Speaker 1: So there was the liberal, mostly white, liberal female point
of view on what happened in Venezuela. We could debate
it legally if you like, but from an operational perspective
and from a societal perspective, there was a lot of
liberal women in the United States of America very very upset.
And then there was the street parties in Venezuela, as
you see in this video of people celebrating the outstir
of Maduro as he's taken out and removed by US forces.
That had to be a big shock to the liberal women,
mostly all white women, who are very, very concerned about this,
and the Venezuelan stepping in to say, hey, you can
be concerned. From where you're sit we're pretty happy about him. Well,
talk about that, but more so the operational realities of this.
Speaker 2: What happened? How did it happened?
Speaker 1: Is as successful as everybody says, It's not me, it's
my friend. Michael Rourke, retired Special Forces, the chief over
its Advanced Operational Concepts, joins US with the help of
Bulwark Capital Manage and of course God Almighty.
Speaker 3: But Todd Herman show is one disapproved but big pharma
technocrats and tyrants everywhere from the hind mountains of Free America.
Here's the Emerald City exime Todd Herman.
Speaker 1: Today is the day the Lord has made in vis
are the times to which God has decided we shall live.
And tell me this isn't God ordained. Look who the
sponsor is today, bone Frog Coffee. I got the bone
Frog Coffee merch, a new collared shirt for records. I'm
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And there's so the God Country team reality on all
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Com slash Todd promo code Todd.
Speaker 2: Michael Rourke joins me, Mike, retired.
Speaker 1: Special Forces Chief over at Advanced Operational Concepts.
Speaker 2: Brother, thank you for coming back on the program. It's
a pleasure to have you.
Speaker 4: Here, Todd. Good to talk with you again. Been too long.
Speaker 1: It has been too long, and immediately I thought of you,
and you're helping me with an interview with a guy
who knows a little bit about Venezuela that's supposedly going
to happen next week.
Speaker 2: Is a little busy this week.
Speaker 1: Let's start with a video that those of us who
are not operational haven't served watch and wonder what it is.
It's some helicopters flying. It's an operational video, and I
just see helicopters flying over a city.
Speaker 2: But what do you see as this is going on?
You called this the Delta package. What does that mean?
Speaker 4: It's the Yeah, it's the assault package going in to
grab Maduro. What you're saying in the video are sevens
and MH sixty black Hawks that belong to the one
hundred and sixtieth Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and they are
flying in Delta assaulters and very likely Rangers from the
seventi fifth Ranger Regiment who would serve as an outer
security force, and they would be hitting the target, putting
people on the ground in front of the building, probably
fast roping onto the roof. Of the building to take
the objective top and bottom all at once.
Speaker 1: And this is just phenomenal for people who haven't looked
at the operational details of this. You know, General Raisin
Kane gave a little well, he gave about a seven
or eight minutes explanation what happens, Mike, Let's start first
of all with the complexity of this. I understand it's
one hundred and fifty aircraft from twelve locations. Those are
big numbers. But break this down for us from your
perspective of all the moving pieces and just just rate
everything here for us.
Speaker 4: This is a sophisticated military choreography that spent in the
planning for months, probably at least since August. You had
naval aviation assets, air force aviation assets, you had electronic
warfare aircraft going in to blind the opposition. I think
one of the questions that China's going to ask themselves
is why didn't their radars work? Because Chinese radars were
part of the air defense system. Russian mobile missile launchers
were hit. The whole thing was designed to prevent the
assault package from coming under effective enemy fire. And what's
really sophisticated and daring about This is that we didn't
suppress the enemy air defenses first. We were doing it
simultaneously with the assault going in to maximize the surprise.
And of course now the helicopters didn't fly right over Caracas.
They would have come around from the least populated route
possible in order to hit the target on that military
base that's outside the city.
Speaker 1: It's an extraordinary thing. Michael works with this advanced operational concept.
There's a link to his company. You might, as an
executive one day need to get extracted from a place
like this. Mike can help you with that. It can
also help you secure your facilities against cyber attack, to
employee screening, security training. It's advanced operational concept. There's a
link to the company in there. Maduro was on a
military base and he'd seem fit to mock our military.
He mocked President Trump saying come and get me, but
do it fast. So he's on a military base. And
then you told me the sort of building this guy
was apparently betting down in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my understanding is a multi story building on the
military base, which is why it was important to hit
top end bottom simultaneously. I say, you'll have probably MH
forty seven, hovering right over the roof, you know, feefeed
over the roof, and then a couple of fast ropes
coming out the back end. The assaulters would be sliding
down like fireman on polls. At the same time, you'll
have another assault team breaching the front entrance. I understand
they had to use blow torches to get through some obstacles.
They very likely used explosive breaching to get through doors,
and they were trying to get to Maduro's quarters before
he had a chance to react. And my understanding is
they made it just in the nic of time, before
he made it to a safe room, which would have
had like a vault like door, and then might have
taken several hours to get inside, in which case you
would have had time for the Venezuelan military to mobilize
and perhaps provide some effective opposition.
Speaker 2: But they were at this point. I got to believe
they were.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a whole phrase that our military leaders
back when before we had the adventure in Dei and
madness and leaving behind a billion dollars equipment and intel
for the Taliban, we use that phrase shock and on.
I have to imagine they had no idea what to
defend at this point.
Speaker 4: Correct, And also when it comes to an assault, whether
hostage rescue or a snash mission like that, the phrase
that we use is speed surprise and violence of action.
Speaker 1: Okay, speed surprise, vines of action. We had the speed
surprise and we'll talk about the violence of action here
at the moment. Let's get into some details because those
of us who've not served and people who've never been
around anything like service. When you're speed roping out of
a helicopter in that fireman scenario, what's a common package
you're carrying weight, and what's commonly with you in an
environment like that.
Speaker 4: You're got to have your ballistic helmet, you'll have your
body armor, and you're going to have your basic assault kit.
You'll have night vision goggles on top of your helmet.
You'll have a series of breaching tools where called Halligan tools,
which are like similar to what firemen used to pry
open doors. Someone's going to be carrying, you know, there'll
be more than one Broco torch, which are these high
speed blow torches to get through melt metal obstacles of
quickly saws with metal blaze, pretty heavy saws that again,
love this equipment. You see you might see fireman used
on a trying to estricate people from a crushed vehicle.
But so a lot of that's on your back. You'll have,
you know, flex cuffs in order to buying people, and
you're gonna have a lot of ammunition because you don't
know what kind of firefight you're going to be in.
Speaker 1: So what you eat operators coming in forty fifty pounds
maybe sixty pounds of.
Speaker 4: Kit Yeah, yeah, easily, easily.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So then the speed rope down. But then you told
me that there were operators speed climbing up from the
bottom floors as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they deployed, probably deployed fast ropes to the roof
from an MAH forty seven overhead, and they're sliding down
the fast ropes and then you're you're gonna be breaching
the bottom of the target simultaneously. If you can get
multiple breach points going simultaneously, you're going to overwhelm the
target that much faster. And that's why you need a
unit that is is incredibly well trained. He has the
first Special Operations Uh, there's first first Special Forces Operational
Detachment Delta to do this because multiple brief points is
incredibly dangerous to your own forces.
Speaker 2: Why is that.
Speaker 4: Because if you're not well trained, you can easily end
up shooting each other.
Speaker 2: Okay, so getting across you actually coming.
Speaker 4: You're coming towards each other and I'm kind of meeting
in the middle. Yeah, so why you have to have
the incredible level of training.
Speaker 1: So I want to get into some more operational details
here about how they get him back to the aircraft.
But being a Special Forces operative, this means seem an
odd question, But how do people respond when they wake
up at four o'clock in the morning and there's five
guys with night vision goggles saying good.
Speaker 4: Morning, surrender or die?
Speaker 2: So it's just like.
Speaker 4: That, Yeah, if if there's if someone's coming into your room, basically,
if the assaulters are coming in, and if you make
a single furtive movement, you'll you'll you'll be dead before
you even have a coherent thought. Okay, And that's what
happened to a lot of his Cuban security forces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to talk about that in a seconds.
Speaker 1: The Cuban security forces, and then the casualties in Venezuelans,
because praise God, there were no American lives lost in this.
Speaker 2: Did they speak Spanish? Do they go in? I mean they.
Speaker 1: Studied him so well, what he ate, what sort of
pets he had, which I guess is relevant to this,
or you're going to be confronted with the guard dog.
But do they say anything? Do they say surrender? I mean,
what would be the common thing? You got the guns,
you got the guys in bed, presumably with his wife.
Speaker 2: Is it like one or two Spanish phrases? And that's it.
Speaker 4: Very likely they would have learned. First of all, they're
probably Spanish speakers in the Assault Force. Yeah, because you
know it's the US military is multi ethnic and the
Special Operations Forces are no exception. But like in Iraq,
we learned a few basic phrases to try to get
people to comply, you know, before our interpreters were in there.
But very likely they had enough people speaking Spanish and
they certainly had the commands down.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when they get in, I understood it was three
minutes they are in and out. So what's the end
of the process. He surrenders, He makes it clear he's
not going to do anything. His wife hands up.
Speaker 2: Whatever they're told to do. That the plastic coughs.
Speaker 1: Go on, how do you get a guy like that
then onto the helicopter in three minutes?
Speaker 2: And do you put him in a basket? How do
you lift them out?
Speaker 4: You can physically carry him. I remember one time we
did it an air assault in Iraq, and you know,
all we knew is that our target, who was an
al Kada financier, had a limp. And then when we
got in hit the target, we found the guy. We
actually found out the limp was because he only had
one leg and which he couldn't tell because of the
good Josh's you know they were, which were almost floor length. Yeah,
and we had to go across a plowed field to
where the helicopters were, which was hard enough to walk
in when you have two good legs. So we just
we just physically carried them and threw them into the
bottom of the helicopter. So that's probably something similar happened.
If they're out that quick, that means they probably didn't
do any s SE or sensitive sight exploitation, you know,
grabbing documents, hard drives, things like that, you know, But
it seems like I saw some video where it look
like the helicopters on the exfiltration might have it might
have been a significant amount of time later, So they
possibly spend a little bit of time and they're seeing
what they could grab so they get through the whole thing.
As far as taking down the target, Yeah, three minutes
would be would be a pretty good time.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: And there we watched TV, we watch movies. Uh, we'll
see the they're using the little uh toys. Micro works
with this advanced operational concepts. Retired special Forces. They use
these little toys. This flies here, this flies there. I'm
sure there's computer modeling. Do they set up for a
notp like this scenarios where they build a bedroom like
kids and they practice breaching.
Speaker 2: Does that really have.
Speaker 4: Yes, it does. They could have even built the entire
building and they've been practicing from I heard, since August
and working on a realistic mock up. So they and
you know, if they had intel about the inside of
the building, then they would know exactly where they're going.
You know, you have a plan to the breech point,
and then once the breech goes down. It's what we
call a flow drill. You can't necessarily say, okay, the
first guy in is going to keep staying the first
guy because everyone's breaking off, clearing individual rooms, and you
just flow like water through the building. And that's where
all the training comes in. It's like, it doesn't matter
if you're the last person to go in through the
breech point. All of a sudden, now you might be
the first person grabbing Maduro.
Speaker 1: And you guys operate with very little. I mean, you
got to be at this case, in this case quiet
on colms. I mean, is it hand signals, is it
minimal calms. I know things have got to be encrypted,
et cetera, But I got to think that you guys
are as signed as you can be in an op
like this, Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're gonna be pretty quiet. But again once once
you have an explosive breach, then you know, or in
the bombs or dropping.
Speaker 2: Noise, then you can scream and yell and tell people
what to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, but they're they're they're not gonna they'll
have their comms on, they'll have uh, you know, uh
headsets on their helmets with microphones, so communications minimal. The
you you have an overall ground force commander, you have
the assault force commander, and they'll primarily be talking to
each other. You'll have Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controllers
or JATAX that'll be saying, hey, we're taking fire from
this building, and that's when you'll see you might have
seen the video of some close range rocket fire from
a helicopter that that was probably not a not like
you know, not a little bird or not an Apache,
but most likely a uh, what's called a direct action penetrator,
which is a version of the m H one sixty
that's just hung with a bunch of rockets missiles and
that provides close air support. So you got the JATACH talking,
you know, making sure the external forces are staying away
by bringing airpower to bear. You have some internal communications
going on, but you have brevity codes, you know, so
like say, you know, when you got them, you might
call jackpot and then you know when you read to
xoble to be a code for that. And then as
you're coming out, you need to make sure people on
the outside know you're coming out because by then you
probably have snipers set up. You know, your sniper's covering
the target and so therefore you don't leave the target unannounced.
Speaker 1: Incredible series of events one hundred and fifty airplanes twelve
locations all arrive at the same time. Mike was saying
that they're suppressing and destroying their ability to interrupt our
aircraft at the same time as they're reaching this building
three minutes in and outs and in the second Mic,
I want you to talk about the significance or maybe
the significance of the fact that Maduro had surrounded himself
not with fellow Venezuelans, but he'd surrounded.
Speaker 2: Himself with the Cuban security forces.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about this in terms of the
greater picture of American might, because to me, this is very,
very good news. We'll continue with Michael Rourke advance operational concepts. Look,
there's no transition for this, it's just no way to
do this artfully. I'll just tell you We've got a
great sponsorship for years at the company called Alan Soaps,
like bone Frog, very independent company like bone Frog, couldn't
really afford to come on and.
Speaker 2: Purchase ads here, so we have a very special deal.
Speaker 1: We hold back inventory for Alan's because we love the
mission it is to hire people like Alan and Ian.
Speaker 2: The rest of the world would call them useless, They're.
Speaker 1: Far from that. They're great kids. Alan can't speak very well.
He's effectively nonverbal, but he invents soaps from special moments
in his life. He works there every single day. He
works for his dads. His dad, John is going to
go see the Lord. His life is ending. He's likely
to go to heaven sometime in April, maybe summer of
next year. He knows this in advance. We're trying to
make plans to get down there. I'd love for you
to actually see John. I'd love to interview him. And
been friends with the guy for four or five years.
Never hugged his neck. And I'm not saying this for sympathy.
I'm asking you, if you have not yet tried the soap,
try it with hopes that she'll subscribe, because John's wife
will take over the company. She's being trained to do
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Speaker 2: Mike O'Rourke.
Speaker 1: The fact that you mentioned to me that there were
absolutely is what you understand that there were casualties on
the grounds. So dead Venezuelans and dead Cubans. So what
are the numbers and then what were these roles? The
Venezuelans are doing what and the Cubans are doing what.
Speaker 4: Well, the Venezuelans would have been members of the of
their defense forces, of their military, their their their law
enforcement establishment. Remember this is a Venezuelan military base, what
the primary target was, and they would have been operating.
Also a lot of the air defense systems that were attacked,
they would have been at the airfields. The Cubans were
like an outsourced Praetorian guard. They were the close end
protection for Maduro. And apparently thirty two of them were killed.
And that's Cuba's numbers, and they've announced I think about
two days of official mourning for these thirty two Cubans
who were killed.
Speaker 1: So what does the CD as a guy who's gone
in country to prep environments for invasions and to get
human assets in.
Speaker 2: Place to help our guys, what does your.
Speaker 1: Intuition tell you about Maduro employing Cubans in that position?
Close to him guarding his life versus Venezuelans.
Speaker 4: Doesn't trust his own people, plain and simple.
Speaker 1: And this is that the statement that a thief doesn't
trust another thief. I mean, there's no honor mug thieves,
right and correct.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, their significant opposition, you know, within within Venezuela,
and most of it has to be underground because of retaliation.
But you're not going to let someone who could potentially
be working for the others side close to you with
a gun. So the Cubans were much more reliable.
Speaker 1: So fascinating, and there were other celebrations in the street. Mike,
you may have seen this. This is outside a church
in Venezuela. This video of people celebrating for years the
church and the having to see the talk on and
they're out there praying outside the church and thanking God
for this and the removal of Maduro. Their prayers in
this It's so beautiful to see that. And then I
compare that to and as Look, I'm sorry, I have
liberal white female family members I deeply love, but I
see a lot of liberal females up here in America
saying all Venezuelan should be super upset that Maduro is gone.
What the people in the States need to understand about
what Maduro had done to this country as Chavez before him.
Speaker 4: Watch the Venezuelans. The there's a significant of Venezuela and
diaspora in uh down in Brazil or Argentina, I forget,
which they were all celebrated in the streets. You had
Venezuelans in New York coming out in opposition to the
pro Maduro protests that were being held by by white Democrats, socialists, communists,
the people who the people who traded their palest Palestinian
flags in for a Venezuelan flag in order to uh,
you know, demand the release of Maduro. So that's that's
what's going on there. The Venezuhalens, they're they're primarily a static.
It's still not clear how it's gonna shake out, because
you still do have the you know, the the fact
of Venezuelan government in place, just with a different head
of state.
Speaker 1: And President Trump has said, we're running the country now,
and Marco Ruby has said, we're going to leverage the
oil assets. We've got control of these oil assets, so
we're going to leverage that to have an outcome that
America wants, and there's been an opposition leader flown out
of that country in an extraction done by a buddy
of yours, and we're in conversations with him. Brian Seterns
group flew her out and this was a couple of
weeks prior when that happened and they got her outs.
These are retired Special Forces folks and Navy seals, et cetera,
who do this as a nonprofit to rescue people that
didn't clue these guys in that they had some like
like problems securing things that they couldn't even keep that
lady in their country.
Speaker 4: It's kind it kind of bottles the mind that you know,
you've seen the video and you probably played it where
you've got Maduro challenging Trump to come and get him. Yeah,
and Trump did a mashup of that released it. You know,
it's you know, and it's you know, Maduro challenging and
basically Trump's saying challenge accepted. We actually put that on
our Instagram page and I think it's been viewed over
one hundred and thirty two thousand times there. Yeah, it was.
It's just a certain amount of arrogance.
Speaker 1: And when you're on a military base like he was.
He's living in a millionary base. You would think you're secure,
and obviously not three minutes in and out. I look
you guys who've been at risk in country, willing to
die for US. I looked at the Afghanistan withdrawal, and
I shook my heads.
Speaker 2: It made me sad. It outraged guys that know who.
Speaker 1: Served, some of them to the point of tears, some
of them to the point of rage. There's been congressional
testimony where guys who were trying to get people out.
Speaker 2: Watch people killed.
Speaker 1: They were forbidden to fire upon what appeared to be
people coming in with IDs and a car and s
fs to.
Speaker 2: Go kill people.
Speaker 1: Afterwards, there were lawyers prevented that all that gear, all
that intelligence left behind. To what degree does this speak
to the people who make things happen, the people who,
when they're told to by civilian command, go out and
kill people and break things in expert fashion.
Speaker 2: Is this a morale boost?
Speaker 1: Is this a sign that we've gotten rid of the
insane non leadership at the top, And how does this
affect Do you think men and women who are going
to be asked sometime this year to go out and
do something like this again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a big morale boost showing that you know,
America is back. Recruitment numbers were already way up since
the inauguration. This is just gonna do more of that.
The Special Operations Aviation Regiment, you know, they have a
recruiting team that goes around to a different military bases. Today,
they're at bases in Germany and they you know, they
were publishing there. You know the fact that they're going
to be there over over the weekend, and I think
they just have to be you know, beating the crowd
away for people who want to join their unit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do we leave assets behind?
Speaker 1: I know we've got ships and we've got planes, and
we can have a you know, a cure AFA you guys,
quick response for us, right or rapid response. We could
have that immediate reaction force, quick reaction force. Do we
still do you think it would be common for US
to still have people on the ground sort of hit
in a way?
Speaker 4: Probably? Not military folks. I would not be surprised if
the CIA intelligence assets were still there. Southcom's assets are
still sitting off shore as far as I know, ready
to respond. Not only is Anthon in Venezuela, but also
to additional drug boat traffic. So we still have eyes,
eyes on the ground, eyes in the sky.
Speaker 1: And people are saying this is Trump now starting a war.
And President Trump was going to do away with wars,
He's ended some others. I feel like he's digging in.
But does this beary any resemblance to a war.
Speaker 4: Now it's a raid? I mean, certainly Venezuela would consider
it an active war. But I think what President Trump
was referring to is no more forever wars like twenty
years in Afghanistan, twenty years in Iraq, and when you're
when you're in and out in just a matter of moments,
that's anything about it forever war. And I don't see
us actually on the ground running the country when you
still have the vice president of Venezuela's sworn in as
the interim president. But we're going to be using all
the levers of diplomacy coercion to try to get them
to play ball with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you'd mentioned before the role of China in this,
and there's no doubts and it's not a secret that
China seeks to destabilize the United States through you know,
flooding drugs into a country. Propaganda they're behind. They help
fund Black Lives Matter Incorporated. They helped funds so many
of the leftist causes here, Antifa, et cetera. But you
mentioned this, this issue of their of their radars not
breaking down, we don't know they didn't work. Does that
mean that we have something some jamming system or they've
got to be looking at truly at this, like, how
on earth did they get around this?
Speaker 2: Could it be hacking?
Speaker 1: What are the possibilities that we actually made inert to
their radars?
Speaker 4: Sothern in China is going to be is going to
have some splaining the view?
Speaker 1: Does that to meet me in my office at four thirty,
bring all your things and your family members and the
keys to your apartment, your social credit scoring?
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, something something you know, something like that.
I've only heard of like one missile getting off and
I think that might have been a shoulder fired uh
Man portable air defense system and didn't and didn't hit anything,
So the radars, radars would have been blinded, the radios
would have been not working, so that they were they
were deafite deaf and blind and couldn't talk to each
other and just they were totally overwhelmed. Yeah and so
and so China is now wondering, Okay, how ten how
far superiors America's technology over ours and they're gonna have
to weigh that into their Taiwan calculus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and to me, just to see an institution recover
from what I think was a purposeful attempt to tear
it down and to bog it down and to distract
it from what its true mission is.
Speaker 2: Uh, to me, that just feels great as.
Speaker 1: An American because of it have such a huge attachment
to people who serve and for them to be able
to celebrate this and see, yes, we can still do it.
The oldest crew member was forty nine, youngest crew member
was twenty years old.
Speaker 2: Who pulled this off?
Speaker 1: In my mind, I know that's a full grown man,
But in my mind, that's a kid. And how does
it feel for you, guy who's been you know it
called to go do things like this? What's it feel
like emotionally for you when you did the analysis? But
what are you feeling in your heart today?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's great. It shows that we can still
do these things, you know, we and we have people
who are ready to step up and going to harm's
way and carry out this nation's orders and do it effectively,
do it masterfully. And this is this is a multi
service operations. It's not just not just special operations. You
had you know, Air Force, Navy. I'm sure the Marines
were sitting probably on helicopters on the GiMA, ready to
come in as a as a quick reaction for us.
You know, God forbids should have black Hawk have gone
down or something like that had had to fight developed
into something much more than it was. So, yeah, the
Marines ready to go, you know, Air Force, Navy or overhead,
I think even Space Force was involved with satellites. Probably
there were cyber operations taking place. So it was it
was a whole of military and whole of government effort.
One thing, of course, he actually had law enforcement on
the ground there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it was they're calling you a law enforcement up.
One thing that came up.
Speaker 2: Earlier I forgot to ask about this is I was.
Speaker 1: Watching a lot of leftists who simply want to cheer
for the destruction of anything the Orange Man does. There
was that shot of sort of an improvised skiff with
these dark curtains. The president and General Kine was in there,
hag Seth, the Department Defense was there. I can't remember
if the Secretary of State was there or not, but
they were making fun of the fact that Twitter was
on the screen behind them, and I had a theory
on that, and what what's your theory of why there
would be a Twitter screen behind them in that in
that war room.
Speaker 4: Well, first, before you can get to the Twitter aspect,
what you're not seeing are the are the computers that
where they're not showing any of the screens. These these
are the you know, the secret feed, the secret nets,
the top secret nets, feeding all that information, feeding the
real time communications. Twitter was there. That's a that's another
intelligence tool, the monitor if the operation has been leaked,
if all of a sudden, before before our forces go in,
all of a sudden, messages going out, Hey the Americans
are on the way right now, then you know you've
got to compromise somewhere and that ups the danger level.
And then you can also monitor Twitter has the operations
taking place and the immediate after aftermath in order to
see you know, what people are saying, especially people in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, that's fascinating And I kind of guessed that
that it would be, Hey.
Speaker 1: What are people in the ground saying, But then to
go back afterwards and do forensic analysis and this, this
is utterly, utterly fascinating.
Speaker 2: You work with us, Go.
Speaker 4: Ahead, I'll say it's it's O sense, open source intelligence,
it's it's it's a legitimate intelligence discipline.
Speaker 1: I saw people who just again they want to deride
and destroy anything that Orange Man does, saying that this
is Pete Hegseth's just wanting to ego serve or see
his name, et cetera. And the degree that people go
to just try to destroy something like this from a
perspective of just politics, and you use not you can't
use all these tools. I don't know that you've got
Spacenet at.
Speaker 2: Your disposal, but you've got these years.
Speaker 1: Of experience in working in situations like this to help
get people out of dangerous circumstances, executives help protect them
from this. How do that skill transfer work for you?
You know, you go into a big company, You're looking
at employees who might not mean them.
Speaker 2: Well, you might have spies there.
Speaker 1: You're securing it physically, like that's going to be a
fascinating skill transfer for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of these words transfers really well is when
training people in situational awareness kind of doing an attitude
shift and teaching them about the you know, the three
pillars of situational awareness that all that all need to
come together, and you train a workforce in that, and
when we train them together, it it comes what I
call all hands security. So it's it's more of a
kind of a it's where situation awareness becomes a team
sport and you're doing it to protect you know, your
people and assets at that business because there's so many
more threats out there nowadays, and you don't even know
from what perceived slight there are. I want to say,
like at least four different specific types of workplace violence,
everything from a criminal target in the business who has
no other connection to someone who has a domestic relationship
that's gone bad, or a stalker who then might might
bring that that stocker might bring that problem to work.
And we'll work with companies to learn how to mitigate
all this and bring the whole team in. Has has
parted the solution?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I watched a video. Wasn't it a business?
But was it a churches in Virginia, a guy who
claimed to have been a CIA asset, clearly having some
kind of psychotic break, walked into the church on a
hot summer day with a coat, didn't take his sunglasses off,
lingered in the lobby, had a cup of coffee, he
wasn't drinking, was checking the security cams and pretty and
this was outside of DC, and pretty quickly some you know,
retired operators took him outside.
Speaker 2: Hey why are you here?
Speaker 1: And they went and found out that he'd been chatting
about taking people out at that church and he was
going to go and act justice, and this is a
day he's going to remember his name. So so security
caught that on camera, in person, et cetera. So you
you trained businesses and employees to be aware of, Hey,
why is this dude walking back and forth in front
of the lobby. Why is he taking pictures of a building?
Speaker 2: Things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that that comes to what we call the trusting
your gut, which is the second pillar situational rightness. You know,
if something looked appears wrong, you know your ice age
part of your brain has been warning of danger for
hundreds of thousands of years is kicking in. And what
you have to do is overcome that modern sensibility that says, well,
maybe you know, I don't want to be judged because
you know, this person might be of a different socioeconomic status,
or it might be a different ethnicity, So I don't
want to be judged for that, and therefore you discount
your gut and then something bad happens. Yeah, and so yeah,
we yeah, teach people the trust their gut, investigate and
or or at least react, you know, follow your procedures.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was in Mexico, this was last year with
my daughter and we got there the first night. I'd
fallen asleep and Mike. I was in Port of Art
and there was an explosions and then I heard gunshots.
And I never told you this, but you know what
came into mind because of you ooda loop. Literally, I
woke up from a sleep observe or the side act.
So I observed, okay, are those gunshots? Sure as heck,
sound like it. Are the explosions yes. Then I'm thinking, okay,
it's the revolution or it's cartels. They're attacking a target.
And I got up to do more observation. Then I
saw smoke that I heard music, and I was deciding
what is going to act on. Then I realized, okay,
those are fireworks. My daughter's in the room next door.
Speaker 2: It's okay.
Speaker 1: And but that ooda loup was super helpful for me,
and you'll get a kick out of this. The next morning,
is talking to my daughter and I said, I just
about went over in your room and told you to
take cover. She goes, Oh, I was expecting to knock
any second. I knew it was fireworks right right at
that moment, I said, yeah, you thought it was fireworks.
I actually went outside and investigated. You shared with me
before that one of the things it gets people killed
in a live shooter circumstance and active shooter circumstance.
Speaker 2: I don't remember what you call it, but it's the
refusal to believe it's happening to me, the denial of reality.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah, it is absolutely right. That's the third
pillar issue. Awareness is vanquishing denial. You you have to
come to the mental realization that that bad things do
happen to good people. And then when you know your
mind wants to say, hey, that's that's fireworks going off
with them all food court, you need to you need
to vanquish that denial and realize fireworks don't go off
in food courts, but sometimes gunshots do, you know, So
you have then you have to come to realization that, Okay,
something bad is happening right here, right now, and I've
got to do something about it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And then I had to remember that sometimes fireworks do
go off on beaches in port of our art and
it might not be the revolutionary forces come to kick
the Americans out of the resource. Mike, It's always a
blessing to go.
Speaker 4: Ahead, as I say, Funny, you brought up something about
Mexico and you be in there because Trump kind of
issued a kind of veiled threat towards the Mexican government saying,
you know, there's a chance, you know, in not so
many words, that they might be next because of the
cartels down there and spring breaks coming up. Yeah, and
a lot of Americans go to Mexico. Okay, so what's
the cartella going to react?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: So you know, I am headed back to Mexico for
to see our business partners at renew in Port of Arta,
which I consider to be the safest portion of Mexico.
I guess I'll need to pay attention to this and
if President Trump's issue this threat, what does he want
the president of Mexico to do to the cartels.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we needed we needed to talk offline. Be as
safe as you think.
Speaker 2: All right, well, then we'll talk off line. It's always
a pleasure to have you here.
Speaker 1: There's a link to Mike's company down below in the
show notes.
Speaker 2: Uh, if you don't think you need situational.
Speaker 1: Awareness and you're employing people, think about the alternative. You
had an alternative. You had an opportunity to be prepared
to teach these thingks, to have Mike come and teach
your people, and you chose not to do it. Just
just think of that alternative. Always appreciate you man, Thank
you for what you do, and thank you for giving
us all this wisdom on this mic.
Speaker 4: Thank you Tom. Talk to you again, sir.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this is the Todd Hermit Show.
Speaker 1: Please go, be well, be strong, be kind, and please
make every effort to walk in the light of Christ.