the guy who is believes an injustice over the law. Think of
it in terms of what I wrote on the very first page of The Aid
Effect was a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. In letter from a Birmingham
jail, and that is everything Hitler did was legal. Everything the Hungarian resistance
did was illegal. In this case, Connor Stark is the Garyan resistance.
In many cases, the second character represents law and order. That's Scholzari,
the diplomatic Security Service agent. And the third one Ambassador Sumner, who is
the diplomat who believes in soft power humanitarian operations to support allies and partners.
But what you start to see through this series is how each of them changes
in each of the books and almost becomes opposite of what they originally were envisioned.
As you know, you're going through some of the recurring characters there,
and when you look at you know those are the primary characters. You also
ask some secondary characters to show up again. But when you look at Connor
Stark's company, Highland Maritime Descent, in a lot of ways, it's a
land of misfit toys. And the fact that and also some of the related
characters as well, that these are not people that if you lined up all
their their fit reps or their official records would be seen as success. But
in you're a historian by training, so you know this better. Than I
do. But it's usually those types of misfit toys in history that either are
able to do things, are to see things in a certain way that really
can create an impact when you look at those characters the outlined where there's some
actual individuals from history that people can see echoes of our flavors of in your
characters. Not necessarily in history all the time, but some of them are
based not on real characters, but on real events that I saw. And
yeah, there are some misfit toys. There are guys like Jay Warren,
the crazy engineer from the Upper Peninsula, who is he He's the CUE of
Highland Maritime Defense, who's always coming up with these ideas, but had been
kicked out of as being a civilian in the Navy because you know, he
was doing catnip. But there are other characters who were essentially either drummed out
of the Navy or left the Navy who were really qualified. I think of
the junior officer Bobby Fisk that we see as an ensign on the Nubie insign
on the USS Bennington, and we see Jamie Johnson starts cousin and she is
Naval Academy grad commands a Navy destroyer, but they leave because of a toxic
leadership. And in the character of Admiral Rossberg, we see him first as
the unnamed commanding officer of USS Bennington and Aid in effect. We see him
as an admiral, a rear admiral in Sirensong, and we see him again
yes, in Philippine Pack. He initially was based sort of on a one
commanding officer I had twice, but not in a bad way. They're one
of the finest naval officers and finest individuals I've ever known. Guy by the
name of Darryl Hancock retired as a captain, And basically I took all the
good qualities of Daryl Hancock and I simply inverted them and created the character of
Admiral Rossberg. And then later I realized that admir Rossberg was getting to be
very similar to an actual CEO I had in the in the Navy Reserve.
So he's sort of a congomoration of all of these characteristics. So his summer
named from history, I mean Connor Stark why people asked me sometimes, well,
you know, it's not very original. I mean, you've got Tony
Stark from Marvel, Marvel comic, and you've got all these things. I
said, yeah, But this was in nineteen eighty eight that I first envisioned
having a not being doing a novel. And at that time I was writing
my senior thesis on General John Stark of the American Revolution. I was up,
I was in college up in New Hampshire, and so I said,
you know what I'm gonna have when I write a novel. It's going to
be the descendant of General John Stark. And on the other side we see
a Russian mercenary, and we see a lot about Russian mercenaries today in Ukraine,
and one of the Russian there's a Russian mercenary in this novel that we
see briefly in Sirensong, and now he's taken a more prominent role. His
last name is his Makaroff, and he's I don't think I actually say this
in the book, but I had envisioned him sort of as an alternate to
start where he's now the descendant of Admiral Stepon Makaroff of the Russo Japanese War.
So I really try to mix in history, but a lot of what
I observe in characters, and just a final thought on that, I the
characters Stark, Glzari, and Sumner, this triad, especially in the first
book and now in the second book. I was very heavily influenced by a
particular writer in the eighties and nineties and early two thousands before he passed,
and wanted to reflect and honor that as well. And then the final there's
a very brief introduction of the Filipino president, And as I was writing it,
all I could imagine and envision was the president from the expanse. So
every time I wrote one of her few lines, I had her in mind
and what that would sound like. Well, I would like to clarify that
I was even though I was in the reserves, I was never your commanding
officer. So, Admiral Rosberry, there's not I don't reflect any aspect of
him, but I must admit that there have been quite a few CEO in
my career that reminded me very much him, And you know that. I
think one of the things you point out with him is it he's he's he's
where he is because he's a political He's a benefit of a political system,
and it you know, do you as you write these things. Then another
one of those things, the points you're making that there's a danger in the
politicization of our of our senior leadership in the military. Uh, So I
want to be really careful again the views expressed my own and that those of
the United States Navy or Enaval Academy. Uh. That being said, prior
to working at the Naval Academy, I did work for two US senators and
I did see a lot of interesting political maneuverings, uh, and how people
would answer or how people would prepare testimony, and a lot of other considerations.
So yeah, that's uh. Again, you're spot on with that that,
uh, would something happen like this potentially? I mean, I'm right
now, I'm working on I'm just finishing a book about Admiral Rickover. I've
been working on this for a while. And you know, Rickover was passed
over for captain, sorry, he was passed over for rear admiral. And
it wasn't until Congressman Said Yates of Chicago and a number of other members of
Congress really pushed the effort. That's why he became an admiral, That's why
he got his second star, why he got his third star while he got
his fourth star. There were a lot of politics with Rickover's rise through the
flag ranks. I'm not saying that's bad in that case. I mean,
look what the result was. We had the father of the nuclear Navy.
But these things do happen, and I don't think we should we should ignore
it, ignore realities. You mentioned the fact and most of the listeners amid
rats. No. I mean, you've taught at the Naval Academy for for
a while, and you're a historian by training, and you've written both fiction
and nonfiction books, and as you outlined earlier when you're talking through you know
how you kind of built the bones of the plot line of the book that
requires imagination looking at human interactions, you know, like a couple of couple
of friends of mine's kids going through the academy and I think I must say,
hey, you needed to sign up for doctor Brube's class. And but
they're all in stem majors, and the Naval Academy it does specialize a lot
in producing stem majors. But there's something about not so much history, but
the creative writing process, especially in the venues such as yours, that is
in the national security segment of the book writing area. You have to take
facts in reality. Physics has to imply, unlike science fiction where you can't
have these great well, we're just going to go warp factor ten, so
we can go real fast in books such as Yours, water is wet,
displacement matters, electrons or electrons to debate the laws of physics. People are
people, and you have certain personality types that throughout history show up. But
it requires the writer to think, to be imaginative. And when you look
at a lot of the challenges that we've had in the national security arena,
it's been I mean, people say it all the time. We never expected
that it was a failure of imagination. Nobody briefed this as a possible course
of action. So in the background there's a hint that one of the things
the Imperial we don't do too well is to have an imagination and to think.
And when you look at your students that are in your class, as
we have all these physics and chemistry and engineering requirements that we have that we
think is what we need to, you know, get our minds around to
be leaders in the Navy. As a writer, and somebody who's had to
force themselves to go through the fiction writing process and that intellectual effort. Do
you see a window where creative writing classes are you know, short story there's
quite a few contests out there for short story writers. Is that a process
you see that can activate certain parts of the brain than in a nineteen twenty
twenty one year old shipman might be good to have exercise for when they're twenty
eight, thirty eight or forty eight. Absolutely. In fact, the first
thing that I thought of was some of the incredible English professors we have,
especially the poetry professors, who really do creative projects with their midshipman, the
same as with a former professor now that I worked with on recreating a Roman
Carthaginian naval battle, a Battle of Dropana, where we wanted to teach midshipman
about galley warfare, and instead of reading and writing about it, we got
thirty kayaks of different colors from the fiz Ed Department and held the battle on
the Severn River right off the Naval Academy. But prior to that, the
professor had them do orations Roman orations to figure out who was going to be
the admiral of the Carthaginian Fleet and the Roman fleet, and the best orators
then were selected by their people, and it was to show the importance that
absolutely we need STEM majors. We need those math and science people too,
and the engineers, but we also need people who can aulate why we where
we need to go, why we need to go somewhere, how we need
to get there, who can sort of bridge that gap. So absolutely,
and we do have a lot of English and poly Sign majors. In fact,
I think every I think every helopilot on my ship was a poly sign
major. If I'm not mistaken, Um, I'm pretty I'm pretty sure.
Um. But right, I mean, writing is so an integral to what
they're going to be doing in their careers. They I just don't think they
understand it yet. So that's why I, Charlotte'm a fit rep like you
have. You have this amount of space to write a good fit rep.
How do you do it? What words do you use? Um? And
the I think a bigger challenge quite frankly as reading. You've we've got we've
not got a generation. And this is not on the on the academy,
since I think this could be of anybody. Uh, You've got a generation
of TikTok folks who have short attention spans, who can't sit down for twenty
or thirty minutes to read ten or twenty pages of a book, and that's
that could be problematic. It's great to be able to have ideas, but
where do you get the ideas from if you're not learning from the past.
And I think Mattis was a general Mattis was a perfect example of that.
He says, look, you're not always going to be in a war,
so you better read about war to see at least get a sense of what
it's like. So absolutely, I mean, I think that the broad range
of courses that they take at the academy is absolutely fantastic. But they just
need to read more. And I found that that's been far more difficult as
I've seen them progress in the past eighteen years. Eighteen years ago, they
might have read a little bit more than they do now. But a lot
of Americans don't read books anymore. I think it's the last figure I saw
was fifty percent haven't read a book in a long time. And that's that's
a problem. That is a problem because well, you have to the background
to understand what's going on, and that they're not reading about it, then
they're just getting there where they're getting their information. One of the things I
really like about your books, and I think maybe you've done this to give
yourself some flexibility. But you, you and I have long talked about private
maritime companies, uh, private private military agencies whatever, And of course we
never talked about the Russian folks. But the the uh, the freedom you've
given Connor Stark in this is he started his own PMC and he uh and
then he's he's able to do things like become a privateer and says or he
gets a letter of mark from the from the Sri Lankan government. Uh was
was your thinking just so he could freem up? And it gives him excuse
to have used the uh the sea hunter uh shift and all that is is
that's where you went with us. Yeah, I uh, I wanted to
see this sort of like the A team goes to see. Initially it wasn't.
It was only something that was that was envisioned in the background for the
first book. And I should say aid and Effect was was not the first
book. It was the first book that was published, but twenty five years
ago, I actually wrote a Conner Stark novel that takes place in Canada and
the and Washington DC that that's actually the prequel, and I'm gonna be rewriting
that as as one of the follow ons as as a prequel, but definitely
Sri Lanka. And in this case where they're where they're fighting with the private
security company, is fighting with the the Filipino Navy partners that they have against
against the bad guys, it absolutely gives me a lot of flexibility. In
fact, several years ago, uh gosh, I guess it was like seven
or eight years ago, there was a producer screenwriter who was really interested in
in pitching this as a series as well as a separate Damien Gozari TV series,
and you know, worked with them for about a year along with another
screenwriter, and they pitched it to Hollywood and it came down to two series
and at that time they said, you know what, it would just cost
too much to turn this into a series as as much as we like it.
So it's one of those almost but again it showed because I had to
do a treatment of ten episodes just to show the viability of a series and
so I came up with, you know, two or three paragraph storylines for
ten episodes, and in each case there is flexibility. And there's always something
going on around the world. Pick up the newspaper, pick up the economists,
and there's something going on in the high seas. I mean, there's
a there was just an incident with a forty fourth task Escort group of the
Chinese Navy was just got deployed I think two or three weeks ago, and
you know, they had a Chinese trawler in the middle of the ocean,
thirty nine people and the Indian government is trying to work on rescues. So
you can really develop something out of that. But I also think that the
fact that we've got now forty four Chinese task forces that have gone to the
Horn of Africa, who have built up all this experience is part of what
I talk about and evolve in the in the in the books. I think
we've we've talked about this before on a on a separate topic. If not,
I'll surprise you with it now. But um, we're roughly the same
age. So one of the things is I was reading the Philippine Pact that
came to mind was m yet Claude sees it too, and I know for
a fiction writer networks in relationships, um they helped move things along. But
the older, the older I get, and it's really clicked for me in
my mid thirties is the importance of personal networks, you know, like RM
said, the perfect circle of acquaintances and friends and one thing that keeps the
action moving on a really a global scale, which in today's communication item environment,
it's quite easy. I've seen it with my youngest daughter who will be
up on a zoom call with friends that she's made in Burma or Myanmar,
depending on who you are, Austria, Australia, England, Germany, herself
up in Canada, and they're all talking in real time. But your characters
have developed a network that can leave them from backwater bars all the way up
into the White House, and you spend a lot of time in DC.
I know you've seen similar networks. If you ever had an opportunity to talk
with some of your midship and who might be interested in the work you do,
to talk about not just uh the art and effort of being a writer,
but how network such exists. They do exist in a personal and professional
environment. It's not just the plot device. Yeah. And by the way,
I have to apologize. My dog is just going crazy and it's in
the way the house is. You're going to hear them, and I apologize
to your listeners. Um. Yeah. I actually do tell my students how
important it is to network. And I think back on my own career,
and you know, first coming to Washington, d C. In nineteen ninety
one, and some of the people that you know, I started off with
are now in very senior positions, especially in the Biden administration. Because this
was a I was working for a Democratic senator at the time. And but
you spend enough decades in a particular region and or overseas. I mean,
I can think of it was kind of funny that I think it was.
I met him my second on my second for a senator, and I was
flown off my ship to the Milius and the Milius pulled in got me to
Djibouti and then I had to take a sea one thirty from Jibooty to Bahrain.
Well by the time I arrived in Bahrain, it's about midnight, and
I you know, my mind is mush. I had to I had to
be flown home on an emergency leave. My mother had just passed, and
I'm coming off the C one thirty and who do I see but this guy
shoe Bob carry And I was just like, shoe Bob, what are you
doing here in Bahrain? He goes, well, I was just about to
go home for the night and I was looking at the names of people who
were coming through. I saw your name and I wanted to come by,
say hi and see if you need anything. And you know, if you
wrote that in a novel, it would be seen as as disingenuous or unrealistic.
But these things happen all the time. I'm sure you guys saw this
as well, that somebody you meet in d C or back home you run
into again. And yeah, I do want that reflected in the novels.
I think it is. And networks are so important to Connor start the friendships
he's developed, and sometimes even some of the enemies with regard to the nefarius
mister who isn't who's in charge of a Chinese company that will follow you your
whole life? And you're You're absolutely right. Networks are incredibly important, and
I also tell them my midst this is that you know, whatever they do
at the academy will follow them positively or negatively throughout their careers because people will
always remember that. It may not be the same if you if you're an
ROTC or if you you know, you were a DIRKM reservist like me,
but when you spend four years in a very tight environment, Uh, those
people are going to know you and do something bad, They're going to remember
it twice as much. Well, that's a that's an interesting problem. One
of the things that you you know, we've kind of hit on this before,
but you get you get a a screamer for a CEO or a CEO
who's bad for some reason, and you get these, you know, a
negative fitness report, and the way the Navy works says you're well aware of
that that that will haunt you for a long time and may even permanently haunt
you. Um. And yet the Connor Stark offers up an alternative to two
people who got trashed by the admiral. Uh, is there a way just
this is kind of a side question, but is there is there a way
around a system that the tars people so early potentially so early in their careers
not because they did a bad job, just because they had a bad boss.
Yeah, and I've seen this. I've known officers who have left.
I mean, I knew one former student of mine who just incredible. She
was one of the best I've ever taught. And I couldn't believe when she
left, having just made lieutenant commander. I was just kind of gobsmacked.
And I talked her about it, and she said, you know, I've
had some great assignments, but this last one on the ship with this CEO
was just so bad that I just said, forget about it, and I'm
not going to the reserves. I'm not doing anything. Could these people come
back? I would love to see some sort of program, But it's really
tough once you have that tarnished relationship with a larger organization to bring them back
into that same organization, because you never know that that commander or just right,
who was a captain at the sorry commander at the time, might now
be an admiral. And no, you're telling that young officer, yeah,
we want you back, but we've also promoted somebody who's you know, a
screamer or whatever. You know. I I've told people that I've known,
I said Look, if if the active duty community isn't for you, then
at least stick it out in the reserves and what you can do. There
are opportunities to go back when you want under certain conditions, either at sea
or overseas, and it's a great opportunity and you can still bring your skill
set. But more and more I'm seeing just a lot of people leave.
There's a large percentage of people who leave after their first first tour or so.
And it's I feel bad because I see all the potential we are losing
in our Navy from these incredible, incredible junior officers that I've known since they
were pleads and who on whom I've I've had high hopes. Uh, you
know, a lot of them I selected for when I was on active duty
of the Academy. You know, some of them I selected for the Intel
program, had incredibly high hopes, and now they're out because it for whatever
reasons. And that that's one of the things that bothers me with with regard
to great power competition, and is that and I wanted that reflected, especially
in this large scale exercise you see in the in the Philippine pack. How
many of those officers in that briefing room. After seeing Admiral Rossberg do what
he does, how many of them are going to stay in And I do
want people to think about that when they read the book. That's not only
there, it's not some sort of gratuitous scene. It's to make people think
about what are the consequences of those particular actions on our general capability as a
navy if we're losing really qualified people like some of the junior officers you see
in that in that oh, that briefing room. Yeah. A phrase I've
used talking to a few people is incentives and disincentives do people have? And
motivators and demotivators. And it's not an insignificant problem like like you've seen um
and I continue see. I just had two individuals, classic cases that I've
seen in the last year, who know, no organization is perfect, but
you spend you know, a dozen to fifteen years in the Navy and inexplicitly
you're put on an off ramp with no recovery. It can really impact people
and how they not just view the Navy. But what's really tragic, especially
if it's a byproduct of a toxic personality, is how they view themselves.
And you know, one of the sounds cynical, but I think is actually
healthy for for people's mental health is you never forget that you may love the
Navy, but the Navy probably doesn't love you all that much, and it
can really you know, one of the individual I just talked with again a
few months ago really took it harder. But there are options and ways that
people can can turn the corner. And I like what you said about the
Naval Reserve. I've seen quite a few people who for whatever reason, they
they they hit, hit a hole, or fell into a swamp on active
duty, but they took their skills in their background into the reserves. And
in fact, one of the individuals actually retired as a flag officer in the
reserves. I remember him as a lieutenant. He had a list of pros
and cons of staying in the Navy or getting out of the Navy, and
he had nothing on get on staying in the Navy, but you a lot
of working out just five for him in the reserves. M great guy.
I never never busted him in public once he made flag officer, but we
all have stories speaking of stories, as a guy who on my Twitter profile
if people ever go there. I identify as my home as being a Navesa
island, which those who have spent time in the Caribbean know where that is.
I'm also a big fan of Jan Mayan. But in in your novel
Quad, you seem to have a similar predilegion that I have. There's a
soft spot in your heart for isolated and weird islands. For instance, in
the Eighting Effect we had the Culture and here we have Ballaback Island. As
as a ride er is there besides the fact it's just fun to talk about
something nobody else talks about. Is there something about these relatively unknown geographical areas
that happen to be in some of the most well known and important parts of
the world that kind of draws you to you to to help wrap a story
around. Sure, I think it's a mystery, you know. I've I've
been very fortunate to be to go to a lot of places around the world,
but there are a lot of places I haven't been. I did actually
sail past Scocha Island, so Culture Island in two thousand and five, and
it's this appeal to mystery. I want to unravel the mystery of a place
and I want to learn about it. And in the case of Socotra Island,
I was going back through really ancient texts and some of the first mentions
and seeing one of the apostles may have gone through through uh Socotra Island.
But more importantly it's because they really lend the opportunity for me to use the
private security company ships in a way that I couldn't if this was a story,
you know, based in Mongolia. There's there's just the reality of the
ocean. But there are a lot of islands. I have to really pick
the islands that are near these either strategic choke points or these major trade routes
that could be that could well be disrupted if if something happens there and it
gives me a chance to learn about it. And Socotra Island is still one
of those places I would love to visit if if the opportunity came about,
because it's known as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean has some of the most
unique floora and faun in the world. But even Balaback Islands. As I
started researching it and looking at the options of the Philippine Islands, I was
going to use there were unique things to that as well, and so yeah,
I'm I'm very much drawn to these islands. There was one case where
I almost use used an island that I went to and flew over off the
west coast of Sumatra, Similou Island, which was very close to the epicenter
of the two thousand and four tsunami. We were flying over in a sixty
Bravo and that really appealed to me. And I figure, if if I'm
going to write about something, I might as well write about something that appeals
to me that I want to unravel the mystery and I want to take the
time to research and tell and incorporate into the storyline over eagle on you there.
Yes, but I pushed the wrong button. So when you when you
push muting and talking doesn't nothing, nothing happened. It's a right. A
lot of people push mute when I start talking. The uh my dog was
barking, okay, let's see um A lot of a couple of years ago,
I was reading some articles on people who were suggesting that one way to
help handle China is to go to private teering route again. And I started
that that struck me that when I was reading your books that somebody's been thinking
Connor Stark style, and what do you think is mister Start going to get
involved in in privateering activity other than the letter of market I had from Sri
Lankros is going to be a thing of the future. I think doing a
letter of mark for Sri Lanka in the case of the second book is a
different case because it's an isolated, relatively isolated region and one in which you're
not going to have the entire Chinese government coming down on you. I mean,
I imagine that if there were privateers being used against China, China would
would deal with them in the same way they deal with the wagers. There
would be a mass approach to it, and you know, kind of a
take no prisoners. I don't know how effective privateers would be, and we're
talking a very different era when you know, when you're looking at letters of
mark of the age of sail, they could be effective because the ships that
the merchants had were more or less and I know there are differences I teach
naval history, but more or less they are very similar. The weapons used
aboard a privateer would be very similar to those you might find on a small
warship, a sloop or a schooner. In today's case, what is what
is a privateer going to use? Are they going to use a slow freighter?
Probably not, those are just a target. Are they going to use
a super high speed uh, you know, super Bazos level cruise ship or
or excuse me, a personal yacht where you wouldn't be able to mount very
many weapons or have access to them. Quite frankly, so, I don't
think that there's a realistic use of that, unless you were talking about trying
to somehow take over or sink or do whatever to Chinese merchant ships. And
again I I just don't see that as a realistic endeavor to the level that
you would need you would given the size of the Chinese merchant merchant fleet.
I don't think you would even put a dent in that. And then you'd
have to worry about very you know, logistics processes. You know, in
the age of sail, you had sales. All you had to really worry
about was having enough beer aboard, you know, two gallons a day roughly
for each sailor, and you can sail. You can't simply take a modern
privateer sail at five thousand miles and then expect to find fuel somewhere unless you
were working with a particular government. So from a practical standpoint, I just
don't see how that might be employed. That being said, one of the
first articles I wrote on this issue was called Blackwaters for the Blue Waters,
the promise of private naval companies. I wrote it for Orbis in two thousand
and six or two thousand and seven. But I didn't say, take these
new twenty first century privateers and attack a nation's merchant fleet or anything. What
I envisioned was taking these private security companies and doing low end operations, whether
it's drug interdiction in the Caribbean or at that time protecting doing convoy duty of
ships in the Gulf of Aden, in order to free up our assets,
our destroyer at that time, our cruisers to redeploy where they are truly needed
in great power competition. There is no reason, for example, when we
when Somali piracy was really major, that you had a small sailboat that Somali
pirates had taken with four I think it was two Americans Canadians. The sv
quest you had you had two destroyers, a cruiser and an aircraft carrier surrounding
that sailboat. Okay, this is a bit much. I think if you
had had the model of private security ships for the Gulf of Aid, and
I think you might have been more effective globally by shifting over your big assets
elsewhere. I guess this might be considered a a spoiler, so spoiler alert
though it is revealed early on what the common thread is here, So if
people don't don't want any any quasi plot reveals early on, go ahead and
go walk the dog for the next couple three minutes. But in research and
a fiction novels, sometimes you can pick some areas you need to research that
can really take you some dark places and without showing too much leg Here,
one of the common threads has to do with international human trafficking, really modern
day slavery. How how deep did you dig into that topic and where there's
some surprises plus or minus that you discovered in the course of research in that
area. Yeah. So there were a couple of things that I really tried
to do deep dives on. The first one was actually the drones that are
used in here are based on an actual company's drones DPI out of Philadelphia,
and I actually call them by name in the book, and I got from
from the CEO of the company, and I'll be going up here to Philadelphia
in the next couple of weeks to talk with him again and do a little
video. But yeah, on human trafficking, you know what, I started
off with a baseline of the GMT, the general military training that we all
get on it. And then I just started going through you know, the
the figurative rolodex that I've I've had over the years and talked to law enforcement
officials. I talked to some folks overseas, and you know, you kind
of pull the thread that way. It's like, Okay, if I'm talking
to person a here that I maybe I knew in college, say okay,
I need to understand this. What do you see here in the big cities
in the United States? Do you ever work with people outside of the country.
What kind of organization would I need to talk to? So, yeah,
I did. I did talk to people who dealt with human trafficking,
both domestically and internationally to try to get a better understanding of that. And
I try to do that, you know, in all the books, I
really tried to do the research. Uh, you know, in the first
book, it was like, I wanted to understand, what's what would it
be like to have dinner with Muttahar the merchant slash you know, multi gazillionaire
that it turns out what kind of food, what's what does the food snow
like? What does it taste like? What are the ingredients to these to
these things, just to lend some reality to it. In some cases it's
light reality, and in cases of the human trafficking thread that I have in
this particular book, it's you know, the dark realities. Yeah, I
want I want to go back a little bit to the to the private military
companies as the private naval companies in the case start, because what we saw
in the the Smally Pirates was the yeah, we we we were way overkill
as far as worships go. But what what seemed to have the most effect
was when we started putting private security guards on the merchant ships uh and using
um parsenal ships to you know, so the countries that are worried about having
too many weapons a shore UH didn't react to that, but I mean it
was kind of It's not quite the same as having private ships UH fighting fighting
the pirates, but you know, it is the functional equivalent I would I
would think, is that is that off based? And I know that.
I think in one of the books you kind of discussed those armed security guards
on the hundred merchant ships. Yeah. I think that was my second or
third nonfiction book on It was on private security at sea in the twenty firth
century. But yeah, um no, I think that still stands. Any
ship that had private security armed guards aboard was never taken by Somali pirates.
And now Somali piracy is a thing of the past more or less. But
during that time, I think that's that's really telling. And at the beginning
of this whole thing of the whole Somali piracy trend. I remember being at
a securitytime security conference and I was talking about how much about this concept of
black waters of blue waters and I had There was a guy at the back
of the room in DC and he got up and starts yelling at me,
says, you don't know what you're talking about. There will never be armed
guards on any of our ships, bla blat. I was like, Okay,
I appreciate, thanks, I hope, I hope not. And about
a year later, his company pretty pretty large company I learned was using armed
guards board because they had to. And so I've always learned, you know,
never say Never's a that's a really dangerous word when you're talking about security.
Yeah, that's one of my favorite things to hear people say, especially
if they say it with a lot of emotion. That will never, that's
like we have to those those two words I usually have followed by my favorite
word in English language, why, which is very triggering to people who aren't
used to having people ask that question. Now we see from the aid and
effect on that the center of the tactical action. Though the webs go globally,
keeps moving further east. And I don't know if you'll be comfortable revealing
what's knocking around your head here, but if you look east of the Philippines,
are there a few places that if it doesn't result in a Connor Stark
novel, but it's something that you think people should be looking at, because
I know your mind is always bouncing around looking looking under rocks for the unseen.
So, like Christopher Columbus's Gold, if you go further and further west,
eventually you'll find yourself in the east and right back to where you came
from, and that that's where this is roughly going. You're going to be
going so far east so Gulf of Aden, Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka,
South China Sea. The next one is going to be coming around the globe
and it's gonna start hitting closer to home. Yeah. Um oh, very
effective, you know, China, China, just effective they are. Yeah.
Yeah, you mentioned the your your the non fiction maritime private security book
of Dewich. By the way, I didn't interest of full disclosure, I
could contributed a chapter. Um, how about the other books? The book
on Captain Stewart? Is that is that has that reflected in your in your
fiction writing some uh so Siren's Song towards In fact, Captain Charles Stewart commanded
a ship called Siren during the Tripoli War. That was his second command when
he was a lieutenant along in the Prebble's squadron. And that's why toward the
end of Siren's Song, for those who haven't read Siren Song, I won't
I won't, you know, expose a surprise, but there is an age
of sale incident and I try to do that. I did that at the
end of Aid and effective that at the end of Siren Song where Stark really
uses history to solve a tactical issue. So in that way, I can
use some of the stuff that I've researched inn for my naval history class or
for my books and actually employ it in a way that I would hope my
students do. In fact, the past couple of years, I'm not going
to do this next year, but I had students for their final exam say
that they were the Cno, I'm the president, and they have to Their
final exam is to write a formal memo to me that we are going into
ethnic Clashestan, it is going to be a naval conflict, and what ten
pieces of advice would you give me in conducting this war? And with each
of those, give me three examples in naval history that they studied that support
those recommendations. So I'm trying to get them thinking. And that's why I
try to do that in the books, is bringing a little bit of naval
history into into the novels as well, and hopefully it'll inspire people to look
at them more. I mean look at you know, you'd go down the
Wikipedia rabbit hole. But before there was Wikipedia, you know, when the
three of us were kids, you know, and I'd go to the library
to pick up a book and I'd see a sentence in one book, I'm
like, I want to know more about that, So I'd go pick up
another book and figure out what that meant. And that's Those are some of
the rabbit holes that I'd like to see people go through, uh in not
just being entertained again, but in learning about something from these books that they
might not otherwise. One thing I hope that the reader does, it's a
it's a predilegtion of mine. I love globes, I love garth. I
like making a little measurements and stuff. But when you look at the geometry
in the Philippines, and again, without doing another plot spoiler, as I
watched a couple of the threads developed, especially in the in the second half
of the book, it reminded me in that five thousand year history that China
has as a reference point, we are our history is but a sub chapter
compared to their larger book that in their Nearer Abroad, not just Ashore,
but also in See It One Time reached all the way out to Okinawa,
included Korea, a lot of the islands in the South China Sea, in
those purphyle areas, they had, lack of a better phrase, not allies,
but subservient kingdoms to them, and they they see them cells as that
is their rightful place in there, near or abroad, not unlike what we
used to think about in the Caribbean, in Central and South America, and
especially a portion where you look at what the Chinese could move forward in the
Western Pacific out of emergency compared to what the US Navy can with a big
asterisk therapy, be careful how many allies you're leaning on. But is that
something you would hope that the reader, when when looking at this, would
pause for a moment and maybe maybe look at a look at a map and
dig into the little history a bit about not just how the neighbors look at
China, but perhaps more critically, with her strength, how China views the
proper place for those lesser nations it spinds to its south and its east.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And again, without give
spoiling the second half of the book and what happens, I think we see
that play out and how China can try to exert its influence by dividing allies
and gaining partners. However, small, even a small island, can be
a very powerful ally. And I, you know, I think back,
and I think it's two thousand and six. I visited six Caribbean islands and
what was strange at four of those or no, I think it was all
of them had those Chinese arches and big construction of cricket stadiums, and Chinese
were everywhere, and you know, this is seventeen years ago, and I
would ask. Finally, I asked one of the guides, and I said,
what's going on here? Well, the Chinese are our friends. They're
building these cricket stadiums for the International Cricket whatever it was in two thousand and
seven. And so when I came back to the academy, I talked to
one of our experts on China and all I did was I slapped down the
names of those six islands I went to, and without giving him any context,
I said, what can you tell me about these in China? And
he says, huh, that's interesting. Four of these, just in the
past couple of years, have switched their recognition at the UN from Taiwan to
mainland China. So we see this this soft power emerge. And now I
don't think Taiwan has more than ten countries that recognize it in the United Nations.
So when you're talking about China playing the Long Game and Salamander, you
you've had this The Long Game series on your blog, that's exactly what they're
doing. And again that's in our own backyard. Caribbean is I won't say
it's our South China, see, but we've been down there a while and
we've got a naval base, you know, right smack dab in the middle
of the Caribbean. And I think that will play out for some very interesting
events in the coming decades. Well, I hope it's not that interesting.
I would like it to, but I think i'm I'm I'm hoping against the
odds there. Well, you mentioned your your work on a Ricover book.
We've taken up a you know your hour and but we could of course talk
for hours and hours and hours as we have in the past. Tell us
a little bit about the ricoverbook, tell us what you know, what your
what your expectation is for being published and and do you find him to be
a fascinating figure uh was he was? He just I mean a lot of
people have up and down opinions about him, did great things. Not necessarily
the nicest person on the planet, but different. So first of all,
I yeah, I do have an agent, and I've got to give him
a rewrite for something, to add something in here, and he's going to
be taking care of the pitches with the big publishers. But this goes back
a few years ago when I started meeting with missus rick Over his second wife,
Eleanor. She passed away. I guess it's a year and a half
ago now, but before she passed, she and her co executors bequeathed more
than a hundred boxes of his personal papers to the Naval Cab Museum. And
so I've been working with special collections and archives and an initial cataloging of them.
But these go back to nineteen twenty nine. These include daily love letters
to his first wife or his girlfriend who became his wife in the nineteen thirties,
that are incredibly detailed and show such a different aspect of Rickover. I
could not believe this was Rickover, and I don't think anybody else will.
But it goes throughout his career I'm going to include a few congressional hearing excerpts
those are publicly available, but he gave hundreds of speeches that he wrote on
his own on a variety of topics. He has letters with presidents, c
and os. He did memoranda for the record just for his personal files.
Every time he met with another admiral, a senator, a president, he
wrote up a page or two on this is what we discussed. That is
incredible primary sources, and then also the transcripts of telephone conversations he had with
journalists, with cnos, with the whole gamut of people that we talked about.
And it is more than one hundred archive boxes. I think it's closer
to about two hundred and fifty. It was one hundred regular boxes, but
in archive terms, it's closer to two fifty. So it's taken a long
time to go through those. But I really think people are going to get
a very different perspective on parts of Rickover's life. I think it will also
validate a lot of the things that we've all come to know and learn about
Rickover and in terms of being acerbic and etc. But he was a very
complex individual and I think these documents as primary research will show that, and
I'm going to be doing it in a very different way than than a traditional
biography. So I'm pretty much I've got maybe three or four more weeks of
research to go through the last sources and then it's right to the right to
the drawing board and trying to get this out. Well. At least we
have one more reason to invite you on to mid Rats again, and Claude
again, thank you very much for for an hour to come on. Best
of luck, and again for the for the listeners. The book is The
Philippine Packed. It's the third in the Connor Start series and I saw via
my Amazon tracker that some of y'all have decided to go back to the very
beginning and to start with the first book. And that's but you can pick
it up solo. You don't have to start at the beginning. And I
hope you have a great summer, Claude, and look forward to the next
opportunity. Thank you very much to both of you. I really appreciate it.
Have a good day, take care, con and thank you very much
everybody for joining us for another edition mid Rats. And until next time,
I hope you have a great Navy day. Cheers having all things like maloney,
want to marry me and please be comely, all your being to blame
for love, family to ald me, silly holding you all of the same.
It's a long way to it's a long way to go. It's a
long way to many. I don't bye pcdially, Well, let's talk to
it. It's a long long way to dip a n it, but my
life right there.