Jocko Willink: War, Leadership, and Discipline | Lex Fridman Podcast #197

1. 0:00 – 3:10

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Jocko Willink, a retired US Navy SEAL, co-author of Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership, Discipline Equals Freedom, and many other excellent books. And he's the host of Jocko podcast. Jocko spent 20 years in the SEAL teams. He was the commander of SEAL Team Three's task unit bruiser that became the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. This conversation was intense and to the point. We agreed to talk again, probably many times, and what I find very interesting, aside from the talk of leadership, is the conversation about military tactics of specific battles in history. Quick mention of our sponsors: Linode, Indeed, SimpliSafe, and Ground News. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. Since it's the Fourth of July, a holiday in the United States, let me say a few words about what this country, my country, the United States of America means to me. First, by way of background, I was born and raised in the Soviet Union, just long enough to get a bit of the Russian soul, an appreciation of Soviet history, music, culture, of wrestling and mathematics, of engineering and philosophy, Stoicism and humor, tragedies and triumphs of war and revolutions, all in ways that are uniquely Russian. I do happen to, at times, mention that I'm Russian. This is what I mean, that I got a bit of that Russian soul. But, of course, who I really am is an American. This country gave me the opportunity, the freedom to become and to be who I am, to stand as an individual. This seemingly simple freedom to be a sovereign human being in the face of all the beauty and cruelty of life is why I love this country. Much of life can be unfair, unjust, even tragic, but this is the country where if I'm clever enough, work hard enough, and just get lucky enough, I have a chance to dream big and make my dream a reality. The United States welcomed me, my family, and millions of immigrants throughout its history so that we can make something meaningful of ourselves, to love, to dream, to create, to find joy and meaning. It lets me be the weird kid I am, who wears a suit, talks about love, and has a fascination with robots. I know some people these days have an aversion to pride and love for their country. I don't. I love America. I also love humanity. I believe these two, patriotism and humanism, are not in conflict, much like loving your family and loving your country are not in conflict. They are all manifestations of the human spirit, longing to strive for a better world. I was born a Russian, but I believe I will die an American, a proud American. Hopefully not too soon, but, uh, life is short. I already had one hell of a fun journey, so I'm ready to go when it's time. This is the Lex Fridman podcast, and here is my conversation with Jocko Willink.

2. 3:10 – 8:44

   The beauty and tragedy of war

   1. LFLex Fridman3:10

      Is it tragic or beautiful to you that some of the closest bonds that are formed between people are through war often?

   2. JWJocko Willink3:19

      I think it's both, both tragic and beautiful, and for the obvious reasons.

   3. LFLex Fridman3:29

      What are the obvious reasons? Why is it so obvious?

   4. JWJocko Willink3:34

      Well, it's tragic because a lot of people die, and it's beautiful because you form bonds with people that are very difficult to break once you've been through them.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:48

      What is it about the trauma of war that makes bonds difficult to break?

   6. JWJocko Willink3:56

      Because what you realize when you're in a war is that the people that are next to you, you rely on them and they're relying on you to survive. And without them, you will not survive. And when you realize that you need to work together as a team to- to live, that forms a very strong bond.

   7. LFLex Fridman4:20

      And there's nothing like that team outside of the realm of war?

   8. JWJocko Willink4:25

      I don't know because I've... There's a lot of things that I haven't experienced in my life, but I think the pressure and the consequences of war, there could be similar situations in survival scenarios, in various atrocities where people need to work together in order to survive. And I think you could probably get something that was similar.

   9. LFLex Fridman4:52

      There's a very particular nature to the kind of war that World War II was, especially for the Soviet Union, where it didn't just influence the lives of people, it created culture, the music, the poetry, the literature. It- it's in the, um, it's in the way people think. It's in the way people see the world. It's in the way they talk even still to this day. And, um... Of course, I was talking about the directly relationship between two soldiers, but there's something about the depth of human connection that results from this almost like, uh, reverberations of war. Like, generations later, you're still close to other humans. You're- you're, uh... There's a coldness towards other humans, like in, in Russia, but once you open up, it- it's depth, you seek depth of connection, versus, like, breadth of, uh, career kind of thinking, "How can I make friends with this so I can move into this direction? What can this person benefit me?" You s- instead, you seek a depth of hu- human connection and appreciation that that brings a lot. And maybe I'm romanticizing war here.... but it feels like that's inextricably connected to World War II for Russians. Is there, does that resonate at all? Is it-

   10. JWJocko Willink6:15

       (sighs) So, if you look at military training, what they do is they take people in the military from the civilian world, they bring them into the military and they put them through boot camp, which is the stereotypical thing that you see on TV. You're gonna get yelled at, you're gonna get screamed at, you're gonna get, you're gonna get put in the mud and you're gonna made, be made hard, to do hard things together. And what does that do with those civilians? Well, it gives them a common background. It gives them a common suffering that they've been through together. And they form some sort of connection, some sort of bond. Now, to make that bond a little bit stronger, after you get done with boot camp, they send you to advanced infantry school and you suffer some more together. And when you suffer more together, now you're in a smaller group too, 'cause now it's infantry, it's not supply people anymore or log-logisticians, it's strictly people that are going to fight, they're infantrymen. So, they go through a school together and now they get a little bit tighter. Get done with that and maybe you go to an airborne division, so you go to airborne school, and now you all overcome this fear of jumping out of an airplane together and you celebrate surviving that. Then maybe you get done with that, and now you're at an airborne division, now you're an even tighter group 'cause you've suffered together. What comes next is special forces training or ranger training, and what they do is they put you in these situations where you're gonna suffer together and you're gonna build these bonds because as I said earlier, you have to rely on each other to survive. And by the way, not everyone does, not everyone makes it through this training, so you sort of have these memories of people that didn't make it. You share that connection as well. And you can keep going down this road until you go into combat with a military unit, and military units that go through combat have an even tighter bond. And the harder the combat that they go through, the tighter the bond is going to be. So, I think when you talk about what the Soviet Union went through in World War II, there was a shared suffering to survive, and so the entire nation g- has that common thread, and that's probably the thing that you sense or feel when you refer back to the bond that resonates all the way back to World War II.

3. 8:44 – 15:03

   Soviet Union in World War II

   1. JWJocko Willink8:44

   2. LFLex Fridman8:44

      So, in your podcast and your writing, you talk about... Some of the most fascinating things that I listen to you talk about in terms of military conflict is, uh, tactics and sort of the details of, of combat. But allow me to stick on World War II for a second. There's a particular aspect to that war, I don't know if you can speak to it, where twice the number of civilians died than military personnel. So, the Soviet Union especially. Um... You know, my, uh, my grandfather was a machine gunner on, uh, the, in, um, Ukraine as the Germans were marching towards Moscow. There's this main, there's this important push in 1941 where they were trying to get before the winter to, uh, to Moscow, and what Stalin was doing is he was basically throwing bodies at, at, uh, to slow the attack. And what that meant is everybody understood that you, your job was you have these heavy machine guns, it's very, it's almost unreasonable to be able to be mobile in any kind of way with them, so you're th- you're thrown at the front and you're just non-stop shooting and, you know, 95-plus percent of people are just dead, of the soldiers are just dead, and then you just go back and back. And you're trying to protect as many civilians as you can throughout this whole process, but you don't, and so you have millions of civilians that die along the way through this march. Is there something you could say about this complete, perhaps it's naive of me to say, but a, a war that lacks tactics, that lacks strategy (laughs) and is purely about just, um, no consideration of human life and just throwing bodies and bullets into a mix together where millions die? And that in particular felt li- much less like conflict and much more like torture or suffering. It didn't, it didn't come off as torture, only that interestingly enough, as you probably know, my grandfather, including everybody else, volunteered. They were proud to do this. They were proud to march to their death, uh, for country, for love of country. But the question on the civilian side, when, when more civilians die than military personnel, what do you make of that?

   3. JWJocko Willink11:34

      Yeah. It's awful. It's awful when a soldier dies, it's awful when a civilian dies, it's awful when 10 civilians or 10 soldiers, and it's even more awful when millions and millions of soldiers and civilians die. I think it's safe to say that the Soviet Union was facing an existential threat to their existence against the Nazis, so to not fight would be to die as well. Maybe die a death a few years later, maybe die a different way, but-... the choice was die now trying, or die later on your knees. And I think the choice was pretty clear. As far as the tactics go, I mean there is, this is attrition warfare. That's what that is. We are going to keep y- you know, you said throwing bodies at the problem, that's attrition warfare. And the Soviet Union had a, a lot of bodies, m- more than the Germans. And when you fight with attrition warfare, whoever has more men and material will eventually win. It's an awful, it's an awful way, but that's the, that's, that's what the strategy was.

   4. LFLex Fridman12:59

      You often talk about leadership. Let's put the evils of Hitler aside. The boldness of Hitler in making some of the strategic decisions he did, was considered by many military historians quite brilliant early in the war, or insane and brilliant. Stalin on the other hand, I think universally is seen as somebody who was a terrible military strategist, especially early in the war. He did not see, um, all the possible trajectories that the war could take. Is there something you could say about failure of leadership? Stalin, also the United Kingdom before Churchill, and also FDR on the United States' side, who basically was trying to turn a blind eye to everything that was happening over, over there. E- eh, w- the perspective of we just wanna make, w- we wanted to keep America's interest, uh, as the primary interest, and, and everything else let other countries work out their problems.

   5. JWJocko Willink14:07

      You know, I think one of the things with Hitler was in the beginning of the war he listened to his advisors, he listened to his generals. And therefore, they did pretty well with that. I think as the war went on, he believed that he was smarter than he was and made decisions that were bad that cost him dearly. (laughs) You know, I mean case in point, as everyone knows, going and attacking the Soviet Union while you're still fighting a war on the other front is not, not a good move. The- there's an example of, yeah, bad leadership, letting your ego get in the way, believing that you can do things that you, that are beyond your capabilities. But, you know as you mentioned in the beginning with blitzkrieg, those were really dynamic and bold moves and they worked. And that, what does that do? That fuels your ego and makes you think that you can win.

4. 15:03 – 28:39

   What makes a just war?

   1. JWJocko Willink15:03

   2. LFLex Fridman15:03

      Many people consider that war a just war. What do you think it makes a just war?

   3. JWJocko Willink15:11

      I think you have the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese trying to impose their will on other nations and other peoples. And when that happens, I think on a grand scale, people look at that and believe it's just to step in and do something about it.

   4. LFLex Fridman15:31

      Is there some gray area here? (laughs)

   5. JWJocko Willink15:33

      There's, there's nothing but gray area.

   6. LFLex Fridman15:38

      The United States has been involved in a lot of military conflicts since then. How do you draw the line through the gray area? What, what war should we engage in and not? I know you don't get into politics much, but what, the decision to go to war?

   7. JWJocko Willink15:55

      You have to look at the situation that you're going into and you have to make sure that you have the will to go to war. And the will to go to war means that you are willing to kill people. And when I say people, I don't just mean enemy because in war civilians are going to die, women and children are going to die, every, a lot of people are going to die, and so you, and, and you are going to kill them. It doesn't matter what kind of smart munitions you have, doesn't matter how disciplined your soldiers are. When you go into a war, civilians are going to die, and you have to understand that. And the other thing that you have to understand is that your troops are also going to die. And it seems like sometimes we're a little bit naive about the calculation of what that's gonna look like, and maybe we think, "Well, not that many civilians and maybe not that many of our, our personnel are going to die." And that's where you get into sticky situations. And, you know th- another thing when you were talking about the Soviet Union versus the Nazis, that's total war, that's what that is, and we don't engage in that very often. It's total war. It's we will do absolutely anything to win. And America doesn't fight like that very often. In fact, the last time we fought like that was World War II. We, we, it was total war. We will do whatever it takes to, up to and including the atomic bomb, to destroy the enemy. So, those are the kind of things you need to think about before you go to war, and I don't think we think about that very often.

   8. LFLex Fridman17:36

      You know, even the United States, the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons is an interesting one because there's a lot of... there's a lot of hesitation on that. There's a lot of critics of that decision as it was happening. So even America, you can imagine other countries, like Germany would not be so hesitant to use nuclear weapons. It's interesting to think about, in deciding military strategy to inject ethics into it, into morality. It's not just about winning the war but, "Should we do this?" And doing the calculation of human life.... usually those decisions are made by leaders, not by the, the soldier that's going to be implementing that, th- the, the, that decision. Do you put some responsibility, uh, uh, I should even say blame, on the leaders, in not doing that kind of calculation here? You could say th- uh, you could say that about the Vietnam War, you could say that about even the war that you were involved with in Iraq. Is there some criticism here that you could apply to leaders, f- for failing not to consider the broader moral questions?

   9. JWJocko Willink18:57

      Yes.

   10. LFLex Fridman19:01

       Natural? Like, all leaders will make these mistakes? Or, should leaders not make these mistakes?

   11. JWJocko Willink19:10

       Leaders are going to make mistakes. It's impossible to know what's gonna happen in war, just like it's impossible to know what's gonna happen in life. You make the, you make decisions based on the information that you have at the time, and you will make mistakes. And if you fail to admit that you made a mistake, that's where I have a more significant problem than someone that makes a mistake and says, "Hey, this is the mistake that I made. This is the intelligence that I thought we were utilizing, and it actually is not what I thought it was going to be, and here's the new direction that we're going in." We don't have enough of that type of ownership in, in leadership globally.

   12. LFLex Fridman19:57

       So saying, "I made a mistake, that resulted in a loss at scale of human life." Being able to say that.

   13. JWJocko Willink20:07

       And when you don't say that, you end up with a more loss of human life.

   14. LFLex Fridman20:14

       Can I ask you about the loss of human life? How does killing a human being change you? What does it mean to kill a human being? What does it feel like to kill a human being?

   15. JWJocko Willink20:33

       Well, I mean, I guess you'd have to look at what circumstances a person's in when this is taking place. If you've got someone that's in a, a fit of rage that goes and kills somebody, you know, they're gonna come out of it and think, (laughs) "Wow, I've just really messed up." If you've got, uh, someone that is a sociopath, right? They're not gonna feel anything, and that person deserved to die and that's why they died. If you've got a soldier who feels like they're trying to protect their friends, they'll move through that. If you've got a soldier that's doing it because they want some kinda personal glory, they'll probably not feel good about it later. So I think it depends on the situation. I think it depends on the psychology of the individual that's going through it.

   16. LFLex Fridman21:29

       You said, "Move through that." Is there some calculation here that a soldier, when they kill another soldier, a realization that it is just another human being? I mean, is there some heavy burden to that aspect? That it, it's ultimately just human on human?

   17. JWJocko Willink21:57

       I think it depends a lot on the scenario. I know that when I was in Iraq fighting, you, we, we talk a lot about the dehumanization of the enemy, and it's something that the governments will do. I mean, governments and, will do that to each other. I mean, the, the, the Japanese dehumanized the Americans, and the Americans dehumanized the Japanese, and the Americans dehumanized the Nazis, and the Nazis dehumanized the Americans so that, to remove as much of that human on human killing aspect that you're talking about. And what I, what I've said is that in, when we were in Iraq, we didn't have to dehumanize the enemy because the, the enemy dehumanized themselves through their actions, through their behaviors, when, when we know that they are torturing and raping and murdering the local populace, they've been dehumanized. And so as far as looking at them and thinking, "Oh, this is a, you know, a human, another human that's, that's on the level of, you know, my, my uncle or my brother," I didn't, I didn't think of them out- that way. I thought of them as, as murdering, raping, evil, subhumans.

   18. LFLex Fridman23:26

       Yeah, Iraq is different, and America's position is different. You were right that America's not been involved in a war where it's quite like two humans fighting, like teenage boys fighting against each other.

   19. JWJocko Willink23:40

       And you've gotta remember, I mean, we're, we're seeing these Iraqi kids that are living under this sadistic, sadistic terror, the Iraqi women that are being raped and abused by these insurgents, and so on the one side, we become the, the Iraqi populous is very humanized to us because we're talking to them, we've got interpreters, we understand, we're seeing them day after day, the same individuals. And so we form a bond with the local populous, and yet we see what the insurgents are doing. And so it's, again, not difficult to dehumanize people that behave in that manner.

   20. LFLex Fridman24:28

       Yeah. I suppose I'm- I worry about the de- dehumanization at a much larger scale when it's not the kinda case that you're talking about. Even now... Hopefully, I'm not fearmongering, uh, but there's a sense in which there's the drums of war slowly starting to build with China. They're- h- uh, in the best case, it'll be a cold war of, there's a dehumanization aspect that's happening with China currently, which is they're the other and they're after stealing all of your data. There's a cybersecurity, it starts with cybersecurity. And it w- it worries me because it, uh, creates the other out of, um, a very large population that, um, that may ultimately lead to conflict, uh, in the worst case, hot conflict, that would no longer be the situation you were in in Iraq, and more similar to the Soviet Union conflict with, uh, with Germany that it's kids and then they're dehumanized to where you're, at scale, slaughtering them or at least hurting their quality of life in a way that's, uh, maybe t- you know... Uh, suffering has many forms. It doesn't have to be through just a hot war. It could be, um, through starvation, through camps, all those kinds of things, and I worry, I worry about that. We kinda tend to think that these wars are behind us, and I'm not always so sure that's the case. And i- at least in the way that, uh, it ultimately starts with hate. And if, again, hopefully I'm not being too dramatic, but I, I, I see that there's a kind of brewing of, um, it starts with dehumanization then turns to hate of the other. You see that with China, you see it a little bit with Russia, and, uh, you have, uh, an early podcast w- between the, the Ch- uh, where you break down the tactics of the Che- Chechen War versus Russia. It's fascinating. But that's the kinda conflicts I'm referring to. And, um... I don't know. Um, there's a, I know you're a bit of a musician. Uh, (laughs) I love, uh, I love Dire Straits' song, uh, called Brothers In Arms. I don't know if you know that one. And there's a line in it. Uh, I think they, they play it, uh, quite often at military funerals which I just recently learned. But it's, it's this powerful song. There's a line, um, "We're fools to make war on our brothers in arms." Do you think there's some sense in which at the leadership level but just as human beings we're perhaps foolish in engaging in military conflict as much as we have? Or is fool a very inappropriate word here?

   21. JWJocko Willink27:37

       Well, uh, I think the, using the term brothers in arms means the people that are on my side, right? So it doesn't make sense to start wars with people that are on your side. So that's, that might just be the, the way the lyrics are written so that it fit the song or whatever. Um, I think broadly what you're asking me is, is war foolish?

   22. LFLex Fridman27:59

       Yeah.

   23. JWJocko Willink28:00

       And I would say the answer is yes, and if you can avoid it, you absolutely should. But if there is a bear or a wolf that is trying to get into your house, is it foolish to shoot that bear or shoot that wolf? I think the answer's pretty obvious. So when you're, you're threatened or your family are threatened or your way of life is threatened, then you have to do something to try and defend your family, your way of life. It should be the last resort. Should be the last resort.

5. 28:39 – 31:51

   Jordan Peterson

   1. JWJocko Willink28:39

   2. LFLex Fridman28:39

      You had a conversation with Jordan Peterson... where he asked you a question... in terms of war being the last resort, whether you would like your kids to grow up in peace in a time of no war. You said, "Yes, but..." And so happens Jordan didn't let you finish. Can you, um, can you elaborate what follows the but?

   3. JWJocko Willink29:10

      W- well you, you and I have been talking about the fact that struggle brings people together and, and brings out the best and, and the worst. It brings out the worst in people. War brings out the worst in people. It also brings out the best in people. So... would you want your kid to go and enter in a wrestling tournament where you paid all the ki- other kids off and your kid won? Or you enter them in a jujitsu tournament where they're a purple belt and you know that everyone that they're gonna fight against is a white belt. And so they get the, they get the big W, they get the win. But they don't really get tested. And they don't really struggle. And if you don't struggle, you don't grow. So that's the but, right? Um, the, the-

   4. LFLex Fridman30:06

      (laughs)

   5. JWJocko Willink30:06

      ... absolute best times of my life were in combat and the worst times of my life were in combat. And so even though I wouldn't want any of my children to suffer through the worst of times, at the same time, the but is I would want them to have the opportunity to feel that bond that you're referring to e- earlier and to see human beings...... that are willing to sacrifice their lives for their friends.

   6. LFLex Fridman30:40

      You mentioned the worst. What are some of the worst aspects of when you were in Iraq? What, what are the things that, um... The hardest on you?

   7. JWJocko Willink30:55

      Having my guys killed.

   8. LFLex Fridman30:58

      Is there, uh, absurd cruelty to it? Was it due to mistakes or natural, uh, consequences of, of fighting? Is there any difference? Is that at the end it's just losing those you're ... brothers in arms?

   9. JWJocko Willink31:16

      There's a million different ways to get killed in war. And you can go out on an operation and you can do everything wrong and you can survive. And you can go out on an operation and do everything perfect, and you can get killed.

   10. LFLex Fridman31:30

       Is there some aspect which makes it worse when there is mistakes made?

   11. JWJocko Willink31:35

       Well, yeah. If there was mistakes made, then you're gonna sit there and beat yourself up eternally for mistakes that were made.

   12. LFLex Fridman31:43

       But to you, the things that hurt is just losing, losing people close to you?

   13. JWJocko Willink31:50

       Yes.

6. 31:51 – 36:02

   Fear of death

   1. JWJocko Willink31:52

   2. LFLex Fridman31:52

      Are you yourself afraid of death?

   3. JWJocko Willink31:55

      No.

   4. LFLex Fridman31:58

      Do you think about it? Does it make sense to you that this thing ends? Like, do you... Uh, the stoics contemplated death. It gives flavor to life. It makes you appreciate there's something about finiteness of life that makes it, that makes it, this, uh, Jocko Discipline Go drink, sour apple that I'm enjoying is delicious. It makes it taste better because I'm going to die one day, and I think about that a lot. Do you think about it?

   5. JWJocko Willink32:33

      Other than I know that it's gonna end? I mean, but I don't think about it on a daily basis. I think about-

   6. LFLex Fridman32:39

      (laughs) It's just a fact.

   7. JWJocko Willink32:40

      I think about I, I know that I'm lucky to be here. I know that many people sacrificed to give me this opportunity to be here. So ... but I don't dwell on it.

   8. LFLex Fridman32:56

      What about when you were in combat? Nothing. There's, there's tactics, there's strategy, there's the mission, and then your mortality is not part of the calculation.

   9. JWJocko Willink33:10

      I think you get to a point where you accept the fact that you can die. Like, I, I, you know, like I said, you could do everything right. You roll out the gate, you hit an IED, a triple stack sub-surface IED and you're de- you're done. And there's nothing that's gonna stop that. It's gonna happen. And I think if you're scared of that or you're thinking about that, it's gonna inhibit your ability to do your job properly. And I think it's also gonna drive you crazy. The thing that I thought about more was that happening to my guys, and that's the gut-wrenching terror that you feel when, when operations happen.

   10. LFLex Fridman33:49

       Can I ask you about love of country? Is, it's, um, it continues to ... just how much I've studied Stalin recently in the past few years, it continues to surprise me. Not surprise me, it's- it's just tragic in some kind of way. I'm not sure exactly if I could put words to it. But how many people, and still do, but at the time, were willing ... loved Stalin and were willing to die for country, for the love of country? And I too, maybe because I was born there, and now I am a red-blooded American (laughs) , uh, I love ... nationalism is a bad word, but I love the love of country. It gives, it somehow gives, uh, meaning, like a brotherhood, like we're in this together. I, I love, that's why I love the Olympics. That's just the, the unity of it. It, uh, takes a step out of the selfish pursuits of, uh, any one particular ant and looks at us as a big ant colony. And it's inspiring. It's, uh, it's exciting, but at the same time, it seems to get us to do horrible things if, um, if, uh, manipulated by charismatic leaders. What do you make of this love of country? Is it a, is it a bad thing? Is it a thing that gets in the way? Or is it a good thing?

   11. JWJocko Willink35:26

       Well, I think like anything else, if it's balanced correctly, it's great. And if it goes to some extreme level, then it becomes a negative. And I think it, I think it's probably sourced in some sort of animalistic tribalism that we all have to be part of a tribe, and this is a real big tribe that you get to be a part of. And all you have to do is kinda show up. And so when someone says, "Hey, we're gonna play hockey against the Russians," well, we're gonna cheer for the American boys.

7. 36:02 – 47:37

   Autonomous weapons systems

   1. JWJocko Willink36:02

   2. LFLex Fridman36:02

      So my, my area of work is artificial intelligence. It'd be interesting to ask your thoughts about something, which is, um, autonomous weapons systems. US has now officially released a report saying that they're open to, uh, not open, they're engaging in, in, um, a- adding more and more autonomy and artificial intelligence into its weapon systems because China is doing it. And so there's, these are the first steps in an, something that AI folks worry about, which is, uh...... a race, an AI race in the space of autonomous weapons that can run away, uh, too quickly. Is that something, um... I don't know if in general, if you have thoughts about weapon systems that make autonomous decisions at the small scale of just targeting where to shoot, and at the larger scale of military strategy of just ge- being given a mission of destroy this particular target, this particular, say, terrorist h- human being, and then figure out what is the right bombing campaign on your own to accomplish this task that minimizes civilian death. And, and then just loading that in and letting the AI system automatically decide that. Uh, what are your general thoughts about it? Do you f- do you worry about it? Because there's the positive effects that in the best version of that world, you kill fewer civilians, you kill, hurt fewer of your own human beings. But on the negative side of that, you might lose the, the thing we kind of talked about, which is the basic humanity, even in the individual soldier of what is right and what is wrong, and not making huge mistakes that hurt thousands or millions of people.

   3. JWJocko Willink38:04

      I guess what you're asking me is if they could make a machine that could do more surgical attacks on enemy individuals, would I be for it? Yes, I would be for it.

   4. LFLex Fridman38:16

      The problem is, if you've ever used machines of any kind, their initial design may not be... there, there's unintended consequences. There's, uh, there's ways in the, the machine actually behaves that you realize there's bugs in this thing.

   5. JWJocko Willink38:38

      So, do we not put protocols in place to prevent something from going too far outside the boundaries of what we want it to execute?

   6. LFLex Fridman38:45

      You do, but the question is, uh, this is the first time in human history you can create things, machines, toaster, microwave oven, that's smarter than you in this particular task. (laughs) I mean, it's not yet there. It, w- we, what you're learning a lot with military strategy is humans are actually really damn smart. It's very hard to d- to, to i- improve on a human. And so most actual drones that are unmanned are still piloted by humans. It's very difficult to do every aspect of war. But it's not, uh, out of the realm of possibility that machines will start doing those things better and c- certain, certain things, uh, certain more precise targeting of the enemy. The question is, w- so what happens when you start to rely on the machine to do some of the task is you get lazy. You forget what it is like to do that task. You, or, or more importantly, you lose the knowledge of the intricacies of that task, and you forget the ways it can go wrong. So, the protocols may not s- be sufficient to constrain the power of the ways that things go wrong, especially when things are moving really quickly, especially when the ethics of the two sides aren't perfectly aligned, when people are some s- certain sides, like on the Chinese side, may be more willing to take risks, uh, for dangerous consequences than others. So, what happened on the bioweapons side is internationally, maybe you could speak to this more, but my sense, what I was told, there's a sense globally that bioweapons are not going to be used. They're unethical. There's a sense like, "We're not going to engage in this." And with AI currently, China and US said, "Green light. I'll go ahead." It's, it's totally ethical. If, if it can decrease the loss of human life, um, why not? And my worry is that, um, it's much more... it's, it's much easier to design weapons that are effective than design weapons who have the, the depth of ethics and morals that humans do, which I think we don't, as human beings, don't acknowledge enough that even, like, the cold, calculated killing of others, like, i- uh, precise, effective execution of a mission still has ethics in it at every level. You know what's right and what's wrong. And I don't know if the... I don't know if you take that away, you're not going to make huge mistakes that you regret. Is that something you don't worry about?

   7. JWJocko Willink41:49

      I, I don't really worry about it, um, but as you design something, like I said, you, you put protocols in place. And, and from what I am hearing you say or trying to hear you say, there's be a point where our protocols wouldn't be, wouldn't be sufficient to stop the machine from doing something that was unethical.

   8. LFLex Fridman42:15

      I'm kinda worried that this is something you don't worry about because a lot of people I respect don't worry about it, and I don't know what to do about that. A lot of generals don't worry about it. A lot of people who know much more about war, like you, than me, don't worry about it, and that worries me.

   9. JWJocko Willink42:35

      Well, that's because you have a vision into the shortfalls of AI, and I don't.... I don't have a vision of the shortfalls of AI, I don't know enough about it. As far as I'm concerned, you put a on/off switch somewhere, you put a- a- a kill switch on a system, and if it starts going awry, you hit the kill switch and that's it. So, if... You know, when you look at me and say, "Well, there's no possible way to put a kill switch that would be 100% effective," and here's... You draw those concerns to me, and we could talk through it and say, "Okay. Well, here's where we should draw the line."

   10. LFLex Fridman43:11

       Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's like... Again, from the Soviet Union, Chernobyl meltdown, there was always the ability, I believe, to have a kill switch. The problem is, uh, the more power you give to the machine, the more, uh, opportunity you give to the- to the human supervising that machine to make a mistake and not shut off the switch at the right time. So, yes, the solution. I mean, you're putting the responsibility still on the human hands, and I think that's the correct place to put it. There should be good protocols, good leadership, good execution, competency all around. Your protocols should consider the basic failures of human nature, the human factor of how things go wrong, so there should be multiple people supervising the system, all those things. But I am just very skeptical of greater and greater power in the machine that can create war, that can, uh, lead to death.

   11. JWJocko Willink44:09

       Yeah, and that's why, like I said and like you just said, you have protocols in place that-

   12. LFLex Fridman44:15

       Yeah.

   13. JWJocko Willink44:15

       ... that are a kill switch. And if- if you think about the amount of nuclear weapons that we've had on planet Earth for the past however many years, and there's been, you know, no rogue element that said, "You know what? I'm gonna shoot this thing," there's been no protocol that took place where all of a sudden we said, "H- Oh, no!" I mean, there's been- there's been escalations, but the protocols worked, have worked so far. Now, that's a scary thing to think about, that we rely on these protocols to stop some rogue element out there from launching a- a missile that could kill millions of people and trigger a- a global war. So yeah, the protocols should be strict.

   14. LFLex Fridman45:00

       (laughs) Okay. Can I ask, uh, Jocko one rid- ridiculous question? If human civilization goes extinct, what will be the reason? You mentioned nuclear war. Do you worry about this? The reason I bring that up, a lot of people in the AI community worry about artificial general intelligence, so super intelligent AI systems creating a lot of damage. Autonomous weapon systems is one possibility. Uh, a lot of folks recently, especially with this pandemic... If you wanna be terrified, listen, uh, somebody I talked to recently, Sam Harris, he did a four-hour podcast on (laughs) h- how bioengineering of viruses is likely to destroy human civilization. I recommend that highly if you- if you were too optimistic about the future of the human species. So, apparently, the- i- in the space of bioengineering become- is becoming easier and easier and easier to, uh, engineer viruses, engineer pathogens. (sighs) (laughs) This is the world's most depressing question. What, uh, is- do you- is there something in particular you worry about? Like that we should be thinking as a human species about?

   15. JWJocko Willink46:17

       Uh, yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you again-

   16. LFLex Fridman46:19

       (laughs)

   17. JWJocko Willink46:19

       ... with my lack of worry for all these problems, but I- I don't worry too much about it. Um...

   18. LFLex Fridman46:27

       (laughs)

   19. JWJocko Willink46:28

       You know what? We- we- we've made it through a bunch of wickets so far as a species, and we'll make it through some more, or we won't. And if we don't make it through some of these wickets and someone decides that what they're gonna do over the weekend is create some crazy virus that spreads and kills everybody, yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman46:48

       You know what? Uh, I'm usually extremely optimistic about this stuff. I am now. I'm with you, except the "we won't." Well, there's always a chance we won't. But I have a sense that human... First of all, I believe that most people have much more capacity for good than evil. All of us are capable of evil, I believe, but most people are much more capable of doing good and want to do good. And, uh, I also believe in the resiliency of the human species, that we're an innovative bunch and we can respond to tragedy. Especially, we'll respond more to tragedy as the scale of the tragedy grows and our response is much better.

   21. JWJocko Willink47:30

       So that's why I'm not worried about it, bro.

   22. LFLex Fridman47:34

       (laughs)

   23. JWJocko Willink47:35

       (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman47:36

       Uh,

8. 47:37 – 50:24

   What makes a great leader?

   1. LFLex Fridman47:37

      what makes a great man? Let's start at the individual. What makes a great man? What makes a great woman? What makes a great human being?

   2. JWJocko Willink47:46

      (sighs) Somebody that puts others above themselves.

   3. LFLex Fridman47:50

      What makes a great leader of humans?

   4. JWJocko Willink47:53

      Same thing.

   5. LFLex Fridman47:54

      But that sentence does a lot of work. (laughs) There's, uh... When you're a leader, there's a lot of egos, there's a lot of tension, there's the humans- the human factor. There's people who are timid, there's people who are assholes, there's people who are incredibly competent but, uh, self-obsessed. I don't know. There's complexities of human nature. How do you get all those people to do, uh, to be the best version of themselves and to lift up everyone else around them?

   6. JWJocko Willink48:25

      Okay, so now that- that question is a little bit different now, so now it's getting into a- a more specific question, but at the same time, a more broad question of, what elements does it take to make a good leader?

   7. LFLex Fridman48:37

      Yes.

   8. JWJocko Willink48:37

      So, you're right, that different people have different personalities, different tendencies, different levels of ego. And the- the way that I try and explain this is...... um, like a video game. And I'm not even a video game player, but I've seen this before, where video game characters have various skills, various strengths and weaknesses. So, maybe they're strong, but they're dumb, or maybe they're strong and smart, but they're slow. They just give them these, these ratings. And so that's what human beings are, and that's the way leaders are. And you can have different leaders with different characteristics and depending on how all those characteristics match up, you can have somebody that is very introverted, but they're, uh, but, but they're still a, a very good leader, because when they do communicate, they do it in a clear, simple manner that everyone understands. So, even though they're a little bit introverted, people still respect them and listen to them because they communicate in a clear way. You could have somebody that's extremely charismatic, extremely charismatic, and everyone looks to them, but they're slow in making decisions, and so now we've got someone that can't really make decisions when decisions need to get made. So, even though they're charismatic, they're still not a good leader. So, depending on the human being that we're talking about, and you just mentioned earlier that human beings are, you know, more complex than anything and do a better job at just about everything than a robot. So, that's the same thing with leadership. You've got all these different characteristics and you, you match them or mix them together, and depending on where the ratings come out, depending how, on how that thing does in the end.

9. 50:24 – 1:04:12

   Elon Musk - a leadership case study

   1. LFLex Fridman50:24

      Can we almost like as a case study look at a few people in the tech area that I'm familiar with and I know well?

   2. JWJocko Willink50:31

      We can. The only caveat being that I may have no familiarization with them whatsoever, and you may have to brief me on them.

   3. LFLex Fridman50:37

      Yeah.

   4. JWJocko Willink50:38

      (laughs)

   5. LFLex Fridman50:38

      So I'll do my best to brief. I, I'll do my best to reduce human beings into simple descriptions, and then you can give me insights of why the hell they're such effective leaders, uh, based on my description, not based on your actual deep knowledge of the, (laughs) human beings. Uh, so, uh, that caveat of my inability to speak both the English language and describe humans well. Let's talk about first, Elon Musk. So, he's known as being quite harsh in the sense of, first of all, a very high bar of excellence, and, uh, also willing to, what he calls the kind of first principles thinking of asking the, the questions that hurt, which is, "Why the hell are we doing it this way? Why can't it be done a lot better, not just better, but a lot better?"

   6. JWJocko Willink51:31

      So, so let's... I don't want to hear his whole character. I'll go one at a, one section at a time. So we got a guy that's harsh.

   7. LFLex Fridman51:38

      Yeah.

   8. JWJocko Willink51:39

      And, and asking the really hard questions. How can that be good or why is that good? Well, first of all, it can be horrible. And there's leaders out there that are harsh and they're hated and no one likes them and no one wants to work for them and they never do anything. So, what is it that Elon Musk does that makes, gives him the ability to be harsh? So I was, I was, um, hearing a description of me-

   9. LFLex Fridman52:05

      Yeah.

   10. JWJocko Willink52:05

       ... when I would give feedback to young SEALs that had made mistakes during training operations. And the description was that I, same thing, like, this harsh blunt force trauma and just totally direct sledgehammer of truth that I would hit guys with. But it's interesting because I always talk about, you know, building relationships and making sure you're not offending someone.

   11. LFLex Fridman52:35

       Yeah.

   12. JWJocko Willink52:36

       So, how do these things match up? Well, I can tell you how they match up. When I was being harsh, the guys that I was being harsh with knew without one shred of doubt that I cared about them more than anything else, and that the reason I was giving them this feedback is because I wanted them to be able to lead their troops, I wanted them to be able to go accomplish their mission, and I wanted them to be able to bring their guys home from war. So, I wasn't being harsh because it elevated my ego. I wasn't being harsh 'cause I wanted to denigrate them. I was being, actually being harsh because I wanted them to accomplish the mission. So, if that's where Elon comes from, "Hey, listen, we gotta make this happen. This is for, this is for the good of the world to do this," and people know that, then it works.

   13. LFLex Fridman53:24

       I'll bring this point back up with another guy, Steve Jobs, but let me stay on Elon for a second. The, uh, the other thing he does, which is interesting, um, I see the value of this. It'd be great to hear you, uh, speak about it. It's unlike many of the other CEOs, very rich billionaires, uh, you know, involved in leading a lot of people. He puts a lot of time into making sure he's on the factory floor. He famously sleeps on the, sort of like in the middle of things, and he puts a lot of effort. He's also very good at it, is being a low-level engineer. So like, whatever the task is, he wants to understand the details, and he'll talk to the lowest level person in terms of like, you know, somebody who's, uh, like, (laughs) uh, working literally on putting parts together. He wants to understand what the problem is, what the challenge is. If there's a, an emergency, he wants to understand the actual details of the problem. Not like delegating it to a manager, but like, 'c-'cause a lot of CEOs, a lot of managers will, will, will talk about sort of the, the power and the importance of delegation. Here, he wants to know if there's a big problem, he wants to know the exact detail, he wants to know the exact problem, and he wants to, at the fundamental level, understand how to solve that problem. Uh, whether it has to do with materials, whether it has to do with the actual manufacturing, the, uh, mechanical engineering aspect, like we're talking about like engineering. This is a guy...... wears a suit, is a CEO, tweets about Dogecoin. But, like, a- actual job, he's low-level engineering. And that, to me, was always inspiring to see somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing. That's what it... Like, he gains the respect of engineers at the lowest level. I don't know if that's scalable. But that's always been inspiring to me, and I wonder how many people it's inspiring to. Maybe you could speak to the value of doing that, of, of e- no matter how high their level of leader is, to be able to do the low-level shit.

   14. JWJocko Willink55:34

       Yeah. And that's, that's a common trait that good leaders have. And maybe he doesn't necessarily know how to do everything, a good leader, but they go down there and talk to the front line troops and say, "Hey, what i- what is the issue that you're dealing with?" Or, you know, "How can I support you? How can I give you help?" And one, one key point that you said is he said when there's a problem-

   15. LFLex Fridman55:55

       Right.

   16. JWJocko Willink55:56

       ... he gets in there. So there's things happening at his companies that they're working, and so he doesn't have to dive... He- I'm not saying he never does, but he doesn't have to spend as much time working on or, or looking at some subsystem that's functioning well. He's got a good leader in there that's handling it, and he checks in with that leader and the leader says, "Yeah, it's working perfectly." He says, "Great." Th- when there's a problem, well that's when he might have to get down there and dig into some details so that he fully understands it. So that he, when he digs down in the details, and this is important, he's coming from an altitude where he has a better, bigger perspective. Not necessarily better, but a bigger perspective. So if you sit there and work on a problem, whatever, for eight hours, and you're staring at... You know, if you were planning a mission and you were, you were planning it for eight hours. You're staring at the, the maps and the charts and you're figuring out where all the troops are gonna be located, and I come in after eight hours and I look at your plan from a, from a distant perspective, there's a good chance I'll be able to see holes in your plan that you couldn't see 'cause your perspective was too close. So, so that's good for me to be able to come in from a higher perspective and have a look at it. But also, there's times where I need to get down there and actually look. Y- you know, if you're looking at a problem and you say, "Look, I can't figure out... Boss, I can't figure out how to get to this target," and I'm looking at it from a distance and I don't see, I might need to start digging in and looking and saying, "Oh, here's a route that we can take that actually makes sense. Let's try that." So, I think it's a good example of someone going up and down in altitude to look at problems, understanding what's happening with the front line troops and at the same time being able to go back to the strategic level. And I can... I- i- it's probably this way, the reason that he's successful is because he doesn't get stuck down there.

   17. LFLex Fridman57:49

       Yeah.

   18. JWJocko Willink57:49

       Because if he felt the need to micromanage each and every part on a Tesla, it wouldn't be... He- it would be very unlikely that he would have the capacity to do all that. Now, he can hand over some broad chip design and say, "Hey, this is what the function needs to be," and he gives it to Lex, and Lex goes there with your team and you figure it out and you make it happen. If he had to actually do that all himself, i- i- most likely not possible. So, that's what leaders should be doing. They should go elevate and, and, and, and then get down in the weeds when they have to, and then go back up.

   19. LFLex Fridman58:23

       The sad thing, this is the part that makes me not want to do a startup, is, uh, basically his whole life is dealing with emergencies. Just like you said, he's not dealing... This is not shooting the shit about details of engineering. It's dealing with, like, in the s- in the case of the company, life and death. Like, something that can just completely damage the production line, right? So he's constantly dealing with emergencies, putting out fires. And, um, I don't know if there's something to be said about the psychology of that. Of h- of how, uh... Like, he, he's spoken himself that he's worried whether his mind can hold up much longer.

   20. JWJocko Willink59:03

       Mm-hmm. So hopefully, in the near future, he, he will start to form more decentralized command where he has some subordinate leadership that he fully trusts, and most important, that he has properly trained so that they can handle these day-to-day fires, at least 80% of them. So only 20% of the time does he actually need to go in and solve a problem. If he's not doing that right now, then that's going to end up being a problem. Any time I... So I work with companies all the time, and that's what's interesting about this is I go and work with a CEO or with the, with the C-suite of a company, it takes a little while to figure out what's going on. I'm kinda going off of the things that you're telling me-

   21. LFLex Fridman59:43

       Yeah.

   22. JWJocko Willink59:43

       ... almost anecdotally, right?

   23. LFLex Fridman59:45

       Yes.

   24. JWJocko Willink59:45

       But let's say that what you g- and, and also I don't know how familiar you, you actually are with the inner workings of his companies.

   25. LFLex Fridman59:53

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JWJocko Willink59:53

       But if we were to assume that what you're saying is accurate, then my advice would be, "Hey, listen. You need to start putting a little bit more time and effort into training up some subordinate leadership that has the trust, knowledge, and expertise that you will be able to turn over some of these, some of these details to." For two reasons. Number one, so you can let your brain, um... You know, you can, you can survive a little longer, as he put it.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:00:20

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JWJocko Willink1:00:20

       But also, all the time that you spend as a leader looking down and into your organization is time that you're not looking up and out. So when you're not looking up and out, you're not seeing what the competitor's doing, you're not seeing where the market's going, there's problems that, that, that can come from that. So if right now he's spending too much time looking down and in, a- and you mentioned, you know, you said, "I don't know if I wanna do a startup." When you do a startup, you're gonna be looking down and in for a while.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:00:43

       Yeah.

   30. JWJocko Willink1:00:43

       It's gonna take a while. You're gonna have to do all this work yourself.
10. 1:04:12 – 1:14:24

    Steve Jobs - a leadership case study

    1. LFLex Fridman1:04:12

       Steve Jobs. There's, uh, two things I wanna mention there. One, uh, once again, the harshness, but a very different kind, and the second is team building. So on the harshness, he is much harsher than Elon in a wa- in the following way. And I'm having a sense that you will not like this, but I'd like to defend it, is he loses his shit quite a bit. He was famously, at least earl- especially early on, being very emotional. He was letting passion dominate the discussion. There would be a lot of firings. There would be a lot of mean things said to people. I don't know what you make of that. How much as a leader are you allowed to just lose your shit in your love for the thing you're doing? And how effective is that?

    2. JWJocko Willink1:05:09

       As a leader, you shouldn't be doing that very often. So, you can look back at me and say, "Well, Jocko, here's the most profitable company that's ever existed, and so you're wrong." Well, going back to that multi- multitude of characteristics that human beings can have, well, it's the same thing with businesses, it's the same thing with companies. Steve Jobs was off the charts in some of his traits, his ability to understand design.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:05:41

       Yeah.

    4. JWJocko Willink1:05:41

       His ability to understand human interface with computer systems. So, so far off the charts that despite his bad temper, emotional behavior, the company still thrived. That's, that can happen. You can have people that you, there's, you can have people that are horrible leaders that develop something that's so universally outstanding that you end up with a, a company that's successful.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:06:16

       Hm.

    6. JWJocko Willink1:06:16

       I, uh, the reason, I mean, I get asked that a bunch, you know, people always ask me, 'cause I say, "Look, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be losing your temple as, temper as a leader." "Well, what about Steve Jobs? He used to yell and scream all the time." Great. I, my, when people say that to me, I say, "Oh, okay, are you as good as, at design as Steve Jobs was?"

    7. LFLex Fridman1:06:34

       Yeah.

    8. JWJocko Willink1:06:34

       Or are you as good, are you as good at marketing-

    9. LFLex Fridman1:06:37

       Yeah.

    10. JWJocko Willink1:06:37

        ... as Steve Jobs was? There's, he had s- a certain amount of skills that were off the charts. And so he was able to be successful despite the fact that he would lose his temper, treat people horribly. That's not, that's not good. It's not good. And he would've been even more successful if he, if he wouldn't had those characteristics. Now, you might say, "Well, he, his anger is what pushed things." Well, let me ask you this.... what leader wins? The leader whose team is afraid, who, uh, the, the team who exicate, executes the mission because they're afraid of their leader or executes the task because they're afraid of their leader or the team that loves their leader so much that they don't wanna let them down? Which team wins?

    11. LFLex Fridman1:07:28

        You're implying a confidence that love is more powerful than fear. But I'm not so sure. This is a Machiavelli question. You're saying ultimately it's always better to lead by, uh, inspiration and love-

    12. JWJocko Willink1:07:41

        Yeah.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:07:41

        ... than by, by (laughs) putting the fear into the team?

    14. JWJocko Willink1:07:46

        What I'm, what I'm saying is, that I've seen countless times, is me leading through my authority, leading through my rank, leading through punitive measures, is infinitely worse than me and you working together as a team to win.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:08:04

        (inhales deeply) On the second point of Steve Jobs is, uh, he has this idea, a philosophy of A players, where you have a group, like the power and the productivity of a group of what he called A players, uh, is in- invaluable. So you wanna get a team of people who are the best at what they do. But the most important aspect to him was that a single, quote-unquote, "B player" on the team destroys the entire productivity of the team. Is there something that rings true to that? So he was, uh, uh, again, this could be a temper thing, but vicious about firing and removing the, uh, what he s- felt was a toxic B player in a team. So A players feed off of each other, unless there's one B player present.

    16. JWJocko Willink1:09:01

        Depends on the nature of the B player. Is the player, is the player a B player because he's a little bit lazy? Is he a B player because he doesn't have good vision? Is he a B player because he's got a big ego and always thinks he's right and now creates conflict in the team? So there's a bunch of different B players. Look, if you're working for me and you're kind of a B player, but guess what, you're a grinder and you get stuff done, I want you on the team. Y- you might not be the smartest person I have, but I know that you're committed to the team.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:09:37

        Yeah.

    18. JWJocko Willink1:09:37

        And I want you on the team. So you're a B player. But that's okay. Now if y- if you're Lex with a giant ego, I'd rather have, I'd rather have Lex that's not quite as smart-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:09:50

        Or a grinder.

    20. JWJocko Willink1:09:50

        ... 'cause I got other people that are smart. I got other people that are smart on the team. Look, you're gonna need some smart people on the team. But a team is made u- it's a team. And so you take these different components of a team and if you have complementary components, you'll end up with a superior team than just basing it on the level of ... And what's an A player? Sometimes in the SEAL teams, they would get something called the stacked platoon. And what that would be is someone, you know, some senior person in that platoon would manipulate and, and, and maneuver to get the, quote, best guys that he could in that platoon. So, you know, the most experienced guys, the person that had great, great reputations. And sometimes those platoons would be great. Sometimes they would implode-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:10:39

        Mm-hmm.

    22. JWJocko Willink1:10:40

        ... because what you end up with is a bunch of A players. And now no one wants to follow anyone else. No one wants to agree with anyone else. Everyone wants to do it my way, not ... It's my way, not Lex's way. Lex is stupid. No, you're stupid. We end up with problems. So can one person derail a team? Absolutely. Under good leadership, one person should not derail a team.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:11:04

        (inhales deeply) This could be a tech thing too. There's some multiplying effect of just pure excellence, no matter the personalities. I think for Steve Jobs, we're w- he does, the, the ego doesn't matter. None of that matters. What matters is the quality of the output, the, the genius of the result. And that somehow multiplies itself. And the egos actually, like w- one of the problems with egos is, uh, like what does ego usually say? It says, "I'm much better than you." When you have people that are really good together, it's very hard for the ego to flourish 'cause you're, like, constantly being shown that you're not as good. And there's a competition. So, like, I think to his, uh, his idea was that, like, if you get people that are really good at what they do, it turns, as opposed to you being complacent and not doing much, uh, and thinking you're better than everyone else and your opinion is better, is you almost getting in that competitive race. You know that magic that happens when you're at the end of a marathon and you're just, like, head-to-head, like, you're just going full steam with a person that is as good as you? There's no place for ego there.

    24. JWJocko Willink1:12:16

        Which is great. Which is great. W- let's use that example. You and I are racing. We're at the end of the marathon.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:12:23

        Yeah.

    26. JWJocko Willink1:12:24

        We're both highly competitive, highly competitive. We have massive egos and we both wanna win. We both wanna win so bad that we, we give everything we've got. That's totally positive, right?

    27. LFLex Fridman1:12:39

        Yeah.

    28. JWJocko Willink1:12:39

        Isn't that totally positive? Now imagine this, same thing. We're in a race. We're in a marathon. We're in the last 100 meters. It's you against me. And, and our egos are huge and we're pushing to win. And you start to pull ahead of me. And my ego is so big and I hate losing so much that I somehow accidentally push my knee up against your foot on a backstride and throw you onto your face.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:13:06

        Yeah.

    30. JWJocko Willink1:13:07

        So-... that's what ego, ego is a awesome-
11. 1:14:24 – 1:21:24

    Sundar Pichai - a leadership case study

    1. LFLex Fridman1:14:24

       opposite person was just a fascinating person to me is Sundar Pichai, who's the CEO of Alphabet, CEO of Google. I admire the, uh, in a romantic sense the madness that is, uh, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. So, to me, the opposite of that is Sundar Pichai, who's a, like, everybody loves him. And, uh, he's also a great listener, so he always brings people together. And so when the, the, the energy of that person in the room is like... The basic energy, if I were to summarize it, is like, "I wanna hear all the voices in the room." That's the energy he brings. And, uh, it's almost like he doesn't want to impose a final decision. He wants to hear all the voices, and somehow always the decision just falls out. I don't know what to say about that style of leadership, but it's always surprising to me how that love brought a lot of people together and still... I mean, m- some of the greatest things Google has done in the, over the past several years, uh, could be attributed to that. Continued innovation, bringing out the best out of people. There's of course bureaucracy, which I could criticize at the end of the day, which always happens with big companies. I would argue, actually, the dictatorial style of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk helped fight the bureaucracy, which is one criticism I would give of being a listener and being kind, is sometimes you can't cut through the bullshit as effectively. But he, he's one of the only people I've ever heard of who everybody loves. (laughs) He's an inspirational figure to millions, especially in the Th- like in India. He's a celebrity in the best kind of way. Is there something you can say about that kind of leadership, where you're never the asshole, you're never the dictator, you're always the listener, and the, um, the compassionate, empathetic glue that brings the team together, basically with love?

    2. JWJocko Willink1:16:33

       Yeah. That's, that's great leadership.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:16:37

       If you had to choose for Google, uh, for large companies-

    4. JWJocko Willink1:16:44

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:16:45

       ... is there something to be said about what is more effective, the dictator, the l- uh, ruling by love or ruling by fear?

    6. JWJocko Willink1:16:55

       First of all, everything's a dichotomy, right? And so, to think that all the time you're always gonna be able to just bark orders at people and they're always gonna listen to you and you're always gonna get the best result, that would not be smart. To think that every single time you're gonna come to a 100% consensus amongst the troops and that decision is going to reveal itself without you nudging it along, that would also be shortsighted and naive. So, what you, what a good leader does is they, they, they stay balanced, and as much as they can, they listen to what the troops have to say. They take that feedback. Maybe they quietly nudge things. (laughs) And, and I'm sure he does that. I'm sure he does some nudging that n- n- maybe no one even picks up on. You know, I, I like to say the, the best forms of leadership are, is leadership with minimum force required. So, if I can go into a room as a leader and not say one single thing and the team can come to the right consensus and move in that direction, that's my preferred method.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:17:54

       Yeah.

    8. JWJocko Willink1:17:55

       Maybe I have to give them a little bit of a nudge, a 10% nudge in one direction. Okay, that's better than me walking in there and giving them 100% dictatorial direction of exactly what I want to have happen. Now, occasionally, if we have an emergency situation, people are starting to be frazzled and they're not sure which direction to go, then sometimes as a leader you have to walk in and say, "All right, everyone, here's where we're going," and people get on board. Why? Because for many years or months or however long, you've trusted them to come up with a plan. And when you tru- when you as a leader trust your team to come up with a plan, the team starts to trust you, and you get leadership capital. And as you build leadership capital, occasionally you need to cash in some of that leadership capital. You need to spend some of it. And maybe it is, "Hey, listen, here's the direction we're going right now. We'll debrief it later, but we gotta make a move." And the team who trusts you says, "Roger that, boss. We got it."

    9. LFLex Fridman1:18:56

       And all of them actually do this interesting thing, I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Um, uh, Sundar certainly does it to a large degree, which is, it, it's in the process of delegation, trusting a person to do a really difficult thing, like-... tossing it up, uh, saying like, "I trust you can get this job done." For some, (laughs) even if your resume does not support that. I'm actually kind of, uh, amazed that human beings, when they're given the trust to get the job done, they step up very often. That's kind of an amazing property of human nature.

    10. JWJocko Willink1:19:40

        People often ask me issues about leadership, and I always say that one of the best tools for teaching leadership, and for teaching a bunch of other lessons, is leadership itself.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:19:49

        Yeah.

    12. JWJocko Willink1:19:50

        So, when, it happens all the time, when you elevate someone into a leadership position, they do step up.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:19:55

        Yeah.

    14. JWJocko Willink1:19:56

        And they do make things happen. So, that's not surprising to me. You do have to mitigate risk. So, saying, "Hey, you know, Lex, I know you're, haven't been in the military before. I know you have very limited weapons experience, but I want you to run a target assault on a real mission in whatever country." That would not be good. That would not be a good move on, on my part. Now, if I said, "All right, Lex, you know what? I want you to get some leadership experience. I've got a training mission, and it's going to be using paintball, and I'm gonna put you in charge of it."

    15. LFLex Fridman1:20:29

        Yeah.

    16. JWJocko Willink1:20:30

        I got no problem doing that.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:20:33

        Some of that is judging human character. It's like, there's potential, there's something in this person that they are, they have enough demons, or whatever the hell it requires to have that fuel. They'll figure it out. They'll hate themselves if they don't. And they'll find the right, th- they'll find the tools, they'll find the path though, to, to achieve the, whatever the level of perfection they can. It's been really surprising to me. It's been making me rethink the whole hiring process, 'cause I often, now I'm thinking and looking, so I'm looking for people, both for the startup, but just for my own life, for help, and I almost wanna see evidence of excellence. But maybe you wanna just base on just judgment of human character, without evidence of excellence, have people step up.

12. 1:21:24 – 1:25:32

    Young Jamie

    1. LFLex Fridman1:21:24

       Uh, like Joe Rogan with Jamie, it's, it's a funny side of it. I didn't understand how little Joe knew about Jamie when he hired him. And Jamie stepped up, and now runs one of the most successful podcasts ever. And that's an incredible kinda, and he's one of the best producers in the world now. Not to let it get to his head. And by the way, the funny thing about him-

    2. JWJocko Willink1:21:46

       And one of the best Googlers in the world.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:21:48

       Ah, the best Googlers.

    4. JWJocko Willink1:21:49

       (laughs) .

    5. LFLex Fridman1:21:49

       The funny thing about Jamie, this is, okay, you might, you might not like this. But what I, what I like, I'm constantly exceptionally self-critical, to the point of like self-hating sometimes. I deeply appreciate every single moment I'm alive. But everything I've ever done, I feel like is shit. (laughs) And when I talked to Jamie about everything he's done, he's so, just in every way he carries himself, he's so self-critical. He's so like worried that it's wrong, it's bad. That anxious energy, I love it. (laughs) 'Cause that, that's how you lead to growth and prog-... Like, you might, like, uh, a therapist might say, "That's probably not good for your, like, wellbeing." Fuck it. It's good for the, what's good for your wellbeing is to create awesome things. That's ultimately what leads to happiness, is to, to create the best thing you can in your life. And, uh, so when I see that in, in, in somebody like Jamie or anybody I talk to, when you're really self-critical, that's a good sign to me. I, is that ridiculous? (laughs)

    6. JWJocko Willink1:22:52

       N- that's not ridiculous at all, and it goes back, you know, you were, you were, the way you were phrasing these questions about what makes a good person and what makes a good leader, the way you phrased them kind of eliminated the normal answer that I give. The normal answer that I give, you ask me, "What makes a good leader? What makes a good person?" Is, is being humble. So, when you're going to hire someone for your, for your startup or whatever company you're creating, that is a key characteristic to look for, is someone that has the humility, like, like young Jamie-

    7. LFLex Fridman1:23:27

       Humility.

    8. JWJocko Willink1:23:27

       ... to say, "Yeah, you know, I, I coulda done this better, and here's what I can improve, and here's what I need to work on." When you have somebody that thinks they know everything, um, out of the gate, you're, you're already got someone that's gonna be hard to deal with. They're gonna be hard to coach. They're gonna be hard to mentor. When you have somebody that's truly humble, you barely, again, it's minimum force required, because when you say to Jamie after a show, "How do you think that went?" He says, "Well, you know, I did this wrong, and I didn't have this set up in time," and you don't, you don't barely have to do anything, because he's got the humility. If you got someone that's a big ego and you say, "Hey, h- how did that show go?" He goes, "Uh, it went awesome, on my end." Now guess what you have to do? Now you have to start applying force as a leader, which is expending leadership capital, which we don't wanna do, 'cause we always try and conserve our leadership capital as much as we possibly can. And when we have to expend it just to get Jamie to make some improvements, that's bad.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:24:21

       Mm-hmm.

    10. JWJocko Willink1:24:22

        So, when you go looking for people, look for people that are humble. Now, does this mean you look for people that don't have any confidence? No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a balance to all these things. There's the dichotomy of leadership. You, but, people tend towards, and look, I worked with a lot of military troops in the past, now I work with companies. The reason I talk about humility all the time is because for someone to be, get into a leadership position in the military, they have to have confidence. So, the tendency is that their confidence is going to outweigh their humility at some point.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:24:56

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JWJocko Willink1:24:56

        Same thing with, with civilian companies. If you get to a point of leadership inside of a company, you have to have confidence to get there. You don't get to a position of leadership inside of a company lacking confidence. So, the tendency is for confidence to, to grow a little bit too much. And we have to put that, put that confidence into check. We have to put that ego into check. Really good leaders, they're confident, but they're humble. That's the balance of the dichotomy.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:25:25

        Hear that, Jamie? Don't get cocky. (laughs) On occasion, rarely, you talk about, uh, discipline.

13. 1:25:32 – 1:28:24

    Discipline

    1. LFLex Fridman1:25:32

       What does a disciplined life look like?

    2. JWJocko Willink1:25:35

       D- doing what you're supposed to do.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:25:37

       (laughs) What if I want to lay on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch soap operas? That's, that's not, that doesn't feel like discipline.

    4. JWJocko Willink1:25:49

       D- do you think you're supposed to do that?

    5. LFLex Fridman1:25:54

       Well, you know, you could argue from a, a sort of a meaning of life perspective that perhaps happiness is the most important, and if it makes me happy, uh, perhaps that's, um, if it's fulfilling... Of course, eating Cheetos and watching soap operas is fulfilling for nobody whatsoever.

    6. JWJocko Willink1:26:13

       Next question.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:26:15

       But there's something about discipline that's more than that, which is, um, like the rigor of habit, right? You, you wake up early in the morning all the time. Uh, what is it? Jordan Peterson talks about make your bed. It's one place where you probably agree with Jordan.

    8. JWJocko Willink1:26:35

       People ask me if I make my bed, I don't.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:26:39

       Oh, there you go.

    10. JWJocko Willink1:26:39

        And I never have.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:26:39

        There's a disagreement with Jordan Peterson.

    12. JWJocko Willink1:26:40

        Yeah, there we go.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:26:42

        (laughs)

    14. JWJocko Willink1:26:43

        You know, when I was, uh, younger, before I was married, I didn't make my bed because I had one sleeping bag on it, and I would get out of the sleeping bag. There was nothing to make.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:26:54

        Yeah.

    16. JWJocko Willink1:26:55

        Now, I'm married and I can't make my bed 'cause my wife's in my bed, so I don't make my bed.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:27:01

        (laughs) Okay, so what in your life, maybe we can talk about the one that's most publicly facing, which is, uh, you wake up at 4:00 or around 4:00 in the morning.

    18. JWJocko Willink1:27:13

        Mm-hmm.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:27:14

        You post, uh, on social media a, uh, a picture of your watch, it being early, just to remind people that, uh, you, you, uh, are a man of your word. What's that about? What's the philosophy of the 4:00? What role does that play in a disciplined life for you?

    20. JWJocko Willink1:27:36

        Okay, from that perspective, what role it plays is getting a jump on the day. And, uh, when you wake up early and you get a jump on the day and you've got your workout done and you've got a little bit of, little bit of work done-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:27:49

        Yeah.

    22. JWJocko Willink1:27:49

        ... by the time normal people are getting up, you, that, that's a win. That's a psychological win, and it's not just a psychological win, it's an actual win. It's an actual win. So that feels great. It doesn't feel great maybe when your alarm clock goes off, but by 8:00 in the morning and you've already accomplished some of the major tasks that you have, some of the most painful tasks that you have for the day, you're off to a great start, and it's gonna feel great.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:28:19

        Let's break this down then. What does then the rest of the day look like?

14. 1:28:24 – 1:34:39

    A day in the life of Jocko

    1. LFLex Fridman1:28:24

       What is the perfect, productive, disciplined day in the life of Jocko Willink look like?

    2. JWJocko Willink1:28:33

       Wake up, work out.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:28:36

       Wake up when?

    4. JWJocko Willink1:28:37

       4:00, 4:30.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:28:39

       Workout when?

    6. JWJocko Willink1:28:41

       5:00, 5:00 to 6:00 or 7:00.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:28:44

       No eating?

    8. JWJocko Willink1:28:46

       No.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:28:46

       And then what does the workout look like?

    10. JWJocko Willink1:28:48

        Depends on the day.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:28:50

        What's, what's the perfect? We're talking about body weight lifting, cardio, uh, heavy bag, uh, jujitsu? What-

    12. JWJocko Willink1:29:00

        Okay, yeah, when I say workout, I mean no jujitsu. So jujitsu doesn't, jujitsu comes later in the day. (laughs)

    13. LFLex Fridman1:29:09

        So this is just you alone?

    14. JWJocko Willink1:29:10

        This is me alone working out, yep, and I'm gonna be doing a wide variety of things.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:29:16

        Th- this is the thing that has the pictures of the aftermath with some-

    16. JWJocko Willink1:29:20

        Yes, this is the thing.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:29:21

        ... with some sweat at the... So the goal is to do whatever the hell results in some sweat.

    18. JWJocko Willink1:29:25

        Mm-hmm.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:29:26

        And that takes an hour?

    20. JWJocko Willink1:29:27

        Sometimes it takes 12 minutes, sometimes it takes three hours, depending on what kind of mood I'm in.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:29:36

        You got some demons to work through, or is this just, is this just work? Like, uh, are we, uh... So you got the David Goggins who's like, who clearly has demons screaming inside of his head that he's trying to work through. Are you just getting the work done out of the discipline? Or is this, uh... I think Joe is a little bit what David Goggins is like. There's some ego, there's some bullshit that you're trying to get out through some of the exercise. That's a good way to kind of humble you, is just doing that exercise.

    22. JWJocko Willink1:30:05

        Well, exercise is certainly humbling. I mean, it's, but it's physical conditioning, right? It's preparing your, your body so that you can handle whatever it is you're gonna do.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:30:17

        Perfect. What does, uh, what, what do you do after? Let's talk about food.

    24. JWJocko Willink1:30:23

        Hopefully surf, if the waves are good.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:30:26

        Surf for?

    26. JWJocko Willink1:30:28

        How good are the waves?

    27. LFLex Fridman1:30:30

        Let's say they're good. This is a perfect day. This is a perfect, perfect waves. Why do you surf?

    28. JWJocko Willink1:30:37

        It's fun.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:30:38

        Okay, this is fun. Okay, man, man and nature, which is like what surfing is the ultimate, is the power of the, the infinite power of the ocean, versus a little silly looking man on a board.

    30. JWJocko Willink1:30:54

        You could say it's the infinite power of the ocean versus a silly looking man on a board, or you could say it's fun. (laughs) 'Cause it's fun.

Episode duration: 1:57:38