Jack Carr dissects the Justice League Snyder Cut’s absurd length (4.5–5 hours) and contrasts it with modern streaming’s convenience, like King Kong vs. Godzilla, while lamenting lost theater magic. His Amazon Prime series—based on his Navy SEAL sniper novels—prioritizes authenticity, from Chris Pratt’s involvement to custom Land Cruiser wheels, but critiques U.S. vulnerabilities, like enemies exploiting internal divisions post-9/11 or COVID chaos. Rogan and Carr warn of social media weaponization, echoing Three Felonies a Day’s "lawfare" risks, and question whether institutions like police or bioweapons programs (e.g., Soviet Marburg variant) are failing under political pressure. Carr’s disciplined writing career—from childhood SEAL obsession to First Blood-inspired novels—now fuels his mission: blending tactical realism with societal warnings while balancing fatherhood and creative persistence. [Automatically generated summary]
Tarantino, I don't know what his deal is in terms of his financial situation, like who has ownership or how it would do it, but if they could sell it to Netflix or HBO Max or whatever and just put it as a series.
If things continue on this track, we're having a home theater.
And I get nervous now, of course.
There's probably...
You know, the chances of something happening are so slim, but I get in there, you know, I look where the exits are.
Okay, if something goes off in here, if there's a fire or a bomb or something like that, okay, we're going to move down this aisle, put your hand on the wall, and move down so you can find that exit rather than just, like, chaos.
So I identify those things, I talk to the kids about that stuff, and then I'm ready.
So if someone strange walks in, like, I'm like, mm-hmm.
But the thing is, I really think that with HBO Max showing first cut, like King Kong vs.
Godzilla was on HBO Max, Wonder Woman was on HBO Max, they're going to start doing that.
And when they start doing that and people have the option of staying home, if you have a nice television, you don't have to deal with people on their phone, man.
Yeah, you gotta think of so many different things now.
And the other thing is, like, people are watching movies on their phones now.
If I was Quentin Tarantino and I made a masterpiece, like, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I knew someone was watching on a six-inch screen, I'd be like, ugh.
Well, there's something about the written word that seems to have a life outside of this digital world.
You have to have someone write these things out, right?
Even if it's going to be a film, you have to write the script.
And if you're modifying a script from a book, like your books, someone has to...
So it gives me hope that the written word is still valuable, that fiction...
You can get caught up in a man's or a woman's ideas, and they take you on this journey of creativity.
There's something to it, man.
When you're reading it, it's not just that you're getting enthralled with this story and you're being taken on this journey, but it's also, for me at least...
I know that as a guy who wrote this, or a woman who wrote this, I know that I'm being...
This is someone's labor.
I know they sat down.
With you, we're friends, so it's cool.
I know you.
I've seen pictures of your office.
I know you're sitting there typing away, and as I'm getting this experience out of your books, it's like...
There's something about it still fuels the imagination.
There's something great about movies where you see it all and it's wild and you know it's creative, but there's also something great about having your imagination fill it all in for you.
But your imagination, some of those things are filled in.
You know what the trees look like.
You know what the cliff looks like.
You know what the water looks like as you're seeing it.
But in a book, when you're describing a mountain range or someone walking into an office, you're plugging in all these little pieces from your own experience through your own filters and biases and all the rest of it.
So you're actually an active participant in that creation, which is kind of cool.
And I loved that.
I loved that growing up.
I loved being a part of the magic of these books, and that's what I'm trying to recreate today with these.
But also going to movies has helped huge.
And growing up, I thought it was just fun.
I just loved going to these movies, especially the ones that had main characters that had backgrounds that I wanted in real life one day.
So I just naturally gravitated to all those movies.
But it helped in that it helped me with my storytelling.
It helped me read a book like First Blood, created in 1972 by David Morell.
Which they did because it tested very poorly with audiences when they just rooted for this guy for this whole movie and then all of a sudden he gets killed at the end.
And then when I sat down to talk to the producers and all the people that were involved in making The Terminalist into this series, usually they like to get rid of the author right away because they don't want him saying, like, You ruined my vision and all this.
So I got to talk to them about growing up and reading all these books and watching the movie adaptations of these different books or the TV adaptations or whatever it was.
And they realized, okay, I've been thinking about this for a long time.
I understand telling a story visually is different than writing it on the written page.
And they're creative people.
They're going to take this thing and they're going to tell it in a way that is more...
So they're doing, yeah, they're starting with the first one, and then depending on Chris's schedule and Antoine's schedule and how everything looks, then maybe they do another season.
And then you have Jack Reacher character, you have Jack Ryan, you know, he's really John Ryan from the Clancy stuff, so it's, yeah, James Reese, the main character, former Navy SEAL sniper, background similar to mine, but right now...
It's so hard to get an audience to connect with your character.
And I didn't even think about that as I started.
But since that's happened, since he is resonating with people and the stories are resonating with people, that I think I'm going to continue on with the same character, the same storyline, building on it, building along his journey, because we're all on this journey and people can relate to that as well, to transitions and different struggles and all that.
So I'm going to continue with this character for as long as people want to continue to read about him.
She had this amazing success with Harry Potter, and then she wrote another book.
And, you know, I mean, I'm sure it's probably pretty successful just because she's J.K. Rawlings and everybody loves her, but I haven't heard shit about it.
So Chris optioned it right out of the gate, Chris Pratt.
So January of 2018, before it even hits shelves, Chris Pratt options it because my dear friend Jared Shaw gives him a copy and says, this is your next project, which is just crazy.
He had a small role in Zero Dark Thirty where he plays a Navy SEAL and a very small part, but his other stuff hasn't been as violent, hasn't been as visceral, hasn't been as primal, and so people are going to be surprised.
And Antoine Fuqua right there, man, he is such an amazing guy.
So I did Training Day, did Tears of the Sun, Magnificent Seven, Shooter, Equalizer.
And it's one of those guys, like, when you meet him and you're in his presence, like, something's different.
You know, you have this, like, you meet a lot of people that come through here.
And maybe a couple of them have had that sort of presence.
Incredible.
Such a nice guy.
So having Chris and Antoine at the top of this thing, so many people came up to me on set and just told me, hey, this feels different than other movies we've worked on.
Like everybody from, you know, in craft services to whatever else, technical advisors, you know, all coming in saying, this is different.
And plus we had like 12 SEALs on set, guys that I knew in the teams that are there playing SEALs or acting in it or doing stunt coordination or technical advising or whatever it is.
So we were all on, so it was like a reunion.
That's awesome.
So we had a blast.
Yeah, so all those guys there, it was a huge reunion for a week on set and we had a blast.
But yeah, it could not be, and you trust, a lot of this is trust.
So when you hand something over to somebody to take your work And change it into something and adapt it to film.
Or it can be anything.
But there's a lot of trust involved.
Especially me, if you're not J.K. Rowling or you're not Stephen King and you're not maintaining creative control, you hand that to somebody else and you cross your fingers.
And there's no two better people to be in charge of this than Chris Pratt and Antoine Fuqua.
Yeah, I actually stopped at Taron Tactical on the way out of town, leaving L.A. the other day, and I met the stunt double for Keanu Reeves for these movies.
Yeah, John Ninja, I think, is his thing.
So nice.
So nice.
We got pictures together, and I'm like, oh man, I gotta start working out.
And when you see someone who's at a world championship level, and I've been there, I've been fortunate to be there too, where some other guys who've won really big championships were there as well too, and you get to see them shoot.
I didn't know what to expect out there because it was my first time down this path and my experience was so great knowing Chris and spending some time with him out in Utah and with you and all that stuff.
We had such a great time.
So I didn't really know when they started bringing other actors in.
They're trying to figure out how to do that because he's a fan favorite.
They want to try to get somebody in there that maybe is a little mysterious or can definitely do the accent, like the Rhodesian accent, which is different than the South African accent.
So they want to get all this stuff right, which is really cool.
They want to get all these details right.
Chris wants to get it right, so all the gear is right.
I'm trying to help out my friends that I've mentioned in the book.
And I have another idea that I'm debating, floating to them about.
Anyway, we might talk that one off.
No, no.
Because then if it doesn't happen, they're like, well, you didn't get the right...
Secrets.
Exactly.
But it's so fun to be a part of it and to be brought into it because usually, like I said, they get rid of the author right away.
But it's cool.
I got a Josh Hall surfboard in James Reese's garage.
You know, he makes Jocko's.
I put some Jocko Go on the counter.
You know, I got all these, like, trying to incorporate my friends' knives and Winkler tomahawks and half-faced blades and, like, stuff that I actually use.
But they want to do it right.
So they don't want to just, like, get a knife from the prop house that, like, looks cool, but they have no idea of his actual utility or if SEALs actually use it or if it makes sense for the character.
Yeah.
All this gear tells a story.
Like what you wear, your boots, your belt, your pistol.
All those things tell me a story about you.
So I use that as character development tools.
And they want to stay true to that for the film.
So they've gone to some extreme lengths to track down.
Like they had a Night Force scope that Night Force doesn't even make anymore.
And Night Force made them this scope that they don't even make anymore for the film.
Which is pretty cool.
Yeah.
So they're getting really, really into it.
And the prop house guys are amazing and they love all the gun stuff.
The car guys, awesome.
Yeah, so cool.
They sent me pictures of the Land Cruiser.
And they're like, is this right?
And I'm like, you know, it's an 88. It's their FJ62. It's the right one.
But the wheels.
Somebody put some modern wheels on this thing, and it's just not quite right.
And so they're like, okay.
So they went and switched it out.
So Antoine had them switch it out and put on these wheels that are kind of like the one that I have from Jonathan Ward.
And it's awesome.
And they have three of them.
And I think I'm going to try to get one after the show, after they film.
But that's very detail-oriented because when you're dealing with really high-tech, really well-made backpacks, that is where the rubber meets the road, right?
Yeah, and there's some like that that are actually really good, obviously, for carrying out weight.
You know, that external frame is probably, I mean, it is very good for carrying out weight out of the backcountry.
But if you're just going in trying to be lighter, faster, further, like that sort of thing, it's a little bit different.
But what I didn't realize, just because I've used all this stuff because I'm so passionate about it and it's such a part of me and it tells a story about these characters, What I didn't realize is that other people have that passion, too.
And when you mention, hey, like Dana designs packs, and he's now at Mystery Ranch, but he's a super innovator, just amazing.
His life has been about making these things better, tweaking them.
And when you mention that, other people are like, oh, I remember my first pack.
And it resonates with them.
So they have a touch point, a data point.
Rather than just a story when you say, oh, I picked up a backpack.
You know, okay, that can be anything.
But when you say, like, Dana Designs or whatever else, people are like, oh, I remember that one.
I got 1993 and I took on this trip.
And all of a sudden, you know, they're a part of the story, more in that respect.
Like, I'm doing an FJ40. So with Brian Corsetti at Corsetti Cruisers in L.A. I don't know who that guy is.
So Jonathan Ward has tutored him along, mentored him along.
He's been on Jay Leno's Garage a couple times, I think.
Yeah, but some of those ads, same thing with the Land Cruiser ads.
They have these ads that are talking about how they're used in Africa on hunting expeditions and stuff like that.
And Toyota probably wishes and Rolex probably wishes that these would go away because now, you know, it's more, hey, tennis and golf and sponsorships like that sailing.
This watch was produced in 1950 and was never purchased commercially.
Rolex is one of the sponsors of the 1953 Everest Expedition.
Only one expedition was allowed each year by the Nepalese government.
Isn't that amazing?
Now you've got a fucking line of people trying to climb up that thing.
And part of his sponsorship included providing Hillary with this watch.
It was not a gift, but rather a watch for Hillary to wear during the expedition, and then to return to Rolex for extensive testing after the descent.
And that was exactly what happened.
So you've got to think, in 1950, man, just the ability to make something so complex that was an automatic movement that was on your wrist, was that an automatic?
And I was thinking about you last night because so many people were reaching out because the book launches.
And so many people were reaching out.
And I try to get back to everybody normally.
And there was just no way.
And this morning I woke up and it was like, boom!
And I tried to repost people's things and stories just as a thank you to them because I sincerely appreciate them taking a risk on me and telling a friend.
But I woke up this morning and it was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
So if I have to do stuff or respond to things, I give myself 20 minutes and allow myself to, but if I fuck off and just look at nonsense for 20 minutes, my time's up.
Because up to now, it's been this full-on sprint, just leaving the military, following this next passion in life, getting this door cracked open, kicking it in, having this book resonate with people, having Chris get on board.
Like, crazy.
But now it's time to, I think, take a breath, put some processes in place, get more effective and efficient.
My wife is packaging up merch stuff.
It's in her bedroom.
It's in the living room.
It's all over the place.
In the house, boxes everywhere.
She's customer service.
We're finally like, at Christmas, she's like, okay, stop.
We can't do this anymore.
This is just too crazy.
So we're going to get that out to a fulfillment center, I think.
It happened so quickly with you, from getting out of the military to starting this book, and then having this book take off, and then writing the second, the third, and now the fourth.
So I got out in 2016, got the book to Simon& Schuster in the fall of 2016. They called me in December, wanted to publish it, and then started that process, and then it came out in 2018. So four books, five years, boom, and killing it.
And this one, actually, each one has a distinctly different theme, and I wanted to make sure that I stayed on theme for each book, which actually helped out a ton, because when it got to Simon& Schuster, I thought they were going to change it big time.
I was like, oh, it's at the big leagues now.
If they want to put Exploding Robots from Outer Space in, guess what's going in?
So for the third one, it's really exploring the dark side of man to the dynamic of hunter and hunted.
And then this one, much more than a single sentence.
This one really is something I've thought about.
I thought about it in the teams because going back and forth to and from Iraq and Afghanistan, but I continue to think of it as a citizen and as an author today.
And that's what has the enemy learned by watching us on the field of battle for the last 20 years of war?
Because we've been playing poker, and they've been circling.
So if you're Iran, if you're China, if you're Russia, if you're North Korea, a super-empowered individual, a terrorist organization, they've been watching us play poker, look at our cards, see how we play them, and then they've been applying those lessons to future battle plans.
So that formed the basis of this thing, and that's what I came up with in August of 2019 on the way to and from Kamchatka Peninsula.
I went over there for that bear hunt, and I left my computer behind, left my phone behind, so Russian intelligence wouldn't Pull out all these emails and who knows what people have sent me over the years.
So I outlined this thing in my notebook and got back, wrote that down, started doing research into infectious diseases, the weaponization of infectious diseases in the fall of 2019, and then COVID hits.
I want to get to that, and I want to get to that bear hunt too, but it's crazy the synchronicity of you writing this book about a pandemic while a pandemic hit.
Like you wrote the book, you were way deep into the book, and then COVID-19 hits towards the end of your writing.
When I talked to you last time, when we were here in early May of last year, I was in the middle of it.
And, you know, some authors I heard talking about how they didn't want to incorporate COVID-19 into their writing because they want people to have an escape and that sort of thing.
But for me, the book is about what the enemy is learning from us.
And they're watching our response to COVID-19.
They're watching our response to this virus.
And they're watching our response to the civil unrest of the summer.
They're watching our response to a very contentious political season and election cycle.
It's a very strange time, because we haven't done this before, and then it's being accentuated by social media.
You know, there was the civil rights unrest in the 1960s, but what we're in now is different, because there's opportunists now, and not just at home, but also abroad, that are engaging with these social media thought bubbles.
Poisoning the water, and so you're aware of the internet research agency from Russia.
There's this woman named Renee DiResta, and she came on the podcast a little over a year ago, and she outlined what she learned from watching the social media use from Russia from the 2016 election, and what they do is they have Untold numbers of accounts that are coming from this company called the Internet Research Agency.
It's Russia-funded.
And it's a state thing where they basically are trying to get people in America to argue with each other.
One, they had a pro-Texas secession meeting, and they scheduled it across from a pro-Islam meeting on the same block.
They do it on purpose.
And these memes, one of the things they do is they write funny memes.
She reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of memes, and she said, some of them are really funny, and they're really well made, and they're done by these Russian agents, and their job is to sow unrest.
So their job is to start...
She also outlined how they would start one page and they would build it up and get a bunch of followers.
And then once they got followers, they'd get like 20,000, 30,000 followers.
Then they would switch to theme and make it a Black Lives Matter page or make it a pro-trans page or whatever it is.
Anything to try to get people upset.
A pro-Christian page, a pro-atheist page.
Whatever it is.
And then have people duke it out, and then have other dummies that don't know what's going on, don't know that they're being set up.
I feel like if you were thinking about doing that, you could really manipulate people really well by just creating two opposing pages and getting them popular and then having people duke it out with each other.
There's a book called Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate.
And he writes about how you wake up in the morning.
Average person wakes up in the morning.
Goes to work, comes home, has dinner, goes to bed, and in the course of that day has committed three felonies because the laws are written in such a way that they are so broad they can be interpreted to go after whoever they want.
Because there's so many laws that can be targeted, can be interpreted all these different ways.
It's like what Stalin did in The Great Purge when his head of secret police said, show me the man, I'll find you the crime.
They can do that.
And we're very close to being able to do that with almost anybody in this country.
But yeah, social media is just something that the enemy can look at and figure out, hey, how do we weaponize this against our enemy, so against the United States?
And we're just suckers for it.
We're the perfect environment.
We're the perfect group of people to get turned against one another on social media.
It is fascinating, and I get to use it in the stories.
There's still all things that I can weave into future storylines, but growing up, we grew up roughly in the same time, and it seemed like in the 80s, in the late 70s, 80s, into the early 90s, we were still a group of people as a country that would stand up for your right to say whatever you wanted, especially if I disagreed with you.
That was the one thing we could all rally around.
I mean, there's other certain things out there that, yeah, we couldn't, okay.
But the First Amendment, we could rally around that, and we could stand up for one another.
Like, sticking up, like, I'm the only person that can beat up my little brother, type thing.
You know, you can't.
I'm sticking up.
And we could all do that.
And private companies acted in the spirit of that First Amendment.
And today, we see private companies, we see those people that used to be guardians of the First Amendment, lawyers, politicians, newspaper editors.
magazines publishing houses they used to be the they used to be the guardians of the first amendment and now we're seeing this whole this complete shift where they're actually calling for censorship calling for cancellation and it's what's fascinating to watch especially if you grew up in a time where that was the one thing that we could really all rally around as Americans was that first amendment so now as an author
obviously that is something that is and it's something I thought about because my mom was a librarian so I kind of grew up with it knowing about banned books and the history of banned books and censorship and what that means.
And as you just talked about, you talked about civil unrest of the 60s.
Like, a lot of that was to give people freedom.
And now we're having civil unrest and all these other cancel culture and all these other things that are kind of associated— Rather directly or indirectly, and it's all about restricting freedoms, restricting those freedoms.
Well, they think restricting freedoms is what's going to save us from these bad things.
So the bad things get highlighted, and they say, we have to stop these bad things.
How do we stop that?
Well, we're going to have to restrict freedoms.
But it's just a confusing time, and this is...
It's really new territory.
It is.
Because of the social media aspect of it.
It's new territory.
And these companies that you're talking about that are engaging in this, they're doing it because they're worried if they don't that they're going to get canceled themselves and it's going to hurt their bottom line.
So they're doing it like they're acting in this sort of woke way, but they're only doing it because it's a good financial move.
Yeah, but if you take it another step further and think of like AT&T. So if someone's talking on AT&T line, AT&T doesn't try to censor that conversation between us or a group call.
Or maybe the Telegraph back in the day was that censored.
So it seems financially, I don't know, it's a tough thing to figure out in this next 10 years.
Then it gets weird because then you're saying, well, freedom of speech is important.
Yeah, but this is a different kind of speech than we've ever had to deal with before because now you're dealing with something that can actively affect and influence the way other people think and behave.
And when you have something like the Internet Research Agency where they're actively trying to manipulate the way people think and behave, you realize, oh, wow, this is a complex spider web we're kind of caught up in.
There are complexities to it, and this next 10 years is going to be pivotal for the history of our country when we're talking specifically about the First Amendment and free speech and these companies that have more wealth and control of information than any other country or person in the history of the world.
So I worry about our kids growing up during this time and then going to college during this time and moving forward into the private sector during this time and what freedoms they're going to have as they move forward.
What options and opportunities are they going to have in a country that looks like it's continually infringing upon multiple rights?
And they're doing it in a way that they think they're doing the right thing.
Like there's a lot of people that are calling for COVID passports and a lot of people are freaking out and going, hey, listen, this is going to be abused because this is not something you're going to be able to pull back.
If they do have COVID passports, what's going to happen is they're just going to apply that to all kinds of other things.
Once you have a passport that says you need something in order to go here, you need to make sure that you have a vaccination in order to go here, in order to move around you have to have something, that means they're going to be tracking you.
So if they're tracking you, if they're not just tracking you like they are because of your cell phone, like if you go in tower to tower they can track you no matter what, but what if it's required that they track you?
Because right now it's not required that you have a phone.
If you have a driver's license and you go to the airport, you don't have to have a phone on you, but what if you do?
And that could happen if you need a COVID passport.
We could get to a point where everyone needs to have some sort of a smartphone with a GPS in order to be able to travel freely and you have to be able to do the right thing.
the flu or now we have this or you know you can't do that because you've supported X or you supported Y yeah like there's a lot of people that after Trump was out of office they wanted to find people who had supported Trump and put them on a list oh yeah blackmail or a blackmail Blacklist those people and keep those people from working, make sure those people are punished.
Like, Jesus Christ, folks, do you remember history?
This has all been done before.
You guys need to read history because you can't put people on a fucking list and you can't make people held responsible for a political decision that may or may not have been correct or wise.
But then you can change your mind in the future.
What you should be doing is trying to influence people's opinions by giving them better information, not putting them on a fucking list and telling them, you know, like, you're never going to work again because you were an enemy, and now we won, so we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
It's all being weaponized, and it's the marketplace of ideas and being able to express your opinions in this marketplace of ideas.
That's What really is part of the foundation of this country is having those best ideas, then gravitate to the top because that's where it's competition.
It's out there.
And now when you have one side able to restrict something they don't agree with, so maybe it does start off with a good intent.
Let's just say that that's true.
Well, very soon thereafter, it starts to become something else in a way to weaponize and restrict your political opponents because it's always about power.
See, yeah, the interview was fucking insane and so ridiculous.
On April 1st, AOC did a live stream with Michael Miller, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
She was asked about peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least.
Now, if you listen to her response...
She's unprepared.
She doesn't really have a thing to say about this, so she basically just sort of uses word salad, and it's a nonsense answer.
Go back down.
Go back right there.
I'm really shaken up right now.
So the guy puts this thing saying it's underwhelming.
He puts it up on Twitter.
I'm really shaken right now.
This is the next tweet.
I was just visited by two plainclothes police officers from California Highway Patrol at my home.
They said they came here on behalf of the Capitol Police and accused me of threatening AOC on Twitter yesterday.
This is provably false.
So go back up to what we just saw.
So this is all he said.
Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least.
So someone decided that what he's – now the reason being is I'm sure this is some sort of a supporter of AOC that contacted the Capitol Hill police and probably lied.
But the fact that they could just come to your fucking house without any proof, it's not like he's saying this lady deserves to die, she must be stopped, we have to stop.
Growing up when we grew up, when you talk about liberalism, it means something different than it does today.
And there's a difference between a classical liberal and a leftist.
And what we're seeing more of in this country is those terms intertwined, and they're very different things.
And leftists are kind of what we're seeing more of, which is grabbing this control, restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on owning firearms.
Restrictions on whatever they think might be quote-unquote dangerous, especially when they throw in dangerous to the children.
That's the other key when talking about it.
But then they take power.
And guess who's buying all the expensive houses and has the power and the control?
Oh, those same people that were fighting for the little guy a little while ago and talking about all these restrictions that we needed to place on some of these more natural rights that are inherent at birth, namely to be able to defend ourselves and our family, defend that gift of life.
I talk about the importance of studying our history, putting that requisite time, energy, and effort into studying the past so we can make decisions that...
Because we have this responsibility to make decisions for future generations.
And if we haven't put that time into studying our history and if what you know about a certain event or a certain issue is based on someone else's tweet that you just retweeted and all of a sudden that's your opinion of something that's going to affect multiple generations down the line, particularly...
Their abilities to defend themselves and their families or to start a business or whatever it might be.
Well, you owe it to put down the phone, to get into these books, realize, hey, why are these amendments in place?
Why is this important?
And from the inception of this country up until today, people have died to give you the right to be able to make these decisions, to follow your dreams, to have these options and opportunities.
Not only that, people have died supporting these things that you support.
When people are really into Marxism, you need to learn what happened when that was the rule of law, because it's a terrible, terrible history.
It's horrible, but it seems good, like the idea that everybody should have something.
It should be equal for all, and all the workers should be even, and everybody should have equal things.
Well, you know what happens then?
You don't have the same amount of effort because there's a reason why some people work harder than others because they realize you can actually get further ahead.
There's a competition and that competition fuels innovation.
It fuels all sorts of things.
There's incentives.
There's incentives to discipline.
You wake up an hour earlier than the next guy.
You do it seven days a week.
You got seven hours of work that that guy doesn't have in.
Yep, where you wake up seven hours earlier like Jaco does than everybody else, something like that.
But yeah, you have that option.
You have that option.
I can write books.
You can do this.
We have these amazing freedoms.
And when have you ever read a book, whether fiction or non, or studied history where the people that put names on lists, the people that restrict rights, the people that confiscate firearms are the good guys?
But it seems like when you say it the right way, if you restrict the rights of these people to have guns, then there'll not be any mass shootings because there'll be no guns.
That becomes their opinion rather than, hold on, let me look at the, if this was even the issue, let me take at the FBI crime statistics, the actual ones, and be like, oh, why are they going after this one thing that causes almost nothing?
They should be going after hammers and baseball bats.
Or if they really wanted to save lives, you should make sure that every single phone just turned off when you got in your car.
And just wasn't allowed to operate.
If you really cared about the children, or at least start 18 and under.
No texting.
This thing turns off when you get in a car.
If you're really concerned about saving lives.
So it's a disingenuous argument from the beginning.
Young people that have these good ideals, their heart's in the right place, their mind's in the right place.
They just want things to be better for people.
They're sensitive, kind, compassionate people, and that's what they want.
But they just don't understand that this is not how you do it, because if you do it that way, someone's going to take advantage of that, and they're going to control everyone.
And this is what's happened, that's what happened, that's what Stalin did.
That's what Mao did.
It's what's going on in China.
How do these things get enforced?
Well, you have to use violence to enforce them.
That's the only way people are going to listen.
If you really want to distribute wealth, you know what you have to do?
They're deciding they're going to take more from you.
This is what's going on in California.
This is what's going on in New York.
We've got to get our way out of this problem.
What are we going to do?
Well, we're just going to take all those people that have been working extra hard and making more money and we're going to decide that they did something wrong and we're going to punish them.
It's everything from, and it's like these, all the different aspects of it, the foundation was set before COVID. It was the over-regulation, there's so many problems with California already.
Well, one thing that we can do is continue to fight for these freedoms that allow us to make decisions that, whether they're good or bad, they're on us as individuals rather than restrict them.
That's absolutely true, but my problem with it is that I feel like this is the beginning.
I don't think this is where it's going to end.
I'm legitimately worried about an apocalyptic movie scene, like a Mad Max-style scene that is LA. Because LA's so fucked now, my friend was explaining this to me, that people just go into stores and steal things, because if it's less than X amount of dollars, I think it's like, what is it, like 900 bucks?
Yeah, but he was explaining to me about stores, that they have a real problem with stores, because people are just stealing things, and as long as it's below a certain amount, they won't do anything about it.
And then they have this crazy new district attorney in Los Angeles who's George Soros funded, which freaks people out because they go, wait a minute, is that real?
Are those fucking conspiracy theories real?
Should I get a tinfoil hat and put it on right now?
And I think we even forget, even if we went through this pandemic, we went through a summer of civil unrest.
We had some craziness happen around the election.
People don't realize how fragile society is unless they've been to some of these countries where they've actually witnessed it or they've been in those riots or they've been in a natural disaster when a hurricane hits and there's no law and order anywhere and it's just chaos and you don't have water, you don't have food, you have a medical emergency, there's no one to call.
Society is a very fragile thing.
It's only been stable, quote-unquote, for the very slim portion of human history.
For most of human history, you had to go out and hunt for your food.
You had to defend your family, defend your tribe, defend your community.
Now, we outsource that.
We call 9-1-1, and we think we can call 9-1-1, because that's what we've been told, that the police are there to protect.
Really, they're coming after the fact, unless you're a politician and you have them to your right and left, taxpayer-funded with the same weapons that they want to take from the rest of us.
And same thing with food.
We're so used to going to that grocery store and always having food there.
And that's so fragile.
That can just change in an instant.
And we got a taste of it with COVID, a taste of it with these things that happened over the summer.
But in reality, that can really happen.
And you put all three of those things together at a natural disaster, to some civil unrest, to the pandemic.
I mean, that's why.
What can you do as an individual?
Well, you can be prepared, as prepared as you can be.
So when tasers first came out, I don't know the exact date, but they had this issue back then and people can fact check or look it up somewhere.
I haven't thought about this in about 25 years, so I'm a little off.
But the taser was so similar to a pistol, there was an incident, and I forget where it was, where somebody turned around in their seat, someone's being crazy in the back of the police car, and they tased them, but guess what?
Yeah, there's no way it should be shaped like a pistol, and there's no way whoever that person was should be a cop.
Because if you can't figure out that your gun is on this side and your taser's on that side, so if you go like that and you pull this out and you hope it's a taser, You're fucking looking at a black gun.
So it seems like the opposite of what certain people are calling for would be more beneficial.
It's more training.
So she should have so much time on that taser, so much time on that pistol.
So she is competent and knows, hey, this one is for the taser, this is the escalation of force, but you can't just do it once.
You just can't have somebody come in and give you a half-hour class, and here's your taser, and now you're on the street, and now you're in this situation that's the most stressful of your life.
You get so angry that this piece of shit is a cop.
These situations are so goddamn aggravating, not just because you see a person who's victimized, but also because you realize now it's going to be harder.
Now it's going to be harder for the good cops.
It's going to be harder for people to get law enforcement to help them.
No, and defunding the police is not the way to go either.
It's like, what do you guys expect is going to happen when you defund the police?
Do you think crime is going to quit?
Do you think they're going to go, oh, there's no cops anymore?
All right, we're going to stop being criminals.
Since there's no jobs, what do you think people are going to do?
Well, they're going to turn to crime.
And if there's no way that they're going to go to jail now, if they just steal $900 worth of shit, they're just going to steal $900 worth of shit all day long.
It's just that she realizes you really need the law and order, and you really need rules.
You really do.
It doesn't mean you need to restrict people's freedom.
That's not what it is.
It's just you need people to stay within the lines of polite society and obey rules because if they don't, then they just keep pushing that and pushing it.
Next thing you know, they're camping on your fucking front lawn and you can't do anything about it because you're infringing on their right to have shelter.
And you're like, oh my god, is this real?
And if you kick them out, then they arrest you.
You're like, what the fuck?
And then they sue you, and then they take your house.
And then we also have, you add to this, there's just so much more tension because of social media.
And what we have in the military, we talk about online or L, like ambush online or L. And right now we seem to have this ambush happening with big tech over here.
What does that mean, online or L? So coming up online, boom, so you have, let's say, bad guys walking along the trail.
You're on line right here.
You light them up.
Or an L, so you're not shooting each other.
So they're coming into this ambush and they're getting hit here and they're getting hit sideways.
So you're set up to not shoot each other, but to just pour down a massive amount of fire on the enemy force.
And so we're walking right into this L ambush.
We're letting our freedoms be taken away in the name of things being dangerous, these restrictions to keep everybody safe.
And we have big tech over here and we have politicians and the big government over here.
And we're walking right into this L ambush.
I don't know how to get out of it because we all rely now on a lot of these platforms for our businesses.
You know, everybody makes mistakes, especially when you're out there and there's people and all that stuff.
And this is your profession.
You've been doing it for 50 years now, maybe a little too long.
But then we get people in those positions of power that have these platforms that say, hey, no right is absolute.
No amendment to the Constitution is absolute.
Okay, there's some discussions about certain things.
There's advocacy versus incitement when we're talking about the First Amendment, which is a very clear thing that the Supreme Court has ruled on when it was a very liberal court, by the way.
But so what about the 19th Amendment, which I think is women's right to vote?
Is that not absolute?
And we have the leader of our government saying that.
How about right to a fair trial and due process?
Is that not absolute anymore?
Like which ones?
He said there's no amendment that is not absolute.
And if you are a law-abiding citizen, the idea that in this country, where we have had the Second Amendment for the entire time, for you to come along and say now, there's no reason for you to have a gun.
And there's a lot of people that have said that.
I know Biden hasn't said that, but there's a lot of people that say, we need to take guns away.
I've had that discussion with liberals.
I'm like, okay, take crime away first, please.
Did you take crime away?
You didn't.
Okay, so how are you going to take guns away?
Like, if you ever had someone try to do something, break into your home, why don't you go talk to someone who's defended their family, who used a lawfully acquired firearm to defend their family?
And if you haven't, you probably should shut the fuck up, because you're just talking nonsense.
We are citizens, not subjects, and we must stay ever vigilant that we remain so.
And that's a responsibility of a free citizenry, to stand up.
But once again, with social media, we all get manipulated like this.
We can all say, oh, that sounds good.
No, it does not sound good.
The First and Second Amendments, all of them are there for a reason.
But we need to look into that history.
Like, you need to study it.
How much time are our kids spending in school studying the Constitution?
Probably not much.
So when I got out of the military, I gave my kids a gift.
I gave them each copy of the Constitution, a leather-bound one, so it's not just something that they look up online, like if they want to look up, you know, some, you know, Kardashian-type thing.
No, it's different.
It's tangible.
It's right there.
It's in leather.
So the Constitution right there.
I gave them a Bible with their name on it.
I gave them an old compass to help guide their way, and then I gave them a tomahawk.
I gave them this Winkler tomahawk, and then here's the means to defend it.
And as a citizenry, that is our responsibility, to ensure that our kids and grandkids can have those same freedoms and options and opportunities that we have.
That's what we owe the people that gave their lives from the inception of this country up to today.
Not just studying history, but having history taught to you by someone who has a real understanding of the consequences of each individual action and what happened and how this led to an erosion of rights, how this led to chaos.
What happened?
What went wrong?
How Stalin's action led to thousands of people starving to death?
What is going on with all these steps that turned into the horrors of these historical stories that you can tell?
And what we used to do in school, we used to teach kids how to think.
And that's been passed down from ancient Greeks up through today.
You taught people how to think in school.
We do the opposite today.
And I think that's why this has the power it does.
Because you're thinking about these things logically.
You're talking about it.
And people haven't...
People, even if they think they went to school and they took math and science and they took these things...
Most people were not taught how to think unless they actually took the time to say, ah, what is the history of education?
What is this philosophy about?
And they actually do it themselves?
They're not learning how to think.
And somewhere along the way, like, you learned how to think and how to think logically and how to be a critical thinker and how to ask questions and how to have these conversations.
And we don't do that in school anymore.
You're just on receive mode for the most part unless you go to maybe a law school where maybe you have a professor who maybe wants to use the Socratic method to teach you and teach you to think logically through his questioning and through his class.
But you're going to have 10 others that aren't doing that.
So I think that's why this resonates with people because there's something about us that wanted to think logically because that gives us control.
That gives us control of our own destiny being able to do that.
And it's lost on most people in this country today.
Well, it's just too easy to follow a predetermined pattern of behavior.
It's too easy.
It's too easy to line yourself with either the left or the right and just adopt a conglomeration of ideas that these people have already set out for you, and then this is how I feel about this, and we need to do that.
And I see that so often in Hollywood.
And when you would talk to people about it and question them, you realize, like, this is a veneer.
There's nothing below this.
You haven't given this any deep thought, but you're talking about really important subjects.
That affect not just you and your kids, but their kids and their grandkids.
That affect the future of this country.
And you're putting more thought into, I don't know, what you're going to have for dinner than you're putting into these decisions that will affect future generations.
Depending upon whatever subject it is that's being debated and discussed, if you say that freedom of speech is not an absolute right, there's some people that are going to agree with you because you're talking in reference about something that they support.
Like, yeah, it is true that that one is not absolute and that there's incitement and there's advocacy.
And the Supreme Court in Brandenburg, actually, that was their decision, that the Liberal Court standing on the side of people that disagree with you vehemently.
And that was the whole point of the Brandenburg decision.
And like, I agree with you.
I don't agree with you, but I'm going to die for your right to say it as long as you're not inciting violence.
And nobody really understands the difference between inciting violence and advocating violence.
Advocating violence is actually legal as per the Supreme Court decision.
Inciting violence is different, a very narrow set of parameters.
But that takes study.
It takes more than two seconds to figure that out or to put in the requisite time to read about that.
You have to figure out what you think, especially if you've just been told a bunch of stuff for your whole life and you've been following these people on Twitter and Instagram who also have not put in the requisite time into studying these things.
So your opinions are being formed by people who are not informed themselves.
So take a breath.
And what's your responsibility as a citizen?
To go study that past.
Absolutely.
And then also take it a next step.
Once you do that, realize, oh, the police might not be here to defend me.
What is my responsibility as a citizen to myself, this gift of life, and to my family?
Well, I better get some training here on this.
I better get a firearm and get some training because it might come down to me.
This society thing is fragile.
I thought that we were nice and safe in this country.
But you know what?
Ah, yeah.
Civil unrest, pandemic, hurricane, earthquake, whatever it might be.
Maybe I need to take a little personal responsibility here.
But also, a lot of them didn't take that next step to then realize, oh, I voted people into power that put all these restrictions in place that do nothing but make it harder for me to defend myself and my family.
It doesn't do anything for the person that's not paying attention to these laws.
And we talk about background checks, they throw that around so easily, which it sounds really good, but then you realize, oh, what is a universal background check?
We already have background checks in place, okay?
I go in, I fill out this paperwork, they call the ATF, they get an approval that I'm not a felon and all these things.
But yet we're willing to discuss putting a fucking thing on your phone that allows you to go somewhere or not go somewhere based on whether or not you've allowed them to vaccinate you.
Your character, Reese in these books, is this guy who, I mean, it's very idealistic, right?
He's this soldier who does the right thing and can handle these horrible situations.
And he's the guy, you know, he's the break glass in case of war guy.
Mm-hmm.
When you created this guy and you're putting him in these scenarios, you're creating this ideal version of what a soldier is and should be.
And there's a lot of horrific aspects to this guy, but you also realize he's a good person, but if you're a piece of shit, that's the wrong guy to be looking at.
He's the last guy you want to face if you are worthy of his rage.
Yeah, actually, it goes back to a lot of the stuff we were just talking about, about this due process, about the right to a fair trial.
Things that he raised his hand to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, just like we all did.
And in that first book, I needed a free...
That's what I wanted to explore in that first book.
It was all about revenge without constraint.
So somebody that has come up in this way, in that he has stepped up to defend his country.
He's gone downrange.
He has the training.
He's very good at his job.
He's gone downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he has a real-life experience.
And then he comes home and his family's killed, his troops killed as part of this government conspiracy.
And now he has to question all those things that we just talked about, all those things that he swore to uphold and defend.
Well, now he thinks he's dying, which frees him up to then become that terrorist, become that insurgent that he's been fighting in the book for the first 16 years of war.
Now we're at 20 years now.
So that's really what I wanted to explore in there, which was fascinating for me to explore because I thought about it for a long time.
It was very therapeutic to write the novel, by the way.
And if it's at a deeper level, it's really also about someone who is bringing the wars from Iraq and Afghanistan home to the front doors of people who have been sending young men and women to their death now for what was 20 years.
So yes, he's an ideal soldier in that he is very good at his job.
He is a He has a background similar to mine, but he's much better at everything than I am.
He's a better shot, he's stronger, he's faster, he's better at jiu-jitsu, he's better at boxing.
All these things he's better at, but he's not perfect.
He doesn't understand the surveillance side of things.
Because in the SEAL teams, we didn't do that.
Now we have guys that do that and are very good at it, but when I came up, we didn't do that.
So I try to humanize him in that respect, try to humanize him Through his relationships, through the way he likes his coffee, likes his black rifle coffee with some honey and some cream in there, which people made fun of me for in the military.
So he's a character that people can relate to.
He's the person you want to have a beer with, want to sit down and have a coffee with.
He believes in this Second Amendment, this First Amendment.
He's an American guy.
But all of a sudden, now his family's gone, his troops gone.
He has to question those things because he just wants to put everybody involved in the ground.
And he does so in a very violent way.
Very primal way, which also resonates with people, because sometimes, yeah, the law doesn't work.
The justice does not prevail.
And in this case, he's freed up to make sure that it does.
But there's also people in your books that are supposedly on the right side, whether they're politicians, whether they're people in the military, that...
They're corrupt and they're evil and they're doing terrible things.
When you're writing these things, is it difficult for you to write about those kind of people?
Are you doing it based on your understanding of The realities of some of these people that are either senators or military people, I mean, is it based on your actual knowledge or are you just using your imagination, creativity and creating worst case scenario for a politician?
It's a fictional narrative, but they're inspired by feelings and emotions behind things I was involved with.
And then, you know, Eisenhower had a speech about the military-industrial complex.
He didn't just make that up because it sounded good, because he wanted to sell a book later or something like that.
He was trying to get likes and tweets and be incendiary or something like that, clickbait.
There's a reason we all know that phrase.
And if you read the whole speech or if you watch that whole speech...
It's fascinating.
People should do both.
And, I mean, he was warning about those generals, those admirals that get up to these senior levels of power that all of a sudden get that contract across their desk and they're going to be out of the military in two years and all of a sudden they have this contract from Boeing or Raytheon or General Dynamics or whatever it is and they see their buddy that got out a couple years ahead of time at the three-star mark or the four-star mark that's now sitting on a board for We're good to
go.
It is a path for these guys.
And some people probably come in thinking about that.
Maybe some people get jaded along the way and turn into politicians in uniform.
And maybe some outliers, maybe some never feel that way.
That's possible, too.
But for me, when you're making an antagonist, when you're designing a character who's supposed to be a bad guy that you want the reader to cheer for when James Reese takes him out, while some of those senior-level policymakers, both in uniform and out, Are essentially politicians in uniform.
So we see that in the military.
It's a real thing.
And I use that to create some of these characters in the novels.
And when you're a ground level combat guy, tactical level leader, tactical level operator, and you're seeing decisions made at higher levels that aren't necessarily made in the best You start asking questions and you notice it.
It doesn't escape notice.
So in some of these novels I get to create characters where I then get to dispatch with them in a way that feels quite good.
Well, somebody probably read the book and was like, wait, he blows up this admiral in his office with an S-vest?
Like, no, we're not going to support this.
You have all these bad guys that are senior-level politicians and senior-level officers that this guy is going around and gutting and making them walk around trees and blowing them up in their offices.
So it's possible they're inspired by multiple people, certain traits that you see in one person here, one person there.
Maybe you know them, maybe it's somebody that you see in the news.
But you can take those things and create a single character and you can add the fiction side to it to make them even worse.
Or maybe in some cases better.
There's probably some horrible people up there that need killing.
But it doesn't mean we need to be the ones that do it.
Don't get in trouble.
But yeah, it's fun to do that.
It's so fun to do that.
And like I said, very therapeutic because there were some senior level people as I was in the military that you looked up to and said, how did this guy, not looked up to, I mean, like saw them at senior levels and were like, how on earth is this person in this position of power?
And I think it's in most gigantic bureaucracies, I would guess.
Probably a little harder to do today, I can only imagine.
The political games that are going on at senior level is in the military right now and we're talking about all sorts of different social experiments and whatever else going on.
I'm glad I'm watching that stuff from the outside.
But then we have just people that get up to these levels and they're just inept.
And an example of that would be, you know, people all know who I'm talking about, but when we disbanded the Iraqi army.
When we have this policy of de-Bathification in Iraq.
So what does that mean?
It means that we essentially made an insurgency because now everyone in the military is out of a job.
And we also guaranteed it that people aren't there to pick up the trash to keep the power grid going because everyone was a Ba'athist.
So these two decisions, like if any of us made that a tactical level decision as horrible as that, we probably would have gotten our platoons and troops killed.
We would have been court-martialed, sent home, kicked out of the military.
But yet we have senior level policymakers who don't study the nature of the conflict in which they're engaged.
That is our only job is to understand the nature of the conflict in which we're engaged and make strategic level decisions.
Based on that knowledge.
And some of these seem like they did not do that, particularly with those two.
We fueled an insurgency, we created that insurgency, and we made it so we had to start a society from essentially zero and build up everyone in every single job.
Imagine Austin not having power tomorrow, not having water tomorrow, no garbage coming, no stores open, because everyone was a certain political party.
And they can't be in a position like that anymore because a force came in and said so.
You know, young men and women into the ground that stepped up to serve their country and trusted our senior-level leaders to make those good strategic-level decisions, which did not happen.
I mean, we— We have been involved in different insurgencies for a while, particularly from the end of World War II up to today.
So there is some history to look back on, but it's also about understanding the society in which you're moving into.
And if you're going in at one of these senior levels where you are making these decisions, where the politicians are then trusting you, that's the other side of this.
So in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln fired a ton of generals until he got to Grant.
In World War II, George Marshall, he's best known for the Marshall Plan after World War II, but really what he did during World War II and in the lead up was fire people that did not perform.
And after World War II, we saw a shift in that dynamic.
We saw it in Korean War a little bit, but by the time we get to Vietnam and through today, we don't punish people.
We don't fire people for performance at those higher levels.
People fail up from Vietnam up to today, unless there's some scandal like with...
You know, McChrystal talking, you know, with his reporter.
You talked about it the other day with Glenn Greenwald.
I mean, if I was to write that in a story, it would sound like it was possible.
If I wrote that into the story, hey, high-level general in charge of this Jason secretive commands in the military, all of a sudden gets fired because of this guy, whether it's him, supporters, whatever it might be in this shadowy world between intelligence and military special operations where there's a lot of overlap, especially at that time.
But if you were like a low-key guy, like really boring, and then you came in here and you're talking like the way you talk right now, I'd be like, oh...
Because sometimes people are wound up when they come here anyway, just because whenever you're doing something that you know millions of people are going to see, you get weird.
I'm part of this group called Gen Next, which is really about figuring out how to make decisions and put people in positions of authority that are making decisions based on the best interests of the country and for future generations.
In academics, in border security, national security, that sort of thing.
But I met Michael Hastings through them right before he died.
I asked him, because the story broke maybe a year before, six months before.
It was fairly recent.
And I asked him, I said, hey, is there anything as a journalist that if you ever, if you found out and you It was not just a Snowden type thing, you know, not just something like that, which actually informs the public.
But if you found out something that would be beneficial for you to publish, but would have drastic consequences for the United States, for the citizenry, for the military, would you ever not publish something?
It was so great hearing you, because Glenn Greenwald is one of my favorite people to hear speak, whether he has three minutes on the news or three hours with you.
But there was one on guns and guns in the cartels.
And this is coming out of her show.
She was getting these guys who were trafficking these guns down into Mexico, explaining how they get them.
And they got them from the LAPD. She was like, we're buying them from the LAPD. They put them in their trunk and they drive them to Mexico because there's no border patrol that lets you into Mexico.
You can just drive into Mexico.
If you're in the United States, driving into Mexico is a breeze.
So this guy would fill his trunk up on a regular basis with guns that he got from the LAPD. Some bad person in the LAPD is getting him these guns and he's selling them to Mexico to the cartels.
Well, this is even worse in that it was a program by the federal government.
I believe it started under, they can check out that book, Fast and Furious Details, all of it.
But there was one in the Bush administration and it wasn't working out.
They're like, okay, let's put a hold on this.
Let's stop.
This is not working out.
We're not able to track these guns.
And then Obama administration opens it back up.
And they put tracking devices on like two of thousands of firearms.
So they tracked two, and they're trying to prove a narrative that, hey, all these gun sales in the United States are ending up in Mexico.
Well, yeah, because you're talking to these gun store owners, you're putting pressure on them, making them do things they would not ordinarily do otherwise, and letting 50 AK-47s go out the door and then sift their way into Mexico so you can track them to get into these cartels and take down those cartels.
No.
And prove this narrative that the violence in Mexico is our fault, so now we need to over-regulate these firearms.
And what ends up happening, they lose control of everything because they only put two tracking devices, I think, on all of those thousands of firearms, and one ends up killing a Border Patrol agent.
And people would think it was fiction unless the story was broken and unless Katie wrote this book and unless people talked about it.
But people hardly talk about it at all anymore.
It's just like, oh, it's the federal government going in and creating some crazy scheme to prove a narrative that's not even real so that they can infringe on our rights as Americans in this country.
So going back to your book, this guy, James Reese, is essentially a vehicle for you to...
In some ways tell your version like what you understand to be possible in terms of incompetence and corruption and just straight-up evil people that really do exist.
So you've made these kind of fictional narratives that sort of highlight All the things you highlight, they're not impossible.
They could happen that way, even though it is fiction and you have created these characters and created these corrupt senators and all these evil folks behind the scenes.
A lot of it, especially in this one, a ton of research into this book right here in the devil's hand.
Usually, well, for the other ones, I'd been to Iraq and Afghanistan for the first book.
For the second, I went to Mozambique, put boots on the ground.
For that third one, I went to South Africa, helped train up an anti-poaching unit out there, protecting some of the last rhino on Earth so I could talk to these guys in those units and talk to them about man tracking and that sort of thing, getting their heads about that tactic and the tactics they used in the bush wars and in urban centers, and now out there protecting some of these rhino.
And then I went to To Siberia, just south of Siberia, to Kamchatka Peninsula.
So kind of like what I think a journalist would do.
Wouldn't just talk to one person and be like, oh, that's it.
I'm going to write my story.
That was my investigation, talking to one person.
No, I talked to multiple people that have been involved in all sorts of different aspects of bioweapons, bioweapon containment, bioweapon research, that sort of thing.
I mean, I don't want to give away too much of the book, but there's moments where things are being contemplated that would have horrific consequences if they're incorrect.
Out of all my research that I did, whether it was reading articles, whether it was reading books, whether it was talking to people involved, connecting certain dots, overlapping some of these conversations with the research that I've done.
Because when you talk to people that have backgrounds in bioweapons research...
They're not really that open to talking all about it.
So they'll leave things out.
Those give you some hints.
But you know what?
When you talk to five, six, seven, eight different people that are involved in it, every one of them leaves something out, but you can start weaving it together.
And then when you do your research, that baseline foundation, then you can start connecting the dots.
So I would be shocked if there is not something in place similar to what I describe in the novel.
Well, during horrific moments where terrible decisions have to be made for the greater good, those are decisions like when people hear about like when Flight 93 is a good example.
The conspiracy theory about Flight 93 that was shot out of the sky, right?
Well, I talk about that as a contingency in the novel here.
And the only thing that keeps me from believing a lot of these conspiracies is that, or just ideas, not even conspiracies necessarily, is that I've worked just 20 years in the government, and I know how hard it is to keep a secret, especially today.
So Ben Franklin had that thing where he said, hey, three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
That was what he would say about that.
And so just knowing how incompetent the federal government is anyway, just keeping a lid on some of these things and actually swearing everyone to secrecy and so many people would know about something like that.
So that makes me in my head think, just knowing these people, you know, that makes me skeptical.
If I was on the outside and didn't have that experience, I'd probably be like, oh, this could be.
There's all sorts of things, especially back during that time frame.
Before you get to the church hearings in the 70s when Frank Church of Idaho holds this, and that's where I got inspiration for the terminal list for this testing of drugs on our nation's most elite soldiers who end up with these tumors.
That's where I got the inspiration is from Frank Church holding these hearings and really bringing to light some abuses by certain elements of the federal government.
Well, in the case that I was looking in, they're testing drugs on people in mental institutions, on people in the military, people in prisons, universities, without really the knowledge of what's going to – particularly people in mental institutions because they couldn't make those decisions for themselves if they're going to actually allow themselves to be tested with certain things. without really the knowledge of what's going to – particularly Spying on Americans.
Some of the things that we got back into after September 11th.
So a lot of that surveillance state type thing were brought to light.
Yes, there's another one that just got reported recently, and this one was about mosquitoes, that they had released an enormous amount of mosquitoes in a predominantly black community in the 1950s, I believe it was.
And some of them were infected with diseases, and they were running some sort of an active experiment.
Black Americans are more hesitant than whites to take the covid vaccine.
Reasons for that hit close to home in Savannah and include a classified military operation from the 1950s that dropped hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes, mosquitoes that many believe were infected with disease on Carver Village.
They didn't tell anybody.
And it happened.
The Chatham County Commission Chairman, Chester Ellis.
And so it leaves some apprehension, especially when you have residents of that area who've been there since the 1950s.
So this is the first time in the back of the novel I have an author's note that talks about what people just read.
And what's real and what's not.
I have a preface that kind of sets the tone for the books in all of them, but there was so much research involved in this novel that I put an author's note in the back so people wouldn't be wondering, hey, what's real, what's not?
I don't really know.
And just to make it kind of easier for them, be like, oh, no way, that's real, or okay, this is not real, or this is an assumption.
So I spell all that out in the author's note.
Dr. Ustinov, and I'm probably messing up, butchering his name because I've only read it, haven't said it out loud, but he injected himself with Marburg, which was a...
They're researching this disease in the Soviet Union.
And he accidentally injected it into his thumb.
So he's sealed off in this containment facility as he slowly liquefies from the inside out.
So he's bleeding through his pores.
Like he would sweat blood coming out of there, blood coming out of nose, blood coming out of eyes, mouth, ears, every orifice.
And he's brain slowly liquefying.
And that happens slowly over a period of three weeks.
And because he's a scientist, he takes notes about what he's feeling during this time frame.
And so he eventually dies.
He's sealed in this stainless casket.
And he's buried.
But they have this data, and now they have what happens when you get a virus that takes over a host.
Oftentimes it becomes more virulent.
So they take a sample from either his bone marrow, his blood, his organs, and they weaponize it.
So they have this strain of Marburg, variant U, after his last name, that they then weaponize.
And that's what I researched in the novel.
And it's out there.
It's a real thing.
And do we have it in this country?
I would suspect that we do because as part of the bioweapons conventions we signed in the 70s, along with Soviet Union, along with Iran, we say we can develop these defensive bioweapons.
So that means in order to build the defense, you actually have to have the weapons.
So it's kind of a way around not weaponizing things, which is the intent of the conventions or what you would think the intent of the conventions.
Okay, they have this Marburg variant U. Okay, well, either we have to develop this on our own, or we have to get a sample here, and that's the intelligence side of the house, trying to figure out how to turn people and get this thing out so we can then study it and then develop a weapon so that we can then...
Yeah, it's a crazy world to work in for these people that get into it.
But it was fascinating to me because I didn't know anything in the military other than putting on my little biohazard suit thing we had to put on and take off if we ever went into an environment like that.
But I didn't really spend much time.
Learning about the specific bioweapons and going deep on it.
So I'm doing this in August of 2019. I start doing this research and I'm researching all through the fall, getting into January.
In December, I heard a little something because I was so deep into this research.
And I'm talking to these people that that's their whole life is studying these things.
So I hear about it in December.
I'm kind of like, you know, I've heard a bunch of things coming out of, you know, swine flu and avian flu and kind of I've heard of these things, you know, over the years.
Then we get into late December or January.
I hear a little more still hypersensitive to it because I'm in the midst of this study.
Then into February.
And it's like, okay, interesting.
So then it became, well...
I'm looking at this stuff from the enemy's perspective, and here we start responding.
We're shutting everything down.
I mean, when I came out here to see you last time, you know, at the gas station, I'm getting out putting on the rubber gloves and putting my mask on outside because we didn't know, you know.
We still don't know who to trust at that point in early May of 2020 when I drove out.
But the enemy's looking at that.
Look what we can do.
Look what we can manipulate here.
And this is for a.03 mortality rate.
Well, what if we have something with a 90% or an 80% or 70 or 60 or 50?
Imagine what the United States will do to itself if we get this in there.
That's also a really disturbing thing when you see how much easier it is to contain if the people don't have any freedom.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's what scares me about some unscrupulous members of our society, that the people that do wish that this country was a dictatorship, because there are some politicians that would be very happy if they could run this country the same way other countries are run, with an iron fist, and punish people for any deviation outside of the right way of thinking.
My fear is the same protocols are in place that hired that lady who shot that kid who doesn't know the difference between a fucking taser and a pistol.
That's what my fear is.
My fear is it's all in the same line.
That it's just incompetence more than anything.
And that's one of the things that we really do have to fear.
He just lied about what—he was bragging about what this amazing student he was, and then he had to say, oh, well, I was misinformed about my own record.
But he has a podcast on that where he talks about memory.
And he uses the Brian Williams example, saying that he was in a helicopter in Iraq and it was shot down and all these things and it didn't really happen.
And he talks about the psychology behind that.
And it's fascinating.
And you end up having much more empathy for people that end up going down these paths that actually start believing their lies.
Fascinating guy who actually loves reading thrillers and such a smart guy.
And someone who I think is on the opposite side of like, you know, political spectrum, but one of those guys that I can sit down and have a drink with.
I want to sit down and have a beer with, have a coffee with and talk because he's so smart and so thoughtful.
Most importantly, more thoughtful about his positions.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't say enough good things about him and his work.
Well, there's a difference between making mistakes and not remembering things correctly and clearly exaggerating your own accomplishments to make yourself look more competent or qualified or more...
Just make it look like you're a better person than you are.
But I ran into a guy when I was in Park City that had this guy working for him that was telling these stories about being a SEAL. And there were these heavy-duty, detailed stories about operations and Courageous moments and gunfights and all this crazy detailed shit.
And somehow or another, he got wind that this guy might be full of shit.
And Goggins somehow became a part of it as well.
And Goggins found out that this guy was full of shit and informed him that he was not a SEAL. The guy was never a SEAL. And apparently he was a nurse.
You hear about a lot of guys saying they came back from Vietnam being special forces guys or SEALs or whatever, when they didn't think you could really check on these things.
They're from a small town.
Some politicians, like some mayor somewhere, said they were a SEAL, had the uniform, like the trident on there.
I think it's pre-internet days.
And yeah, sure enough, eventually busted.
But after years, and everybody believed it, because when you're talking about a top-secret operation from You know, Vietnam or something, how are you going to check that in 1978, 1985, 86, 92, whatever?
No, but there's some guys that were out at a bar in Tennessee, and somebody walked in with a, in their blues, with like a wife-girlfriend type person, with a trident, with this stack of medals, and he walks into this bar.
And we used to train down there.
We used to do close quarter battle stuff down there at a really cool place called Mid-South Institute of Self-Defense.
And guys would just go out and, you know, it was a great, great place to train, great place to bond.
Awesome.
But this guy walks in and they're looking at him.
They're like, hmm, that's odd.
And they walk up and ask him, hey, so what team are you with?
And, you know, they're dressed in like I am right now.
And he's like, oh, SEAL Team 2.
They're like, oh, really?
What do you do there?
He's like, I'm the commanding officer.
And he's there with a lady.
And they're like, hey, we are from SEAL Team 2 and you should probably leave right now.
And he turned around and walked out.
Crazy!
Like wearing a uniform at a bar in the middle of Tennessee, like somewhere.
Yeah, I told this story before, but there was a guy that we knew that was a fake Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, and he tricked a bunch of people and was actually writing for Abu Dhabi Combat News.
He killed this woman's husband, and he was fucking her, and he was banging this guy's wife, and he wound up killing him and driving his car around, and he's in jail right now.
Yeah, this was in the 2000s, like early, early 2000s.
I want to say like 2001-ish, something like that.
Well, I was on Fear Factor at the time, and I know this because my friend who knew the guy was talking to me about it, and his phone was tapped, and then the cops wound up calling me while I'm in my trailer.
And they go, hey, is this Joe Rogan?
Yeah, this is Sheriff, blah, blah, blah.
And I go, hell, what's up?
And he goes, how much do you know about this thing?
And so I go, okay.
This is exactly what I know.
I go, I know the guy's a liar.
I don't know if the guy really killed somebody, but I know that he lied about being a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
And we had heard that he'd killed somebody, but, you know, so we went through the whole thing.
I go, but in my...
And without understanding of it, this guy's completely full of shit.
So I didn't know him that well, but he was a student of this other guy that I know who told us about this whole situation.
Luckily, I was telling the truth, because I wasn't close with the guy, but one of my best friends, Eddie Bravo, knew him because Eddie had done some stuff for Abu Dhabi as well, and he was telling Eddie that he was a black belt, and Eddie rolled with him.
They sparred, and Eddie was like, man, something's wrong.
But there were some guys back then that had these janky black belts.
They would be a black belt in some fake jiu-jitsu.
Before Brazilian jiu-jitsu came around, there was a lot of fake karate.
A lot.
I mean a lot.
There was a lot of fake martial artists, because I could show you how to throw a kick or two, and if you're reasonably athletic, you could throw some kicks, and I could show you how to throw a punch or two, and then you could go and tell people you're a black belt.
It's not that hard.
Kicking, in particular, and punching, you could pretend you're doing some karate.
If I teach you how to do this, you could do that in a few seconds.
If I could teach a little kid, like when I used to teach Taekwondo, I would get someone doing this in just a few seconds.
So all you would have to do is get some reasonably athletic person, you teach them how to throw a couple of kicks, and they could say they're a grand champion.
Well, this guy was so crazy, he had his friends drop him off in the woods.
With a bag.
He brought a bag.
And inside the bag, he had a trophy.
But he didn't tell anybody.
So he has this fucking big bag.
He said, I'm going to compete in this No Rules Kumite Karate Tournament.
And he tells him, yeah, I won the karate tournament.
And he's like...
This is how full shit this guy was.
He created this sort of persona.
And this is where he got tripped up.
Not even just that my friend rolled with him, but that he said that he was going to Thailand to fight in a mixed martial arts fight.
Okay.
So he goes to Thailand.
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
There was a lot of really shitty martial artists back then, right?
A lot of weird fucking people that were fighting in these tournaments that had no business fighting anybody.
So he comes back and he says he caught the guy in a twister.
You know, Twister is a really complicated submission.
It's very complicated.
It's hard to set up because it's very specific.
You have to be inside control or have someone's back.
And if you're inside control, this is like, say if a guy's laid out like this and his head is here, his feet are here.
If I'm inside control, I have to grab his left leg, I have to pull it, I have to hook it with my left leg, and then I have to triangle it with my right, so I have his leg isolated.
Then I have to dive forward on my left shoulder and roll so I'm behind him.
So I turn his whole body and flip him over.
Then I have to take his arm and I have to pull it behind my neck.
This is a series of complicated control moves.
We can find it online.
Eddie Bravo was the master of it.
And then he was my instructor.
And then you have to grab the guy's head and pull him like this.
So it's like a very terrible spinal lock.
It hurts like hell.
And if you don't tap, then they go to DEFCON 4, which is instead of holding it like this, you do this.
There's been a few guys that have been called out.
Like, there's another video, I don't know who the black belt is, the actual black belt is a black belt screaming at a guy, take that fucking belt off, you know you're not a...
So a lot of these guys, they're just tough, tough people that have an opportunity in front of them, whatever, a karate tournament, a fucking tough man contest, bare-knuckle fight in the woods.
So Eddie and I, Eddie was one of the commentators of King of the Cage back then.
And we would go to these Indian reservations to watch these fights.
This is like the early days of the Tap Out crew and all these martial artists, whether they're jiu-jitsu people or a lot of like...
A lot of these top shelf guys started off in King of the Cage fighting in these Indian reservations.
And so we would go travel out to the middle of nowhere to these places to watch these events because that was the only way you could see live events in California.
And so this dude talked one of his students into taking a dive.
He had a fake student.
He was teaching fake martial arts.
I think he knew a little karate.
But he called himself a black belt.
And then he would say, listen, I'm going to pay you off.
Let me give you 500 bucks.
Just pretend I'm knee-barring.
I think he got him in a knee bar.
I'm not going to hurt you.
Enough to worry.
It's not like a knockout.
And so I'm pretty sure he got him in a knee bar, if I remember correctly.
I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but there was one where there was a prominent mixed martial artist from the United States who got tapped by a heel hook.
And it's so obviously fake.
It looks like pro wrestling.
Like, he's hesitant, hesitant, and he decides to tap.
And then I also, at the same time, I'd take that next leap and be like, you know what?
I am not storming the beaches at Normandy.
I am not going across this beach with no cover, no concealment, running into enemy machine gun fire who are in an elevated position, or Iwo Jima.
I'm like, you know what?
I can do a couple more push-ups here in the sand in sunny Southern California.
Because those guys died so that I could pursue this dream that I wanted to do for my entire life.
So that really put it in perspective for me.
Everything's relative.
But I thought about that.
I'm like, hey, these guys died so that I could be here and I could take my turn, get standing in the breach and just stepping up to put on the uniform of this country.
So I thought about jujitsu, I thought about boxing, and I thought about those guys that sacrificed everything so I could be there doing that job.
Yeah, you have people that roll back, like did a couple days of Hell Week, and then they got hurt, and they're back in your class now going through it again.
So you have all these people with all sorts of advice for you as you start.
And usually those are the people that quit right away again.
Yeah, it's typical that, like, the fastest person, the strongest person, the most outgoing person that's trying to motivate the class, they quit, like, that first couple hours.
And remember, the class, we're in the, you know, Andy and I are in the surf zone, and we're watching these people get up to quit, and some people would be like, Come back.
Yeah, so I'm glad I'm looking at that from the outside.
So for me, Andy tells something different.
He says that, hey, no matter what, the standards are the same.
You know, I don't care who you are.
And for me, you know, so as a kid growing up, what do they teach you?
They teach you, hey, you never hit a girl.
You stand up when a woman enters the room.
You pull a chair out for the woman.
You open the door for them.
Like, you're taught to do these things.
So as a combat leader, and this is, you know, this is just how I am.
So going into battle, I am 100% going to be more concerned about her than I am the other guys, just because that's how we're taught growing up.
You're taught to, you know, stand up, to be the protector, to stand up, to open that door.
It's just a part of me.
Maybe now we're not doing that anymore.
So maybe going forward, it's just fine.
But for me, I would definitely care about the female more than the male, just because that's How I am.
But when there's all guys in there and you're going forward and you're doing the job, that variable isn't there.
And maybe that's on me, but going forward, maybe they're not going to teach kids growing up that you respect females and you open the door for them and you pull up the chair for them and when they sit down and do all these things, maybe they're not going to teach that anymore and everybody's going to be the same and you won't care more about a female than you would a male and vice versa.
I don't know how it works, vice versa.
I've never really put much thought into that, but I'm glad I'm looking at it from the outside.
I'm glad I did that 20 years.
I'm glad that I was there in 9-11 and could do those combat deployments.
And then now I'm glad to be out taking care of my family and writing these novels.
The concept that men and women are the same thing is just so stupid.
It's so irrational and illogical.
And it doesn't mean that a woman can't do what a man can do, because there are outliers.
But when we're looking at the average woman versus the average man, if you're selecting for the elite of the elite, if there is a woman that can appeal to those standards, how many women have gone through SEAL training?
They were comfortable enough in the water to do this swim in whatever time that was.
They were a good enough runner to make it around the track, however many times that was, a mile, two miles, I forget what it was, and to do some pull-ups and sit-ups and that sort of thing.
But it's timed, and it's regulated, and there's only a certain amount of time between those different events.
So, you know, you have a base, and then you go to the next stage where you go to BUDS, and then you have another test when you get there.
That is the same.
So maybe you got out of shape between these two or maybe you made this one just barely and now you didn't make it here.
So then there's another gate and then you start your training and then you have tests every single week.
So there's different gates that you have to get through.
So I'm not sure how many have started here.
Gotten to here and then gone forward, but the last time that I checked was probably a few months ago where somebody told me it was one person that had gotten to this last stage as an officer, I think she was, and didn't make it through this pre-BUDS training they do for officers just to make sure, like, hey, you want to get...
Some more options as far as preparing for SEAL training.
So one of them is called MiniBuds, and you show up in this MiniBuds thing.
You go through a week just to make sure that you've made the right choice and you didn't really want to be an aviator or somebody on a ship or in Intel or whatever else.
And so she was in that, from what I understand, and then didn't make it through.
Now, when you're writing about someone like James Reese and you're writing this story, do you feel like you have an obligation to represent the SEALs through this character?
Are there things that you would never have this guy do?
When you think about it, do you think of it as not just a fictional character, but he's also a representative of something that you hold sacred?
And the same thing, just the way I interact with anybody, either social media or in real life in person, he's that kind of a guy.
So I do think about that.
But I want to explore certain paths that you wouldn't do.
Like that first book, yeah, you're going to jail forever if you do what he does in the first book.
You're going to the gas chamber if you do that in real life.
But this is fiction.
I get to explore some of these things.
And I get to give that person that reads it or that watches the show, they get to root for him because he's doing things that they can't do in real life because they have these inhibitors, they have these laws, they have a justice system, they have a family they don't want to lose, whatever it is.
We have that revenge.
We love those stories of revenge.
And we have since the beginning of time.
Because it's an outlet.
And because you can't do that in real life, but you can do it.
You can read about it.
You can watch that movie.
I mean, Death Wish movies.
That's why there's like 10 of them.
So for him-- And Dirty Harry.
And Dirty Harry.
Yeah, yeah.
All these things like that.
Vigilante Justice is a very popular thing.
So for him, and when you write a character that is going to have more than one novel, or even if it is just one, people are trusting you with their time for that.
So whether it's three days they're reading this, one week, two weeks, or they're listening to 13 hours of Ray Porter do that narration.
They've trusted you with the time, and no one wants to spend time with someone they don't like.
You get to choose all these books out there, all these movies out there, all these audiobooks out there, and you get to choose who you're going to spend 12 hours that you're not getting back with.
So I take that very seriously, and I want to provide something of value.
So whether I'm writing that book and James Reese, The protagonist, former Navy SEAL sniper, is the catalyst, is the protagonist, is the guy that moves the story forward.
And we see the world through his eyes for the most part.
So I do take that very seriously.
And I put a lot of thought into everything that he does.
into how I personally interact with people online and things that I post every day because once again people have trusted me whether they're gonna read that post for 10 seconds or they're gonna look at that picture for two seconds or whatever it is I don't want to waste their time because you are not getting that time back you only have a certain amount of time on this planet And, you know, you might not make it through tomorrow.
You don't know.
You might make five years.
You might make ten years.
But you trusted me with that time.
That's why it's so important who you follow, why you follow them.
And so I take my posts on social media just as seriously as I do writing a paragraph in the novel.
I like to put that thought into there, add value to people's lives because they're trusting me.
And as a way to thank them for trusting me, that's what I owe them in return, is putting that requisite time, energy, effort, and thought Into how I explain something in a post or how I read a paragraph in the novel.
I guess it sounds strange to say, but I thought about this for so long growing up, knowing that I wanted to be a SEAL since I was seven years old.
Everything that I did was focused on that goal, whether I was playing soccer or lacrosse or running cross-country or whatever it was, I was thinking about it in terms of how does this prepare me to be a SEAL later in life at an early age.
When I was seven years old, so let's say 1979, 1980. When you were seven?
Yeah.
Yeah, so my grandfather was killed in World War II. He was a Corsair pilot, which was the planes that had the gull wings that folded up like this.
There was a show on at the time called Black Chief Squadron with Robert Conrad, and he played Pappy Boynton, who was the commanding officer of this squadron in the Pacific.
Which was also the same plane that my grandfather flew.
So I had this connection.
I watched those with my dad.
We had this connection to his dad, to my grandfather.
And I grew up with his pictures of him and his squadron, the maps they used to give aviators back then, which were made out of silk.
Because if you hit the water with a paper one, they would disintegrate.
So you had these silk maps, had his medals from the war, that sort of thing.
Military service was a calling.
I just felt it.
It was innate.
And very early on in life, I found out about Frogman through a movie called The Frogman.
And I watched it with my dad.
I didn't watch the whole thing because in our house, there was four channels back then, ABC, CBS, NBC, and this outlier that always had some war movie playing on Sunday, opposite Sunday football.
And I didn't really care about the football, but I cared about that war movie that was on.
And when we hit a commercial break, my dad would look at his watch and say, two minutes, and I'd run up because I was in remote control back then.
And I'd turn it to that Outlier channel and I'd get to watch for a few minutes.
And he'd be like, turn it back.
So I'd turn it back and then we'd wait until the next commercial.
These guys, black and white, they're going up over the beach.
They're placing explosives on obstacles in advance of a conventional forced landing.
And I asked my dad, hey, who are these guys?
And he said, they're frogmen.
And I'm like, what?
Pestering with more questions.
And he said, ask your mother.
Because she was a librarian at the time.
And we went down to the local library, looked into frogmen, found out about underwater demolition teams, found out about SEALs.
And my takeaway from that research was that, hey, these are some of the toughest, the training's some of the toughest ever devised by a modern military, and these are some of the most elite fighting forces on the planet.
And so I was like, age seven, okay, this is what I'm doing.
And then when I got to about age 10, I started to read the things my parents were reading.
So Hunt for Red October came out when I was in fifth grade, started reading that.
Then I found David Murrell, who created Rambo.
I found Stephen Hunter.
I found A.J. Quinnell, J.C. Pollock, Mark Olden, all these guys in the 80s who had protagonists with Vietnam experience, typically in special operations.
So I find this world of reading in thrillers, and I just love it.
There's this magic.
And I know that these authors did some sort of research into their characters.
So I'm learning at the same time.
So I'm reading nonfiction, on warfare, on terrorism, on insurgencies, on counterinsurgencies, and I'm reading this fiction.
And I just love it.
I know that, hey, after the military, I'm going to one day write books just like this.
And then today, David Murrell is a dear friend.
Stephen Hunter is a dear friend.
We talk every week or so on email.
And these guys have been so fantastic.
So these guys that I looked up to are now Friends.
But I thought back then, I'm like, of course, I'm going to be a SEAL. 80% attrition?
Yes.
And back then, I thought there was like six guys on each SEAL team.
I didn't realize there was a lot more than that.
And I'm like, okay, six guys.
Okay, I read that there's three teams on each coast.
I'm going to make it through.
I'm going to be part of this 20% that makes it through, of course.
I never thought that I would fail.
And then I also knew once I get out, I'll write thrillers and then they'll be optioned by an A-list star.
I'll have an awesome director.
I just thought that's how it worked because that's how when you have this dream when you're seven years old and then 10 years old, that's what you think happens.
And so I just never lost that.
Of course, you have some other people tell you how hard it is along the way and you have to discount that and stay focused because you only have so much bandwidth.
You can't be worried about not making it.
energies on producing the best product that you possibly can be the best combat leader or producing the best book and so i never thought in a million years that uh that i wouldn't be a seal and that i wouldn't uh do at the time you thought it was always secret missions and really we only started doing real stuff after september 11th most of us anyway uh and then i would write these these novels So I just never thought that that wasn't how it went.
And so I just focused on making the best book I possibly could, getting it to the exact publisher, the exact editor that I wanted to read it, Emily Bessler at Emily Bessler Books.
Because I looked in the acknowledgements of other people's books, and I kept seeing this name, Emily Bessler.
And I'm like, ah, Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills, Brad Thor, this is who I want.
Well, the other part of it is also you have to do that work.
So I read all these books growing up.
So I didn't just wake up one day and decide, hey, what should I be reading if I want to be an author?
I'm going to go back.
No, I read those things at a very pivotal time, very impactful time in my life.
And it would be different reading them today.
And some of them I'm hesitant to reread because they were just so magical to me back then.
But I did all that work reading those books and then doing all that academic study of warfare, then getting the SEAL teams, then that experience downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that when that door got cracked for me by Brad Thor, who said, when I talked to him, he's like, hey, I'll let my publisher know it's coming because a friend of mine told me some things you did in the SEAL teams.
And I said, thank you for that.
I'm going to let them know that a book's coming from you.
Can't guarantee they'll open the package.
Can't guarantee that they'll read one word.
Definitely can't guarantee that you'll like it.
And he thought they'd just maybe read one word and toss it out.
But he cracked that door for me, and then I kicked it in.
So you have to be prepared to kick it in.
You have to have done this work at this level, because if you don't and someone cracks that door for you, guess what?
It's not happening.
So the constant is that you have to do this work at this foundational level because if somebody – you either make it happen on your own or someone puts their hand out or cracks the door a little bit, you have to be ready to crush that thing.
For sure they're not going to kind of push that dream if they don't try, if they don't devote themselves to it.
Kind of like you say about surfing, when you're like, guess what the odds are of me going...
I told my little guy I didn't want to go in the water in Hawaii, so I told him that story about...
I'm like, yeah, I get it, because, you know...
You know, Joe says, what are the odds of me being eaten by a shark if I don't go in the water?
Zero percent.
I'm not getting eaten by a shark if I don't go in the water.
But same thing, if you don't put in that work or if you get discouraged along the way or you're worried too much about everybody that says that you can't do it or how hard it is, guess what?
That's the key, I think, is identifying that mission and then finding that passion and putting those two together.
So for whatever reason, that's what I've done here is I've moved out of the military, taken care of my family.
It's my mission.
We have a middle child with some severe special needs, so taking care of him for a lifetime of full-time care, that is my mission.
And then my passion is writing.
And so I get to do both of those on this path.
And I feel so fortunate that the book's resonating with people and that people took a risk on me as a new author, told a friend, and that's what allowed all this to happen.
It was really cool.
Is that a lot of it was all grassroots.
It was veterans.
It was veteran-owned companies.
It was tactical shooters.
It was hunters.
It was readers that all, like, took a risk and read this book and then said, hey, I'm going to tell a friend about this.
And that's why I get to do what I do.
And then after I made the New York Times list, you had me on.
Chris Pratt says something about her to go on Tucker.
And then it just keeps building.
From there.
So I feel extremely fortunate to everybody, especially in the beginning, before you've been vetted by multiple people, and they take a risk on you with their time more important than how much the book costs.
But that time, that's really what they took a risk on me with.
And so I just want to do the best job I can for them, always.
Well, I feel very fortunate that you're out there, and I feel very fortunate that you've been on the show and get to talk to people, and I'm very fortunate that you mentioned the podcast in your book, too.