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No One is Ready for This Coming War - Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf

Andy Stumpf is a former U.S. Navy SEAL, extreme sports enthusiast, public speaker, podcaster, and author. What will the future of war actually look like? As AI accelerates and warfare rapidly evolves, the stakes feel higher than ever, but how worried should we really be? Expect to learn what surprised Andy about how warfare has developed over the past few years, if we are overhyping AI in warfare, what the biggest misconceptions civilians have about “hard men” and discipline are, what role hardship should play in a person’s life, the one lesson from SEAL Team that every young man should learn and much more… - 0:00 The Surprising Danger of Fighting Under a Full Moon 0:51 Is Technology Making Warfare More Dangerous? 2:46 Can We Predict Where Warfare Is Going? 5:00 Should AI Make Life and Death Decisions? 7:18 Is Ghost Murmur Technology Just a Myth? 10:28 What Really Happens When You Eject From an Aircraft 14:51 How Soldiers Are Trained to Survive Capture 18:51 Is Pulling the Trigger Harder Than It Looks? 23:20 The Dark Virality of Charlie Kirk’s Death 26:00 Are Special Operations Glorified By the Public? 29:48 The Unique Learning Points of a Special Operations Instructor 37:20 How Much Does Failure Cost You? 38:27 The Most Expensive Lessons of Andy’s Career 41:46 Why Walking Away is So Difficult 44:21 Don’t Make Yourself the Victim of Your Own Life 46:41 The Reality of Marrying a Special Operator 51:07 Was Bin Laden’s Raid Truly a Success? 57:40 How America Really Sees Its Military Today 01:08:32 The Dangerous Divide Inside the US 01:13:20 Is Guns For Hire the Way Forward? 01:17:01 Why Do People Quit? 01:29:12 The Most Important Traits in Life or Death Situations 01:31:08 The Brutal Truth About Drownproofing 01:34:40 The Top Scaring Tactics Used in Training 01:40:05 Are Deaths in Training Necessary? 01:41:40 Why the Grind Is Everything 01:44:24 The One SEAL Lesson Everyone Should Learn 01:48:48 Why You’re Never Truly Alone 01:52:22 The Truth About Making a Real Impact 02:02:45 Andy’s End Goal - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostAndy Stumpfguest
Apr 25, 20262h 4mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:51

    The Surprising Danger of Fighting Under a Full Moon

    1. CW

      I'm gonna play a little trick for the first time ever in this studio-

    2. AS

      Okay

    3. CW

      ... to make you feel a little bit more at home. So you're a man who operated largely in the dark when you were doing raids, when you would've been operating, I imagine some stuff would've been by day, but other stuff would've been by night.

    4. AS

      Unless there was an extremely compelling reason to do so exclusively at night.

    5. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    6. AS

      Oh, nice. Here we go. Transitioning, evening.

    7. CW

      And now we're in a blood moon. And now-

    8. AS

      We usually didn't go out at full moon.

    9. CW

      Oh, okay. Because there's too much visibility.

    10. AS

      Illumination. So, you know, even though you can see at night with night vision goggles, we constantly were looking at the illumination, the external illumination, because at some point people can almost see you as well as you can see them with the technological advantage. So we would avoid the high illumination nights, and obviously aviators and things that fly that could be backlit against those, they try to avoid

  2. 0:51 – 2:46

    Is Technology Making Warfare More Dangerous?

    1. AS

      it as well.

    2. CW

      What are you surprised by with what's happening with warfare over the last few years? Like, I can't work out whether technology is making things more humane or more dangerous.

    3. AS

      I think an equal measure of both. I've had a lot of conversations about this with guys, uh, during the time period that I served. I'd never for a single second thought about, uh, the danger of drone warfare. And I don't mean-- D- drones to us was Predators or Reapers or overhead surveillance platforms that had great, you know, sensor pods, and they could pipe stuff down, and you could have the ability to look at what they could see. It was great for situational awareness. I never once was concerned about somebody essentially ordering a drone on the internet. Not that that's how it's being built in, uh-- or made in Ukraine specifically, and Iran has some smaller ones as well. But having that be a kinetic option on the battlefield, didn't think about it a single time, and I am glad that I am not a part of that because, I mean, I have an internet connection just like anybody else, and I, I don't go searching for those videos, but sometimes they find you, and people running away from a, basically a DJI drone that detonates.

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. AS

      Uh, hard pass. The hardest of passes being involved in that.

    6. CW

      I read that field medics are not getting the same sort of trauma training that they used to because the kind of injuries that soldiers are getting on the battlefield are totally different now.

    7. AS

      Well, towards the tail end of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was very IED heavy, so it would be explosive wounds, which are really gnarly. Um, not that any kind of wound is particularly great, um, but it just, it just tears things to pieces.

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AS

      And most of the stuff I'm seeing with the drone warfare is kind of the same. It's explosive-based. So maybe. I don't know.

    10. CW

      I'm not sure. It might be more aggressive. It might be, might be able to be more powerful. I don't know. But, uh,

  3. 2:46 – 5:00

    Can We Predict Where Warfare Is Going?

    1. CW

      yeah. Well, what have you been surprised by? Would you have been able to predict the direction that warfare was gonna go in?

    2. AS

      No, because at the same time, with-- Like, let's take Ukraine as an example. At the same time that they're at the cutting edge of what's going on with electronics, there are videos of guys running through trenches, fighting at distances between you and I. Like, just putting AKs around a corner, which by the way, kind of a fan of clearing a corner that way. Like, "Hello, is anybody here?" God, [chuckles] not advisable, honestly. I mean-

    3. CW

      [laughs]

    4. AS

      ... maybe like peek. I know.

    5. CW

      It's a high-risk strategy.

    6. AS

      It is controversial. I'm not here to tell anybody how to party, so you do you. But I mean, so we're talking back to World War I and World War II, but at the same time, the leading edge of electronics in the same battle space. What? So it's this blend of innovation and evolution and then humans getting it on, like, eye to eye.

    7. CW

      Do you think we're over-hyping AI in warfare? 'Cause each technological development-

    8. AS

      Yeah

    9. CW

      ... is basically touted as the end of one era and the beginning of something different.

    10. AS

      I don't know. The way it's been described to me is that there's phases that AI is coming in. Um, right now there's a human in the loop, meaning a human in making the final decision, maybe assisted by AI. Then there's human on the loop, meaning kinda just overwatching the AI. And then the phase that I think terrifies everybody is human out of the loop. And I think that's where a lot of the stuff when it came to... I think it's Claude. Is it anthropic? I think that-- I wanna believe that they stood their ground. Um, and again, I only have information based off what I could consume on the internet, which, you know, take all that with a grain of salt. But it seems like they stood their ground morally from a intelligence perspective or the ability for mass surveillance and then getting to that point where humans being off the loop. 'Cause if we take humans off the loop, I don't know how you combat that as an adversary without doing exactly the same thing.

    11. CW

      Hmm.

    12. AS

      'Cause if it can think and make decisions faster than any human that's any of those earlier phases, then you're already at a tactical disadvantage. And then we end up working for robots for our daily water ration, and I don't think that's great. I don't want Terminator to become a documentary, which we might be on that trajectory. [chuckles]

    13. CW

      Yeah. I, uh-

  4. 5:00 – 7:18

    Should AI Make Life and Death Decisions?

    1. AS

      [laughs]

    2. CW

      Coming from a SEAL background, how do you feel about AI basically being involved in life and death decisions for operators?

    3. AS

      I don't know how it would be at the level that we operated at. I mean, broadly, to speak broadly, and again, I am dated, so I don't know exactly how they are interfacing AI right now. The job was to, at some point, a lot of other entities would find, fix, locate an individual, fix them in a location, and our job was to get to that location and then finish. And that doesn't mean kill. Sometimes it does. It largely depends on the actions that the individual would take. But solve the problem, which means cross the threshold of a door somewhere.

    4. CW

      Hmm.

    5. AS

      I don't know how AI does that for you. I think AI can do a lot of stuff, especially in the electronic spectrum. Um, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess you could im- you know, those, those, uh, Raytheon dogs or whatever they are, the robotic type st- I mean, maybe it gets to that level, and maybe that removes the operator from that, or they're controlling him like the, the drone operators are now. But I don't think it's at that level yet.

    6. CW

      Hmm.

    7. AS

      So I think it helps more in the planning and analysis process than anything.But as long as there's people still crossing thresholds of doors, I don't know how much impact AI is gonna have.

    8. CW

      Could choosing to cross the threshold of that door or not, or the time to do it or not, and targeting and planning-

    9. AS

      Yeah

    10. CW

      ... the fact that that's done by AI, AI now puts operators at the mercy of the decisions that maybe humans weren't involved in.

    11. AS

      They'll-- It'll never make the decision as the go, no go criteria. It will spit... Like, intelligence, the intelligence, uh, community can present packages, and you can, you know, in your mission planning process, you are looking at every phase of the operation. You're planning mostly on contingencies, but you're looking at all of those things. The go, no go is not based on an intelligence package. It's based on essentially the ground force commander saying, "This meets the criteria." Now, there are exceptions to that, I would say. Let's say if you are looking for somebody, and there's a trigger, a cell phone pops up on a network, and you've been looking for that thing. Like, that's like, "Hey, we might need to go, like, right now." But other than that, the decision is gonna be based off when you think it is best su-suited for you and least suited for the person that you're going after.

    12. CW

      Mm.

  5. 7:18 – 10:28

    Is Ghost Murmur Technology Just a Myth?

    1. CW

      Tell me you saw this ghost murmur thing.

    2. AS

      Oh, you mean how we can find heartbeats from space?

    3. CW

      Yes.

    4. AS

      Yeah, I'm sure missing hikers would've appreciated if that got used for them as well too. You know? Like, I don't-

    5. CW

      This is the wildest shit.

    6. AS

      Yeah, but that's because it, you found it on the internet. I saw Bigfoot on the internet one time too. That doesn't mean it's real.

    7. CW

      You don't think that this is what they did?

    8. AS

      No.

    9. CW

      Wow, okay.

    10. AS

      No. Um, does it sound awesome? Yes. Would it-- Do I want that tech to exi- Well, now, was it from space, or was it supposedly from an aircraft?

    11. CW

      Supposedly from an aircraft.

    12. AS

      Um, I do not wanna tip my hand. Again, I am very dated, but I don't wanna tip my hand on any of the... Like, to me, it is essential to maintain the TTPs, tactics, techniques, and procedures. There are [sighs] ways and means that I think aviators have to identify their location that would be picked up by aircraft, and probably the higher you are, the better you would have for line of sight and things like that. Do I think it's capable of doing it at a heartbeat? Maybe, but I don't think we're there yet. I really don't. There are other less complex ways to do that.

    13. CW

      You mean instead of quantum electrodynamics fixed to the front of an Apache helicopter detecting a heartbeat and getting rid of all of the gerbils and dogs and enemies that are out there, zeroing in on this one guy from 40 miles away to pick him up and extract him?

    14. AS

      So when the episode comes out, can you just dub me saying what you just said that I...

    15. CW

      [laughing]

    16. AS

      'Cause, yeah, so it's exactly [laughing] ...

    17. CW

      I don't know why you s- think that this is unrealistic. This just seems fun.

    18. AS

      I want-- Here's the thing, though. I want stuff like that to be true, but can you-

    19. CW

      The funnest story is the truest story. That's the way it works.

    20. AS

      Can you imagine how pissed people would be who had lost family members in the back, in, like, backcountry, and technology like this existed, and we didn't use it for our own people 'cause we were trying to pr- That's like sending help-

    21. CW

      We wanted to, we wanted to wait for this one guy.

    22. AS

      Yeah. Like-

    23. CW

      What's he called? Like, Dude 44 Bravo or something? What was his code name?

    24. AS

      I don't know. It-

    25. CW

      Dude 45 Bravo or something.

    26. AS

      That was too good of a code name, to be honest, or a, uh, a call sign. Most of them, you'll notice they're, they are from mistakes or things that the person who the call sign is associated with are not proud of, which is exactly why they need to be what they are. Like, if you make a galactic mistake in training, and they can associate one word to that, that's what you're known for for the rest of your military career.

    27. CW

      What was yours?

    28. AS

      No, it was only aviator-wise.

    29. CW

      Okay, okay, okay.

    30. AS

      I was just Andy.

  6. 10:28 – 14:51

    What Really Happens When You Eject From an Aircraft

    1. AS

      you-- First off, I've never punched out of an aircraft. I've talked to some people who have. It seems to be a spicy ride.

    2. CW

      How so?

    3. AS

      Um, well, I had a guy on my show who ejected at about three knots under the speed of sound, about a-

    4. CW

      [laughing]

    5. AS

      So, and, uh, I might be, I might be getting this, uh, exact detail incorrect, but he was doing a maneuver and was nose down in a Hornet looking at the Atlantic Ocean rushing up, and punched out. And it basically... How did he describe it? Took all of the bones in his body that weren't broken and did the opposite of that, and the only reason he's actually alive is because the water was so cold. He was in the hospital for months. Keegan Gill is his name.

    6. CW

      Why would the cold water help?

    7. AS

      Because it, uh, shunts your blood vessels. He was gonna bleed out otherwise.

    8. CW

      Hang on. So the force of ejecting-

    9. AS

      A few knots under the speed of sound.

    10. CW

      Because the air that was-

    11. AS

      Yes

    12. CW

      ... that immediately slammed into... Okay, so it wasn't the force of the ejection, it was the s-

    13. AS

      I don't think that feels good either, but-

    14. CW

      I was gonna say, 'cause people-

    15. AS

      [laughing]

    16. CW

      ... people can get concussed, I think, just by doing that.

    17. AS

      Oh, I think if you do two, you're done. I think they medically retire you if you get two ejections.

    18. CW

      [laughing]

    19. AS

      Like, you know, it'll shorten your vertebrae. I mean, it's, I think you go from-

    20. CW

      Dude, I used to be 5'11". Look at me now.

    21. AS

      Yeah. I think it goes zero to double digit Gs like that. Um, and so yeah, he was, um, and he was fine. He's-

    22. CW

      But that was a real one-two punch.

    23. AS

      Yeah.

    24. CW

      That was the, the jab was the ejection, and then the-

    25. AS

      He basically said he almost got liquefied on departure from the aircraft. I'm like, "Okay." [laughing] Yeah, and then, and then his aircraft, aircraft just vaporized when it hit the ground.

    26. CW

      Yep. Well, water.

    27. AS

      Yeah. Well, the water.

    28. CW

      Yep.

    29. AS

      There happened to beI believe it was a Coast Guard vessel nearby that his-- He was flying with his boss. [laughs] They were doing, like, some early air combat maneuvers, and he literally, he's like, "I initiated a maneuver outside of the envelope that I should have, put the aircraft into a position where it was not gonna recover." And can you imagine that visual? So he's probably at, like, six hundred miles an hour, and he said a second and a half from impact. Can you imagine that visual coming up at you? [imitates airplane]

    30. CW

      Fuck! But-

  7. 14:51 – 18:51

    How Soldiers Are Trained to Survive Capture

    1. CW

      Yeah, it's crazy to think that these guys that have been tr- Will they have training to be able to, uh, uh, evade?

    2. AS

      Limited. So like I said, we w- we go to the same school. It's about a week of in-classroom stuff, and a lot of it, at least when I went through, was based off of Vietnam. A lot is studying the Hanoi Hilton and the POWs there and the, you know, the tap codes that they, they created an alphabet system that they would teach each other through doing it. Um, and it was a five-by-five. Um, and a lot of it is what to expect if you're captured, how you're gonna be questioned. You need to s- you know, stay... You're supposed to do the best that you can to stay inside of the boundaries of releasing particular information, but the reality is, with enough pain, people are, they're gonna break. You know. Um, and then you go out to, the one I went to is in Warner Springs, which is in east of San Diego by not very far.

    3. CW

      The one you went to?

    4. AS

      The, the SERE school, Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion. Um, you go out to the... And it was, this was aviators and largely people who might find themself on the ground, so special operations personnel, anybody that might find themself on the ground in, like, a theater of war.

    5. CW

      Mm.

    6. AS

      Um, I don't think you would need to send, like, traditional Navy people who are gonna be on a vessel to SERE school. Very unlikely. But that would be, that'd be a rough day if they ended up getting rolled up.

    7. CW

      I know.

    8. AS

      I don't know.

    9. CW

      Yeah.

    10. AS

      Be like, "Wow, they swam out here and took you out of your bed."

    11. CW

      Really far from home.

    12. AS

      [laughs] Totally.

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. AS

      God, that would suck. And then you would really wish you had gone to that school, but, you know, uh, you gotta play the odds on that one. So it was a couple days of group navigation, and then they, they start off a simulation where now you're on E&E, escape and evasion, and you're paired up, and you are trying to evade an enemy force that is looking for you, probably very similar in concept to Iran. And then everybody eventually gets caught because you spend about two and a half days in slappy camp, where they slap you around, and they introduce you to, uh, being, I don't know if they would say interrogated, but it's essentially what it is. And you're in this little, you know, it's this... It looks like dog kennels that human beings are in. You know, and they're way too small to be in there, so you can't find a comfortable position. There's music playing all the time.

    15. CW

      It must be very hard for you to get comfortable th- with the erection that you had.

    16. AS

      [sighs] Just stay hard, you know what I mean?

    17. CW

      [laughs]

    18. AS

      Just the whole way through. That's-

    19. CW

      That's actually a great way to warn the terrorists off you.

    20. AS

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      Like, "We can't go in. Don't go in kennel number five. Like, he's just, he's permanently erect."

    22. AS

      That's, that's the, that's see, that's the problem. And some people, they let it go. The, the key is go hard or stay home.

    23. CW

      Always gotta be on.

    24. AS

      [laughs] I mean, I've-- if I put myself on the other side of that coin, I'd be like, "Just leave that dude alone."

    25. CW

      Yeah, no, I'd do that.

    26. AS

      Clearly there's some psychopathy there I want no part.

    27. CW

      Yeah. I'm terrified of him.

    28. AS

      [laughs]

    29. CW

      The other way around.

    30. AS

      But it, it's a couple days, and then those people go back to, if you're an aviator, your job is to aviate. And so they're gonna go back and master that craft, and I don't think any-

  8. 18:51 – 23:20

    Is Pulling the Trigger Harder Than It Looks?

    1. CW

      So technology in war-

    2. AS

      Yep

    3. CW

      ... is it making soldiers more fragile or more effective, do you think?

    4. AS

      [exhales] I think two things can be true sometimes. I don't, [sighs] I don't think you should outsource killing. And killing through a screen, even though I think that that's the way that the world is probably headed, I think that removes the burden associated with that. But at the same time, some of those tools can help you kill people a lot more effectively.

    5. CW

      So you mean there shouldn't be a flippancy with pulling the trigger or the equivalent of on another human?

    6. AS

      No, I don't think so. I think it should scramble your eggs for w- maybe the rest of your life. Not like destroy you, but it should change your optic on humanity in the world.

    7. CW

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    8. AS

      Yeah, S.L.A. Marshall did a study on this, and it's why they went from shooting at circular accuracy targets to silhouette-type targets. Now, there's some issues with S.L.A. Marshall and his data collection, though. So as they've looked at this in hindsight, he claims to have interviewed a substantial number of people, and somebody finally just got out a calendar and a piece of paper and said, "How many did you say that you did? And how long were you over there for?" The math doesn't math on that. So they're... Come to find out, there's some BS involved, uh, in that section of military history as well. Um, but that is, um, a lot of where Grossman got his On Killing information as well too, in walking through that. They claim that there was a, a statistically very small amount of people that would actually aim their weapon at another human being and pull the trigger, and they associated that, uh, probably with two prongs. One, just the morality of humanity, but two, only practicing shooting at things that didn't look real. Not that a sil- like a green-type silhouette. It doesn't look that real, but it looks more human than a circular bullseye.

    9. CW

      Mm.

    10. AS

      So they swapped that out, and then I believe S.L.A. Marshall and Grossman, their theory was that the percentages went up. I don't know how you actually measure that. You know, I talked with some guys who served in Vietnam. They're like, "Goddamn, man, I was shooting at everything I could get my... [laughs] The only thing that stopped me is I ran out of bullets." I'm like, "Whoa, dude.

    11. CW

      [laughs]

    12. AS

      You're at a 12. Can I get you back at an eight also? Are you okay? Have you talked to anybody about this in your life or are you just like waiting for me 60 years later to ask you this question?" [laughs] How's my dad, by the way? [laughs]

    13. CW

      Jesus Christ. Well, and look, I mean, the technology might enable people to get around that if that is an issue and-

    14. AS

      Should we allow that, man? I, I... Killing is so romanticized in so many ways, and it is something that I... God, it should be a measure of last resort, and I don't know if you should remove the complexity and difficulty associated with that.

    15. CW

      But certainly the flippancy that people can find around that, it shouldn't be there.

    16. AS

      Well, look at it. You can... If you're on any social media platform...

  9. 23:20 – 26:00

    The Dark Virality of Charlie Kirk’s Death

    1. AS

      I mean, did you see Charlie Kirk's death?

    2. CW

      Uh, how would you say? Uh, unconsentingly, yeah.

    3. AS

      So all three-

    4. CW

      Twice

    5. AS

      ... so all three of my kids did too. That was the hardest conversations I had to have was with all three of my kids.

    6. CW

      Especially knowing what their dad did.

    7. AS

      They-- I am the most resoundingly uninteresting human being to them. I think they have maybe asked me about my old job five times.

    8. CW

      Mm.

    9. AS

      I don't, I don't know what they know or don't know. I don't talk with them about it. I have nothing military related at the house. It's just... I'm just... I just try to be their dad. But all three of them, in formative years of their life, scrolling on social media, 'cause their generation is, of course, almost terminally online at this point, saw that. I saw it as well too. And on, on any of these social platforms, if you go deep enough down a rabbit hole, there's no way that these filters can be as effective as we want them to be. You're gonna see people who are dying online.And that is not something that most people ever actually see in their real life. And I don't know if that reduces your... You know what I mean? Like, it's like this, this barrier that I'm very thankful that almost nobody is willing to cross. Like, like people might talk a big game about that, but almost nobody is willing to cross that barrier, and I'm very thankful for that because it's not something that should be talked about flippantly. I don't think we should remove barriers to making that easier.

    10. CW

      That was really... D- I mean, that seared into my brain. Think about how many videos on the internet you've seen. Like, uh, tens of thousands of videos that I've seen on the internet.

    11. AS

      Those are rookie numbers.

    12. CW

      Yeah, I know. [laughs] Fucking baby numbers too. Up your game.

    13. AS

      We're talking in a week?

    14. CW

      Yeah, yeah. Just-

    15. AS

      [laughs]

    16. CW

      That's just porno. Um-

    17. AS

      [laughs]

    18. CW

      And, uh, that one, it's not the m- it's not the main angle that everybody saw. It was the second one that was much more graphic.

    19. AS

      Yeah.

    20. CW

      And I didn't mean to see that one either. I-- That's not my idea of a good way to spend an afternoon to see that. And, uh, yeah, I didn't, I didn't mean to, but then you're contending with what does freedom of speech mean, and freedom of exposure, is that the same thing as freedom of speech?

    21. AS

      Mm.

    22. CW

      Freedom to be exposed to these things, and how much should we... There's certainly things that we don't want to be insulating people from.

    23. AS

      Yeah.

    24. CW

      But then there's stuff that almost universally, like a guy being killed in a really, really graphic way, that's one of the ones that, uh, who, who needs to see that as a part of their human development?

    25. AS

      I completely agree, and the fact that that stuff exists and will for the foreseeable future-

    26. CW

      Mm.

    27. AS

      I don't, I don't know what that does to the psyche of people who see that when they're in the, those developing ages.

  10. 26:00 – 29:48

    Are Special Operations Glorified By the Public?

    1. CW

      What's something about special operations that you think civilians glorify that's completely wrong or misconstrued?

    2. AS

      The people. Legitimately, so I, I truly served with people that I consider to be just tremendous in every regard, and not like a person that was tremendous in every sense, but I could look at somebody and say, "Oh my God, I wish I could do what you're able to do," to fill in the blank. I could find inspiration in those people and look at them and say, "Okay, I know what's possible, and, and, and if you can get to that level, I can at least try to get to that level 'cause I want that to be the standard." You could apply that across the board. But they're all exceptionally normal people. The special operations community is not comprised of people that put a cape on and go to work. They are very normal people that are tasked with doing some exceptional things at times, but they suffer from the same ailments of life that everybody else does, and you can easily create this unrealistic expectation that they can do anything, that they can tolerate anything, that they are impossible to knock down, and that isn't the case, man. They're normal, exceptionally average people. I wish I could take people and introduce them to the first day of, of BUD/S training, where you'll have a couple hundred people lined up and just like, just look at the physiology of these people. Th- there'll be like, there is gonna be like a D1 college athlete, which guess what? That fucker's not gonna be able to swim, so see you later, right? [chuckles] And there's gonna be a marathon runner, and that guy's gonna have a really hard time swimming. So that stuff kinda sorts itself out. The rest of it, you would look at their physiology and anatomy and just be like, "Really?" Like, you look like the dude who was checking me out at the grocery store. And it's like, yeah, that dude's a savage, but still also a normal person, and I think that's forgotten often. And you can actually lie to yourself when you're in that community because if people expect that from you, you start expecting it from yourself, and then you're headed into a really deep, dark place.

    3. CW

      You've got a line, "We are not as unique as we think. We just struggle in different ways."

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      I'm guessing that's what you're talking about here.

    6. AS

      Yeah. I mean, it-- there-- You have more in common with the guy who's bagging your groceries and a special operations soldier than you could possibly think, and nobody wants to believe that.

    7. CW

      Why?

    8. AS

      I'm not saying-

    9. CW

      Why didn't I want to believe that?

    10. AS

      I don't know. Um, because then I think it makes it easy for people to say, "Well, I could never do that because that person's different." And I'm not saying take the grocery bagger to Iran, you know? Maybe, [laughs] maybe take the guy-

    11. CW

      See if you can fucking survive. Actually, we really wanna make a movie about you with Mark Wahlberg.

    12. AS

      [laughs] You can put whatever you want to in this brown paper bag, but it's all you have to survive.

    13. CW

      The next 72 hours, yeah.

    14. AS

      Only if you want Chris.

    15. CW

      Yeah.

    16. AS

      Yeah. Nah, it's, it's easier to... If you can say, "Well, they're different," then you give yourself an excuse. "No, I can't do that." I m- and I went back as an instructor for 18 months, and I watched these kids, and I'm sure the instructors watched my class and said the same thing like, "God, I work with retards."

    17. CW

      [laughs]

    18. AS

      [laughs] That's clearly what they were saying about my class. But it, it was not a group of people that are on baseball card decks. It was people from all over the U.S., from the Midwest to coastal cities, who would probably have politics align a little bit more blue and some align a little bit more red, and people who joined the military to get out of their socioeconomic position because they had no upward mobility.

    19. CW

      Hmm.

    20. AS

      And legitimate people who had probably generational wealth, and they're all there, and they're all so ridiculously... The, the differences are on- It's just, it's roundoff error. The similarities are... Yeah. They're just average

  11. 29:48 – 37:20

    The Unique Learning Points of a Special Operations Instructor

    1. AS

      people.

    2. CW

      What did you learn as an instructor looking at selection that you didn't learn being part of selection?

    3. AS

      Yeah. Let me just tell you, it was a different experience. [laughs]

    4. CW

      Right. Okay, yeah, because you were warm. Did you, did you play into the fact that when you went through it, you saw some bastard with a big anorak on holding a hot cup of cocoa, and you're like, "Ah, now it's my turn."

    5. AS

      Well, with all generational trauma, the goal with it should be to pass it downhill. So at least that's what the military uses. Um, no, there are definitely people who play, like, roles and caricatures. I was a-- I went back, uh, about 10 years after I had been in, and I was rehabbing from getting hurt.So, and also we were well into the global war on terror. So when I went through in 1997, the concept of the real world application of the job was exactly that. It was a concept. I volunteered during peacetime, and there was a generation of SEALs that had served post Vietnam all the way up until that point that had never seen any combat.

    6. CW

      Didn't see action. Wow.

    7. AS

      No, but I mean, th-th-that doesn't change though how hard they trained and how much they focused on the job. It's either good luck or bad luck depending on the optic that you're looking at it, and people will tell you it's both. Like, "Oh, it's good luck I didn't get that," or, "I have, feel like I have horrible luck because I didn't get those experiences."

    8. CW

      Mm.

    9. AS

      So it was a different world for me going through training. A lot of this stuff as a student, it's really weird. You see, my class started with 180 people, and we graduated 18 of the originals. So every day you're peeling people off, mostly in the first phase of training. That's where the vast, vast majority of people are gonna disappear. But you, you don't get to talk to them because your training day continues, and they're just, they're gone, and they are shifted over to another division, and they're housed in a different area. And this-- and that's not demeaning by any stretch. They just, they lift and shift them from the class that is going through training, and you're back to the needs of the Navy. You can come back, and that's something that people don't often know. You can, uh, you'll have to go back out to the fleet for a couple years. You're gonna have to re-screen to come back in. But some of the most legendary SEAL operators are guys who didn't make it through BUD/S their first time.

    10. CW

      Wow.

    11. AS

      And I, I don't know why people don't, don't understand that. Like, oh, you failed one time. I have to go. You know, my life is over. And I'm like, I don't, you know, I, I don't-- if I had to list my successes and failures, let me just tell you, the failure list is multiples. Magnitudes of order greater than my success list. But when I went through as a student, nothing made sense because you would have an instructor one day. He would-- you would do something that they would ask, and they'd be like, "Good job." And the next day you would do something that they would ask, and they would just hand you your ass. You're like, "What is going on here?" So it was very chaotic.

    12. CW

      Mm.

    13. AS

      And it didn't make sense. Like, why are we so focused on some of these things? It was always attention to detail, attention to detail, attention to detail, and follow procedure regardless of how you feel and what is going on around you. As an 18-year-old kid, some of those things are very difficult concepts, right? And I also, again, the lens of, I mean, this is just training, right? Like, nobody's been to war in a really long time. Like, you guys take it easy a little bit in there. My God. Then I go back in 2006, so we're five years into the GWOT at this point, and I looked at the curriculum, and I saw what we were doing, and I-- it was constant aha moments of like, oh, this is why we do that. Attention to detail has nothing to do with the knife that I'm expect-- inspecting to see if it can cut hair before you go for an ocean swim, or the CO2 cartridges that you twist into a life jacket that was produced in 1918 that I don't even know would save your life if you fired the cartridge off. [laughs] But you're sitting there as an instructor, and you're looking at each one of the, you know, the, the, the screws and all, all of the little crevices. Is there any rust in there? Is there any sand in there? It's not gonna matter when it comes to functioning. You're focusing on attention to detail above everything else because that's what's keeping you alive when it comes to following a tactic when your entire world around you is falling apart. Um, so that type of stuff. Time management, emotional control, decision-making, all of those things. Going back as an instructor, I go, "Okay, now I get it." And the way I viewed it was this: I'm only gonna be an instructor for two years, maybe on the far end, 18 months, and I do wanna continue my career. And if I do so, I'm gonna go back to a SEAL team. And guess who I'm gonna end up serving with? All of these people. So it is probably even to my own benefit and perhaps survival if I try to pour as much knowledge information into these people as opposed to treating them like the red-headed stepchild that you'd like to forget, which is technical description of how my class was treated. Not that I harbor any resentment and bad feelings.

    14. CW

      You think you had a particularly bad one?

    15. AS

      They hated our class.

    16. CW

      Wow.

    17. AS

      They hated the leadership of our class. We did-- So Hell Week is the fifth week of training, and it opens with like M60s firing blanks and smoke grenades. It's supposed to be like this intro into combat.

    18. CW

      Sounds like fucking Coachella's opening party or something.

    19. AS

      I've never been to Coachella, but I like where your head's at.

    20. CW

      [laughs]

    21. AS

      And, uh, probably less alcohol at this party than Coachella and Molly. But, uh, for our class, they just walked out to the beach 'cause they put you out in these huge general purpose tents, and they just walked out to the beach into the bullhorn. They're like, "Hit the surf," which just means run out of the tent and just go get into the water. That's all we got. They hated our class. They beat the shit-

    22. CW

      Why do you think they hated you so much?

    23. AS

      It was the leadership.

    24. CW

      Do you have a leader during Hell Week?

    25. AS

      You have a leader at all times.

    26. CW

      Right.

    27. AS

      So, um, they did not like me.

    28. CW

      Were you the leader?

    29. AS

      No.

    30. CW

      [laughs]

  12. 37:20 – 38:27

    How Much Does Failure Cost You?

    1. CW

      checkout. You have this line about failure being tuition payments.

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      "I've reframed how I view failures. I now consider them tuition payments. Some of my tuition payments have been relatively inexpensive, and some have taken me to the brink of bankruptcy."

    4. AS

      Yeah. Uh, it's just an easier way to, uh, get comfortable with consistently failing. You know, just lying to yourself and reframing that, "Hey, maybe this is a good thing."

    5. CW

      Cost of doing business is a great way to look at this stuff though, dude.

    6. AS

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      It really is.

    8. AS

      Legitimately, I- I didn't view it like that for v- many, many years in my life because you wanna sit there and blame every external circumstance, and maybe you do fail because of an external circumstance. But by reframing it as a lesson that I learned then that I can apply moving forward, the tuition payment that you really don't understand the cost of... I mean, I'll take a, to put it in business terms, I'll take a $5,000 mistake that would save me $500,000 later on, you know, and that's, that's really all it is.

    9. CW

      Hmm.

    10. AS

      It's, uh... Failures are rough. I mean, it doesn't make it any easier by reframing it to that, but I also am sitting here today the person that I am because of the failures and hopefully what I've learned from those

  13. 38:27 – 41:46

    The Most Expensive Lessons of Andy’s Career

    1. AS

      as well.

    2. CW

      What are some of the most expensive lessons that you've paid for?

    3. AS

      Oh, man. [sighs] So earlier in life, my entire life was based around this concept of being somebody who was incapable of quitting because that's the community that I came from. And because of that, I put my children and myself through probably 10 extra years in a relationship that I'm still working my way out of and the impact of because I would look at myself in the mirror and say, "Today's the day, huh, pussy? Gonna quit?" I literally talked myself into staying in something that demonstrably and objectively almost everybody from the outside after I made the decision to leave was like, "Hey man, good job on that one. Wish you would've done that about a decade ago," because of how I viewed myself in that situation.

    4. CW

      Hmm.

    5. AS

      That shift... And I write about it. It's... I'd actually at this point in my life rather see people fall a little bit short of their goals and know when to walk away than destroy themselves because they don't ever wanna quit and they end up having nothing in their life.

    6. CW

      There's a fine line between resilience and suppression with this.

    7. AS

      Yeah.

    8. CW

      And a lot of the time I think we, uh, we compute- confuse suppression for strength, and I don't... I'm, I'm, I'm kind of fascinated about the line between giving up too soon-

    9. AS

      Mm-hmm

    10. CW

      ... leaving it on the table, sandbagging a workout, and stopping because you're about to get injured.

    11. AS

      That is a tough one because how do you measure that? That-- There's no external tool that somebody can look at you and say, "Hey, you should keep going," because they don't ac- you know, like, they don't know how your body is-

    12. CW

      What your limit is.

    13. AS

      Yeah. And especially, like, you know, if you use an exercise as an example, like, uh, the tension that you're under, like you- you're actually getting physical feedback. It's like, "No, no, I'm not gonna put that down so I don't blow my, you know, my spine out."

    14. CW

      But the emotional one's even more difficult because-

    15. AS

      Oh, yeah, for sure

    16. CW

      ... what, what does it mean to say that you went past your emotional limit?

    17. AS

      Yeah.

    18. CW

      What does an injury relationally or karmically or psychologically mean compared with, "Yeah, dude, I, I put th- th- 380 on the bar and tried to do 20 back squats and I blew my MCL out."

    19. AS

      Yeah.

    20. CW

      "That was a bad idea." But what does that mean? Because it's... you erode psychological wellbeing in small chunks typically-

    21. AS

      Yeah

    22. CW

      ... over a very long period of time. So you can always go one more day. You can always go one until you get to the stage where you've accumulated sufficient damage.

    23. AS

      Yeah. I wish I would've been able to recognize that point earlier in my life. It would've saved a lot of hardship for myself and I think for my, my children as well too. But if I'm like anybody else, I'm almost always my own worst enemy. You know, my, my mastery of negative self-talk, I, I, I have no, uh, education beyond a high school diploma that I barely got. I think they gave it to me just so I would get out of there, but a PhD in negative self-talk.

  14. 41:46 – 44:21

    Why Walking Away is So Difficult

    1. CW

      How does that encourage you to stay in situations that you should leave earlier?

    2. AS

      The reason I stayed is because the entire currency of my life up until that point was being known as somebody who wouldn't quit.

    3. CW

      Hmm.

    4. AS

      And that's very common inside of that special operations world. Again, you know, what, what do you... what are these misconceptions that people may have? And, and that's why to me it's so important to at least try to pull back the curtain a little bit and just explain that these are absolutely average people. Like, yeah, and, and, God, so many guys will say this. It- I hate the term always and never, but most guys would tell you like, "Listen, the job will always suffer last."The boys will always suffer last, but the family will absolutely suffer before your job performance does. I mean, you put everything for that pursuit of who you are and what you're doing on a pedestal, and everything else around you in life is falling apart, and you still have to deal with that at some point. And it's just that unwillingness to let people down and that unwillingness to admit like, "Hey, man, like I'm falling apart at the seams here. Like I might be performing at work, but absolutely every other metric in my life is, is trending in the wrong direction." The, the guys won't say anything, and it's, it's dangerous. I think it has a lot to do with what happens when, um, you know, guys get out and the struggles that they have when they get out as well, too.

    5. CW

      I found out that of professional athletes who get divorced, 50% of the divorces happen in the first year after they retire.

    6. AS

      It's a different universe when you stop going to work and you actually have to physically be there. But, uh, the world I came from, 270 days a year on the road, easy. I mean, y- you, you're living independent but make hopefully parallel lives.

    7. CW

      Hmm.

    8. AS

      And then you switch to 365 home. "Hey, honey, do we know each other? Do you still like me?" [laughs]

    9. CW

      And you've lost your purpose. I think that's a big one. Like you are trying to deal with the deceleration of your own identity.

    10. AS

      Hopefully guys put the brakes on a little early, you know, lift their head up a little bit, realize that however long you want to stay in the military, the end is coming, so you can kind of keep an eye on the horizon, on the future. Uh, the, the longer people wait for that, I think the tougher the transition can be. But yeah, it's, it's a shock, man. You gotta be careful that it's not who you are, that it's just what you do.

    11. CW

      Given that it's so all-encompassing, that's got to be difficult then.

    12. AS

      Extremely. And I think that's why, I mean, the stats don't lie. Statistically, uh, veterans, special operations as well, suicide rate is statistically anomalous-

    13. CW

      Hmm

    14. AS

      ... in comparison to the rest of society.

  15. 44:21 – 46:41

    Don’t Make Yourself the Victim of Your Own Life

    1. CW

      You've got this line, "Until you view yourself as the author of your life, you'll be the victim of it."

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      What's that mean?

    4. AS

      It means until you stop blaming everything else around you for the course and trajectory of your life, you're just gonna be a flag in the wind going with the direction that the wind is blowing. And for clarity, you have almost no control over what happens in your life, but you have complete and total control in how you respond to it, and that is being the author of your life. So life sucks sometimes. Cool. Are you gonna suck with that, or are you gonna take control of who you are and work your way through that and maybe even be better at the end of that, right? Um, and that's the difference between somebody who will sit there and externally, instead of doing anything about what's going on, they'll sit there and complain about what's going on and point fingers at everything. The author of your life, not that it's any easier, you accept what's going on, and you focus on what it is that you can control, which is largely gonna be your actions, your thought process, your internal monologue, and what you do with it.

    5. CW

      I suppose an interesting, an interesting challenge that you have here is you are the author of your life.

    6. AS

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      And that means that you need to take responsibility for how you have contributed to the problems that you're facing. But that also includes how your traits, even the ones that in a different world or a different environment were strengths-

    8. AS

      Yep

    9. CW

      ... you are having to pay the price for now, too. That's also, you are your own responsibility. Your traits are your own responsibility.

    10. AS

      If you take a no-quit attitude to everything in life, you are headed towards failure. You have to control those tools as well, too. And again, that from-- coming from a community where that was the currency and equity is your ability to never quit.

    11. CW

      Hmm.

    12. AS

      Let's apply that to alcoholism. Like, I have a drinking problem. Oh, shit. No, never quit. Okay, maybe I should just pick up heroin then, too, and see how far I can push that one. Like, do you know what I mean? [laughs] Like you-- there's easy examples of where that can get completely out of control, and it's just... God, it's so-- God, it's so dangerous. And, and that's why I say I would rather have people fall a little bit short of their goals and understand that not everything is worth destroying who you are or killing yourself for.

    13. CW

      Hmm.

    14. AS

      There's just so few things in life that I think actually rise to that level.

  16. 46:41 – 51:07

    The Reality of Marrying a Special Operator

    1. CW

      What's the classic avatar mold of a special operator's relationship like with their wife?

    2. AS

      Man, uh, that really varies. I don't know if there could-- [sighs] Some guys like to marry strippers, you know? So-

    3. CW

      I mean, this is-- [laughs] We're not even talking about the SEALs community anymore then.

    4. AS

      [laughs] So I mean, that's, that's, that's a weird avatar, and I'm not here to tell anybody how to party, but I mean, that relationship dynamic often involves Chinese food getting thrown at you for some reason. I don't know why, but I've seen it. [laughs]

    5. CW

      [laughs]

    6. AS

      I've seen it. It's weird. Um, so it really depends. The divorce rate in special operations, I would say, hovers at 80% to 85%.

    7. CW

      Fuck.

    8. AS

      That's an estimate. Like I have no-

    9. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah

    10. AS

      ... that, that-- It's anecdotal based on my experience. But the other side of that is, so let's say it is 85. 15% of those people are making it, and I have seen it where it's been high school sweethearts, legitimately high school sweethearts, and they, they have the ability to grow together even though they're apart and they can reconnect. I mean, a lot of it has to do with, too, the, the what was modeled for you when you were young, right? Because a lot of people r- will replicate the avatar of what was shown to them when they were growing. That's what they think a relationship looks like. That's one of my regrets for staying 10 years longer than I, than I think I should have is, and I got to the point where I was asking myself like, "Would I want my own children to follow my footsteps in this?" And if the answer-

    11. CW

      Relationally

    12. AS

      ... Yes. And if the answer-- Like-

    13. CW

      And you are imprinting that.

    14. AS

      Yes. And like, what am I modeling here? I, I'm so-- You know, I am the most influential person in my children's life, especially at that point in time in their life. What am I modeling? And it's like, that is a tough conversation in the mirror-

    15. CW

      Hmm

    16. AS

      ... to have. Like, oh my God, I'm actuallyEven though I, I view myself as somebody who can never have quit, and this is the only currency that matters, I am actually modeling something I would never want my children-

    17. CW

      Would you want that for your kids?

    18. AS

      Yes.

    19. CW

      Yeah. Before we continue, I wish someone had told me five years ago to stop overthinking nutrition and just find something that works. I've simplified mine down to one scoop a day, and it's made hitting my nutritional bases an awful lot easier. AG1 includes seventy-five vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients, and that is why I've been drinking it every morning for over five years now. And they've taken it a step further with AG1 Next Gen, the same one-scoop ritual, but now backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, AG1 was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, boost healthy gut bacteria by ten times, and improve key nutrient levels in just three months. They've been refining the formula since two thousand and ten, fifty-two iterations and counting, and I love the Next Gen because it's more bioavailable. It's clinical validation, which is unbelievably rare in the supplement world. The older I get, the more I realize that the small stuff compounds, and this is one of the smallest things I do that makes a massive difference. If you're still on the fence, they've got a ninety-day money-back guarantee in the US, so you can buy it and try it for three months, and if you do not like it, they'll just give you your money back. Right now, you can get a free AG1 welcome kit that includes a bottle of D3K2, AG1 flavor sampler, and that ninety-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. I mean, I spent a good bit of time with Jocko over Christmas, and uh-

    20. AS

      He's an autonomous robot.

    21. CW

      Dude, he was just exto-extolling the virtues of his and his wife's relationship.

    22. AS

      Yeah.

    23. CW

      He's like, "Yeah, we-- I think-"

    24. AS

      That's an example of one that did work.

    25. CW

      "I think we've had about one and a half arguments in thirty-five years," or however long the fuck they-

    26. AS

      Oh, that just means they lie to each other.

    27. CW

      [laughing] Or she's too scared to do it. Uh, I don't know.

    28. AS

      Jocko's a teddy bear.

    29. CW

      Yeah. He's cute. He's been... He was nice. I saw him fucking roll on the floor with Mark Zuckerberg. That was a, a scene that I never thought I would, I would observe.

    30. AS

      That's not wise of Mark.

  17. 51:07 – 57:40

    Was Bin Laden’s Raid Truly a Success?

    1. CW

      we're bottoms. Dude, um, what happened with this Rob O'Neill conversation? 'Cause me and you were texting about it, and I saw an absolute tsunami of bullshit occur.

    2. AS

      Man, um, I don't know how to accurately answer that because I don't know. It's the first time he and I ever had sat down and talked. When we opened the conversation, he reminded me that I had taken him for his first tandem when he went to the tandem course. I didn't remember that because on that day, I was there as an instructor. You probably take six or eight people for a jump, and that's how you-

    3. CW

      That's strapped to you.

    4. AS

      Correct.

    5. CW

      You're a bottom.

    6. AS

      They would be the bottom.

    7. CW

      Ah.

    8. AS

      They're, they're front riding.

    9. CW

      Power position.

    10. AS

      Yeah. Yeah.

    11. CW

      Power-

    12. AS

      Actually, it is power bottom, yes. [laughs] PBA, power bottom actual.

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. AS

      Um, I didn't remember that because I'd always said I'd never met the guy, and he's just like, "Dude, you took me for our first tandem." I'm like, "Fuck, sorry man, I didn't remember that." I've taken fifteen hundred people for their first tandem, so it definitely wasn't intentional. I have never seen a military operation that has more tentacles going out with divergence in relayed experiences or stories, whatever you would wanna call it, than that particular one, and I don't know what to make of it. I know a lot of people that were there. I was not. And not all of their stories align with the most common narratives as well, too.

    15. CW

      This is the Osama bin Laden raid?

    16. AS

      Correct. Yeah. The operation was called Neptune Spear. So dude, I don't know. Um, he didn't deviate from his story. You know, he added some things in there that, that definitely surprised me about what they included in the debrief and what they left out of the debrief.

    17. CW

      What were those things?

    18. AS

      Uh, [sighs] from... Again, I was not there, so I'm relaying this. There was the first floor, the second floor, and then bin Laden and his wives, and I believe a few children were on the third floor. The stories or the relayed experiences seem to start deviating at the, the stairs that go up from the second floor to the third, and very, very few people were actually on those stairs. I don't know how wide the, the stairways actually were, but stairways can actually be really dangerous from a tactical... You don't wanna get, get a bunch of people in there. It would take one guy to pull a pin on a grenade and roll it down a set of stairs, and you're having a real shit day. So you wanna have enough people, but also the minimum amount. And the way he described it is that it-- they were getting a little bit thin on bodies, but the first person saw movement, took a shot. They went into the room. Rob encountered bin Laden, shot bin Laden, and then essentially before they went to the debrief, and then after that, it... I mean, Rob said that as he was getting ready to take pictures, a guy walked up and shot him in the face multiple times right in front of him. But essentially before they went down to do the debrief, they, that the people who were on the third floor got together and decided what they were gonna include in that and what they weren't going to include in that. And again, the conversation was a while ago, so I don't know the exact specifics of it, but it was the initial shots and then the follow-up shots from that as well, from Rob and the man who was in front of him.

    19. CW

      Hmm. Why is shooting a enemy combatant that's dead in the face-

    20. AS

      It's a war crime

    21. CW

      ... mutilation of an enemy combatant?

    22. AS

      Correct.Yeah. Not, not advisable. And if you are gonna do that, and I mean, it's just, I... That stuff happens, I mean, bottom line. Um, you also someti- I mean, it- but there's a difference between... The way he described it is there was an immense amount of time between essentially the target being called secure, which is where you can kind of unwrap a little bit from a tactical perspective, right? You, like, that call will come over the radio, and then you start a process of basically gathering as much information as you can. That's where you get the cameras out and you start looking for stuff and, and bagging things. Y- you know, when you're clearing, you don't want to, you don't wanna leave uncertainty as... If you engage somebody, you don't wanna leave uncertainty as to whether or not they're gonna resurrect themself and come... So it's, and so you, what you end up doing is you inflict wounds that are incompatible with life. So if you can put the inside of their head on the outside of their head, that's usually a good indication that that problem is solved. Um, there's a difference in doing that as you are a clearing instructor in a structure and actively engaged, and then after, you know what I mean? After that happening. It happens. It's a, it's a fucking ugly occupation, and it will show you the best of who you are and the worst of who you ever thought you could be, and some people get lost in that. And you put people on the front lines who have been sharpening their teeth for decades, fighting the same people in the same places, it happens. But-

    23. CW

      Does that feel like righteous retribution in the moment, perhaps?

    24. AS

      Probably in the moment, but-

    25. CW

      And almost immediately regret.

    26. AS

      I don't know if there's always regret.

    27. CW

      Hmm.

    28. AS

      Um, sometimes I don't think there ever is. To me, my personal opinion, and I only speak for myself, we need to be better than that. If we wanna be a beacon to the world, we need to be better than that, and that's tough.

    29. CW

      Because it means that you need to play by rules that other people are maybe not going to.

    30. AS

      You need to respect certain boundaries. You need to play, I mean, warfare, you know, the, the Geneva Convention, get it, totally understand rules of engagement, totally understand law of war, rule of war, totally understand. There is a lot of flexibility inside of all of those things. You can do everything that you need to do and be accomplish the mission you need to and dominate people on the battlefield inside of those things. Just imagine, I mean, uh, and a lot of times all you have to do is flip the coin. How would the American people react if, let's say, pilot in Iran, right? We'll go to modern day, got captured, got killed, and then they put on the internet a guy walking up with an AK and unloading a magazine into his face. That's not gonna go over well.

  18. 57:40 – 1:08:32

    How America Really Sees Its Military Today

    1. CW

      Well, there's already a level of contention over the US entering conflicts at the moment, and I don't know what you think this does to how attractive military service looks at the moment. But at least for me, you know, i- in the UK, for instance, you've spent a good bit of time in the UK.

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      Um, there is no, "We would like to invite first responders and active military personnel to board the plane early."

    4. AS

      How come?

    5. CW

      Because no one gives a fuck about our military. I've never... I've flown hundreds of flights around the UK. And they may have changed it now, but I have never once heard-

    6. AS

      Do they have a special group that they invite on early?

    7. CW

      [laughs]

    8. AS

      I'm fascinated now. [laughs]

    9. CW

      I, I, I, I don't know. Maybe your friend that ejected himself out into liquified, perhaps he would get to go on first.

    10. AS

      Beagan Gill, look him up, man. Holy.

    11. CW

      Can he walk now?

    12. AS

      Yeah.

    13. CW

      Okay.

    14. AS

      He's, like, running half marathons.

    15. CW

      Okay.

    16. AS

      I mean, I'm not saying his gait's good, but, like [both laughing] he's walking.

    17. CW

      Galoping down.

    18. AS

      A little.

    19. CW

      So we're s- Uh, yeah, the, just so the UK doesn't revere... The, the veteran community in the UK-

    20. AS

      The, the-

    21. CW

      I have no idea what that-

    22. AS

      Yeah.

    23. CW

      To me, it's the sort of shit that I just learned about in American movies and then since coming here. I, I, for instance, I once was wearing a Black Rifle Coffee, uh, T-shirt, and I think it had the American flag.

    24. AS

      Yep.

    25. CW

      And, and it's a sort of a, um, military green kind of color.

    26. AS

      Yeah, OD green.

    27. CW

      Yeah. It's really nice T-shirt. I wore it until it was fucking threadbare. And I got on a plane, and a gentleman who was sat in one of the earliest rows said, "Thank you for your service," to me as I went past.

    28. AS

      What did you say?

    29. CW

      I was like, "F- uh, we, uh, fu-", as I'm, like, being fucking conveyor belt-ed along.

    30. AS

      The move is you say, "You're welcome. I did it for you."

  19. 1:08:32 – 1:13:20

    The Dangerous Divide Inside the US

    1. CW

      What's that line about wars being chosen by old men so that young men go out and die? There's some, yeah, some pithy aphorism-

    2. AS

      Yeah

    3. CW

      ... around that. But, uh, I mean, I, I think what's fa- what's been fascinating to me is watching the commentariat and the supporters and the critiques, criticizers of both sides, like contort themselves into knots trying to work out what their position is on this. People who didn't like Trump still don't like Trump.

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      And have more reason not to. Lots of people who did like Trump also now don't like Trump. I don't know of anybody who has been converted over to the support, and I think this is shown in the polls. Like he's, he's had, over the last two years... Check this out, Jared. I'm pretty sure over the last two years, what, what's happened to Trump's, uh, approval numbers? I think he's had the fastest decline in approval numbers maybe in American history.

    6. AS

      Historically, when you tell people to go fuck themselves on Easter-

    7. CW

      [chuckles]

    8. AS

      ... that may happen. [laughs] Or, what did he end the Easter q- uh, post with? "Praise to Allah"?

    9. CW

      Oh, yeah. Yeah, what the fuck was going on with that? I was, this frightened me.

    10. AS

      You're asking me what's going on with that? [laughs]

    11. CW

      In the last two years, Trump's approval has followed a pretty clear pattern, a modest bump, then a steady decline, now persistently low and polarized. Uh, forty-six percent approval and forty-three percent disapproval in January 2025, which is higher than 2017. Uh, keep going down. Recent polling shows fifty-five to sixty percent, so a net negative approval of fourteen to twenty points. Yeah, maybe that's not as low as I might have thought. But I mean, still not great, but that's a big drop. And what was the fucking... I, I was in Australia for this. I'd-

    12. AS

      Yeah

    13. CW

      ... I kind of saw it third hand. Why, why did he say the Allah thing?

    14. AS

      I love that you're asking me for an explanation [laughs] to that.

    15. CW

      Can you psychoanalyze Donald Trump for me for a second?

    16. AS

      Uh, oh, yeah, good. There you go.

    17. CW

      Psychoanalyze.

    18. AS

      Right.

    19. CW

      I have a theory about-

    20. AS

      [laughs]

    21. CW

      ... why Donald... Hey, look.

    22. AS

      Oh, is it glasses time?

    23. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put these on.

    24. AS

      There you go.

    25. CW

      Put these on, and now that you've got... [laughs] Okay, so why did Donald Trump say, "Praise to Allah"?

    26. AS

      Because we elected a TV star to be the President of the United States. [both laughing]

    27. CW

      Oh, God. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to condition myself to use this. Uh, yeah, well, I don't know what the fuck, um, is, like, what you can say the current US administration's plan is.

    28. AS

      Well, I don't know if they have one, and I think that might be the scariest thing. I-- People get so wrapped around the color of their team's jersey, and I just, I want whatever administration is in office to do the best they possibly can so that we all can benefit from that. And I don't know where it, it leads us when people forget that the goal should be like, hey, like thriving of this country, but they'll choose alignment of their colored jersey over, like, to the exclusion.

    29. CW

      Mm, mm.

    30. AS

      I don't understand that. I don't know why it got that way. I don't, also don't know how to get out of it either.

  20. 1:13:20 – 1:17:01

    Is Guns For Hire the Way Forward?

    1. CW

      Yeah. What do you think about the, um, the future of mercenary organizations of sort of guns for hire? Increasingly I'm seeing-

    2. AS

      Depends on who you ask. Some people are saying that's the way forward. Um, usually those people own those companies, but [laughs] that's a tough one. I don't think you should be able to rent the American flag. I think it should be issued on your uniform and that's it. If you want to do things-- If the military is not capable of doing the things that you're filling those gaps with, then do me a favor and restructure the military and develop those capabilities instead of outsourcing it.

    3. CW

      Mm.

    4. AS

      Because there are some ways to cut corners outsourcing it and paint outside of the lines that the military isn't supposed to be able to do, and I think that's a dangerous thing. I think if the military isn't serving the role and isn't capable of doing it, then let's solve that problem.

    5. CW

      Because you're using this buttress performance enhance, uh, thing to-

    6. AS

      And outs- I mean it-

    7. CW

      ... compensate.

    8. AS

      Yeah. It's, uh-- And there's also risk in that too. I mean, it, it-- The Iranian pilot as an example, dude, we nuked some assets to go get that guy, which by the way, people complain about the price of that. But to go back to like being issued a flag on your uniform and being asked to do exceptional things, it kind of helps to know that if shit goes sideways, like the chariot will be lit on fire. It might not be pointed in the right direction, like you might see it go off a cliff, but like we're gonna come do something.

    9. CW

      We'll send another one.

    10. AS

      Totally.

    11. CW

      Send more chariots until we get you.

    12. AS

      It, uh, it-- That doesn't exist in the contracting world. I mean, if you're out there and, and you're doing a contract and, you know, a kinetic contract in an environment that is maybe less newsworthy, but you're still... I mean, there is no like red button like, "Hey, send everybody." It-- So there's a lot of risk involved in that as well too.

    13. CW

      That's interesting. I didn't know that.

    14. AS

      How could there be? I mean, the, the, the, the CSAR, Combat Search and Rescue response, that was all military-based, right?

    15. CW

      I thought that there would be something that was a part of that ecosystem inside of it, but I suppose it's, it's much closer to a market. It's just a capitalist entity.

    16. AS

      Correct. Yeah. Th- I mean, it, they're, they're talking probably minimum manning at times, you know what I mean? They're, "How many bodies do we need to be able to do this? What can we charge?" They're not gonna have-- Like, the assets that we, no pun intended, metaphorically and literally burn to the ground, those organizations don't have a stable of those things to be able to do that.

    17. CW

      Mm.

    18. AS

      So, yeah, it's-- I don't like the idea of outsourcing military-type roles, specifically when the underlying motivation behind it is to skirt rules that prohibit military behaviors and activities.

    19. CW

      What are those sorts of rules?

    20. AS

      Rules of engagement. Um, meddling in affairs that the U.S. military is not supposed to be meddling in.

    21. CW

      Because it would cross some kind of diplomatic-

    22. AS

      Yep

    23. CW

      ... or-

    24. AS

      Yep

    25. CW

      ... legislative-

    26. AS

      Yep.

    27. CW

      Right.

    28. AS

      I don't think we should be doing that stuff. I think that gets real murky real fast. I'm not saying there's not a role for private military contractors, PMCs, which are most of those organizations. Um, I don't think outsourcing war is a good idea.

    29. CW

      Well, it suddenly opens up the problem of who's got the biggest bank balance and who can continue, who, who is going to pay the most.

    30. AS

      Yeah.

  21. 1:17:01 – 1:29:12

    Why Do People Quit?

    1. CW

      "People quit when they focus on how far they have to go."

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      Where'd you learn that?

    4. AS

      Uh, so interestingly enough, going back as a, an instructor, I was there for 18 months. I did not wanna go back. It, it was global war on terror. That's a shore duty command, non-deployable, meaning regardless of what's going on, your job is to be an instructor, which if you are in a profession of arms and arms are being used in your profession, you're probably gonna wanna be over there, not at a schoolhouse wiping noses and asses, right? We didn't actually do that. We let them do that for themselves 'cause they're adults. But it ended up being the most rewarding 18 months of my entire career. I look back on it and I learned a lot about myself, and it gave me an incredible understanding of the community, and I realized it was like the world's best laboratory on why people quit. Like, all of this-- There have been so many, millions of dollars, and I don't have an exact... I'm gonna say it's safe to say millions of dollars have been spent trying to figure out who makes it through SEAL training. Psychological assessments, looking at your sporting background. Did you come from a nuclear family, a broken home? Where'd you come from? Socioeconomic status, all of these things. Pre-training programs that existed for a couple of years. The attrition rate just hums right along. All of this stuff, it might have bumped it a percentage point. And, uh, for people who don't know, the attrition rate in the summer months is about 75%, so three out of four students aren't gonna make it. Winter months, a little bit colder, so more exposure to the elements, 80, maybe sometimes 90% attrition rate, which is-

    5. CW

      You did winter, right?

    6. AS

      Winter Hell Week, yes. Um, for sure. My, my class was the last hard, uh, buds class that there ever was. Um, documented. It's written somewhere, uh, probably in my handwriting. But, [chuckles] um, the win- the winter is just e- it's just colder, and the cold sucks more. As a student, when you're going throughYou don't get a chance to talk to the guy who was next to you who quits because they're gone, and your training day continues. And especially in, like, Hell Week, if that's a five-day evolution starting on Sunday and ending on Friday, if they're gone, most of the, uh, quitting occurs between Sunday and about Tuesday morning. They're already moved out of the barr- Like, you'll probably never see them again. So as a student, you're just, like, front sight focus. As an instructor, they're there for a couple of weeks. They have to process out. They get put over in a different berthing place. A lot of times they have, uh, medical issues that they're working their way through, and you are around young men who probably a week before you have a conversation with them would have told you that it is their singular goal and focus in life and that there's nothing that you could have done to make them quit, and that they were gonna be there on graduation day, and that this is the only goal that matters to them. And then eight to nine out of ten of them quit, and you can sit there and you can talk to them about why. And I try to be very kind, uh, in talking with them because most of the people who have regret is the largest emotion that just is kind of outpouring. It, uh... They wanna go back. It sucks. I've met students decades later or people who have quit BUD/S. I'm like, "Hey man, I'm not trying to be a dick, but I'm just curious because I have a theory. Like, how do you feel about that decision?" Regret every single time. They wish they had been able to see it through because it leaves a really large question mark in their life going forward. So when spending time with the students, I would ask them, you know, "Well, why did you quit?" And in that kind of fragile state, they were really honest with me, and they, they kept saying the same things. There, there, there was a couple categories, and one of them was huge. The small one was like, "Life happened. My dad died, and I gotta get the fuck out of here." Like, dude, I wish you the absolute best. You know what I mean? Like, that's not the data set that I'm looking for. Injury is another one. Can't control that because that wasn't necessarily a consensual choice, so boom, they're gone. Everybody else who rang the bell, "Why'd you quit?" And they would all say the same thing. "I couldn't be as cold as I was for as long as I thought I was gonna be cold." I would say, "Well, how-- Who told you how long you were gonna be cold for?" "Well, nobody, but I told myself I couldn't be cold for as long as I thought I was gonna have to be, or tired, or hungry, or the combination of all of those things, or in physical pain, um, or it was too hard." What they are all expressing is a moment where they became overwhelmed by the situation that they were in, and they started looking at time. Literally time. How they viewed time was the determining factor on the decision that they made. If they could only see where they were, like this is the start of BUD/S first day-

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm

    8. AS

      ... and this is graduation, on average a hundred and eighty days, and the only thing that they can see is the, the gap between my two fingers. Dude, that's a lot, especially on your first day when you get your shit absolutely kicked in. And let's say you had a three-inch stack of, uh, little notes, and on the first one it said a hundred and eighty, and at the end of that day where you're barely able to walk back to the barracks, you rip that off and it says one seventy-nine. How pumped are you? Not that pumped. So that's a person who became... Th-they're, they're, they're creeping towards becoming overwhelmed. Hell Week, the same thing. Starts on a Sunday, ends on a Friday. But if all you can see is this gap and how far you are from your goal, you're getting into a really susceptible position and a really malleable position from an instructor state. And that, that was literally... Like, that's the secret sauce. This is the most important thing that I learned in my entire career. If you can identify that that is the main reason why people give up on their lifelong goals, you should be able to reverse engineer that. So how do you do that? You think about everything other than that. So instead of trying to get from here to here and only looking at that distance, you slam these two together so there is a microscopic step that you can take, and you only focus on that step and then the next one and the next one. And you don't have to keep track of your steps because as long as you keep making forward motion, this bridge will be gapped at some point in time. The muscle that fails at BUD/S is not below the neck. It's between the ears. So they focus on that distance. They become overwhelmed, and they make a decision that they'll regret for the rest of their life. So the key to that is to chunk your goals into the most digestible piece that you possibly can and then consistently put those one on top of another.

    9. CW

      Is there a difference between stress and overwhelm?

    10. AS

      Can somebody force you to be overwhelmed is a better question. I don't think so. You can't act- And I would, I would-- So I have some interesting conversation with a student. Be like, "Well, Instructor So-and-so made me quit." I'm like, "Standby please. I have additional questions."

    11. CW

      [chuckles]

    12. AS

      "What do you mean?" "Well, they made me quit." I'm like, "So they, they, they interlaced fingers like the movie Ghost where they were doing pottery, and they put your hand on the bell and rang the bell?" They're like, "No, no, no. No, I mean, that's not what I'm saying, but they were, like, in my face, and they weren't going away because they told me they weren't gonna go away, and I couldn't take it anymore, so I quit." I'm like, "Okay." And again, these are people in a fragile state, so I'm not, like, trying to have an argument with them, but I would try to, you know, maybe reinforce a little bit. Be like, "Listen, that instructor facilitated an environment for you where you became your own worst enemy, and you made that choice." And here's how I know that this works. As soon as I understood that concept, that the view of time was the most dangerous thing for the student, I gave up on all physical tools that I had, whether it was the ocean or the watch or food or physical exertion, and I would just talk to students like you and I are talking right now. Like, "Dude, what's going on, man?"It's like you're having a shitty day. This is only the first day of hell week. And it would be like the third, but they're already hallucinating, and I had set my watch to the incorrect day and time. [laughs]

    13. CW

      You lasted.

    14. AS

      How-- You look like you're really cold. How long do you think you can be this cold? I'm on shift for the next twelve hours. I'm gonna sit here with you for twelve hours, and I'm gonna keep you in this water for longer than you thought was even possible.

    15. CW

      Hmm.

    16. AS

      And you could see it in their eyes. The students are like, "Just whatever, dude. I know the game. Fuck off." And they, and they're-- So what they're chunking in that moment is just surviving the interaction with me, and I can recognize it too and like, "Pfft, lame. Next." Then you go to the other student, and you can, you start seeing the self-doubt, and you just water the self-doubt. It was the single most effective tool to get people to quit training. Had nothing to do with anything in the physical world. So you can reverse engineer that.

    17. CW

      So by reminding them how much further they had to go-

    18. AS

      That's all I focused on is I tried to get them to focus on where they were and how much more work they had to do to get to their goal.

    19. CW

      Mm-hmm. It's not just gonna be the next minute.

    20. AS

      No, I try to get them to think of anything but that.

    21. CW

      Yeah.

    22. AS

      The kid who was thinking about the next one, I'm like, "Lame. Get out of here."

    23. CW

      Yeah.

    24. AS

      "You're gonna be fine. Good j-", and like, as you're walking away, like, "Good job."

    25. CW

      Yeah.

    26. AS

      You wouldn't say that, of course, but you'd think it.

    27. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you outfoxed me. You saw the game that I was trying to play.

    28. AS

      Yeah, totally.

    29. CW

      Yeah.

    30. AS

      That's-- I mean, it, it's for clarity for people who are hearing this, they're like, "Yes, I'm gonna start doing this, and everything in my life is gonna be easy." No. It doesn't make anything easier. It makes it more digestible.

  22. 1:29:12 – 1:31:08

    The Most Important Traits in Life or Death Situations

    1. CW

      What are the other traits that matter in life or death situations that people overestimate or underestimate?

    2. AS

      Emotional control, as ridiculous as that is to say because it is, uh, an emotionally scary event. You have to be able to detach your emotions from your decision-making process. You have to be able to function, and that is what-- The test I administered in second phase was a diving test, and it was twenty minutes long. You're tying a bunch of knots in the student's gear, and they have to get the knots out in an appropriate procedure. If you deviate from procedure, you fail. We'll pull you out of the water. You get four attempts at the test.

    3. CW

      So even if you do the knots, but you do them in the wrong way?

    4. AS

      You ha- If the, it-- At a broad level, the mouthpiece that you are breathing out of, if it is in your mouth and I leave it in your mouth as I tie a knot, you have to start from the mouthpiece and work your way back. If I rip it out and tie a knot, you have to start all the way from your manifold and trace it up, and some people will just reach up and put the mouthpiece in their mouth. I'm like, "Dude, you just..." It's like fail right there.

    5. CW

      Right. Yeah.

    6. AS

      But they can't breathe, and I know that because I can see the inhale and exhale. And if you wanna be a dick instructor, you wait till all the bubbles come out and you're like, "My mouthpiece." Right? If you don't wanna be a dick instructor and you wanna teach the students, you just tap them on the mouthpiece because it's a one-to-one ratio. This is a one-to-one test. Tap them on the mouthpiece, let them get a big breath, [inhales] and then I take the mouthpiece, and I tie knots, and there's a variety of different ways that you can do it. And I'm sitting there as an instructor just floating in a wetsuit with a mask and snorkel on, and you, you start seeing it. They start like... Like, it's insane. And it's like, cool, I've been there. I know it sucks. Are you gonna follow procedure? And at the end of that week, if they pass that test, you sit them down. You're like, "For the love of God, please do not go recreational scuba diving because you guys don't know a fucking thing about it." This test had absolutely nothing to do with diving and everything to do with stress management and following procedure regardless of what's going on in the world around you.

    7. CW

      Hmm.What's

  23. 1:31:08 – 1:34:40

    The Brutal Truth About Drownproofing

    1. CW

      drownproof?

    2. AS

      Drownproof is, uh, an evolution that does not make you drown-proof at all. Plenty of SEALs unfortunately have drowned. You get introduced to that in first phase. Um, the final evolution, which is the picture on the front cover, is where you have your hands tied behind your back and your feet tied together. And I believe this is, ooh, 30 years in the rear view mirror. You bob up and down for an hour. You then have to transit the pool, uh, all the way to the end and then back.

    3. CW

      After an hour.

    4. AS

      After an hour. Which if-- This is one of the most relaxing... Hold on. Hold on. What I'm about to say is not a recommendation for people to do in their own personal pool. Uh, what I'm saying is, as a student, you can only hear them yelling at you as your head is above water. So if you're comfortable, [laughs] if you're comfortable in the water-

    5. CW

      But I get if I stay down here, I can't hear Andy shouting at me.

    6. AS

      It's-- Yeah. Well, I had a bullhorn, so it's like talking at a normal voice with an extremely high decibel level.

    7. CW

      Yep.

    8. AS

      Which talking to somebody from six inches from their face with a bullhorn, let me just tell you, it's pretty fun. Being-- [laughs] What are you thinking about right now? They're like, "Oh my God."

    9. CW

      [laughs]

    10. AS

      Again, generational trauma, it has to be passed downhill 'cause instructors did that to me. It is for an hour... I played water polo in high school, so for me, I was comfortable in the water. And although on the picture on the book, their hands are tied, their feet are tied, but this is also a one-to-one ratio. Half the class is watching the students in the water, and there are instructors in the water for safety.

    11. CW

      Mm.

    12. AS

      So-

    13. CW

      You try not to kill people.

    14. AS

      We do our absolute best, even though I will say it is essential people die in training from time to time, and we can touch on that if you want to after I describe this. But the first time they do this, their feet aren't tied together, and they're just holding their fingers behind their back.

    15. CW

      Mm.

    16. AS

      It's a crawl, walk, run approach. Then we'll use like some Velcro, right? Or maybe just do the legs and then the hands. If you bob up and down, it's, it's honestly you, you bounce off the bottom, take a deep breath, [inhales and exhales] and you slowly exhale to become negatively buoyant and you bounce. It's really not that bad. The swimming isn't that bad either. Then you get back, and they throw a mask into the water, and you have to go down, bite it with your teeth, come up, and then bob with it for a bunch of times, and then the test actually ends.

    17. CW

      'Cause that limits the ability for you to breathe, or it's just a fucking awkward thing to do?

    18. AS

      I feel like it's the latter.

    19. CW

      Yeah.

    20. AS

      I have no explanation as to why, and I think there's honestly a somersault in there somewhere, too. [laughs]

    21. CW

      Scientifically, this isn't justified at all.

    22. AS

      No, it's not at all. Again, this is just a rolling rock of generational trauma that's going downhill. And so that is drownproofing. The concept being, though, like before thriving, let's learn how to survive. It's about control and comfort to the best of your ability in an environment that you can't control and probably shouldn't be comfortable in if you have your feet tied together and your hands tied behind your back. Some people are like, "Oh man, this is so like if you guys were taken hostage on a boat, you can just go do like a dolphin off the side and pour poo's out." I'm like, "Uh, no. That's not what that's for at all." So I'm like, it's so cra- and again, I didn't, I didn't understand a lot of this as a student. It... This was just the evolution of the day. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Let's go through it. Let's get it done." One of the evolutions is a 50-meter underwater swim. Like why? Why do we do this? 'Cause it freaks people out.

    23. CW

      Mm.

    24. AS

      And that's exactly why we... Is it-- Do you really need to be able to do a 50-meter underwater swim? I don't think so. I hope not. That would suck. I don't wanna do one.

    25. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AS

      But you do it in training 'cause it scares the shit out of the students. And it's again, it's a one-to-one, and the instructors are doing the best they can to make you nervous beforehand.

  24. 1:34:40 – 1:40:05

    The Top Scaring Tactics Used in Training

    1. AS

      So-

    2. CW

      How are they doing that?

    3. AS

      Oh, we have many tricks and tools. [clears throat] What year is it? 2026. Okay, statute of limitations has probably expired on this. So we would often grab the foreign students first that were augmented training. [laughs] Uh, they were paid to be there by their host country, and we couldn't really get rid of them anyway. And so like the diving test, when you're... So the 50-meter underwater sw-swim is a great example, but the diving test or even the tread is even better, where you have scuba tanks on your back, you have your fins on, a weight belt on, and you have to tread water with to the wrist or about where the watch would be with your hands out for five minutes. Five or six students are going at a time. Everybody else is on the pool deck, but their back is to the pool, so you can only hear it. So if you were to grab a subpar performer and they were to lose their shit, and everybody else had to hear that, wondering what in the absolute fuck was happening, knowing that they have to go next, thinking that they were prepared, sounding like... And then somebody sounds like they're just like talking to a dinosaur and then is being pulled unconscious out of the water and being slapped back to life by a dude with seven years of medical school, that's one way. [laughs] The noises, you, you could just see people are just like, "Oh, God." And you're like, "God, I love my job." It's, it just, it warms your soul like a candle that starts a forest fire, you know?

    4. CW

      Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

    5. AS

      Yeah.

    6. CW

      Uh, and what about the underwater swim? Same thing? Just people struggle with that.

    7. AS

      That-

    8. CW

      They make weird noises when they come out.

    9. AS

      Well, only when they pass out.

    10. CW

      Yeah.

    11. AS

      Of all the evolutions in training, that is the only one I'm aware of that if you pass out, so you jump into the water, front somersault, swim-

    12. CW

      Front somersault. [laughs]

    13. AS

      I don't know, man. I don't know. It, well, it's just, it's weird. It interrupts-- 'cause anybody could like run and jump and dive-

    14. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah

    15. AS

      ... and carry the momentum, right? And it, it like screws with your ability to hold your breath, like just enough, right?

    16. CW

      Yeah.

    17. AS

      Like, we know you can do this, but can you do it the way we ask you to do it for no reason other than we're asking you to do it? So you jump in, front somersault. The smart students dive down to the bottom of the pool 'cause it compresses your lung a little bit more, which makes it easier to hold your breath than maybe six inches above the surface-

    18. CW

      Mm

    19. AS

      ... or below the surface. You get to the other side, and you touch the other side, and you have to do another fucking front flip. [laughs] And I think that's just so you can't push off, actually, now that I think about it.

    20. CW

      Mm.

    21. AS

      You start coming back. This is also a one-to-one instructor ratio. So anytime it's one-to-one, it's considered more high risk. This is the only evolution that I'm aware of that as you are c- if you can k- stay down there and do, like, this last Herculean breaststroke, in your forward momentum, your head touches the wall. As you are unconscious, we will pull you out, and you go to the pass line. But the noises that students make when they come out of the water, I don't know how to describe it. And it's, it's like a drunk elephant trumpeting or a blue whale surfacing.

    22. CW

      Is you're trying to get water out of them?

    23. AS

      No, because they're just unconscious. They're only unconscious for a few seconds.

    24. CW

      Right.

    25. AS

      But they're just like, "Wuh."

    26. CW

      [laughs]

    27. AS

      And meanwhile, all the other students are just like, "Oh my God."

    28. CW

      [laughs]

    29. AS

      It's wild. And yeah, 'cause people are like, "Oh man, they make you hold your breath in training until you pass out," right? Like, no, actually, in every eve-ev- other evolution in the water, if you pass out, you're gonna fail for not following procedure because there's a hand signal you can put out if you need us to come down and get you.

    30. CW

      But does that not mean you fail too?

  25. 1:40:05 – 1:41:40

    Are Deaths in Training Necessary?

    1. CW

      Why is it important to have a proper attrition rate for people to actually die?

    2. AS

      Because the job is very dangerous, and I'm not-- I don't want people to die, but if nobody ever died in training, you are not training hard enough. The training has to be a reverse engineering, downstream, real world requirements of the job that you are expected to do, and it is a dangerous job. You cannot prepare for that by avoiding danger in training.

    3. CW

      Because if no one ever died, there wouldn't be anything on the line. Ultimately, there wouldn't be a sufficient risk for the guys to know that this is-

    4. AS

      You wouldn't be pushing it hard enough

    5. CW

      ... there's a reason to fear it.

    6. AS

      Yep. You wouldn't be pushing hard enough.

    7. CW

      Hmm. What's the most common way that people die? Drowning?

    8. AS

      Uh, that is not uncommon. I th-- Well, the last one I think in the pool was somebody who, uh, vomited and then aspirated it while they were underwater. Um, the last student to die at training was post hell week. Um, and I don't remember the exact medical term, but it was fluid into the lungs. Uh, and yeah, he made it to the hospital but still expired. It's, it-- You, you are destroyed at the end of hell week. It's the only week afterwards where they let you walk in tennis shoes bec- I mean, you're, like, you're wearing a life jacket. Like, you are... Sand is abrasive for people who didn't know this. Imagine just basically wearing sandpaper for a week because you're wet and sandy the entire time.

    9. CW

      Mm.

    10. AS

      It does things to the body. Uh, and yeah, you're just absolutely destroyed, and most people are nursing an injury anyway, uh, throughout training. But yeah, that one gets you.

  26. 1:41:40 – 1:44:24

    Why the Grind Is Everything

    1. CW

      What role do you think hardship plays in people's lives?

    2. AS

      I'm at a place now as I'm getting closer to 50 than 40 that I actually think the pursuit of an easy life is a mistake. I think that the grind is actually what life is all about. It's, it's not a matter of whether you're gonna have a, a hard life or an easy life. It's a, a ability, your ability to determine how well that you can suffer along the way and trying to enjoy the journey.

    3. CW

      Okay. So as somebody that has either endured or doled out quite a bit of suffering, how do people deal with suffering more effectively?

    4. AS

      First, by acknowledging that sometimes the answer is you are going to suffer instead of looking for a way to avoid it altogether. You know, you don't have to nerf all the corners on tables. Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe it's okay to bang your knee every once in a while in the middle of the night. So I think it actually starts with accepting that if you really wanna accomplish something in your life, there's no hack to hard work. I, I think you should hack as many, like, for efficiencies, like hack your Gmail inbox, like totally go to town. Hack your business systems. There's no... There is no substitute for hard work. Do you have anything in your life that was truly given to you that you didn't work for at all, but you accept? Yeah. And val- right. And then I look at the things that I worked the hardest for and the goals that I set where I'm like, "Am I out of my mind? Like, can I actually do this?" That's the stuff that I value the most.

    5. CW

      Mm.

    6. AS

      And then I'm trying to, trying to, emphasis on this, learn how to enjoy that journey more because it's hard, and enjoying hard things is, it's difficult

    7. CW

      What gets in the way of enjoying?

    8. AS

      Usually just myself. You know, I, my, my biggest enemy throughout my entire life has been myself. You know, waking up knowing your day is gonna be difficult or more difficult, or choosing to have it be more difficult to do the hard work up front so maybe you can enjoy an easier day later in the week. It's not, you know, it's challenging.

    9. CW

      Mm.

    10. AS

      I think that's where people struggle. It's where I struggle.

    11. CW

      It's strange to think that as you get older, you try to make things harder, not easier.

    12. AS

      Yeah. My goal in life for sure, up until, let's say exceptionally recently, was, was make things as easy as possible. [laughs]

    13. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    14. AS

      Everybody's searching for that. And then you just... And it, you know, you realize that all the stuff that you got easy just doesn't matter. It's the stuff that sucks, especially if you can share that with your friends. That's the biggest thing I would say I probably miss about the community, is that we would do the dumbest, most painful shit ever and laugh about it while we were doing it.

    15. CW

      Mm. Because you were doing it with somebody else.

    16. AS

      Yeah, totally. It would suck by yourself. I mean, you could do it, but watching somebody else suffer with you and finding joy in that, you know.

  27. 1:44:24 – 1:48:48

    The One SEAL Lesson Everyone Should Learn

    1. CW

      If you could take one lesson from the SEAL teams and force every young man to learn it, what would it be?

    2. AS

      Hmm. One lesson. Be cautious and make sure you know what you're willing to die for, 'cause not everything's worth it.

    3. CW

      Say more.

    4. AS

      Many times in my life, the things that I thought were the most important ended up being inconsequential because I didn't put enough thought or time and effort into understanding why I wanted to do them. And killing yourself and sacrificing everything in your life and trying to achieve that, you might get it at the end of the day and be the most hollow shell of a human being known to man.

    5. CW

      And how do you do that assessment without having to go through it?

    6. AS

      I think you have to slow down a little bit. We seem to be in a world where speed is one of the most important metrics, and I think that's important at times, but do all decisions have to be made in a moment's notice? Uh, for me, it's one of the things I really... Like, if your house is on fire, get the fuck out of your house, right? If your house isn't on fire and you have time to make a decision, think about the decision, think about your available options, and make the most educated one at the time, and then on that journey, keep asking yourself, is this... You know what I mean? Like reinforcing it along the way as opposed to just one decision and then your full back dive straight ahead.

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. AS

      I don't think you can get to that point though without making some mistakes on your own. Like, people always ask me, "What would you say to your younger self?" The truly honest answer is, "Buy Bitcoin, you dipshit."

    9. CW

      Yes. Buy Bitcoin and do Five Three One. That's it.

    10. AS

      But here's the problem, though. If I was 18 and my 48-year-old self went back, I'd be like, "Shut up, dude. I got this figured out." [laughs]

    11. CW

      [laughs] All right, Granddad, sit down.

    12. AS

      Yeah, totally. I'm pretty, pretty sure I'd like to invest in, uh, new cars. Uh. [laughs]

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. AS

      I like to buy high and sell low. It's not a big deal. It's a new investment strategy. Yeah, um, I, I wouldn't have listened to myself, but I also probably would not remove the mistakes. I wouldn't remove some key mistakes in my life just to make sure that I learned the lesson from them.

    15. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    16. AS

      I would remove some for sure because they were needless, you know, pain and suffering, and don't worry. I may... They were repeats of mistakes that I was already making.

    17. CW

      Yeah.

    18. AS

      But you have to have those mistakes.

    19. CW

      The fascinating thing about the question, what would you tell your younger self? What advice would you give to your younger self? If you answer that, it is almost always the exact advice that you need to hear right now. For-- In the same way that you've got the same feet that you did 30 years ago, you have the same patterns, the same fears, the same coping mechanisms, the same responses when things become stressful or overwhelming, and that means that you're going to be driven by those unconscious, un-alchemized trends. Those are going to be the things. They're going to be the shit that you dealt with when you were 18 and you got cut from the baseball team, or the way that your first breakup felt and how you coped with it after that. For the most part, those are gonna be the dynamics that are going to drive the rest of your life too. So when you think about... So for me, it would be fear less. Like, just stop fucking fearing so much, dude.

    20. AS

      What do you fear the most?

    21. CW

      Not doing it right, not getting it right.

    22. AS

      What do you use as your yardstick for that, though?

    23. CW

      A totally superfluous, ethereal, fucking fluffy, big cloud of, like, something going wrong. Things will go wrong, and you'll be in the wrong, and something will be taken away from you. I don't know what, I don't know by who. But not doing it right, not getting it right, not being enough. I don't know who for or why.

    24. AS

      All that's gonna happen, though.

    25. CW

      Of course.

    26. AS

      So isn't the juice then in just preparing yourself for that and working your way through it?

    27. CW

      And then overcoming it.

    28. AS

      Yeah.

    29. CW

      Of course. Which I've done throughout my entire life, but the-

    30. AS

      I'll be the judge of that, sir.

  28. 1:48:48 – 1:52:22

    Why You’re Never Truly Alone

    1. CW

      this, it hasn't.

    2. AS

      Can I add one thing to that too?

    3. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AS

      And this is one thing that I wish... I know people hear this, but they don't believe me. Whatever it is you think you're going through, please do not convince yourself that you are the only one struggling with it.

    5. CW

      My God.

    6. AS

      If COVID taught us anything, that it should be that isolation or even perceived isolation is one of the most damaging things to the human brain. We are-- Every person I've ever met in my life is more defined by their similarities than by their differences. And the-It is so unfortunate, uh, again, statistically, the world that I come from has a much higher suicide rate than many other occupational fields. And for those that have chosen to leave things behind, oftentimes there are deep sentiments of being isolated and alone and feeling like they were dealing with something that nobody else would or was or that nobody else would understand.

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. AS

      And it's not true. You're-- you can't-- nobody knows what's going on behind your eyes, right? Like we-- I guarantee you and I are probably spend our mental bandwidth worrying about the vast majority of the same shit.

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AS

      But in my mind, I'd be like, "I have no nails." But like, who, who could I possibly talk to about this 'cause I'm the only one on earth dealing with this? And the reality is almost everybody is. So we lie to ourselves, you isolate, you don't say anything, and it ends up getting worse.

    11. CW

      And it's interesting you said, um, "I don't think that I can do the thing that I need to do for as long as is going to be required of me." And that's not too dissimilar to one of the most common thoughts that people have before taking their own lives, which is that the world would be better off without me. People-

    12. AS

      Or I can't take this anymore.

    13. CW

      The people around me would be better off without me, and I can't continue.

    14. AS

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      Uh, and it's the combination of those two things. It's the isolation that's in there too. You had the w-wonderful line, "The feeling of being alone is one of the most dangerous lies we tell ourselves."

    16. AS

      I have never asked for help and not received it.

    17. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AS

      And I have been like in tears, overwhelmed with the number of people who saw that I needed help but didn't say anything because they were waiting for me to ask.

    19. CW

      Mm. Well, this is a curse of being competent. Uh, you-- the sort of people that listen to this show and read books like yours, they're the kinds of people who usually in their friend group are the ones that have got it figured out. You know, they, they're the ones that are working on their diet-

    20. AS

      Yeah

    21. CW

      ... they're thinking about their sleep pattern, that are reading and doing meditation.

    22. AS

      They're maxing.

    23. CW

      The, the everything maxing.

    24. AS

      Like Thor.

    25. CW

      Yeah, that's true. He d- he did-- he just genetics maxed. And, um, what that means is that if you're the friend that always seems like you've got your life sorted, people tend to not want to come to your aid because, well, fuck, like, you know, Andy's the guy that, that I go to. Like, who am I, who am I, who am I to help him? Like he's, he's got it sorted. Like it's not, it's not on me. Like he's... It's gonna be embarrassing, or it's gonna be whatever. And, um, it's a weird inversion of things that are g- of, of... There are lots of ways that competence is great, but this is one of the ways where competence can hold you back. And, uh-

    26. AS

      Yeah

    27. CW

      ... yeah, I think it's-

    28. AS

      It goes back to the misconceptions about special operations defined by their competence. A country calls upon that community to solve problems when they can't figure out another solution.

    29. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    30. AS

      And by the way, they're not looking for a, uh, negative result. They're looking for success.

  29. 1:52:22 – 2:02:45

    The Truth About Making a Real Impact

    1. CW

      I wrote this essay. This came to me when you were talking about the fact that you stayed in a, a marriage for longer than you should have done, and that you'd used a skill that had got you a lot of accolade in your military career, but it had, uh, damaged you when it came to your-

    2. AS

      Mm-hmm

    3. CW

      ... relationship. The curse of psychological strength. Everyone has a limit, an end to the amount of discomfort that they can cope with. This is obvious physically. Some people can lift more or run further than others. But how much emotional pain, upset, or disappointment a person can endure is subtler and harder to detect. It's not apparent in the size of someone's arms, but the capacity of their nervous system. It's not a weight that you can see on squat rack, it's their ability to carry a heavy emotional load. This psychological strength can be a good thing. You're able to handle more than most. You don't balk at pain. You keep pushing through regardless of how you feel. But too much strength can be a weakness. High performers are particularly vulnerable to this trap. Psychological strength is rewarded almost everywhere. In the gym, it's discipline. In business, it's grit. In public, it's composure. You become the person who can handle it, who doesn't complain, who pushes through when others would quit. Your ability to ignore how you feel and keep moving forward earns admiration, builds your career, and creates momentum. But what you are praised for in public, you often pay for in private.

    4. AS

      Oof.

    5. CW

      Relationships don't reward endurance, they require attunement. If your default strategy in life is to absorb discomfort and override warning signs, you will do exactly that when someone repeatedly hurts you. You'll rationalize it, reframe it, decide it's your job to make it work. And the stronger you are, the longer you can stay. What looks like strength from the outside becomes self-abandonment on the inside. You've trained yourself to believe that struggle is noble and difficulty is meaningful, so when love feels destabilizing, it doesn't register as a warning. It feels like a challenge, and challenges are your thing. But a relationship isn't a marathon to be endured, it's a place to feel safe. The qualities that make you formidable in the arena can quietly make you miserable in your own living room. Let's say that you're dating and feel like a side character in your own relationship. You put them first, and they put you sixth. The rupture is regular, and the repair is absent. Lower resilience, less stubborn people, would have broken long ago and said, "I'm out." But not you. You're the Jocko Willink of psychological suffering. Forget carrying the boats, you'll carry the whole fleet forever. In these situations, you're faced with a much tougher problem. Not how much can you tolerate, but how much do you want to tolerate? Perhaps this is what you had to do as a child. If your needs weren't noticed, your sadness was ignored, and your feelings didn't matter, then you become accustomed to pushing through disconnection in order to make those relationships function. If child you learns, "I need to work hard to be loved," then adult you believes, "If I am not loved, I just need to work harder." You've achieved ten thousand hours of ignoring your own needs. You can't tell people how you feel without first worrying about how it'll make them feel. You unconsciously believe that suffering is the price of connection and that silent subjugation is noble.You basically think, "I should be able to tolerate the intolerable in order to make this work."

    6. AS

      What inspired you to write that?

    7. CW

      Thinking about some of the ways that I'd denied myself, uh, prioritization, that I'd pushed through discomfort because I could, because almost everything that was valuable in life had come on the other side of working hard and going through difficulty. So there's just this implicit belief that, well, if something's hard, that must mean that there's something valuable on the other side of it. But there is such a thing as kind of pointless suffering.

    8. AS

      Yeah.

    9. CW

      It made me think-

    10. AS

      Powerful

    11. CW

      ... it made me think about, yeah, the curse of psychological strength. It made me think about what you were saying.

    12. AS

      Sounded very self-reflective as you were writing it.

    13. CW

      Massively. Massively. I mean it-

    14. AS

      I, I could have easily... Y- you use, you have a better grasp on the English language than I do, probably 'cause you guys... I mean, you guys don't use it properly, but you guys might have invented it.

    15. CW

      Kind of invented it, yeah.

    16. AS

      So yeah. No, that's, uh-

    17. CW

      Say more. [laughs]

    18. AS

      [laughs] It's good, man. That's, I can hear, uh, a startling amount of myself-

    19. CW

      Yeah

    20. AS

      ... in that. It's tough. Yeah. What people see from the outside isn't always what's going on on the inside.

    21. CW

      I like that line, you know, what, what you are praised for in public, you pay for in private. And, uh, it's one of the reasons why when you look at anybody that's a, a, a high performer or somebody that's in the SEALs or, you know, whatever, uh, anybody that's got unusual results typically has unusual inputs and an unusual environment internally too.

    22. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    23. CW

      You know, normal people get normal results. Weird people get weird results. And the most successful, popular in the world, you shouldn't... Your first response shouldn't necessarily be envy. A lot of the time it should be pity. Like, what happened to you that caused you to do that to yourself?

    24. AS

      Or at what cost?

    25. CW

      Yeah.

    26. AS

      Yeah. That's-

    27. CW

      What did you have to go through in order to get that?

    28. AS

      Man, that message is so not put out there, that be careful what you wish for and, you know, envy may not be the first thing that should cross your mind when you see somebody who has something you, you want.

    29. CW

      It's the, it's the question that I've been most fascinated by on this show for probably about five years now. Unfortunately, it's an anti-meme. It's if you tell people that the view from the top of the mountain that they are still climbing maybe might not be worth the rest of the journey, it feels to them like you're sucking the oxygen out of the fuel tank because it is, it is, "Fuck your feelings, just work harder, you will get there, and glory is waiting for you," the total addressable market for that is 99.999% of people. The people who get there or got close to the top and said, "Uh, I think this is a false peak. I don't think that what's up there is going to be worth it," or they got there and said, "No," there's a very small number of people who got there and went, "Ah, it's two mountains. That's the problem," as opposed to, "This entire game is kind of rigged against me, and I actually need to look deeper. I'm not gonna fill an internal void with external accolades," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's an anti-me- it's an anti-meme, and it is always going to lose to a much more simplistic, "No, no, no, it's just more. The answer is more. You should push for more."

    30. AS

      Yeah.

  30. 2:02:45 – 2:04:22

    Andy’s End Goal

    1. CW

      Andy, you're a fucking legend, dude. I appreciate the hell out of you. Congratulations on this.

    2. AS

      Thanks.

    3. CW

      It was awesome.

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      You worked real hard on it.

    6. AS

      Yeah. It's, uh, the... I don't know if you get emails like this. I'm sure you do. Because the Internet's a weird place, right? We hit upload, and I don't know where anything goes.

    7. CW

      Mm.

    8. AS

      Your platform is massive, and I could not be more proud for what you have built.

    9. CW

      Thank you.

    10. AS

      But I bet you get emails from people that you'll never meet, and they say, "You know what? Something I heard you say," or a guest say, "changed the course and trajectory of my life." And that is, I don't... I save those emails. I have a, I have a folder. About a dozen people have reached out and said they chose not to kill themselves because of something they heard on the podcast. Books are measured by bestseller lists. Fuck all that. I wanna hear about people who changed the course of their life because of something they got from a place that they never thought that they would have access to.

    11. CW

      Mm.

    12. AS

      But picked this up and realized, "Holy shit, we are way more similar, and I can use this, and I will use it." And you're still gonna make mistakes, and I hope you do, 'cause you need them. But it'll help you suffer better.

    13. CW

      Fuck yeah. Dude, you're awesome. You're awesome. Congratulations.

    14. AS

      Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

    15. CW

      All right. Goodbye, everybody. Dude, let's fucking go.

    16. AS

      [laughs]

    17. CW

      So good. Unreal. Unreal.

    18. AS

      Thanks for having me, man.

    19. CW

      Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply, and it thinks you're gonna like this one even more. Go on, press it.

Episode duration: 2:04:23

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