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Speaker 3: The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Bark.
Speaker 2: Hello, everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and twenty four
Speaker 2: of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and
Speaker 2: our guest on tonight's show is Tom Gaines. He's the
Speaker 2: author of Quantum Dagger, which I read here on my kindle. Tom,
Speaker 2: you want to hold up the paperback version. You can
Speaker 2: go and find both of these out on Amazon now
Speaker 2: and pick up a copy. Tom serves as a signals
Speaker 2: officer and a United States Army Special Operations Command officer,
Speaker 2: and he.
Speaker 1: Wrote this book.
Speaker 2: It envisions near term war and how technology is going
Speaker 2: to impact tomorrow's conflicts. So, Tom, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: I'm really happy to have you on here. I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, I appreciate you guys inviting me on. I
Speaker 4: really like what you all do with the team house,
Speaker 4: the discussions that you all have with different members of
Speaker 4: the community. I think what you guys do is phil
Speaker 4: a pretty important niche which is not filled by a
Speaker 4: lot of the other other podcasts that are out there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I appreciate what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1: That's a strong endorsement. Thank you, Tom, I'll take that.
Speaker 2: So let's let's start off talking a little bit about
Speaker 2: you and your military career and which will of course
Speaker 2: lead us into the book.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about you.
Speaker 2: Know, where you came from and how you ended up
Speaker 2: in the army.
Speaker 1: What was that path like for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean all stories started at the beginning.
Speaker 4: So my dad was in the Army. He was actually
Speaker 4: a Medical Corps officer, so he was a physician. He
Speaker 4: got out like right when I was in like third grade,
Speaker 4: at the beginning of a desert storm. So I was
Speaker 4: vaguely around the military, but not really for the most
Speaker 4: of my life. Then we moved to East Tennessee, grew
Speaker 4: up always saying that I was going to follow in
Speaker 4: his footsteps, did what everybody else did, and went to
Speaker 4: college and kind of ran into some trouble because I
Speaker 4: didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.
Speaker 4: You know. I finally got to the point where the
Speaker 4: world was open to me, and I struggled. Fortunately, though,
Speaker 4: I kind of stumbled onto ROTC. I thought about, honestly
Speaker 4: just dropping out of school and enlisting, but that seemed
Speaker 4: a little bit drastic to do something I had no
Speaker 4: idea what I was gonna do. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: just try this ROTC thing, see what that is. I
Speaker 4: didn't have any idea what the difference would have been
Speaker 4: between and listening or you know, going through ROTC and
Speaker 4: becoming an officer. I was like, oh, just I'll do
Speaker 4: this thing. And it turned out to me a great
Speaker 4: decision for me, right, because essentially I just lacked sort
Speaker 4: of discipline and drive to accomplish things on my own.
Speaker 4: So I kind of latched onto what the armory provided
Speaker 4: in ROTC and I just borrowed theirs and it was
Speaker 4: enough to get me get me through. I College was
Speaker 4: wasted on me then, but that's all that's w right.
Speaker 4: I think the youth is wasted on the young. I
Speaker 4: made it through though, and commissioned into the infantry, went
Speaker 4: through the infantry pipeline, so you know, the Benning School
Speaker 4: for boys, and then Ranger school and then Airborne school,
Speaker 4: and then my first duty assignment was with three to
Speaker 4: two Striker Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Lewis. Showed
Speaker 4: up about a month or two before they were due
Speaker 4: to employee, so immediately hopped on the first deployment with
Speaker 4: him in two thousand and six. Did fifteen months there.
Speaker 4: While I was there, I kind of decided that the
Speaker 4: infantry life wasn't necessarily for me, so I transferred over
Speaker 4: to the Signal Corps because I wasn't ready to just
Speaker 4: get out of the Army altogether. So I said, well,
Speaker 4: I've kind of got a technical aptitude. I'll try this
Speaker 4: Signal Corps thing again. I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker 4: I just think, oh, yeah, this will be cool. I'll
Speaker 4: go do that. So I do that transition, do another
Speaker 4: rotation in Iraq, get back. After that rotation, they send
Speaker 4: me to school to learn how to be a Signal
Speaker 4: Corps officer. And while I was at Fort Gordon, I
Speaker 4: got a I got an email saying, hey, come to this,
Speaker 4: come to this briefing. You know we're going to We're
Speaker 4: going to tell you about you know, this special assignment
Speaker 4: within Army Special Operations Command. Maybe maybe it'll be interested.
Speaker 4: I had no idea what it was about. If you
Speaker 4: notice there's a theme here, but I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I want to do something interesting. So I showed up.
Speaker 4: They said, we can't tell you what this is, but
Speaker 4: you know, come and come and try out if you're
Speaker 4: good enough. Cool. So I did that. I you know,
Speaker 4: I kept raising my hand and saying, yeah, I'll do this,
Speaker 4: and it's it's worked out pretty well for me. I
Speaker 4: think one of the great things about the Army is
Speaker 4: there's so many opportunities for that where you know, if
Speaker 4: you're just willing to do things, there's all sorts of
Speaker 4: different paths where you can find what it is specifically
Speaker 4: that you want to go. It may not all be glamorous,
Speaker 4: it may not all be perfect. But there are so
Speaker 4: many different opportunities in the Army if if you kind
Speaker 4: of take a chance and find them. So I did
Speaker 4: that and it worked out really well for me in
Speaker 4: this case.
Speaker 1: Tom, I think your camera got knocked out of focus
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: If I can't hold there, you go go perfect.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it sounds like you were constantly looking to
Speaker 2: challenge yourself and see what the next thing was and
Speaker 2: found what you were looking for.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: You know, I I didn't want to do the typical thing.
Speaker 4: I wanted to be able to make make an impact
Speaker 4: greater than what I thought I'd be able to do
Speaker 4: if I just, you know, stayed doing it enterprise management.
Speaker 4: You know, we absolutely need people that do that. I
Speaker 4: just would have been been bored. So I needed to
Speaker 4: do something else. And that's something else is what led
Speaker 4: me to use the SoC.
Speaker 2: And you're I mean, what what can you say about
Speaker 2: you know, where you're at today, what you're the next
Speaker 2: step is, you know, sort of in your career, and
Speaker 2: I think you mentioned that you were You're getting towards
Speaker 2: the point of retiring out of the right my current job.
Speaker 4: I've basically been promoted out of doing anything fun at
Speaker 4: this point, so they they pulled me back into doing
Speaker 4: infrastructure sorts of things. So my current role is I
Speaker 4: am the G six four first Special Forces Command, so
Speaker 4: I run all of the IT enterprise for for WHITESFCE,
Speaker 4: so all of the green berets and civil affairs. That's
Speaker 4: that's my current role for about another four months or so,
Speaker 4: and then I'll, you know, get my piece of paper,
Speaker 4: my handshake thanking me for my service, and I'll be retired.
Speaker 2: Well, unlike US infantry guys, it sounds like you have
Speaker 2: a career track where you can actually walk on to
Speaker 2: a really good job in the civilian world.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The problem is I don't know that I want
Speaker 4: to do that. I've found doing that for so long. Yeah,
Speaker 4: right out, I don't necessarily want to do that coming out.
Speaker 4: So I think what I want to end up is
Speaker 4: helping other people figure out how to be adaptable and Brazilian.
Speaker 4: So that's been a project that I've been working on
Speaker 4: for a couple of years with a neuroscientist out of
Speaker 4: Ohio State, basically going back into the Special Operations schoolhouses
Speaker 4: and trying to figure out what it is about those
Speaker 4: schoolhouses that train operators to survive and thrive and win
Speaker 4: when they're put in these sorts of load data, volatile,
Speaker 4: uncertain situations. And you know, kind of what we've done
Speaker 4: is we've taken those lessons learned and we've brought them
Speaker 4: back to his lab and paired it with what neurosciences
Speaker 4: is telling us about the way the brain works, and
Speaker 4: then translate that into lessons that we can give to
Speaker 4: people who aren't going on the Long Walk or aren't
Speaker 4: going to Robin Sage or things like that. Getting it
Speaker 4: into the schools so we can make kids more adaptable
Speaker 4: and resilient as they're they're coming up today.
Speaker 2: What are there any preliminary findings from that effort about,
Speaker 2: like what is it about special ops training that is
Speaker 2: kind of like giving these qualities, giving us the types
Speaker 2: of soldiers that we hope for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it really comes down to the open ended
Speaker 4: nature of what we give them. So when we so
Speaker 4: we interviewed a bunch of folks from the community on hey,
Speaker 4: you were successful, what was it about you? What was
Speaker 4: it about your training that made you successful? And all
Speaker 4: of the green Berets pointed to one specific thing, and
Speaker 4: that was Robin Sage. So Robin Sage was like the
Speaker 4: first point in their career where like it was a
Speaker 4: it's a very open ended exercise, right. The the cadre
Speaker 4: there do a really good job of just reacting to
Speaker 4: whatever the students do. So there is no one set answer.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately most of our lives, we're taught, hey, there
Speaker 4: is one right answer. In school, you got to get
Speaker 4: to the professor's answer, that's the right answer. So we
Speaker 4: raise a generation of students who think that way. So
Speaker 4: one they think that there's one right answer, and then two,
Speaker 4: when things don't necessarily go their way, the immediately to
Speaker 4: authority figures to solve their problems for them, right, And
Speaker 4: that's that's you see that in kids, you see that
Speaker 4: in adults. Now, people are just not necessarily given those skills.
Speaker 4: But what Robin Sage does is it essentially removes that
Speaker 4: from them. In these sort of open ended exercises, they say, hey,
Speaker 4: figure it out, right, So what we've figured out was
Speaker 4: that a lot of the gray Beards that have gone
Speaker 4: back there, they're long since retired, but they still want
Speaker 4: to give back to the community. They're doing it through,
Speaker 4: you know, being members at Robin Sage, and they're they're
Speaker 4: using words like, hey, trust your gut, use your gut instinct,
Speaker 4: you know, use your intuition, things like that, And what
Speaker 4: we found is that really what we're doing is we're
Speaker 4: training up four different things. We're training up intuition, so
Speaker 4: you're an ability to spot something that's different in your environment.
Speaker 4: Your imagination so, your ability to come up with a
Speaker 4: new plan in response to that. Your common sense, so
Speaker 4: your ability to decide wisely even in the absence of
Speaker 4: a bunch of data. And then finally, your emotions, so
Speaker 4: your ability to actually, like relative regulate your emotion to
Speaker 4: take advantage of what it's telling you about yourself and
Speaker 4: your environment to make better decisions. So that's what all
Speaker 4: of these soft pipelines are actually training up, even though
Speaker 4: they didn't necessarily have those words, that's what they were
Speaker 4: all doing. So we took those findings. We went to
Speaker 4: the Command in General Staff College and tried it out
Speaker 4: on some majors because that's where you know, field grade
Speaker 4: officers go to get their field grade lobotomies where they're
Speaker 4: good idea, fairy colonies, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 4: So we went we tested it on them, and through
Speaker 4: we gave them an hour block of instruction on this
Speaker 4: new method, and the results were essentially that we raised
Speaker 4: their creativity by one standard deviation, which is pretty statistically significant. Right,
Speaker 4: So if you came in with an average amount of creativity,
Speaker 4: became better than average. If you were below average, we
Speaker 4: got you up a little bit. And if you were
Speaker 4: already above average created creativity, we made you better. Then
Speaker 4: we replicated that study with some college students and so
Speaker 4: different different testing, different evaluators, same results. So the college
Speaker 4: students were in about two hours, we raised their creative
Speaker 4: IQ by one standard deviation. We also raised their resilience
Speaker 4: by about the same amount. So what we mean by
Speaker 4: resilience is, hey, when your plan breaks, can you come
Speaker 4: up with a second plan. And then we're like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is cool, let's try it on third graders. So
Speaker 4: we tried it. We tried it on third graders, and
Speaker 4: we got the same results. So we've that's been published
Speaker 4: in the New York Academy of Sciences. It's now like
Speaker 4: the second or third most read article in the New
Speaker 4: York Academy of Sciences. That's history, and so we're having
Speaker 4: a pretty good impact on those findings. Which is pretty exciting.
Speaker 3: Is that is that article? Do people have to pay
Speaker 3: to download that?
Speaker 4: Or or no, it's yeah. So you can just google
Speaker 4: New York Academy of Sciences Creativity and it's there.
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Speaker 4: We've written stuff for Harvard Business Review, We've Google has
Speaker 4: picked up a bunch of our stuff. We work with
Speaker 4: NASA is that everybody is after this same problem, right,
Speaker 4: whether it's kids today trying to do this or folks
Speaker 4: graduating from high school graduating from college. One of the
Speaker 4: things that we get when we go out and talk
Speaker 4: to the business community is they see their employees that
Speaker 4: don't know how to handle adversity or uncertainty right, and
Speaker 4: they don't know what to do if they think that
Speaker 4: there's like one way to do things, and as soon
Speaker 4: as you deviate from that, they fall the pieces. So
Speaker 4: this is something that everybody's kind of understood, but nobody's
Speaker 4: really had a pretty good an answer with until now.
Speaker 4: Pulling those lessons out from the soft community and getting
Speaker 4: them out to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's a terrific results because the army
Speaker 2: has kind of struggled, I think for decades with how
Speaker 2: do we inject more creativity and initiative for sure with
Speaker 2: our soldiers. And you know that runs up against the micromanaging,
Speaker 2: zero defact environment that the military cultivates or did for
Speaker 2: a long period of time. So it's interesting and I
Speaker 2: think absolutely this is directionally correct about how we train
Speaker 2: and indoctrinate soldiers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So one of the heartening things about this
Speaker 4: program is the current CAT commander, Lieutenant General Eagle, So
Speaker 4: he oversees all of the military PM right, so all
Speaker 4: of the professional military education. He is super interested and
Speaker 4: invested in this sort of training because I think he
Speaker 4: sees the writing on the wall that it's not going
Speaker 4: to be this sort of sterile conflict like we had
Speaker 4: in g Watt if we have to go to.
Speaker 1: To warm, humans are more important than hardware.
Speaker 4: Right exactly. There's there's something about that in you know,
Speaker 4: the Soft Truth somewhere I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 4: it's written somewhere.
Speaker 2: Well, on that note, let's start talking a little bit
Speaker 2: about your book, Quantum Dagger that just came out, what
Speaker 2: a couple of months ago, I think, So, how did
Speaker 2: the idea of even occur to you of writing a novel?
Speaker 2: Sounds like you're pretty busy with your military career. How
Speaker 2: did that come about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so honestly it came about from this research project.
Speaker 4: So my my friend and I were like, all, cool,
Speaker 4: we've written this academic piece, We've written a bunch of
Speaker 4: these other things, but like, how do we get people
Speaker 4: to sort of understand what it is that we're talking about?
Speaker 4: And he's like, well, well, uh, you could write a
Speaker 4: you could write a novel about it. It's like, I
Speaker 4: can't write it. I can't write a novel. I'm not
Speaker 4: a guy who's had any sort of desire intent to
Speaker 4: do that. I'm not going to do that. He's like, no,
Speaker 4: you should totally write that. So again I was like Okay,
Speaker 4: I have no idea what this thing is, but I'll
Speaker 4: raise my hand and I'll do it. So that that's
Speaker 4: kind of the genesis of this novel. So a lot
Speaker 4: of our research is juxtaposed against the way that so
Speaker 4: many people think that intelligence works. Right. So the common
Speaker 4: way that people think that intelligence works is logic and
Speaker 4: reasoning based, right, That's that's what kind of got us
Speaker 4: to where we are. That's and it's brilliant. We absolutely
Speaker 4: need logical reasoning, we need the ability to critically analyze data.
Speaker 4: The problem is, human beings are very bad at it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're just we're just not very good. Fortunately, computers fantastic
Speaker 4: at it. Computers are way better at it than we are.
Speaker 4: But the problem is we keep trying to make human
Speaker 4: beings more like computers and it just is failing spectaclic
Speaker 4: because we're not really good at it. So that's sort
Speaker 4: of the genesis of this book is a way to
Speaker 4: get people to understand that human beings we're never going
Speaker 4: to be better at crunching large amounts of data than
Speaker 4: computers are, but we're really good at other things. We're
Speaker 4: really good at low data environments. Because if you put
Speaker 4: even the smartest computer up against the situation where they
Speaker 4: don't have a lot of data to work against, they
Speaker 4: fail in spectacular ways. So the best example that I
Speaker 4: have of this is recently the Marines went up against
Speaker 4: an AI pattern recognition software. I don't know if you guys.
Speaker 1: Have have heard this, No, I think I know this one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, probably like a year ago, where uh, you know,
Speaker 4: these these technical engineers have been working for months on
Speaker 4: target identification software so that they could detect people moving
Speaker 4: in and around the environment. So they were like, all right,
Speaker 4: we're gonna we're gonna test. This thing is going to
Speaker 4: be great. So they gave they gave the task to
Speaker 4: play the Red team to Marines and what are marine's
Speaker 4: gonna do? The Marines are going to do marine things.
Speaker 4: So one of one marine did somersaults right up to
Speaker 4: this turn and was not detected. Another marine like literally
Speaker 4: did like the the cartoon get under a cardboard box
Speaker 4: and was not detected. Right, a human being standing there
Speaker 4: would be like, that's that's totally a dude in a
Speaker 4: cardboard boxer somersault. What are you guys doing? But the
Speaker 4: computer wasn't trained on that, their data didn't account for it,
Speaker 4: so it didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 2: And it's awesome how fast some young marines came up
Speaker 2: with a way to defeat that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, if you want ingenuity, give give the Efore
Speaker 4: mafia a problem and tell them that you're gonna look
Speaker 4: the other way and go be back and need a solution.
Speaker 4: Right that they will solve every single problem you need
Speaker 4: them to. So that's Machines are fantastic, but they're also
Speaker 4: fantastically dumb in certain certain cases. So how do we
Speaker 4: how do we imagine a world where humans are doing
Speaker 4: human things the machines are doing machine things right, Because
Speaker 4: the other problem, one of the problems I see right
Speaker 4: now is that we are investing so much money in
Speaker 4: all of these advanced technologies, and we need to because
Speaker 4: there's a lot of great things that they can do,
Speaker 4: but it can't come at the expense of training humans
Speaker 4: to deal with whatever situation comes with myself, train up
Speaker 4: those fundamental skills that make us win in whatever conflict
Speaker 4: we need. So that was that was sort of the
Speaker 4: genesis of this novel. Hey, are what are the technical
Speaker 4: capabilities that might come out in the near future, what's
Speaker 4: within the realm of the possible and then what would
Speaker 4: it look like if those were sort of taken to
Speaker 4: their logical end, if there was, you know, a competitor
Speaker 4: that just doubled down on all of these sorts of
Speaker 4: advanced technology. And what would happen though, if we just
Speaker 4: unleashed the power of an ODA, Right, so a team
Speaker 4: of green berets against them, just they happen to be
Speaker 4: in the right place at the right time, because that's
Speaker 4: one of use of socks, you know, guiding principles right now,
Speaker 4: is that they are out in the contact layer working
Speaker 4: with our partners, building relationships, and they just have placement
Speaker 4: and access in these regions that aren't necessarily in conflict,
Speaker 4: but we are absolutely competing. So what could they do
Speaker 4: against an adversary who has all of these all of
Speaker 4: these advanced systems. So that was that was the genesis
Speaker 4: of this whole thing.
Speaker 2: So to tell our listeners or viewers a little bit more,
Speaker 2: the plot of your book centers around special Ops Intel
Speaker 2: guy who's kind of out there doing Singleton stuff and
Speaker 2: an ODA that's in Vietnam, and then eventually these two
Speaker 2: plot lines come together in the book. Of course, the
Speaker 2: title Quantum Dagger Quantum is a big part of this
Speaker 2: novel and what it's about. Before we get into some
Speaker 2: of maybe some of the details there, I would like to,
Speaker 2: you know, open it up, maybe with a broader discussion
Speaker 2: about quantum, which is a bit of a buzzword today,
Speaker 2: but it is a real technology.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like I'm qualified. You know, I
Speaker 3: did watch everything in the Marvel Comics universe, so I
Speaker 3: do feel as though I have a good grasp on
Speaker 3: what quantum is.
Speaker 1: I would I don't have a good grasp.
Speaker 2: And one quantum is I know it's related to quantum physics,
Speaker 2: and there's quantum computing, and these are technologies that are
Speaker 2: kind of on a near term horizon, maybe in the
Speaker 2: next ten years that we're going to see. Could you
Speaker 2: tell us what this is and what its military applications are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so quantum computing does exist right now, we have
Speaker 4: we have quantum computers, and actually in twenty nineteen we
Speaker 4: reach the tipping point where a quantum computer can now
Speaker 4: outperform or the fastest the best normal computer. So like it,
Speaker 4: it's a real thing now, it's just not where we
Speaker 4: think it's going to be in the future. So we'll
Speaker 4: start back at the beginning again, right, So, it is
Speaker 4: essentially a different technology than current computers are. So it's
Speaker 4: sort of like a candle and a light bulb. They
Speaker 4: both do the same thing, they both illuminate, right, but
Speaker 4: they go about it very in very different ways. So
Speaker 4: with a classical computer, you're using electricity and you're storing
Speaker 4: essentially like a bunch of on and off switches. So
Speaker 4: one bit can either be on or it can be off, right,
Speaker 4: And that's where we get the idea of like binary.
Speaker 4: If you ever see some computer code breaking down, it's
Speaker 4: a bunch of ones and zeros. That's where like medio
Speaker 4: can see the matrix. It's just a bunch of ones
Speaker 4: and zeros flipping by. And what's great about that is
Speaker 4: a computer can look at those ones and zeros and
Speaker 4: extract that into information, and they can do that very
Speaker 4: very quickly, much faster than human beings can do. So
Speaker 4: they can do thousands and millions of computations every second
Speaker 4: by interpreting what that each of those symbols actually means
Speaker 4: when you put them all together. But they're limited in
Speaker 4: their speed and capacity kind of by the limits of electricity, right.
Speaker 4: Quantum computers, on the other hand, use a totally different
Speaker 4: property in physics and a totally different technology based on
Speaker 4: the idea of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So in normal computers you have that zero one gase,
Speaker 4: so it's a switch that can either be on or off.
Speaker 4: Quantum computers use instead of bits, they use cubits would
Speaker 4: imaginatively name quantum bits, right, And instead of just being
Speaker 4: on or off, they can be both. They can be
Speaker 4: multiple things at one time, right, So it's what they
Speaker 4: call the superposition. So one cubit can be multiple things
Speaker 4: at once, versus on a traditional computer it can only
Speaker 4: be one thing. So what that means is when you
Speaker 4: pair a bunch of different cubits together, now, instead of
Speaker 4: having to be a one at one point and then
Speaker 4: a zero, right, a very slow mechanical process, it can
Speaker 4: do calculations vastly more quickly, right. So it's it's orders
Speaker 4: of magnitude faster, and it's able to do things that
Speaker 4: would take a normal computer years and years almost instantaneously.
Speaker 4: And that's with the systems that we have right now.
Speaker 4: So if you translate that into start to get a
Speaker 4: discussion of military means, one of the things that people
Speaker 4: are talking a lot about when they talk quantum computers
Speaker 4: is encryption. Right. So the current kind of gold standard
Speaker 4: for encryption in the world is something called AEES two
Speaker 4: fifty six, right, So that's a specific encryption algorithm that's
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty six bits long.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So essentially, like the number of different possibilities that any
Speaker 4: one password could be is to raise the two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty six power, which is a very large number. Right.
Speaker 4: Traditional computer, so the strongest computer in the world right
Speaker 4: now would take something like fifty million years or something
Speaker 4: to break that. It's just it's not even worth brute
Speaker 4: for we're attacking that password. Quantum computers as they stand
Speaker 4: right now, it's not like an instantaneous thing with where
Speaker 4: the technology sits right now. A quantum computer now would
Speaker 4: take one hundred days to a year or so to
Speaker 4: break that password. Wow, So it's not it's not like
Speaker 4: the sky is falling right now. But if you look
Speaker 4: at where computing has come in the past, right where
Speaker 4: we had the computers that filled rooms right that we're
Speaker 4: using punch.
Speaker 1: Cards, which quantum computers kind of do.
Speaker 4: Right now, Quantum computers are absolutely in the room filling
Speaker 4: space right now. But as we refine that technology where
Speaker 4: it's going to be miniaturized like everything else, and eventually
Speaker 4: it will get to the point where even those high
Speaker 4: algorithms are going to fall relatively quickly to the point
Speaker 4: where they're no longer useful, you know, like everything in
Speaker 4: the competition, it's always a competition between offense and defense, right,
Speaker 4: ever since ever since somebody had a stick and somebody
Speaker 4: else got a different stick, right, this is no different.
Speaker 4: So on the defense side, everybody is starting to work
Speaker 4: on quantum hardened algorithms and ways to combat this thing
Speaker 4: so that they can't read the mail. But we're not
Speaker 4: necessarily there yet.
Speaker 2: When I think about the military applications, I typically think
Speaker 2: about what you just mentioned, quantum encryption and quantum decryption.
Speaker 2: And so it was interesting to reading your book sort
Speaker 2: of like on the tactical level, how is this really
Speaker 2: going to impact the force? And your protagonist finds one
Speaker 2: of these devices like in a server farm where it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be right, well, when it is miniaturized and it
Speaker 2: is out there in the wild like that, what does
Speaker 2: that potentially mean for us as from a national security standpoint?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think it has implications at every level
Speaker 4: of the war, right, And I do I kind of
Speaker 4: go into that and ask that question in the book
Speaker 4: at different phases. Right, So from the strategic lens, if
Speaker 4: I can read your mail, if I can read your
Speaker 4: email and know what your policies are, know where your
Speaker 4: weaknesses are, I can exploit that to my own gain. Right, So,
Speaker 4: at the strategic level, if they have the ability to
Speaker 4: just break into our base, our email, our databases, and
Speaker 4: essentially read our correspondence, that's a pretty big threat to us.
Speaker 4: Down at the operational level, if I can do that
Speaker 4: same thing, but then exploit it in such a way
Speaker 4: that I can cause doubt. And this is this is
Speaker 4: a specific mechanism I use in the book. I can
Speaker 4: use it to delay, deterred, deny, even if it's just
Speaker 4: for a short time you acting, I gain a pretty
Speaker 4: big asymmetric advantage. So again, the ability to sort of
Speaker 4: read and understand like what an adversary's capability is and
Speaker 4: readiness to respond to these sources of threats or even
Speaker 4: you know, so a little bit of doubt can buy
Speaker 4: critical time, especially on the onset of a conflict. And
Speaker 4: then at the tactical level, if you have the ability
Speaker 4: to understand in near real time plans and intentions of
Speaker 4: what another force is doing like that's that's gold Like,
Speaker 4: That's what we've commanders have been wishing for for you know, millennium,
Speaker 4: is the ability to understand really what's going on. And unfortunately,
Speaker 4: for the majority of human civilization, we've been kind of
Speaker 4: mired in this claus Witzian fog, right, where we don't
Speaker 4: really know what's going on. The best we could hope
Speaker 4: for was a really good scouting report from from cavalry. Right.
Speaker 4: If you look at what we've done in the global
Speaker 4: we're on terrorism, We've we've come a long way with that, Right.
Speaker 4: We have spent a lot of money bringing these sorts
Speaker 4: of intelligence aggregators, a lot of these systems and integrate
Speaker 4: them to in talks in jocks, in intel centers, intel
Speaker 4: fusion centers, where we're pulling in fees from everywhere, and
Speaker 4: you know, you've got headquarters all around the world that
Speaker 4: are creating common understanding and working off of a common
Speaker 4: operating picture. That's we're close to that gold standard now.
Speaker 4: But the problem is those are going to be the
Speaker 4: first thing that go in a modern conflict, right, That's
Speaker 4: that's one of the things that we've learned. We learned
Speaker 4: quickly at the beginning of the Ukrainian campaign was if
Speaker 4: you are in a static talk location, you've got your
Speaker 4: tak mahal put up, you've got your your kill TV
Speaker 4: on like nine different screens with different drone feeds off,
Speaker 4: Like that's you're not going to survive more than a
Speaker 4: couple hours. So we know that that can no longer
Speaker 4: be the case. So how do you get those same
Speaker 4: effects while still being sort of disconnected and either hiding
Speaker 4: in the noise or being very careful about when and
Speaker 4: where and how you you communicate. And that's one of
Speaker 4: the problems that I've been working on, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: my current role with first Special Forces Command is hey,
Speaker 4: what does that actually look like? Because we have gotten spoiled.
Speaker 4: We've been spoiled for the last twenty years. So like
Speaker 4: my basically my entire army career and the entire army
Speaker 4: career of more and more senior folks has been where
Speaker 4: we can communicate in the time and method of our
Speaker 4: of our choosing. I can pick up a radio, I
Speaker 4: can pick up a void call, I can get on
Speaker 4: a vtc H and I can talk to whoever whenever
Speaker 4: I want for any length of time. And it doesn't matter, Right,
Speaker 4: But that's that's not the way it's going to be
Speaker 4: in this next conflict, right, and the army gets it,
Speaker 4: like we're experimenting with how it's going to look like,
Speaker 4: but we don't know to what extent that's actually going
Speaker 4: to going to be the case.
Speaker 3: I mean that that whole thing has also created its
Speaker 3: own unique set set of problems, because all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you have a lot of like combatants on the battlefield
Speaker 3: being micromanaged by somebody sitting in a jock, you know,
Speaker 3: a thousand miles away telling you know, trying to make
Speaker 3: trying to make their tactical decisions for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly right. So what what we've done is in
Speaker 4: the military is the same thing that we sort of
Speaker 4: we talked about earlier with you know, the rise of
Speaker 4: logical reasoning in the school system.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: We we had this idea that if we have like
Speaker 4: the perfect general with perfect information, we can come up
Speaker 4: with the perfect plan and then we can execute it perfectly, right,
Speaker 4: and then we will achieve the perfect victory. Right Like,
Speaker 4: That's that's an idea that is intoxicated Americans for decades, right, Like,
Speaker 4: that's that's the American way of war. We love technology
Speaker 4: and the idea that technology can get us to that
Speaker 4: end state. And that's why one of the reasons why
Speaker 4: we love the idea of AI so much, Right, we
Speaker 4: love the idea that we I can have perfect information
Speaker 4: and then I can use that to make the perfect decisions.
Speaker 4: The problem I have with that is that that's not
Speaker 4: what is made as successful. If you look at like
Speaker 4: how we've been successful in wars or just as a nation, like,
Speaker 4: that's not success in democratic terms. Democratic success is small
Speaker 4: groups of people going and figuring it out and coming
Speaker 4: together for a common united by a common purpose, but
Speaker 4: then figuring it out on there at the lowest level, right,
Speaker 4: sort of the centralized planning, decentralized execution thing that is
Speaker 4: in army doctrine if you follow the the doctrine of
Speaker 4: mission command. Right, what I describe a little bit ago
Speaker 4: is essentially like authoritarianism or you know, modern manifestations of communism,
Speaker 4: where I can I can rule by adict and as
Speaker 4: long as my chess pieces play the perfect game as
Speaker 4: I have out, as I have laid out, I will
Speaker 4: I will win every single time. Like, that's not that's
Speaker 4: not democracy, Like, that's that's not what's made us successful.
Speaker 4: But it's it's so intoxicating for people to think that
Speaker 4: you can do that when what we're really realizing is no,
Speaker 4: what makes us successful is when you unleash the creativity
Speaker 4: of the guys on the ground. Right, Like we were
Speaker 4: talking about earlier that the best way to solve a
Speaker 4: problem is to give the ephors the challenge and tell them,
Speaker 4: tell them they're not going home until the problem is solved.
Speaker 4: Suddenly that that problem is getting solved, right, Like, one
Speaker 4: of the greatest examples of ingenuity that we like to
Speaker 4: point to in the Army PME is the idea of
Speaker 4: the getting through the hedgerows in in Normandy in World
Speaker 4: War Two, right where essentially a sergeant was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: I've got an idea for how we can get through
Speaker 4: these hedger rows. And that's where they came up with
Speaker 4: the idea to put the the blades on the front
Speaker 4: of the of tanks right field expedient. Like nobody tasked that.
Speaker 4: They didn't form a task force, hire some you know,
Speaker 4: a big military contractor to come up with a bunch
Speaker 4: of different ideas. They were just like, no, man, figure
Speaker 4: this thing out. You know, how to weld here and
Speaker 4: here's some steel, Like weld some shit onto the front
Speaker 4: of this tank. We got a war to.
Speaker 5: Win, right.
Speaker 2: What I think is like really interesting is the way
Speaker 2: you're describing like a high tech, low tech environment at
Speaker 2: the same time, Like we're having this conversation about like
Speaker 2: AI teaming, quantum computers and all this borderline science fiction stuff,
Speaker 2: but at the same time you're also describing how the
Speaker 2: electronic warfare environment will be intense. You know, you have
Speaker 2: ballistic missiles coming into your talk. The notion of the
Speaker 2: golden hour is out the window. If you have a casualty,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to treat them in place you might
Speaker 2: Your comm's windows are gonna be different. The way that
Speaker 2: that the maneuver elements communicate with the headquarters elements is
Speaker 2: gonna have to change. I mean, I'm trying to like
Speaker 2: wrap my mind around that sort of new paradigm myself,
Speaker 2: like that combination of high tech and low tech.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so essentially, and everybody's struggling with this in the
Speaker 4: civilian world, they're trying struggling with it. But what makes
Speaker 4: our challenge unique when it comes to the defense space
Speaker 4: is we have a multi optimization problem right in the
Speaker 4: in the civilian market, they just have to optimize to
Speaker 4: use all of the technology. How can I leverage technology
Speaker 4: to create value for my firm? Like, that's that's it cool,
Speaker 4: and I mean that's that's easier said than done. In
Speaker 4: the military, we have to be able to do that, right,
Speaker 4: So when everything is turned on, when we're going full bore,
Speaker 4: all of our assets are working, we can outpace you.
Speaker 4: And going back to John Boy's oodle loop, I can
Speaker 4: get inside your ooda loop and make decisions faster than
Speaker 4: my adversary, and I can act on them faster than
Speaker 4: my adversary. That's with everything turned on. But then we
Speaker 4: also have to optimize our processes for when all of
Speaker 4: that gets shut off, right, Right, what happens when I
Speaker 4: can't use these systems because either they're denied to me
Speaker 4: or if I turn them on, there's a missile that's
Speaker 4: going to come into my talk in twenty minutes. And
Speaker 4: then you know that spectrum in between, so we don't
Speaker 4: have the luxury of just going all in on this
Speaker 4: one thing. We have to optimize on that spectrum, and unfortunately,
Speaker 4: what ends up happening is we do over optimize towards
Speaker 4: one end. Right, What optimization really gets us is brittleness.
Speaker 5: Right right. I was kind of thinking about it.
Speaker 3: You know, you mentioned, you know, like how much we
Speaker 3: love technology, and it's sexy, right, I mean, you know
Speaker 3: when you start talking about like integrated VR like headsets
Speaker 3: that give us a friend foe and everything else like that,
Speaker 3: like everything that can happen. But then it's almost like
Speaker 3: whoever is willing to like throw out that emp and
Speaker 3: has been training like Daredevil to fight with the lights off, right,
Speaker 3: and they turn off the lights knowing that's going to happen.
Speaker 3: What happens to the element or the side that is
Speaker 3: not ready for that to happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So here's the great part. The great part
Speaker 4: of that whole thing is if I train up the
Speaker 4: humans to do inherently human things, those same skill sets
Speaker 4: translate to whether I am do it using perfect information
Speaker 4: from the vacuums of data that are hoovering everything up
Speaker 4: on the battlefield, or if I'm doing it essentially with
Speaker 4: a map and compass. I'm still coming up with a plan.
Speaker 4: I am still aligning my team to execute my intent
Speaker 4: to accomplish the mission. It's just what sort of toys
Speaker 4: am I bringing with this.
Speaker 5: So, Tom, I have a question in regards to that.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned how these marines beat this AI by
Speaker 3: doing things that would not defeat a human, And obviously
Speaker 3: there are things that you can do to defeat a human,
Speaker 3: you know, like gilly shoots and camouflage that maybe AIS
Speaker 3: can recognize patterns and whatnot. How how do people so obviously,
Speaker 3: depending on the environment we're going to go into, like,
Speaker 3: how do you create a hybrid strategy to deal with
Speaker 3: either or those things or both of those things at
Speaker 3: the same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ideally it's a it's a team, right. So the
Speaker 4: concept of human machine teaming, the problem is a lot
Speaker 4: of the things that I hear about when it comes
Speaker 4: to human machine teaming is the human almost ends up
Speaker 4: like the dummy minder who's essentially like the minimum wage
Speaker 4: fry guy who's just like yep, nope, yep, right like that.
Speaker 4: That's that's not really it. That kind of reminds me
Speaker 4: of like the mic judge idiocracy and state, where we
Speaker 4: just get led around by our nose. But that's not
Speaker 4: that's not where we're actually going to create magic, right.
Speaker 4: The magic is going to be when the machines are
Speaker 4: doing machine things and humans are doing the human things
Speaker 4: because we've recognized the difference and where each one excels
Speaker 4: and also where each one fails. One of the really
Speaker 4: hard parts is getting machines to realize that they're dumb.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So a couple a couple months ago, it was all
Speaker 4: over the Internet because everybody realized how dumb chat GPT
Speaker 4: was because it didn't know how many r's were in strawberry. Right,
Speaker 4: like chat, it's just going to fail in hilarious and
Speaker 4: or catastrophic ways. The problem is it doesn't know when
Speaker 4: it's dumb. Right, So that concept of hallucinating that you
Speaker 4: hear about where it's going to give you an answer. Right,
Speaker 4: it is going to give you an answer, and it
Speaker 4: is going to tell you it with the conviction of
Speaker 4: deep down to its core. But right it doesn't know
Speaker 4: whether it's right or not. So that's where the idea
Speaker 4: of like explainable AI comes in. XAI is is like
Speaker 4: the acronym because tech folks and military folks both love
Speaker 4: their acronyms. So XAI is the idea that not only
Speaker 4: can it can a computer come up with an answer,
Speaker 4: it can tell you how it got got there. Because
Speaker 4: right now, most AI models. They're a black box, right,
Speaker 4: we don't actually know what it's doing. It doesn't know
Speaker 4: what it's doing. We just fed it enormous amounts of
Speaker 4: training data and kept poking it with a stick until
Speaker 4: the output was what essentially we.
Speaker 5: Want it right. Right.
Speaker 3: So, I was just going to say, because in addition
Speaker 3: to that, like you mentioned the human fallacy of thinking
Speaker 3: that we're logical right when we're when we're not. Almost
Speaker 3: all of our decisions we've reached emotionally, and then we
Speaker 3: create the logical.
Speaker 5: Shit structures to support that decision. Right.
Speaker 3: So, and if you look at our politics, everybody on
Speaker 3: each side thinks that they're right one percent right. And
Speaker 3: so when they go to train these ais, and we've
Speaker 3: seen this with like whether it's political influence or the
Speaker 3: religious influence or whatever it might be, the person telling
Speaker 3: the AI what to do is flawed. So they're giving
Speaker 3: the AI flawed you know, sort of information on how
Speaker 3: to determine whether something is information or mis information or
Speaker 3: whatever else. And now you have an AI that it
Speaker 3: can do great computer stuff, but it also carries the
Speaker 3: vagues of the people who programmed it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I don't know the extent to which program
Speaker 4: or bias influence it, Like I, okay, I don't know
Speaker 4: enough about it to speak to it. But you're right
Speaker 4: that the models are only good as the data that's
Speaker 4: giving given them, and there's a human being involved in that, right,
Speaker 4: And yeah, we are we are fallible, right, so if
Speaker 4: we if we expect a computer to give us infallible information,
Speaker 4: but we've we haven't been able to iron out all
Speaker 4: of the foibles of it, like, right, it's going to
Speaker 4: come up with with issues, right, which is I think
Speaker 4: one of the reasons. Rightly, so people are nervous about
Speaker 4: keeping a human in the loop, right when of the
Speaker 4: kill chain, not letting it the entire kill chain of
Speaker 4: censored a shooter be taken over by uh by machines.
Speaker 3: Right can can I ask you that this is kind
Speaker 3: of off tangent? But I'm very curious, you know, we
Speaker 3: what is the concern of like with these.
Speaker 5: With these ais, whether they're a military or whatever.
Speaker 3: Of them actually being despoiled by the enemy, of you know,
Speaker 3: like the enemy like getting in there, hacking in or
Speaker 3: whatever and then telling them you know, hey, this is
Speaker 3: actually that or whatever.
Speaker 5: And now the AI is that a concern that you.
Speaker 4: Know that Oh it's it's absolutely a concern. So it's
Speaker 4: so the phenomenon you're talking about is data poisoning, okay, Right,
Speaker 4: So there's there's just like the human being like, oh,
Speaker 4: we made a mistake error, like yeah, that we trained
Speaker 4: it to think that buses are actually bicycles, like go, okay, cool, Right,
Speaker 4: But then there's there's absolutely malicious actors that will seek
Speaker 4: to poison data. Right, So either through training sets, which
Speaker 4: is far worse because then essentially they're just training it
Speaker 4: to be dumb, or training it to do something incorrect, right,
Speaker 4: which we touch on a little bit in the book.
Speaker 4: We do some training data poisoning to kind of talk
Speaker 4: about this thing, or they poison the data that it's
Speaker 4: currently collecting. So what it thinks is accurate is not
Speaker 4: necessarily accurate. Right. So it's one thing if I'm pulling
Speaker 4: in data from all sorts of different sources and I
Speaker 4: fact check it, right because I'm like, I'm not really
Speaker 4: sure if Tom's a reliable source, so i need to
Speaker 4: fact check it from these different places. But what happens
Speaker 4: when you are getting information from a source that you trust, right,
Speaker 4: you have trust that that source is there, but it
Speaker 4: is now feeding you incorrect information because that data has
Speaker 4: been poisoned, right, And we wouldn't know with a lot
Speaker 4: of these models that that is actually the case because
Speaker 4: it can't explain how it arrived at the conclusions that
Speaker 4: arrived at necessarily right.
Speaker 3: And I feel like in a find picks finished, like
Speaker 3: you say, the kill chain, that if the enemy could
Speaker 3: actually say that these friendly positions are enemy positions and
Speaker 3: there's not a human in there, that it could have
Speaker 3: catastrophic effects.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And that's that's not to say that again
Speaker 4: we shouldn't use these technologies. It's just these are the
Speaker 4: problems that everybody is trying to figure out right now,
Speaker 4: like how best to use these systems as they currently exist,
Speaker 4: and then how best to uh structure our R and
Speaker 4: B to meet what we think will need in the future.
Speaker 3: What was your impression of the story of the I
Speaker 3: know that the Air Force retracted and said it wasn't accurate,
Speaker 3: But the colonel had come out and said that the
Speaker 3: drone had revolted and killed its operator in a simulation.
Speaker 5: Do you do you recall that story?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: So, so it was it was it was I think
Speaker 3: a colonel gave a talk and said that an operate
Speaker 3: in a simulation, an operator had given a drone an
Speaker 3: order to kill you, to a take out a target
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 5: Do you remember the specifics to take out a target?
Speaker 3: And it was against like the drones or the AI
Speaker 3: sort of, I don't know if it was you know.
Speaker 5: Warfare rules, it was civilian targets.
Speaker 3: But essentially the drone revolted and killed its own operator
Speaker 3: as a result of that, and then the Air Force
Speaker 3: later came out and said, no, that's not true. That's
Speaker 3: not a real story, even though it was an Air
Speaker 3: Force colonel who had given the talk. Let me see
Speaker 3: if I can find that out. Yeah, colonel, colonel saying
Speaker 3: drones highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal in a
Speaker 3: virtual test. Maybe it wanted to kill the target, and
Speaker 3: the drone operator said no, I can't remember the specifics.
Speaker 3: But the system started realizing that while they did identify
Speaker 3: the threat, at times of human operator would tell it
Speaker 3: not to kill that threat. But it got its points
Speaker 3: by killing the threat, so it wanted to get more points.
Speaker 5: So what did it do. It killed the operator.
Speaker 3: It killed the operator because that person was keeping it
Speaker 3: from a complex a complixen objective. Now that was like
Speaker 3: given by a by an Air Force officer at a
Speaker 3: talk and then the Air Force was like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 3: that didn't happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that happened or
Speaker 4: didn't happen, But like that's not outside of the realm
Speaker 4: of the possible, right where if you give an autonomous
Speaker 4: system a list of priorities, like hey, here's what I
Speaker 4: want you to go after, you don't know exactly like
Speaker 4: how it translates that when it's being trained to execute
Speaker 4: the tasks that it's being assigned. So you have to
Speaker 4: be very careful with that because it can interpret it
Speaker 4: any any number of ways. And you know, that's that's
Speaker 4: kind of one of the key things in you know,
Speaker 4: in that book is the AI is going to make
Speaker 4: decisions based on what it sees, what its priorities that
Speaker 4: have been given, and it's not necessarily going to take
Speaker 4: into account things that humans would necessarily take into account.
Speaker 5: Right shades of eye robot.
Speaker 2: Right, That's that's exactly what I wanted to dive into,
Speaker 2: was you know, most of your book is more about
Speaker 2: like operational preparation of the battle space, but the war
Speaker 2: goes hot at a certain point. And I think there's
Speaker 2: a couple of different interesting conversations to be had about
Speaker 2: the AI teaming question. One of them is how America
Speaker 2: might use these technologies versus an authoritarian country does.
Speaker 1: And in your.
Speaker 2: Novel, one of these authoritarian countries essentially hands over their
Speaker 2: strategic military decision making to an AI in order to
Speaker 2: make those decisions faster. But of course an AI just
Speaker 2: sees military units as chess pieces on a board, has
Speaker 2: no compunction at all about sacrificing them in order to
Speaker 2: achieve whatever goals it's been programmed. You play that out
Speaker 2: really interestingly in your novel. I'm did you talk about
Speaker 2: that a little bit?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I mean commanders have always had a
Speaker 4: hard job, right, They've always had to make decisions that
Speaker 4: send soldiers to their deaths. That's that's a hard thing.
Speaker 4: People will always wrestle with that, and unfortunately, sometimes you
Speaker 4: do have to make those hard decisions. The good thing
Speaker 4: is a human being, at least like a sane rational one,
Speaker 4: will take pause at at spending that. Unfortunately, if you
Speaker 4: look at spending lies from a pure logic rational level,
Speaker 4: you're essentially just trading pieces on a tession on a chessboard. Right.
Speaker 4: So one of the famous, like cold hearted quotes from
Speaker 4: World War One that I can't remember the specifica, but
Speaker 4: essentially is, how are the French gonna beat me? I
Speaker 4: can spend you know, ten thousand lives a week, like
Speaker 4: holy crap, man, Like those are those are people that
Speaker 4: all had families Like that is super callous, especially you know,
Speaker 4: modern Western ideals like have a hard time coming to
Speaker 4: terms with with that. AI doesn't necessarily have that compunction,
Speaker 4: right like they will. If if you're gonna tell me
Speaker 4: to win the war, I'm gonna win the war no
Speaker 4: matter what. I don't care that afterwards you're gonna, you know,
Speaker 4: crucify me in the court of public opinion or like
Speaker 4: legitimately hold me accountable for my actions. I'm a computer,
Speaker 4: like I don't. That doesn't factor into it. You give
Speaker 4: me a task, I will complete the task and the
Speaker 4: best way that I see fit given the resources and
Speaker 4: constraints that I'm I'm placed on. So you can't necessarily
Speaker 4: think that it's outside the realm of the possible that
Speaker 4: given that if you take the gloves off and say, hey,
Speaker 4: win me this war, it's not going to come up
Speaker 4: with things that a human just wouldn't want to wouldn't
Speaker 4: actually pursue as a suitable or acceptable course of action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as your book demonstrates, what happens when the
Speaker 2: human beings get tired of being treated like chess pieces.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so they I wouldn't want to be treated
Speaker 4: like that over and over again. The French mutinied in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventeen when they felt like they were that way. So,
Speaker 4: you know, in this one, the human beings decide that
Speaker 4: they no longer want to be a part of those
Speaker 4: sorts of shenanigans, and that ends up kind of being
Speaker 4: a critical moment for that military.
Speaker 2: Other points from the book any like, you know big
Speaker 2: you know, you've talked a lot about the intersection of
Speaker 2: the military technology. Are there any other big themes that
Speaker 2: you want to talk about in the book?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So, I think in addition to you know, just wanted
Speaker 4: to explore the difference in human intelligence. The other thing
Speaker 4: that I wanted to get at was one of the
Speaker 4: things that use of SoC has been trying to figure
Speaker 4: out is what General Braga has been calling the soft
Speaker 4: space cyber triad. Right, so hearkening back to the nuclear
Speaker 4: triad as a theory of deterrence and competition, right, what
Speaker 4: is the new triad for competing that doesn't necessarily involve
Speaker 4: nuking the planet. And essentially what he's come up with
Speaker 4: is hey, soft, When you put soft together with space
Speaker 4: capabilities and cyber capabilities, there's a lot that we can
Speaker 4: do to compete below the level of active arm conflict.
Speaker 4: Uh So, I kind of wanted to see, like what
Speaker 4: that looks like, because it seems like one of those
Speaker 4: things is not like the other. You've got you've got
Speaker 4: nerds in space, and you've got nerds in cyberspace, and
Speaker 4: then you've got you know, you've got this long tab
Speaker 4: snaky ears, like what what is that doing? And really
Speaker 4: what it comes back to is placement and access, Like
Speaker 4: they they have SOFT has people in places currently working
Speaker 4: with our counterparts, right, building partners, and they're they're there, right,
Speaker 4: and they have the ability to when you cross that
Speaker 4: threshold and you want to move into unconventional warfare or
Speaker 4: regular warfare, or even keep it below, they can gain
Speaker 4: proximate access for some of these space and cyber effects, right,
Speaker 4: because some of them you can't just do from the
Speaker 4: convenience of you know, some the NSA's basement. You have
Speaker 4: to you have to get pretty close to be able
Speaker 4: to do these things. And it's not going to be
Speaker 4: it's not going to be like a super engineer that's
Speaker 4: doing it like a computer programmer. Right, they'll get you
Speaker 4: most of the way, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: there has in a lot of instances, there has to
Speaker 4: be somebody that's on the ground doing these things. And
Speaker 4: that's where like soft forces are uniquely suited. Right for
Speaker 4: the last twenty years we've been hunting hunting terrorists and
Speaker 4: we got really good at that, but that really wasn't
Speaker 4: necessarily like in the Green Beret wheelhouse, right where we
Speaker 4: are work going by with and through locals, operating in
Speaker 4: small teams in and around the battlespace, maybe not particularly
Speaker 4: in the conflict zone, but in the periphery to achieve
Speaker 4: outside effects. And that's something that soft can absolutely do
Speaker 4: if they can help deliver some of the the effects
Speaker 4: that you know, the folks in the space and the
Speaker 4: cyber world are are dreaming out.
Speaker 1: How do you see that sort of playing out?
Speaker 2: Because as you point out, the Green Beret in the
Speaker 2: you know, like an essay offensive hacker guy like two
Speaker 2: very different people, different personalities, they're selected and trained for
Speaker 2: different things. How do you and I know we've experimented
Speaker 2: over the years trying to blend these capabilities and blend
Speaker 2: teams together, and how do you sort of see that
Speaker 2: playing out in the in the coming years as we
Speaker 2: try to combine these capabilities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think you're always going to need like
Speaker 4: the pure breeds on either side, right, You're always going
Speaker 4: to need guys who just want to be trigger pollers.
Speaker 4: You're gonna need girls, guys that are keyboard warriors. And
Speaker 4: I mean that in like the best sense of the term.
Speaker 4: Like the things that those folks are able to do
Speaker 4: in cyber space is absolutely amazing. Right, But then there's
Speaker 4: there is a need for the way that I've kind
Speaker 4: of described trying to find this niche for so kind
Speaker 4: of people like me or people that want to nerd
Speaker 4: out and brow down right, so they're they're interested in technology,
Speaker 4: but they're also totally happy, you know, running around in
Speaker 4: the mud getting their gun on from time to time.
Speaker 4: And you don't need an entire force that's filled with that,
Speaker 4: but you need enough of those people two to be
Speaker 4: able to go forward. And that's kind of like what
Speaker 4: the the SADA is doing right now. So I think
Speaker 4: it'll be something like that, but armed with a little
Speaker 4: bit different skill sets, maybe you know, just enhancing certain
Speaker 4: ways or changed, you know, as U A S has
Speaker 4: come online, that's going to figure into it, like, hey,
Speaker 4: can I have man portable U A S is that
Speaker 4: that can help deliver these sorts of effects. So I
Speaker 4: think it's I think we're gonna end up seeing more
Speaker 4: of of that going on. So if there's a part
Speaker 4: in the book where we sort of see this where
Speaker 4: we are the team is engaged in a firefight but
Speaker 4: then supported with some of this tactical on net deception
Speaker 4: operation ends up feeding information to the the AI, who
Speaker 4: then makes decisions based on that incorrect information that ends
Speaker 4: up saving the saving the day for the Green Berets.
Speaker 4: So I think that's gonna be the reality here in
Speaker 4: the not too distant future, where it's gonna not necessarily
Speaker 4: move from you know, independent operations, but it's going to
Speaker 4: move into real time blending of all of the different
Speaker 4: domains in multi domain operations.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you're describing the guy or a team
Speaker 2: that can get close enough to the enemy using you know,
Speaker 2: a chief tactical surprise, but then also implement some piece
Speaker 2: of technology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, And again, I think the green rays are
Speaker 4: perfectly suited for this because they are always genuinely curious
Speaker 4: by nature, right Like they didn't they didn't accidentally stumble
Speaker 4: into this profession because they just like following the rules
Speaker 4: and accepting whatever alignment they were told there. They tend
Speaker 4: to be pretty free thinking and curious and happy to
Speaker 4: pull threads wherever they can because they want to. They
Speaker 4: want to be masters of their of their craft. So
Speaker 4: I think that's one of the things that makes them
Speaker 4: particularly well suited to being a large part of this equation.
Speaker 1: Do we have all questions for Tom?
Speaker 3: I actually uh let to see her. Actually, no, we didn't.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna ask this question from uh solely. What's the
Speaker 3: kindest someone's been to you.
Speaker 5: In your career?
Speaker 4: What's the kindest someone's been to me?
Speaker 5: Yeah? The kindest?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think I think the kindest somebody has
Speaker 4: been to me is helping me actually like believe in
Speaker 4: myself right, so believe in that I actually can do things.
Speaker 4: So I've had I've been fortunate enough that this has
Speaker 4: happened a couple times. But I think that's been like
Speaker 4: the the thing that in hindsight of like that not
Speaker 4: necessarily kind is because you know their mentors are going
Speaker 4: to push you. But in hindsight like that act was
Speaker 4: absolutely kindness of hey, Tom, you you have way more
Speaker 4: to give. So specific example, when I was going through
Speaker 4: CGSC so the place where manjors go to have their
Speaker 4: brains lebotomized, I wasn't necessarily getting a lot out of
Speaker 4: it because it's built towards the media end of the
Speaker 4: bell curve. They need to make sure that they have
Speaker 4: everybody's on the same page as they they're on staff.
Speaker 4: But I had one professor, Doc ken Long, who kind
Speaker 4: of pulled me aside and was like, hey, Tom, I
Speaker 4: know that this is a challenge for you. Find something
Speaker 4: that is a challenge is for you, and like do that.
Speaker 4: So you know him, I can draw a line from
Speaker 4: the conversation I had with him then to like this
Speaker 4: book being published, right, being curious, starting to chip away
Speaker 4: at this, accepting that I think a little bit differently,
Speaker 4: and like doubling down on that and getting getting me
Speaker 4: to where I am now. So that's that's what I
Speaker 4: would say.
Speaker 2: I got a question here from the He says, do
Speaker 2: you think that plans to expand special forces teams to
Speaker 2: include people like drone pilots to teams would be more
Speaker 2: beneficial overall than just sending guys to more schools in
Speaker 2: those capabilities.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's I don't know that we
Speaker 4: really know the answer to that yet. I think that's
Speaker 4: something that we're trying to figure out right now. So
Speaker 4: Yususak is they are made making an MOS for drone operators,
Speaker 4: so it's going to be a warrant MOS to try
Speaker 4: and figure this out. So I guess the question is
Speaker 4: is there going to be like a an eighteen uniform
Speaker 4: for uas I don't and they'll they'll have a specialization
Speaker 4: or is this going to fall into.
Speaker 2: Like one of the others of like echo, like we
Speaker 2: send guys to j tax school or sniper school or
Speaker 2: something that someone's going to go and run school.
Speaker 4: And I don't. I don't think that we have an
Speaker 4: answer on which one is best. I think the problem though,
Speaker 4: is you can't you can't necessarily stick somebody in here
Speaker 4: as an additional duty like you would like the Arms
Speaker 4: Room NCO right right. It has to be somebody who
Speaker 4: is interested and has the an aptitude for it, because
Speaker 4: it is hard to wrap your head around some of
Speaker 4: this technology when it comes to like programming these things
Speaker 4: and understanding what actually is going on. So I think
Speaker 4: for a while, the best option is going to be
Speaker 4: something that's separate so that we can get people who
Speaker 4: are interested in have the aptitude through these sorts of
Speaker 4: pipelines so that we can experiment with it. But I
Speaker 4: think as you know, the technology matures and we figure
Speaker 4: more things out and people become more comfortable with it,
Speaker 4: we'll actually be able to see whether or not we
Speaker 4: could just have it be an additional duty.
Speaker 5: Tom.
Speaker 3: Do you think that overall that the military needs to
Speaker 3: relook for certain fields. It's recruiting requirements when it comes
Speaker 3: to height, weight, when it comes to neurodiversity, things like that,
Speaker 3: in order to.
Speaker 5: Stay at the cutting edge of this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I absolutely think so. I think that one of
Speaker 4: the things that makes America great again is democracy and
Speaker 4: the idea that we pull from the citizenry to get
Speaker 4: the best and the brightest. Right, there's not like a
Speaker 4: warrior class where hey, you have to be you have
Speaker 4: to be a member of the aristocracy to serve. We
Speaker 4: cast a wide net. Why would I want to discount
Speaker 4: somebody who can be super great at specific things just
Speaker 4: because of like potentially outmoded understanding of what their capabilities are.
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't. That's not Listen like a blanket. Let everybody in, right,
Speaker 4: you know, come together and just kumbaya. Everybody is equal.
Speaker 4: Everybody is not equal. And that's the point, right, If
Speaker 4: we try and make everybody interchangeable parts, like we fail right, right,
Speaker 4: because again that's not democratic, that's authoritarian. Where where everybody
Speaker 4: is just interchangeable parts that you can fit into the
Speaker 4: cogs in the machine. And again, as long as you
Speaker 4: have the brilliance at the top, everything runs smoothly. Right,
Speaker 4: that's just not that's just not reality. So I absolutely,
Speaker 4: I mean, anytime I've gone down range, I want the
Speaker 4: best person beside me, right, and if that best person
Speaker 4: at whatever task doesn't have to you know, it can
Speaker 4: be neuro divergent because they're going to be they don't
Speaker 4: need to be on the front line. They can do
Speaker 4: their job from like a command center back Like I don't,
Speaker 4: I don't care. We got really close with with the ACFT, right, like, hey,
Speaker 4: we I don't care what your what your background is, whatever,
Speaker 4: We're going to have job specific standards for these things.
Speaker 4: And then we determined that we weren't quite ready for
Speaker 4: that yet, and we you know, we've since modified.
Speaker 3: Are throughout the science and we already do it, right,
Speaker 3: Like you have to have a higher PT to be
Speaker 3: in a range of battalion than you do in a line.
Speaker 3: Like we already have those separations. We just they're internal, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: So, Uh, first, I will say the only mark of
Speaker 4: a true leader is your five mile run time. But besides,
Speaker 4: besides that, yeah, I think that we could get to
Speaker 4: a point where we accept that not everybody has to
Speaker 4: be a physical specimen right to do their job well.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: I still think that if you're going to be running
Speaker 4: a log pack as a as a you know, an
Speaker 4: eighty eight mic truck driver, and you actually probably do
Speaker 4: need to be in pretty good shape, right, and you
Speaker 4: do need to be able to handle yourself in a firefight.
Speaker 4: But if you're going to talk about on net operators,
Speaker 4: we should take a hard look at what those actual
Speaker 4: demands are and make sure that our recruiting policies our
Speaker 4: meeting that. And I think there's a recognition that we
Speaker 4: want to get there. I think there's just a lot
Speaker 4: of cultural inertia that we're going to have to overcome.
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry, Jack, I know we have another question,
Speaker 3: but that reminds me of the last question I want
Speaker 3: to ask you, is that the Army, I'm outside of
Speaker 3: special operations. Special operations has really been an exception to
Speaker 3: this rule.
Speaker 5: But outside of.
Speaker 3: That, the military is very slow to change, right and
Speaker 3: people get entrenched. There's a massive bureaucracy, whether it's like
Speaker 3: the latest in boots or the latest in rucksacks or
Speaker 3: whatever it is.
Speaker 5: How do they compete?
Speaker 3: You know, like there's so much stuff that is in
Speaker 3: the army system that you can go buy better equipment
Speaker 3: off the shelf. How does how is the military responding
Speaker 3: to emergent technology and the ability to stay competitive there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're we're trying to get our act together. I
Speaker 4: think you know the So the new c IO G six,
Speaker 4: General Ray just came in like two weeks ago, and
Speaker 4: before him, General Morrison is he recognizes that he's kind
Speaker 4: of fighting with one hand tied behind his back when
Speaker 4: it comes to I T monornization because of our procurement processes,
Speaker 4: because they are very, very slow, and they don't necessarily
Speaker 4: meet pace with with what we need. So there there
Speaker 4: are a lot of people that are working on that,
Speaker 4: but you know, I'm just as frustrated with the procurement process. Again,
Speaker 4: we are different though than the civilian the civilian market,
Speaker 4: in that there is tremendous downside to us getting things wrong.
Speaker 4: We know what worked in the past, it got us
Speaker 4: to this point, right, we are potentially making an existential
Speaker 4: decision that will cost the lives of our sons and
Speaker 4: daughters if we get something wrong when it comes to
Speaker 4: adopting new doctrine, new hardware. So there is bureaucracies are
Speaker 4: completely designed to keep the status quo, and they're designed
Speaker 4: to change slowly. That's not a bug, that's literally a
Speaker 4: feature of what it is.
Speaker 2: Right, they need to have you down at Softweek on
Speaker 2: some of those panels to talk to those guys who
Speaker 2: want to move fast and break things. You know, it's like,
Speaker 2: what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like, I too want to move fast and break things,
Speaker 4: but but what I what I don't want is to
Speaker 4: go out and end up putting folks in the field
Speaker 4: with equipment that doesn't actually meet our needs. Right, And
Speaker 4: it's The other hard part is we don't know what
Speaker 4: the future is going to be. All we're making all
Speaker 4: of our choices on past data, the wars that came before.
Speaker 4: We don't know that what the next conflict is going
Speaker 4: to look like. So everybody right now in the Inner
Speaker 4: War period, it's I mean, it's exactly like the the wars,
Speaker 4: the period between World War One and World War Two,
Speaker 4: where we're trying to guess what is going to go on,
Speaker 4: right Like, if you guessed combined arms maneuver, you won.
Speaker 4: If you guessed battleships, you lost. Right Because it turns
Speaker 4: out that aircraft carriers were the heat in World War
Speaker 4: Two and have been for the last fifty years. Bat
Speaker 4: are aircraft carrier is going to be supreme in the
Speaker 4: next conflict with the rise of hypersonic missiles and you know,
Speaker 4: drone swarms and things like that. We don't know, right Like,
Speaker 4: we don't know if the next generation fighter is still
Speaker 4: the best thing or if it's going to be low
Speaker 4: tech drome. Like, there's a lot of unanswered questions. So
Speaker 4: figuring out what our assumptions are and coming at that,
Speaker 4: I think we do need to be deliberate. That being said,
Speaker 4: there's still probably a lot of red tanks that we
Speaker 4: could leave on the cutting rooms for that at least,
Speaker 4: could get equipment out to exercises and experiments where it's
Speaker 4: safe to fail, to get it into the hands of
Speaker 4: servicemen and women, so we can we can learn these things, right,
Speaker 4: because it's one thing to sit back and admire the
Speaker 4: gravity of the situation, but that's just going to lead
Speaker 4: to paralysis, right because we just get bogged down and
Speaker 4: we don't know what to do because we don't have
Speaker 4: all of the data. Yeah, but again, human beings are
Speaker 4: actually really good at making decisions with load data. If
Speaker 4: we get out of our own ways and we do
Speaker 4: that through small, safe to fail experiments.
Speaker 5: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: I imagine with emerging technologies, like we don't want to get
Speaker 3: excited about it, I don't know, be like the Beta
Speaker 3: max military when all of a sudden like VHS becomes
Speaker 3: the big thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, yea, not where we want to be, right,
Speaker 4: But we also still have to equip the four the
Speaker 4: total force now right, which probably was a huge price tag,
Speaker 4: right because there turns out that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: us and all of us need email.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I got a question from lewis this is
Speaker 2: an interesting one. What can we do to maintain ethical
Speaker 2: oversight in terms of AI?
Speaker 4: The biggest thing is to have conversations about ethical oversight
Speaker 4: when it comes to AI. Right, So I think that
Speaker 4: that starts at every single at all levels. So from
Speaker 4: the operator on the ground, like is it ethical for
Speaker 4: me to use this system in this context? Right all
Speaker 4: the way up through a is it ethical to deploy
Speaker 4: this capability in combat? Through A where do the authorities
Speaker 4: need to be held? Right? And we wrestle with ethical
Speaker 4: considerations with all sorts of capability. Right, It's not like
Speaker 4: it's not like there's just a lieutenant running around somewhere
Speaker 4: and be like, you know what jadeams for everybody, Like
Speaker 4: everybody's just going to get bombs all over the fort.
Speaker 4: We we reserve those authorities at certain levels. So I
Speaker 4: think that'll continue to happen, where the senior decision makers
Speaker 4: will delegate authority down to some level depending on the technology,
Speaker 4: but then they're still going to reserve it at the
Speaker 4: highest level for others, whether it's the capability itself or
Speaker 4: the specific use of it for specific targets. Right, That's
Speaker 4: what we do now. But I think what we need
Speaker 4: to do is one educate the force. So what is it? When?
Speaker 4: What are we actually talking about when we mean AI, right,
Speaker 4: do we just mean a drone that if it loses signal,
Speaker 4: knows how to come home or I can put it
Speaker 4: on a pre planned out so it does what it
Speaker 4: needs to. Is is that unethical or total autonomy? Where
Speaker 4: a drone can launch itself based on an piece of
Speaker 4: intel it it had, and guide itself all the way
Speaker 4: to the target and choose to execute that target. I
Speaker 4: think the understanding what the capabilities are, what the tools are,
Speaker 4: is the first step. And then I think we want
Speaker 4: to understand like what it is that we actually want. Right,
Speaker 4: so the American people get the army, they get the
Speaker 4: military that they want, you know, for for good or bad.
Speaker 4: A lot of the policies that you hear being thrown
Speaker 4: about in the news headlines recently, they were enacted because
Speaker 4: part of the American people wanted that thing. And now
Speaker 4: Americans think differently. So we're we're changing to adapt. That's
Speaker 4: what we've done throughout our history, right, we adapt to
Speaker 4: be what whatever our nation needs us to be. So
Speaker 4: that's that plays into our rules of engagement That's why
Speaker 4: whenever we go to conflict, we hold ourselves to a
Speaker 4: higher standard because that's what we believe in at our
Speaker 4: at our core. Those are the values that the American
Speaker 4: military draws from the American public. And I think that's
Speaker 4: going to be ending up where we need to draw
Speaker 4: the source of what we want, right, Like, what is
Speaker 4: it that we want to do, Because it'd be super easy,
Speaker 4: right to turn on the floodgates and just go take
Speaker 4: out all of our adversaries now, but that's not that's
Speaker 4: not who we are as a people. So I think
Speaker 4: that's what it's. It's it's an education, and it's a
Speaker 4: reconciliation with like our values of who we actually want
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: So M.
Speaker 2: Corbin has a question here that I don't even understand,
Speaker 2: but maybe you will. He says, given that RSA might
Speaker 2: no longer be secure de wave advantage China, do you
Speaker 2: have any thoughts on the future of encryption?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's just gonna be a constant cat
Speaker 4: and mouse game right where I'm gonna I'm gonna come
Speaker 4: up with shield and then somebody's gonna come up with
Speaker 4: a way around that shield. They're gonna make a bread
Speaker 4: better solar. So I think we are trying to figure
Speaker 4: figure this out as we go because and this goes
Speaker 4: along the lines of not only how we protect what
Speaker 4: we are, what we're saying, how we encrypt things, but
Speaker 4: then also like what needs to be what needs to
Speaker 4: be said, and what needs to be classified. Right, So
Speaker 4: there's a there's a big conversation right now happening across
Speaker 4: the force on like what data actually needs to be classified?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Can can't do? I need to because it's been so
Speaker 4: easy we can just overclassify everything and in doubt make it
Speaker 4: like you know, super secret, double probation Jesus level and
Speaker 4: like okay, as long as you're read on cool, I don't,
Speaker 4: I don't care. But that's not what we need where
Speaker 4: we recognize that that is hampering our ability to fight. Right,
Speaker 4: So we're having those conversations about what actually needs to
Speaker 4: be protected and maybe instead of just wrapping it in encryption,
Speaker 4: we just don't say it, or you know, find find
Speaker 4: other ways and two to maneuver around it so that
Speaker 4: we aren't giving our adversaries the opportunity too. Uh, swing
Speaker 4: at it, right, because one of the big the big
Speaker 4: things is not only do they have to possess the
Speaker 4: capability to do it, they have to have the the opportunity.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So if I, if I never communicate over a particular method,
Speaker 4: you're not going to know that it exists, right, Right,
Speaker 4: But if I start using that for everyday correspondence, suddenly
Speaker 4: you have all sorts of opportunity to figure it out,
Speaker 4: to experiment with it, to pick at it, to find
Speaker 4: out where the holes are, right, So that I think
Speaker 4: it's going to be a more intentional and deliberate game
Speaker 4: of cat and mouse.
Speaker 3: Did you follow the DARPA competition where they had the
Speaker 3: different AI, the different hacking teams create AIS to both
Speaker 3: defend an attack at the same time.
Speaker 5: No, I didn't, Yeah, it was. It was interesting.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating what everybody, you know, all the research is
Speaker 3: going into this field is incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think people realize that when they're when
Speaker 4: those systems are on and there, if we can get
Speaker 4: them to do exactly what we need to do, there's
Speaker 4: so much potential. Right, it's not necessarily even for our
Speaker 4: capacity to kill people easier, right, So right, making better
Speaker 4: better drugs, So AI is so much better at being
Speaker 4: able to just crunch through thousands of different permutations for
Speaker 4: chemical compounds like that's it's it's an amazing time to
Speaker 4: be alive. It's just a frustrating time to be alive
Speaker 4: because we're sort of in the in the wild West
Speaker 4: right where we're not sure what needs to be regulated
Speaker 4: or how it should be regulated yet.
Speaker 3: Right, Tom, I have a question for you that other
Speaker 3: people that people who watch the show, especially young people,
Speaker 3: might be interested in. You know, you mentioned that you
Speaker 3: got an email or you know you've got a letter,
Speaker 3: you know, and we've talked.
Speaker 5: We've got other.
Speaker 3: People on the show that have been part of SAPs
Speaker 3: that they kind of stumbled into or you know, different
Speaker 3: projects and programs. If somebody wanted to go in the
Speaker 3: military with focused on these types of things, how outside
Speaker 3: of you know, just getting a random letter, is there
Speaker 3: a way they can direct their career to like find
Speaker 3: themselves in these fields.
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think there's there, absolutely is, right. So the
Speaker 4: advice that I give to everybody who I talk to
Speaker 4: that's interested in these things is all these organizations are
Speaker 4: looking for for three things. They're looking for, can you
Speaker 4: do the job, do you want to do the job,
Speaker 4: and will you fit in right? So, can you do
Speaker 4: the job? Do you actually have the skill sets that
Speaker 4: organizations like this need to accomplish their mission? Right? So
Speaker 4: in the discussion we're having, do you have the technical acumen? Right?
Speaker 4: You don't necessarily have to be the world's best programmer
Speaker 4: or anything like that, But do you have a basic
Speaker 4: understanding of what these things are? Right? Do you are
Speaker 4: you curious? Do you do you read things? Right? Are
Speaker 4: you constantly learning to be the master of your craft
Speaker 4: wherever you are now? Right? Do you know other languages? Like?
Speaker 4: What is it about you that makes you unique? And
Speaker 4: how can you gain these sorts of additional skills? Right?
Speaker 4: So that's can you do the job? Do you want
Speaker 4: to do the job?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Because these jobs everybody's like, oh man, I'm going to
Speaker 4: go down and do do super swoopy stuff, hang out
Speaker 4: with the secret squirrels. But a lot of it sucks.
Speaker 4: I mean it's right, right, You're you're working in window
Speaker 4: lists offices where like, I mean, this has been super
Speaker 4: neat for me for the last couple of weeks because
Speaker 4: I have my phone on me all the time, right,
Speaker 4: Like I go in like nothing, Like I've got my
Speaker 4: garment watch on. It's meat, Like I do you just
Speaker 4: give up these little things to be a part of this,
Speaker 4: and then a lot of the work is it's not glamorous, right,
Speaker 4: It kind of it sucks. It's it's hard because if
Speaker 4: it was easy, everybody would be doing it. So do
Speaker 4: you actually want to want to do this job? And
Speaker 4: how you demonstrate that is by mastering the things that
Speaker 4: you have control over because you don't know what's on
Speaker 4: the other side of the fence. You don't know what
Speaker 4: they're looking for specifically, but you do know things that
Speaker 4: will set you apart, right, like being good at what
Speaker 4: you at, what your job is now, being being physically fit. Right.
Speaker 4: It may not be necessary for all of them, but
Speaker 4: given the option, would you want somebody who has more
Speaker 4: endurance or less endurance? Given that one of the key
Speaker 4: indicators of mental resilience is aerobic conditioning, right, So you
Speaker 4: can be you don't have to be strong ranger. You
Speaker 4: can be smart ranger. But smart ranger also is in shape. Right,
Speaker 4: given two packets, the one that's if they're both equal,
Speaker 4: I'm going to take the one that's more in shape
Speaker 4: because that shows that you are disciplined, right, and it
Speaker 4: shows that you actually have stamina because a lot of
Speaker 4: this work is actually also really tedious and it requires endurance.
Speaker 4: So that's do you want to do the job. And
Speaker 4: then finally like will you fit in? All of these
Speaker 4: organizations have their own culture, right, And I think that's
Speaker 4: if you look at the different people that you've you
Speaker 4: all have had on the on the team house like you,
Speaker 4: that's readily apparent like they're all lumped into this thing
Speaker 4: of soft or the the ic, like it's this monolith.
Speaker 4: It's not right. Every single organization out there has their
Speaker 4: own unique personality and their own their own culture, and
Speaker 4: folks that are are thriving in one won't necessarily fit
Speaker 4: in into the other, right. And that's where it's not
Speaker 4: necessarily a knock against you if you try out and
Speaker 4: they say, hey, thanks, but you're just not a good fit, right,
Speaker 4: because they're all honestly doing you a favor because you
Speaker 4: would put your time in effort in this thing and
Speaker 4: then you'd go there and you would be miserable, right right,
Speaker 4: Then you're not producing and you're not happy, right right,
Speaker 4: So that's that's just not a recipe for success. So
Speaker 4: will you fit in? Is learning who you are as
Speaker 4: an individual, learning what you like to do, learning what
Speaker 4: your strengths and your weaknesses are and being being okay
Speaker 4: with who you are in your skin, and also like
Speaker 4: not being a terrible human being. Right, keep out of
Speaker 4: keep out of trouble because the other thing that these
Speaker 4: organizations all have in common is they have to play
Speaker 4: by big boy and big girl rules right right, Like you,
Speaker 4: the future conflicts are going to be distributed. You cannot
Speaker 4: expect to be micromanaged and be successful. So you have
Speaker 4: to trust the people that you are you're sending out.
Speaker 4: And if you can't trust somebody to make good decisions
Speaker 4: when you're just going out in town on the weekend, right,
Speaker 4: how am I going to trust you with this high
Speaker 4: tech cyber thing behind enemy lines? Right?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: How is that supposed to be? So make good choices,
Speaker 4: practice that now, because it, like everything else, it's a habit.
Speaker 4: So that's what I would say. Demonstrate that you can
Speaker 4: do the job, that you want to do the job,
Speaker 4: and that you'll fit in. And then like, there are
Speaker 4: a lot of these places are open secrets, right, Like
Speaker 4: they have recruiters that are constantly posting in education centers.
Speaker 4: They all have email addresses and once you get inside,
Speaker 4: now you start to open up and understand like what
Speaker 4: is actually going on with more of these programs. You
Speaker 4: don't necessarily know like all the secrets ins and outs
Speaker 4: of the other organizations, but you know who's who, right,
Speaker 4: and you can find your way if your first one
Speaker 4: didn't necessarily land. Like the Ranger Regiment is a perfect
Speaker 4: example of this, because they take people straight off the street,
Speaker 4: right and once you once you get into the regiment
Speaker 4: and kind of cut your teeth a little bit, you
Speaker 4: see what other opportunities are out there, and it's easier
Speaker 4: for you to hop from one place to the other
Speaker 4: because one it's it's more directed. It's not just hey,
Speaker 4: random email to random organization. It's targeted. I am good
Speaker 4: at this. This interests me. I'm going to go for that.
Speaker 4: And you've already demonstrated that you don't suck right allah,
Speaker 4: you can do the job and you want to do
Speaker 4: the job right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's fascinating, you know, like knowing yourself
Speaker 3: is so important because even inside Ranger Regiment, well especially
Speaker 3: these days, there's so much more professionalized now, but like back,
Speaker 3: you know, way back when the guys in the sniper
Speaker 3: section had a very different mentality than the guys on
Speaker 3: the line, like even though they are rangers and you
Speaker 3: think of them as monolithic, think.
Speaker 2: About the recon guys, like not every infantry man is
Speaker 2: really cut out.
Speaker 3: For that, right and not and not every like infantrymom
Speaker 3: wants to do that. Some guys just want to kick
Speaker 3: indoors and that's fine, and yeah, so I mean that's
Speaker 3: that's great. So you know, so basically for people who
Speaker 3: might want to get into like these little fields, like,
Speaker 3: start with the big thing. So whether it's cyber or
Speaker 3: or singant, you know, signals intelligence or human intelligence or
Speaker 3: rangers or you know eighteen X ray or whatever, and
Speaker 3: then those doors will start to open up for you
Speaker 3: to like narrow it down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, because what's going to happen is if you
Speaker 4: go into those positions and you do well and you
Speaker 4: learn everything, you know, all these organizations want you, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: Like they they will fight over you to bring you
Speaker 4: in and put you through their assessment and selection because
Speaker 4: you've demonstrated that you don't suck and you have the
Speaker 4: ability to pick your own team, like you want to
Speaker 4: be around people that can actually do the job because
Speaker 4: that's gonna make everybody better.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the book is Quantum Dagger. Where can people go
Speaker 2: to find it?
Speaker 1: Tom?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's it's available on Amazon, It's you can
Speaker 4: order it from Barnes and Noble. Uh. Pretty you can
Speaker 4: order it from pretty much any retailer. I'm not sure
Speaker 4: how much lucky you have, like going to your local
Speaker 4: bookstore and picking it up, but it is available online
Speaker 4: pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1: And we will have a link down the description.
Speaker 5: And also I.
Speaker 3: Did do a search for the creativity stuff is there?
Speaker 4: Is there?
Speaker 5: Do you have a website?
Speaker 3: Can people find your work, your academic work in a
Speaker 3: central place?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So. The the easiest way where I have some of
Speaker 4: it aggregated is on on the website of the school
Speaker 4: dot us so t Hyphenschool dot us. And then there's
Speaker 4: a research and media tab in that that has links
Speaker 4: to some of the articles we've we've written on this,
Speaker 4: and then some of the podcasts that we've we've done
Speaker 4: that talk about it.
Speaker 3: I think that's fast. I mean, I think it's such
Speaker 3: a fascinating topic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, me too, really interesting research.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you again Tom for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: U Quantum Dagger is the book. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I hope you guys will go check it out anything
Speaker 2: else before we get going. Is there another another book
Speaker 2: project in the back of your mind?
Speaker 4: You know? So I have started to think about like
Speaker 4: what the what the next book would look like. It
Speaker 4: may end up becoming a possibility, but for right now,
Speaker 4: my focus is more on how I can bring creativity
Speaker 4: to uh you know, the next generation.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Uh, well, thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Uh we will see you all next Wednesday with Darryl
Speaker 2: retired tenth Special Forces Group guy.
Speaker 1: Excited to have him here in studio.
Speaker 3: Until then, well that'll be Friday for the people who
Speaker 3: are watching this, right, it'll we'll talk on.
Speaker 2: Well, it'll be it will be Friday for the riff
Speaker 2: rapp Yes you know about with the poorest watch this
Speaker 2: on ut but for.
Speaker 5: And Friday for you poor peasants.
Speaker 2: Uh so, all right, thank you Tom, and uh we
Speaker 2: will see all you guys next time.