216 - The Gang Gets Recruited To The Military ft. Colonel Butler | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 216
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Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. Put a bunch of paratroopers together, give them ISVs and give them Starlink, and it's pretty amazing what they can accomplish. Like, what if we just didn't put soldiers in really **** situations all the time? What are we paying them for, though? I want meat shields. Ah, ****.

Say hi to Eli. He's racially ambiguous and random. His hair is fabulous. Don't know a dark, dope disposition. There's a fat electrician. Welcome to unsubscribe. Three, two, one.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Unsubscribe Podcast. I'm joined today by Eli Doubletap, Dr. Alex Miller, Colonel Butler, Brandon Herrera, myself, Donut Operator. Thank you so much for coming. Hi, welcome everyone. Welcome guys. Damn good to be here. Dude, we're excited to have you. I'm excited to be here. This is your first time. It is. I feel... Dr. Alex. I might be gentle, but it's fine. Here's how it went down. I said to General George...

Hey, I'm going on unsubscribe podcast. And he's like, yeah, great. Alex is going with you. Super serious. Like, you're not going alone. I don't need to trust you. Well, Alex really knows what he's talking about. I kind of know. No, I just use very fancy words and people trust me. He's a doctor. He gave you the, you got to bring your little brother if you go. I want another slide. Totally flat. Good. You're taking Alex with you.

Yes, sir. Of course. Yeah.

I'm surprised they like it. How was it after the first episode aired for you guys? Was it... The Pentagon one? Huh? The Pentagon one? Yeah, the Pentagon one. It was like super positive response on our side. And you actually were like, holy shit, this is a lot of positivity. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, you guys bring a very positive vibe. And, you know, that's one of the reasons we love you. That's one of the reasons your fans love you. They bring the positive vibe. Yeah. We just got lucky. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you stay generally, you know, you like...

you stay positive and it's just, first of all, it's a great frigging pod to listen to. But, um, so what was your action from the Pentagon? There were the haters. They're like, what are you doing? Uh, I got, I got a funny, like team's message. Are you promoting drinking in the Pentagon? Um,

I was like, uh, like, I don't think it needs to be promoted. I was like, wait, are you talking about the podcast or in general? Cause I have been known. But, uh, but the forward thinking people are like, I'm so glad what you guys are doing, you know,

what they see you guys do for the community, for people interested in the military, for just people interested in general. It's great. Yeah, I think it was a blast. I mean, that was one of those staple, like we still talk about that. It's one of those weird, holy shit, that was a thing. I'm not surprised that there would be people in the Pentagon that would be talking down about it. But at the same time, it's a,

it's quite an interesting thing considering just a few months prior you know every the entire world got to see what the medium of podcast did to i don't know let's say a presidential election that's right and see that power and go nah

That's probably not it. Yeah, definitely not it. I guess not. That's not going to last. Can we do more print media? All of it, long form, like newspapers. Just being able to communicate, right? So normally the Pentagon doesn't talk to the people. We talk through all kinds of spokespeople and they sort of hear about it. So for leadership just to go, hey, I'm going to

We're going to have a conversation. We're just going to tell you what we're thinking. We're just going to be very open. That is antithetical to how a lot of bureaucrats were raised and being able to go from the chief and the chief spokesman and like people on the staff down to every private, every sergeant, every officer in the army and go, hey, here's what's happening. Unheard of. So the reaction from the force was unbelievable.

Hey, I also want to drink White Claws. But it was... That's an awesome message. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. I mean, even...

From all of us, it was that standpoint. And seeing behind the camera, because you did have specialists that were laughing in the background. You guys didn't get to see them, but in the background, they were laughing. That guy's a work drum, by the way. Gone. Gone. It's just an awesome experience and one we will always remember. I mean, you Google, like, fat electrician, first person to drink officially. Yeah.

And that's like staple in AI now and everything. Because that dick slammed it. We didn't know he was racing. Did you see that part? Oh, yeah. Nick was just... I'm the first person to do it. Dick. He made the big announcement. If I knew it was that special of a thing, because I knew it was like, oh, wow, that's really cool that we get a waiver. I didn't know it was like first officially drank, consumed alcoholic beverage in the Pentagon ever.

minus all the hidden speakeasies that exist. I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but it's probably not the first alcoholic beverage consumed in the Pentagon. Officially. Officially. Like signed off on. I mean, there's like, there's, there's a, what, like, you mean we were supposed to ask? Social occasions and stuff. The process exists, but it was certainly the first one

doing a podcast in the Pentagon and, you know, drinking a White Claw during a podcast. Anyway, I'm a spokesman. I can make it the first of anything. If you get a narrowing of Herrera. Yeah. If we knew it was that special of an occasion...

We would have probably chosen something other than a White Claw. I would have maybe brought some, I don't know, decent bourbon or something for everybody. I actually, so the feedback, I did get some shit about that. Yeah. White Claws? Really? And then I guess I said- It's the people's drink. I love the smell of White Claw in the morning, so people go to bed back to me. That's funny. I mean, Alex is a big White Claw guy, so he was like- I'm soft and supple. Leave me alone. Yeah.

We, I mean, that was, we probably would have got out like a bourbon of some type and then been completely shit wrecked by the end of it. Cause we would have finished it. You should have got the, it would have been a very big race. Nick is still just slamming. That would have been a harder exception. We're only drinking three bottles of bourbon. So, you know, I had to remember I had to count the number of white claws, which is,

We miscounted, but... The only person to ever say eight. The special eight pack. So what is it now? After that, it's like, okay, hey, do we normalize that? Or is that like...

more people at the Pentagon. Podcast. Yeah. Well, like podcast, anything at the Pentagon is like, okay, Hey, let's start introducing this media for the military aspect of it. Um, so we haven't, uh, but general George is like,

We just made a big announcement. We're going to talk about that here today. But we just made a big announcement, probably the most fundamental change of our lifetimes for the Army. And General George is like, get me on a bunch of podcasts. And Secretary of Justice goes right beyond. And so, yeah, that's the way he's thinking, at least. And we're trying to help him. But look, one of the reasons I'm on here today is to try to set the example for people that do my job

you're allowed literally the first

First thing in my title is public. So public affairs officers be public, talk to the people, talk to the media. You know, we've got public affairs, very senior ranking public affairs officers that you can never find a quote from them or you can never find a place where they've ever been public. And they keep continue to rise up to ranks. And that's not the whole job, but that's certainly part of the job. I mean, literally, it says it in our job title. So one of the reasons I'm here is like,

Try to set the example for the whole field. Get out there, talk to people. How the hell do you do a public PR job and not talk? Because they put their bosses in front. They're like, I can't answer this question.

But, you know, General George can or whatever. And he keeps us close enough where we can answer any questions. Alex has been for the past week and a half. He's been on the Hill answering questions to Congress as a representative of General George. It's been very fun. I've enjoyed every moment of it. That would be terrifying. Sorry, I would not do that. Like that I got to speak from somebody else. And if I fuck up, oh, no.

It's for them. So that's a good point. That's something that we're always afraid of is, hey, what if I'm wrong? Okay. There is this very bad sort of mentality that you can never be wrong. And that's not true. So one of the things I actually learned from Dave was if you're wrong and it's not on purpose, it's okay. We can fix it. If you don't know, that's the problem. And I think that's what Dave's hitting at. Like a lot of the public affairs and I'm a technologist, right? So my job is to make sure I know and help.

People who are uninformed are the ones that are not actually helping so if they don't go out there and they say hey This is why we're doing it then they're afraid to be in public They're afraid to get out front and then they put their bosses in a terrible position because then they go Hey, my boss knows and we don't know if that's true. Yeah I go on about four days. Yeah, go on We get in this is like traditional media, but we get we get plenty of questions right to the army and

And everything is email, you know, everything is some curated response via email. And there's a couple of great public affairs officers who, you know, I lean on. And as soon as some as soon as we get any question from the media, pick up the phone, go meet that person, explain the whole context.

you want to talk to me on the record and people are like you mean by name sure i'll talk to you on the record it's a super surprise but but we should be proud about the stuff we're doing i mean we're doing especially now we're doing some freaking amazing things and so i'm like yes on the record let's talk about it let's you know give me some of your time because i'm gonna tell you what the army's doing and uh i don't know we're doing good so

I think that, like, Brandon, coming from your side, was that ever scary for you? It's like, hey, I'm going... You spoke for yourself that entire campaign, so it was always just... Oh, yeah. When I did the politics thing? Not really, just because I...

I don't know. It's, it's a very similar culture where people are afraid to not know things. And so I, I, I did my homework. Like I knew a decent bit about what I was talking about, like the major core issues. And I, I did something where most people do their little stump speech and then they leave. I did like five minutes of this is who I am. This is what I think. Do you guys have questions? I did almost entirely Q and a that's it, which I thrive in that because I just, I feel like it's people stop paying attention after five, 10 minutes anyway.

And then if they engage back and forth and you're actually answering questions and not ducking them, that's way better. And I wasn't afraid if somebody would ask me about some particular agriculture bill that I wasn't familiar with, I'd be like, hey, I don't know the answer to that question yet, but I can find it for you. Like this is broad strokes. This is what I believe, but I'm not familiar with that particular bill. Would you mind telling me about it?

Something they taught us a long time ago, or at least they taught me a long time ago, was one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader is say, admit you don't know. Because too many people...

you get into the bullshit cycle. It's like people will just make up answers if they think it's what you want to hear. Yeah. Um, so it's been good. I think it, it helps people trust you too. Agreed. Yeah. Where you're just like, I'm not afraid to admit that I don't know the answer to that. Especially about like niche or complex topics. And that's what, so Dave talked about like this big announcement that we did as the army. There's a lot of complex topics in there in terms of things that we're going to stop and things that we want to do and like the technology ecosystem and how we want to engage and, and like how we actually take care of soldiers and,

Some of it, like we have a lot of good data and analysis. There's a reason why we're doing it. We know this. Some of it, there's unintended consequences that are going to pop up. And frankly, the secretary and the chief, so Secretary Driscoll and General George have said, we're going to fight through this. Sometimes something's going to pop up. We'll figure it out. And that's why, again, I've been on the Hill for the last couple weeks. I'll be on the Hill again tomorrow. Some of it's just explaining to

our board of directors, Congress, hey, here's what's happening and why. And oh, if these things happen, we'll figure that out. You could overstaff. You could wait for it until you have every detail, all the answers, whatever.

Secretary of Justice General George said, nope, let's go public. Let's go to the Hill. We're making these changes. And there's still plenty of things we need to figure out. So we're figuring them out. The hardest part with that is in the military side, some of that stuff is outdated and people hate change. That's the one thing I do remember is changes. Terrifying the military. And it's like, no, we need these very ancient equipment. We'll just keep it going and spend way too much on it. But you guys are actually the first ones who are like, hey, let's.

What if we didn't? The soldiers don't hate change. No, soldiers don't. They're like, why are we still doing this dumb shit? So they're ready for the change, and that's what's great about it. You know, when we go, we were just at JRTC, was it last week? It was last week. Last week.

And man, the soldiers out there, because we gave them all the new shit and they're like, this is freaking awesome. They're figuring out, they're teaching us and how they're going to use it and what's good, what's not. So they're ready for change. It's, you know, we talked about it a little bit last time.

the defense industrial complex the big primes the congressional districts those folks don't want to change you know there's interests uh that they're trying to protect and uh it's money there's lots and lots of money involved yeah and and like one of the good one of the coolest things i got to see is um i went down down to jrtc um down in southern louisiana early just so i could be embedded with first brigade 101st for a little bit of time um

I showed you the infantry squad vehicle. So that, that new thing, that's a, it's a general motors defense. It's a Chevy Colorado. That's been militarized with a Hendrick chassis. It looks like the warthog from halo. It is awesome. Wait, what? So infantry squad vehicle. It really did. Yeah.

So, right? So it's badass. It's a troop carrier. You see a code? Yeah. He showed it to me a minute ago. There's a, there's a five seat variant and a nine seat variant. Dude, that would do good against IDs. Well, you ever have any bad habits? Yeah, I've had bad habits. What are we doing it now? Yeah. Okay. If you're part of the 50% of people who try to quit vaping each year, well, you're going to have to equip yourself with the right tools for the job. Right? Cody, is it fume?

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Code on sub. Head over there now. So it's not an ID vehicle, right? So we have to have these vehicles. Unless we make it a robot. ID vehicles right through. Yeah, exactly. They go so fast. They just go so fast. But it's supposed to replace the Humvee. And my dad got fielded Humvees in 1988 as one of the first units. But we're still building and buying them now.

And we just want to replace it with cooler vehicles that are super light, super cheap. So we pay about $150,000 for those, $150,000. These probably rip compared to – no. Okay. So for anyone out there, Brent, have you rode in an actual up-armor and Humvee? Yeah.

It's fucking terrible. Oh, dude. Like zero to 60 in, I think, eight hours. Four guys, maybe. Yeah. Like this. It feels like you're entering the atmosphere once you hit highway speed. It is the worst thing in the world. The strikers are faster. How much does the army pay for a Humvee? Like a shitty Humvee like that?

I think it's 300 K. Yeah. It's, um, without, without the up armor. Um, the coolest thing is I got to drive with the convoy going from Alexandria airport to the box on the interstate. And you just see a line of those and it's just, it's just paratroopers. Like some of them are under nods. Some of them aren't like, it's just guys driving a truck. Cause it's a Colorado that's been militarized and we can pump them out and they come off the same production line as the normal truck. And they're easy to get. They can be repaired anywhere in the world.

and we don't have to keep the 40 year old thing just because we kept buying it. Better vehicle for half the price. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not fighting from the infantry squad vehicle. We're just mobile. We're moving around the battlefield.

The new battlefield calls for mass mobility, right? So you can see everywhere on the battlefield. If you can see, you can hit it. And so the survivable thing about the battlefield is by staying low, low signature and moving very fast. And that's why we have these...

That's where we're fielding these vehicles. So you can, you know, we're going to put this across the whole division. You'll be able to move a division. You guys are just watching. Yeah. We're watching the robotic ISV. Oh yeah. So, so we took a cool story. So we went to California, we went to the Valley and we said, Hey, um, what if we took one of these companies and we gave you an ISV? Could you turn into a robot in 10 days? And that's not a, that's 10 days. And they said, we'll see what we can do. And once we got it,

We were like, we don't know what to do with this thing. So we went, hey, let's just give it to a unit. First Brigade Hunter versus going to the box. Give it to them. They'll figure it out.

First thing they said, I love them because it was the exact same idea that I had. They were like, we'll put C4 on it and we'll use it as a breaching asset. And I was like, yeah. I like it. I was like, cool, it's a remote control bomb. Methinks whoever was in the 101st at the time played a lot of Battlefield back in the day. Methinks you're right. Well, the problem was I was like, that's the exact same thing I thought of. Oh, my God. Don't blow up my vehicle. And they came up with some cool things. They did resupplies.

They had it go through Wadis. It was just a cool experiment to watch a robotic vehicle and us enable that. Yeah, they fit on the back of a Chinook. You can sling load them. Oh, that's cool. They just get right in there. That's gangster shit. It's almost like we thought

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Yeah.

The Ranger Regiment took the top of it. They put a 360 gun turret on there, and they put a gunner up top. No cupola, so it's super light. So it's just a good, light, cheap vehicle that we can put anywhere in the world, and it can drive anywhere. In fact...

When the hurricanes hit North Carolina last year, a lot of the roads washed out. And like North Carolina is still home for me, so it was personal. Humvees couldn't get there. And the National Guard has Humvees, and the Guard's doing amazing work all over the world, but the ISVs could. So we deployed the 82nd and the 101st for hurricane relief, and their ISVs were the things that could get them there.

Put a bunch of paratroopers together, give them ISVs, and give them Starlink. And it's pretty amazing what they can accomplish. And they can solve anything. Yeah. And drones. That's what we did in North Carolina. Like, find people. It was awesome. Yeah. We had, like...

The strikers were way faster than the Humvees. That's the one thing I didn't true. And you're looking at how much does a striker weigh? 120,000 pounds. Oh, it's more than that with all the up armor and all the reactive armor and everything. Like 200,000 pounds, like fat bitches, but they ran like, but they were, you could, they had great personalities. Oh yeah. Not the ones, not the ones in Austin. Yeah. Get inside the torture. Yeah.

back door opens up. I love those fucking things. We gotta have fun with them. It's like, yes, yes. The no utility waddling vehicle. Yeah.

I'm still talking about the striker, right? Yeah. The striker had a big following of contractors, FSRs, field service reps. And so we had, it was, you know, it's contract madness. We had all these contracts built. Yes, we'll buy a bunch of strikers. But who's it, GD or who makes them? Yes. Yeah, General Dynamics. Fields a bunch of contractors with them. And so we can't fix our own freaking vehicles.

And let me give you an example. So in general, George tells a story very eloquently. If you wanted to weld something to your striker, let's say you want to just like a new ruck mount or like put your AT4s on the side of it. Non-commissioned officers can think of anything. Like let them fuck with the striker a little bit. You can't. Like you legally can't because of the contract that we had. So if one of your maintenance guys who is a certified welder and a mechanic cannot weld to the side of that because of a contract that we signed,

probably right at the start of GWAT. So is that why, like, I remember when they added the V mount, or the V holes. Yeah, the double V holes. Yeah, the V holes. So one of the issues when these first hit is IEDs, they were soft underarmors. So you had the birdcage on the side. It would stop RPGs.

that's about and some ied blast but underneath was just a problem well because if you know anything about directional explosives um you basically just created a bowl to absorb the ied instead of deflect it so you made it worse essentially and they had uh turned into a shape charge yeah yeah literally so we had to actually bring them on base um and then they were down for i think it was like a week well all the units or our battalion had

the V holes put in. So it was like, Hey, look, they take blasts better now from underneath. You don't have to worry about that. But that was months into the deployment. And it was, I didn't realize that we couldn't touch them physically. That's why we can't drop them off. Which is also why when you put the bird cages on there or, or like the bag of bolts, you'll hear that term now for like the drone problem.

Most of the solutions that our soldiers come up with, given the boundary condition, you can't weld on this, is super simple. Here's literally a sandbag full of bolts so that if something explodes, the kinetic energy goes out through the bolts because we can't weld it. We can't put new stuff on there. That's why we would wrap it in the netting. So no shit. So we would just put – Yeah, and then we'd put the bulletproof glass on the sides for the –

I always wondered why we did that shit. That makes way more sense. I was like, wow, we're just soldiers. That makes sense. You're solving problems given the condition. We would just put bulletproof glass where the VC would stand up and do patrols because you're just like at that. And then you would just do a camo net wrap around the top. Yep.

It's like, it's like Popemobile light, like just put the bulletproof. Yeah. And it wasn't meant to stop anything. It was just so if you're getting a sniper, they can't see, hopefully they can't see your silhouette through the sniper net. And you just, you're still like standing up in the hell hole. You're never down. You have four people up at any given time when you're riding around. Yeah.

So you're just like, oh, we'll do this and then we'll look around and that's it. But you do a sniper net around it and just hope for the best. All this so Raytheon's arrow stays green. Yeah. Stonks. Stonks. Oh, yes. Stonks. Which brings to our sponsor. Oh, no. Blackrock. Blackrock.

There's a God. I mean, you know, it wasn't, it was like a minute in before we got into the, uh, the interest in congressional districts and stuff. I mean, something we need to talk about. It's true facts. True facts. So that's the stuff I'm like, Ooh. Yep. I tip my hat to all y'all for doing that shit. Still. I don't know how you guys do that. I'm not addicted. It's fine. Well, so we, um,

I can quit anytime I want. We've been trying, General George, in the year and a half, almost two years he's been the chief. We've been trying to cancel stuff, trying to cancel stuff. And Secretary Driscoll, new administration, come on board and he's like, we're canceling it. Just do it. And you've got people, we want him to make informed decisions. We're like, okay, but so-and-so is going to be super mad. This congressional district is going to be affected. Yeah.

you know, we're going to have to explain this to Congress. We're going to have to do this, going to have to do that. And then there's a trade offs. And he's like, Nope, screw it. We're doing what's right for the soldier first time. And we're not going to fucking change. And I'm like, uh, okay, I'm in.

I'm in. Because, I mean, in your career, how long have you ever seen that before in, what, 20, 25, 30 years? No. I mean, I was a real soldier before this. So I haven't been in the Pentagon that long. But I'll just use the example of canceling the FARA. What the hell does that stand for? Oh, man. Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. Yeah. So we canceled this billion-dollar program. My brain is full of memes and acronyms.

About what eight months ago or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah and Instead of taking all that money. It was you know billions of dollars into the future and and That's a hard thing to cancel so credit credit to our last set of bosses But instead of taking all that money and investing it in stuff that we know soldiers need drones and you know Network drones robots AI robots. I

we put it back into our old ass helicopters because the FARA was going to be made in a certain congressional district. So,

Well, yes. So we traded. We canceled FAR because that's what's best for the future of the Army. So we're all celebrating. But we're taking all the money and we're putting it into old ass helicopters. And so that was a tradeoff, right, that we do. And this secretary and this chief is the tradeoff.

is going to the soldier. Yep. So that was great. $7 billion that we wanted to create to buy all the, the G whiz future stuff to make sure that soldiers had the best stuff. And six point, I think like six or 6.8 of it, we had to go back and reinvest to make sure everybody was whole. And when you say G whiz,

very technical term. So things like, um, we know that FTV drones are all over Ukraine. We've seen them in Gaza and in Israel. Um, being able to just buy those and like stand up production lines, because most of the stuff they're using overseas are Chinese parts and we can't buy that. We don't want to subsidize the CCP. So how do we like,

buy in America or build in America. Like, standing up, investing in the American industrial base to do that. Buying things like ground robots. So if we... Like, I don't want a soldier to ever have to go through a breach first. That's silly. Like, we all know what the fatal funnel is. We all...

hey, let's trade blood for steel and make sure it's their blood. And let's spend the money and buy the robots to do that. Let's make sure that all the commo kit, because we've all had a 117 golf fail on us or a 152. How about we just buy the right things and we outfit the rest of the army? Get smaller plates so that you're more maneuverable. We all had plate carriers because the IBA with the spalders and the crotch pad looks super cool, but

I never put that on. I was like, man, I look so dope right now. I'm like, Eli with the mirror picture. I'm fucking so hot right now. I'm so sweaty. The cock pad I'd always wear. Well, yeah. Because you've got to protect the crown jewels. That was about it. I can bring myself. You didn't want the biceps? This, not important. This, extremely important.

If this is gone, I can still... I didn't even wear plates. I just wore that. Just to look cool. If I die, I die. But like the level four armor, it's very heavy. But like, how do we get the smaller ones? Like, how do we invest in that, in the materials and the compounds? And how do we buy that at the army scale instead of just spending money on stuff we don't need? I'll give you another one. So we always talk about FAR because that was a multi-billion dollar thing. But there was this other system called the SHADO.

Developed in the late... He does the shadow. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds super familiar. The UAV, it's like this long. The big-ass motherfucker. Yeah, we do. We try to chuck one. You throw them, right? No, so that's the Puma and the Raven. The Puma. The Raven. So Raven was like this. Puma was like this. Shadow was like, why does it table? And it had a rail, and you had to like yeet it off to get it to go. Or it had to have a runway. Yeah. Dude, we chucked one, and then it...

And the problem is they could hear it too. So you would see like FMV and they'd be like, you'd see like two dudes walking. All of a sudden they'd be like, running. Um,

So last year we were going to spend $77 million to keep those things alive to pay for 53 people. Oh, God. And we were like, hey, this seems like low-hanging fruit. What if we just didn't waste that taxpayer dollars? What if we just didn't? What if we bought quadcopters for a couple units? Everybody lost their minds. $500? How much is a fucking drone? Okay, so... American-made drone.

Yeah. So if we buy one, like one of ours very hardened, like GPS to not like you can do, these things will fly anywhere. They're almost quiet. So like you could fly it over there and you couldn't hear it here. Like it's actually super quiet. The ones that we buy, they're 30 to 50,000. Yeah. But they're, they're EW hard. So you can't, you can't jam them. Like all the, like all the lessons we learned from, from Russia. Yeah.

But even a set, that's still 10 times less than the other stuff that we're buying. And it's going to come down with higher production. Yeah, of course. That's fucking wild. Cody, do you want better sex? I love better sex.

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I'm sorry. Can you teach me? Adam and Eve can. Cody f***ered me. Still, you know, 10 times less than the other stuff that we're buying. And it's going to come down with higher production. Yeah, of course. That's f***ing wild.

And again, how much were the originals? So we were going to buy, we were just going to spend hundreds of millions. We were going to spend $77 million for 53 maintainers. Yeah. Like around the world. And speaking of maintainers, what was the operational readiness rate, Alex? The highest it had ever been was 53%. So only 53% of those drones were capable of flying at any one time because the maintenance sucked on them. Anyway, the flying lawnmower. We're so proficient. Dude.

That's as quiet as they are? Yep. And you can see where he launched it from. These are literally like DJI drones. Hey, hey, not DJI. They're whatever they are. Not only do we want to not subsidize the CCP, but there are very real scenarios where potentially having Chinese supply chains are a bad fucking idea. Go figure. Maybe like not our enemy.

could be controlling the supply chain for all the stuff that we would use against not our enemy yeah especially if they yeah never mind yeah warfare got terrifying with those things that's the one thing i will say like watch it we watch front like the front line combat footage that is the most terrifying thing that has been i don't think anyone's seen it going that way yeah 70 70 of casualties right now in ukraine russia are from drones

Yeah. It's scary. You'll see the guys just sit there and they'll see the drone. They'll just accept it. Yeah. And they're shooting down. Half of the drones are shooting down are their own drones because there's, you know, we don't have mechanisms right now to do airspace management and figure out like if you're, if you're an instrument and there's a drone flying over. Are you risking it? Pretty sure I'm going to shoot it. Yeah. Unless you know specifically it's your drone.

And so... I can't even think of that. There's not like Blue Force trackers being like, hey, this is when you're in your battle space, you know exactly where it is. But instead of developing like these big standalone systems where you need a truck and like a big server and a satellite to figure all that out, we're building apps to be able to do that. You said apps? Apps. Okay. Everything is app... Everything...

This kind of sounds, you know, there's iPhone. You don't have 11 iPhones, do you? To do 11 different things? So in the army, we have 11 iPhones, but they're not just iPhones. They're trucks by themselves with servers and groups of soldiers that have to run things. Our army, what we're invested in now is everything is application-based. Application-based and sits on one network so that soldiers aren't lugging around a whole bunch of shit. And we don't have extra soldiers doing all this extra stuff.

Sorry, we had a separate app conversation. No, we were just showing cool stuff. You were showing me the battle space with the...

Trying to manage all of the drones in the airspace. You're on patrol and you're like, is that mine? I don't know. It's one of those. I hope. I'm overstimulated. Get the three gun shotgun out. Oh, that's been one of my favorite things is the return of the combat shotgun. Number one, number one drone killer.

There was a legitimate conversation where it's like, aside from breaching, does the shotgun still have a role? I remember that conversation. And then here comes DJI. Or, well... These ones are. We're shooting a shotgun and it's probably DJI. Are they still using the OG...

for whatever the army's new shotgun or is it going towards like that three gun style because i figured it'd be like a three gun style shotgun so it's just speed ready high tube capacity 12 rounds and and long barrel because yeah like you can't have a short barrel and maintaining a level of accuracy and they're using birdshot right and they're light as shit really birdshot

Interesting. I heard a conversation, and I wasn't sure if it was true or not. They said they were using buckshot because birdshot wasn't doing enough damage to the drones. But I'm not sure. So it depends on how close you are. And this just gets into weird mechanics.

If you think about like how cheap some of the drones are, if you can just knock off one of the rotors, you, you, it'll fly off and just crash out. Um, if it's super close and you can actually hit it with buckshot while they're maneuvering, you just kill it there, hit it right. Main body. But the birdshot gives you a higher probability of hitting one of the rotors. Interesting. Oh, shit. No tech. I love it. Right. Well, I mean, one of our battlefield. Yeah. One of our guys, and he's super smart. Um,

E5 type, just like, hey, how I would counter drones is, you know, if you look at a quadcopter, you got four very powerful electromagnets on there. And that's the rotors. Like, just throw ferrous sand at it. Like, just, like, T-shirt tube, sand, and it'll suck it up into the motor and just chew up the motor. That's...

That's smart. Right? Soldiers come up with good shit all the time. And bad shit. T-shirt two, drone. T-shirt two. What is actually, for you, what is some of the dumb privacy? You had to deal with some dumbass soldiers, dog.

Probably not ripe for public. Damn it! I want to know, like, yeah, there's this one guy. Yeah, public affairs talking shit about his... You gotta love him. I love him so, so much. It's all very good.

There's... Well, you guys had Vern Daly on when we were in the Pentagon. Yeah. Sergeant Major. He was my first sergeant when I was company commander. Oh, no shit. Man, we had some good times. We had some good times. Yeah. He was a great guy. Dude, all those guys were fantastic. Yeah. It was...

Still, who's the individual that was stacked? He's like Scuba, Combat, or Halo. Mullinex, probably. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was the one. Captain America. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was my first reaction seeing the stack. I was like, Jesus Christ, guys. Me and Cody, I'm just like... You just lean forward and you go...

Instantly. He's also just, he's very well spoken. So he was one of the guys that we went to the Hill as we rolled out this Army Transformation thing. So one thing I appreciate about the team that we have between Mike Weimer, the Sergeant Major of the Army, the Chief, the Secretary is...

like the team is just so high performing like you have a bunch of smart people who have done a lot of really cool stuff um and he's one of them those guys are like the entire chain of command seems extremely stacked for are very overqualified which is fantastic i was not expecting that like period period it was an awesome change it's like okay these dudes and

Even Roma Shay speaks so highly of General Jorge. That's what he calls him. He's like, what's Jorge doing? What's Randy Jorge doing? Would love to know the context behind that. I think Dave and I can do that once. He just had a grandkid. And so there was about 24 hours where I was calling him Gigi. Hey, Gigi. And he was like...

Okay, that one's done. Yeah, but Roman Shay speaks so highly of him as a leader. He's like, that dude is one of the first dudes or one of the only dudes that had his back even when they got into that. I think when he got into that battle space, he was one of the few leadership that was like, hey, this is a stupid fucking base. That's right. Yep. Keaton. You know what, Keaton? It's in the bowl. Yeah. Yeah. General George was like, this is why? Why? Why?

And they were still like, no, it was strategic until it wasn't strategic. That's right. And at the time, a bunch of – he was Colonel George. Yep. And there was a bunch of generals that were like, what are you talking about, Colonel? You can't move those operating bases or outposts. And he was like, just did.

LOL. Yeah. Literally the deal with it sunglasses. So, but that's what he's doing now. You know, you can't, you can't cut that program.

That's where you're wrong, Bucko. Watch this. It was funny because you talk about your team and the team that you've got, like the guys that are just very well-spoken, very articulate, and good people to have with you shoulder to shoulder in the Capitol. We saw a couple pictures of you guys in the Capitol having to go before Congress, and you guys looked like you were having a fucking ball. I don't know.

I recognize the look. How about that? So I have had to do...

And the other person that's not here is Colonel Molly Salisbury. So she's my battle buddy on the Hill. And all of us have known each other for a long time from some other units. Intel officer, special operations background. We grew up together doing all this stuff. But we had to go do the House Armed Services Committee. I'll be with the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow. The House Oversight for the HAC and the SAC. So Armed Services Committees and...

It was great. It was great. So the members have actually all been super supportive. The members of Congress, the elected members of Congress have all said, okay, I understand why you're doing it. You clearly have a lot of passion here. You've clearly made some decisions. It's clearly the right thing. For the Army. Right thing for the Army, right thing for the country. Okay. What we've been doing is going and briefing the staff.

So the professional staff members who help write laws, right? So it's like anything, they're the ones that are putting pen to paper and then taking it to their bosses. And then the military legislative assistants who are sort of like supposed to be their connective tissue to the military, they're the ones that think that they're going to grill us and like, hey, what are you doing? Why? And have you thought about this?

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And those engagements, some of them have been great because we've been priming the pump on some of these things for a while. Some of them have been straight up knife fights on like, you can't do that. And we're going, hey, we're doing the right thing for soldiers. Like you cannot tell us to keep buying these things just because. We're going to tell you no, it's not the right thing. We're going to try a whole bunch of other things.

Ben Franklin, like I know 10,000 ways that are wrong. I haven't found the right thing yet, but all of these things are wrong. You have to give us the freedom to do the right thing for soldiers. So that's really been, it's been a weird dichotomy of, hey, the members are all like, go forth and do the right thing. The White House has said, go forth and do the right thing. The SecDef has said, you will do the right thing. And our leadership has said, here's what the right thing looks like.

And then working through the people's representatives has been a fun challenge. I'm really glad you brought that up because I think most Americans would be shocked to know how much of the country is run by unelected legislative aides. It's terrifying.

What do you mean by that? It means, so you have a member of Congress. Okay. He goes forward. He does the votes, whatnot. But the actual bills being written, different committee stuff, all that's done by like eight to 10 people in his office that are there to read through the bills, to write the bills, whatever. They have more power than you would ever fucking think. That's why it was so important. I was warned like, hey, if I got the job, you need to pick these people fucking carefully because they run your office. Yeah.

And that's not something I think most people know. And they know the system. They know how to do it. It's a very complicated bureaucracy, and you need people who know how to get things done within the bureaucracy to do it. And so you can't – I was reminded by General George, actually. You just can't burn it all down. You have to make the bureaucracy work. You have to force it to work. I know. It was my plan, too. But, yeah. Yeah.

I'm going home. At face value, people see what we're doing and they're like, of course. Modern battlefield, Ukraine, Israel, we're seeing it all over the world. Of course, modernize the army, transform the army, stop doing old dumb shit. So it's just a challenge. And it's been interesting to educate people. The army, the oldest service, 250 years this year. Birthday coming up.

We have the smallest budget of any military department. So there's three military departments, Air Force, Navy, Army. We have the smallest budget. So we represent 21% of the defense budget. That's it. What would you attribute that to?

Aren't the... Is the Army the largest? There's more expensive projects like aircraft carriers. Big platforms. Yeah. That's right. Okay. So just to get technical on how we do things, like the Navy and the Air Force buy platforms and then they man platforms. They buy boats and they put people on boats. Ships. The Army... No.

Don't touch this. Yeah, don't touch our boats. I'll stand up for the Navy. Don't touch our boats. You flip it. The Army builds formations, and then we equip formations. We buy stuff for our troopers. And therefore, the way that we argue for our budget is just we have the smallest one. We don't have huge capital assets like an aircraft carrier, like a Zumwalt, like a B-21, like the F-47.

So the way that we do it is just differently. The second part of that is it's really hard to describe the scale of the Army without sounding like there's too much Army. So the Navy says, hey, we have 300 some odd hulls. Like they count it in terms of ships. The Air Force says we have X number of tails. The Army says we have a million people.

That sounds like a lot. Well, that's the entire guard. That's the reserve. That's the active component. That's literally everyone. Well, so during GWAT, we started saying, well, we have 50 some brigades. That still sounds like a lot, especially when it's, you know, 6,000 pissed off soldiers who just want to go do, you know, wreck things and do the things for the country. Hey, Brandon, do you have cash app? Brandon, I asked you a question. No, Eli, what's that?

Do you have Cash App, Brandon? How did you do that? Brandon, anything's possible when you use Cash App. Okay. Moving money should be easy, Brandon. That's why there's Cash App. Wow, this is really easy to use. I have it now. Don't hit me again.

- Catch up is fast, safe, and way more personalized than the other apps out there. - No extra hoops to jump through, no extra stress. All the tools are right there to help you cash in. - Plus, sending money through Cash App actually feels safe and secure. - If something seems sketchy or there's like red flags that you might be sending your money to a scammer, they let you know. They'll give you a warning and make you think twice before hitting send. It's like having a bodyguard for your cash. Send your bunny some money with the eggplant emoji. - My favorite. - Make his friends.

Think twice. Brandon, what are these three drops of water and an eggplant mean? It's a tip for good service. I like tips. Just a tip. Just the tip.

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Just download Cash App and use our code UNSUBTEN. Send $5 to a friend within 14 days and you'll get $10 dropped right into your account. That's money. That's Cash App. So the way that we fight for the budget is a little different. And the way that we describe it is a little different. And then we focus so much on stuff that we sometimes just get wed to this stuff. So we get wed to Humvees. We get wed to the M4, which I love, like

M4 is great. And it's just, it's a different battle when we go to the hill and say, hey, we want to really change. Yeah. But to be clear,

This change, and we're not unsubscribed for this reason, we're not asking for any more money. We've got a budget, and General George and the Secretary have been like, we don't want more money, guys. We'll keep the money we have. We just want to be able to spend it in an efficient and responsible way. And what they mean by that is— So you get restricted on how you can spend that? Yeah. Oh, let me tell you, we get restricted. Yeah.

Budget lines? Yeah. Back in... Wait, they give you the money and they're like... No. They give you the money and then across, I think, 1,900 budget lines. It used to be 600.

We get told exactly how to spend every dollar. So if you're a budget nerd, the Army's budget this year was about $185 billion, which sounds like a lot because it is. It is a lot of damn money. 55% of that, immediately locked. It's mil pay, civ pay. So we want to make sure we pay our soldiers, make sure we pay our civilians. Another 25% of that is immutable. It's congressional direction. You will spend this money in this direction.

The rest of it is what is our spending money. It's our discretionary funds. So that goes into programs like Shadow, programs like Humvee, programs like Nick's Gen Squad Weapon. But that was planned five years ago? But it was planned five years ago because we had to guess at what we wanted to spend in this year. And then...

the budget line items, it's a technical term. So think about if you're at your home. I'm sure you planned all this five years ago. Exactly. I was so far ahead. We were like three years ago. It's like, we've got the Pentagon in 2024. And if you need a new camera, obviously you'll just say, I'll buy one in five years.

Yeah. But you'll plan to buy the thing that exists right now in five years. That camera. Yeah. That one. I'll budget that. Every good company is revered on its ability to maneuver five years at a time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Flat and fast. Yeah. But it's- It's fucking wild. It is. 20% of the budget is just going to be like, oh, fucking guess, dude. Yeah.

But it's surprising how much the American people don't know. Like they think that we waste a lot of money and we do, but it's, it's, it's because like, we don't have a lot of. But the thing about you, you hear the stories like the, the air force just got caught up in this weird thing about the, the, the soap dispensers on the C-17s. Yeah. And they were just like, we were paying 1700% markup on the soap dispensers. Well,

Well, that's because... Wait, what? So this is a real thing. Are they good? No, they're the same ones that you find in the fucking Bucky's bathroom. It's the same soap dispenser. But because of the way that we are told to spend our money, someone had to plan that and all of the engineering overhead to design, oh, I hope I can screw these two things into the C-17, that gets added to the cost. So by the time that we have to buy it, this might be three bucks if I go to the gas station. It's going to be $300 because of all the overhead that we add. Yeah.

When we talk about, hey, I want to spend my money better, it's I literally go, hey, I can buy that on the consumer market. It's probably okay to use it a couple times. I know that I'm taking risk. I just want to spend the same dollars that I can out of uniform that our soldiers can in uniform. And

When you hear about the $700 hammer or the $500 toilet seat cover, like all of these like terrible military procurement stories from the 50s, 60s, 70s, there's a reason. It's not a good reason, but it exists. And that's what we're trying to burn through and break down. That's where you get that bag of bolts. It's like one of those running. Soldiers find – it's like Jurassic Park. Like soldiers find a way because of all the dumb conditions that have been put like on us.

instead of just going, "Hmm, that seems like common sense. Let's just fucking do that." But even the justification where you're like, "Well, consumer market is, you know, we're taking a risk. It's probably, you know, it'll probably be okay." It's like, "Well, in some scenarios, it's probably better." And even if it's not better, maybe it's just on par.

still 2000% more efficient. Yeah. And it's available right now, not five years from now. Yeah. Yeah. There's kind of three categories, right? We just, we were emailing about this this morning. There's, you can buy it right now and it's, it's close enough, good enough for, for military use. You can buy it and then modify it just a bit so that we can use it in a military way. That's like the ISV, like Chevy Colorado adapted for military use. Yep. Or there's long lead time, like a,

Like our next generation tank. I haven't seen any. I don't know. I haven't been to all the places in Austin or in San Antonio. Not Austin. Not Austin. I would recommend avoiding. But anyway, I haven't seen any tanks.

So we have to develop that out. And that's going to take some time, you know, to develop the next generation tank. But drones, there's a lot of them around and we can use some right away or just modify them a bit to use them. So anyway. Same with like the laser weapons and microwave weapons, which we definitely won't use on people. That's a Geneva Convention thing. Geneva Convention. Yeah. Microwave weapons? Yeah.

Yeah. So there's... Brandon, yeah. I don't know about this shit. He's like, you haven't opened your microwave and just turned it on? No. Alex did the quick classification check. He said, there were microwave weapons? And Alex went, zzzz. Yeah. Those would be gangster. I mean, they originally rolled them out for, I think, crowd control, right? No, so the...

We didn't. That was definitely like a Homeland Security thing. The history of microwaving people. Yeah. It's... Have you seen that? Here we go. It's like eyeballs exploding. No, too high. Popcorn. That one's a little done. No, these are for like counter drone. So think about...

Counter-gum. Take two of your safes, put one next to each other, and stand it up so that you can just blast it and fry the electronics if they're coming in. And the scary thing for me, and I won't give away any TTPs because that's terrifying, is you're in a base in Iraq or Afghanistan, Syria or anywhere else, and there's a bunch coming. You just flip it on and all the electronics fry and they just fall out of the sky. That's Nirvana. Yeah.

High-powered microwave. High-powered microwave. Just takes a lot of power. You know some private's going to be cooking ramen noodles on that pitch. He's going to be like, yeah, for sure. Hold his hand up. It's like, well, it's like my dad used to tell me a story. He's like, hey, private, crack your mask. You'd be like, hey, private, hold up the ramen. If it starts boiling, it's fine.

That's right. I wouldn't trust anyone. You walk in front of it. Privacy is the most dangerous thing in the world. You walk in front of it. It's like, oh, why does it hurt? Oh, I guess it doesn't hurt anymore. Fuck. When did you go to basic then? Wow. Was he just aging me? 1997. 1997.

I mean, that ain't bad. I was a fucking 12. Thank you. I was like two. Who were you? Oh my God. Congressman? Maybe. I think I was like one and a half. You're already an admiral? You're a friggin' colonel? Level diaper. 10th level prestige. Wait. It's kind of like having your grandma on the podcast. How's that? Having me on the podcast.

You were two when I was... You're old. You're a Nazi? I was going to say, that's a modern record. That's a weird way to identify a day. Hold his arm down. His heart goes out to people. I was wondering where you were going with that. I'm like, ah. We're like, you set this joke up. How old are you, Cody? I'm 37.

Yeah. It's pretty good. Yeah. When you were in the military, did you do infantry first or what was your first? Oh, dude, you had. I was an infantryman growing up. Yeah. How was basic? Well, I was an infantry officer. So, you know, coming out of college. Yeah. So we had a great time. Yeah. Actually, I just hung out with my buddy, uh,

So I went to college camp with them, advanced camp. Band camp. Band camp. Band camp, yes. Then officer basic, then ranger school, and then first duty station. I just hung out with them last weekend, drank a bunch of beers together. But yeah, we had some good times, man. Do you remember your school is...

Have you guys heard any Ranger School stories from any of the guests yet? Not from the guests, no. Did you do Warner's cycle or Summer's cycle? Oh, I did some. Yes. I dabbled in a couple different phases of Ranger School. Oh, you did a repeat cycle? Yeah. This is what I like to say. I eventually went straight through. This is the PR skills coming up right now.

I didn't learn this in ranger school. I got extra schooling. I'm more trained. When I finally restarted, then I went straight through. So what's, does that count? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So winter school, you had to it. So do you just did the one MRE? Like they probably have no, do you guys have a baseline of ranger school? I read it from Matt's book.

His stories from that, but that's about it. Yeah. I graduated in December, so I was a winter ranger. Sleepy. You get no sleep. Tell people. Explain. Because I think you got a lot of people. You're eating, what, two MREs? Do you get the two MREs or still one at a time? So we got two because this goes back a ways in 1998.

or something like that. There were a couple guys that died in Florida phase. I didn't know about that. Yeah, they got hypothermia. Basically, you combine being...

totally physically beat down with lower temperatures and water and then yeah we lost a couple guys and so they swamp face yeah swamp face yeah because you're wet all the time so they changed it anyway we got two MREs I think in in yeah in Florida in the mountains but the choice always was

do you sleep or eat? And I remember waking up after 40 minutes with my open MRE in my lap and saying, damn, I really would have liked to eat. Instead, I fell asleep. Because you guys are averaging on like two hours. Yeah, it depended when we were out in the field. Yeah, because it's a cycle of field problems, kind of learning stuff in the classroom. And it is actually school. It's not just a complete suck fest.

And so, yeah, we were probably two hours of sleep sometimes. Well, oftentimes quite a bit less. And this is for 60 days. Yes. 62 days or something. You lose a bunch of weight. You know, you're under not only physical stress, but mental stress. And it's a leadership school. So you consistently put into leadership roles where you're like a.

you know, all these people that are sucking as bad as you, now you're in charge of them and you have to go really far that way. And so, uh, you gotta figure out a way to, uh, you know, use the process and, and lead these, lead these people to, uh, to success. And, uh, yeah, it was a good challenge. Just like we do in the Pentagon. No, but, uh, you're trying to speak so positive. I love how positive you try. I've never heard someone say, well, you know,

I think it was this. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but if I recall correctly, I think it was swamp phase. Matt said that he had a fucking flesh eating bacteria all over his back or something like that. He had to hide because he didn't want to be recycled. Well, yeah, you're up against that. You know, you got a limp or you got, you got, you know, a couple of problems and you don't want the medics to know about it because they're like, that could get worse. You're,

you're out. Um, Rocco did, um, he got knocked off during a raft and dislocate his arm and just faked his arm being in place for the remainder. Like, yeah, I think. Yeah. And he just like held it there. Yeah. And he made it all the way through until afterwards. And then he went to salute and he was like, Oh God. And they're like, wait, soldier. What? I'd like to say that tab is worth it. That like longterm damage to your shoulder. Uh,

But you know why I speak about it positively? Because, like, let's be honest. Like, those were good times when you're pushing yourself to the physical limit and you're sucking and you're out there with your buddies. Public affairs. Yeah. No, I actually, you know. Would not do that right now. Yeah. Even for a YouTube video. Would you not? Fuck.

How many days would we do that for? Like for content right now in our positions in life? Three days? I'd do it as long as you guys did it. Nice. Yeah, cool. Which I know caps out at about 40, 48 hours. Kerry's like, I'm done. It sounds like you guys are throwing down the gauntlet right now. We can just have a great idea. Work with Ranger School.

We get you guys in. Do like a Ranger School thing. Unsubscribe, go to Ranger School. 62 days. That'd be so good. Dude, Brandon gets an actual tab without being in the military. It's so dope. You survive on it, we drop out, and Brandon makes it through just the hard ass. I think I found my new career. There you go.

Here's an alternative. Army birthday, we have a... Here's an alternative. Enlistment papers. Best squad competition. Ooh, we should talk about the EIC guys. Best squad competition on Army birthday. So the morning of July 14th. June 14th. Or excuse me, June 14th. Good catch. Good PR. Wow. Yeah, everyone's going to show up on July 14th. Yeah.

we've got a best squad competition and uh we're putting together teams from you know what's the competition it's can't tell you it's cross how much do you like coloring in the one no it's cross-fitting i mean it's climbing ropes it's it's uh you know some team it's it's physical competition obviously hey brandon you ever wake up in your bed feeling like you just fought in the war

All clear? Yeah, what do you ask? You ever wake up and feel like you slept in a sauna? Yeah, I believe that's called night sweats. Means you got a trash mattress, Brandon. Why are we talking like Macho Man Randy Savage? Because today we're talking about our premier sponsorship, GhostBed.com. GhostBed mattresses are built with cooling technology. So you're not sweating through your sheets like some street bum.

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Yeah. It's just not on the national lawn. Yeah. It's on the national lawn. So it's... They get a little weird about that for some reason. Yeah. It's 10 stations of that overhead ball throw. Not anymore. Not since January. No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. So anyway, you're invited to put together a team. How big does the team have to be? I think it's five. Five?

Anyway. I think it was an even number. Let's bring Unsubscribe and then Matt Frazier. I was just going to say bring Matt Frazier. Let him get all the points. That's perfect. Yeah. Matt, you're coming. You're welcome. Well, they're team events. All right, Cody. Yeah.

We just pay five of the top world CrossFitters. You're us now. Here's our face masks. Latex masks. You can't kip anything. Matt won how many CrossFit World Championships in a row? Five.

Five of them? Yeah. And he would get so... Dude, that guy's not human. Well, you know, the X-Men were a team, and I don't think Professor Xavier was doing any wall climbs. Well, you can't look at him and be like, hey, walk it off, Charles.

Could he move things with his mind or just read minds and make both?

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Handicap jokes? No, it's mutant jokes. Well, that was worse. Wonder Magneto hates jokes. They're not handicapped. They're fucking mutants. Dr. Axe? Oh, that reminds me of my childhood.

And the 90s kid. Do you guys regret coming on yet? Not yet. Never. Let's keep going. All right. Let's go deeper. Oh, yeah. We have the fucking Army 250th coming up. We're all doing... We're still figuring out what we're doing there. Yeah. We have a stage.

For main stage? Are you asking or telling? I'm asking and telling because I got told one thing and I'm just confirming. Yes. Stage. Okay. Yeah. What would you like us to do on that stage? Just do, what are we doing, an episode? Do an episode out there, a live episode.

we can do that yeah i know they wanted plot to a stranger school oh no i could do an hour range you're a battalion guy though right no uh two id two id yeah nice yeah korea k-boy no fort lewis brandon just left yeah do you want a drink

You can get up. You're in uniform. Yes. You asked me to wear this, by the way. I know. I was like, you were like, do I wear this or this? I was like, the class Bs. I thought they were the green stuff. I was very off on that one. This is our pinks and greens. Throwback. Pinks and greens? Yeah. Old World War II, they called them pinks and greens for whatever reason.

I don't know. Alex probably knows what reason. Because he's the chief technology officer, so I assume he knows. Yeah, and this is our throwback uniform, yeah. No shit. It changed so much. When did you guys roll those out? Four or five years ago, yeah. No shit. Yeah. I'm so off of all of this shit anymore. I'm like, bah, bah. No, we got with Army...

We're going to do a, whatever you guys had scheduled. And then a live show. I think they were saying YouTube, the YouTuber talking about Hegseth being on. Oh yeah. Great. And I was like, yeah, all the guys were like, yeah, that'd be a good episode. That'll do. Yeah. Decent. Yeah. Decent. Yeah. It'd be okay. But then getting you guys to rotate up and then however else we treat the two 50th, we're just going to have a blast. Cause it's going to be blessed.

You guys are giving us a lot of free reign, so we can ask them, too, what they want to see. This is the way to do it. Free reign. We trust you guys. We'll see how long that lasts. Not Brandon, but everybody else. And...

No, I mean, so the Army's turning 250 years old. That doesn't happen every day. And it's pretty cool. We're going to have a massive parade in downtown D.C. That's a whole thing going on right now in the media.

What are they saying? Unfortunately, because we live in such a politically polarized world right now, they're making it all about the president. And we're really, really trying to make it all about the army because it's the army's 250th birthday. And the president will certainly be there. He's going to celebrate with us. We're doing...

a big ass parade. I'm telling you like a massive parade in downtown DC, uh, which the president will reside over. And, um, it's going to be super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Excited about it. What are, uh, what else can we do? Like for the two 50th? I know anyone doing that one. I want to go,

Nice. There we go. Solid. Foul. Foul. Yeah. No, the 250th, we'll go, we'll show up, we'll have our events, and then people are coming out. Is the general public allowed to just come hang out? Yeah. Yeah. So the first part of that day, June 14th, we'll start out with the Best Wild Competition. General public allowed there. Watch out. That's like...

9am to 11 I think something like that that's right there on the mall in DC June 14th and then we'll go into like an army festival kind of thing we'll have a bunch of

stuff that we're cutting out there. People are just allowed to hit it with hammers. Wait, what? Here's some obsolete equipment. I think that is a fantastic idea. We can shoot drones into them and see how they survive. Same time. Depends on what you bring out. Good luck denting a Sherman. Actually, that's cool. We're not getting rid of Shermans. We're actually going to bring them back.

Just show many. What's old is new. And so we'll have the Army Festival. Just like if you can imagine like a county fair or a fair down in the mall, you guys will be there. Stuff for the public to do. And then that'll transition into the parade that evening.

Think about 4 p.m., a parade go down Constitution Avenue. The president at the end is going to enlist about 200 new recruits into the Army. That's when Brandon signs up. That's when Brandon's going to be there. Army, not Navy. Brandon, you're going to hate your paychecks. He's resigning his appointment as an admiral and...

He resigns his fucking... We should trick Finn into joining the army.

Hey, I'm a prisoner of what I do. I was like, how old is that dude? Because we could use editors. Ben, Ben being an editor for the army would be a crazy plot twist. So good. We need good editors. And then fireworks and

And that's like the army birthday day. And then there's a bunch of stuff surrounding that. I want to have fun with it though. That's where I want, like you can go and get smoked by angry costs. Cause he's going to be there. You just have a line where he smokes like 15 individuals at the same time. Rotate through. Yeah.

Oh, he'd have a blast with it. Yeah. Oh, Rich has a good time interacting. He's still a drill sergeant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great. He popped up. People are cropping him into other videos. He popped up on a random Instagram thing I had yesterday. It was just him superimposed and BDUs. And I was like, oh, God. He's in everything now. How is it working with soldiers with that kind of following? And you have to... Is there any dealing with it? Because that's a dude that has millions of followers now. And he's a drill sergeant. We know...

he gets kicked off of being a drill sergeant. He gets like instantly like, what do you mean? Like, he's been on what one time he got showed up to duty. The other, his NCOIC or whatever the commander of that unit knew who he was. And they're like,

No, we're not going to have him. Like the recruits are going to be like, that's the guy from YouTube. As he's fucking them down. I know recently it was kind of like a courtesy thing. Because it was through all the Buffalo school stuff. No, so that's different. So that was a courtesy. It's like, hey, take a day off. But when he goes to his active duty status. I don't know if I've ever heard him talk about that. Yeah, so he'll get removed from it. One was for...

he got in trouble or they tried to, well, that one I knew about. Yeah. They're like, well, he's saying this stuff. He's like, what? I smoke. He treats everyone very equally. He doesn't care about like female male. It is. Yeah. You're private and you're a soldier and you're an idiot at the end of the day. So I'm going to smoke you the exact same. And that got him in trouble. And that's where he was like, what the fuck is this dumb shit? You think it's related to what he does?

on YouTube or you think it's because we get people in trouble for doing dumb shit? I don't know because this one was, I think it was two females complained. If I'm not mistaken that it was like, you know, sexist or whatever it was. It was something like get your ass on the ground or something. It's like, well, that was sexual. It's like, no, he was telling you to get your fucking ass on the ground. Yeah, but that's not abnormal. But they know him as a drill sergeant. They know him as angry cops too so he gets still that pushback even as a police officer. He's talked about it.

That would have been like Cody being dude as big as you are as an active duty cop right now. Yeah, I wouldn't do it. I left because I started getting followers. I don't want to be a cop anymore. I paid way more and people don't spit in my face. This is rad. Some people pay for this. I don't have to. Well, I mean, I got to pay them.

I didn't like that pronoun. I thought you said you guys were friends. Well, I mean, you guys didn't get the white shirt memo? Oh, he's on. Yeah, it sucks. Did you guys actually pick different shirts? No, we just, we showed up to brunch today and both went, God damn it. How do you avoid? I don't know. We should have mixed it up a little bit.

I didn't expect that. We did. No one else wore white. Yeah. Like none of us wore the same color. The brothers got dressed the same. Mom dressed just this white. So you asked, how's it working with the active duty guys? I don't think it's working great. So we have, I think, four or five of the big names kind of

centrally working at Fort Cavazos. What is it? I was fucking very confused by that Mexican ass name. It's here. It's in Texas. I know it's in Texas, but some city in Texas. Killeen. It's like two and a half hours. It's up between here and Dallas. We're in the same state. I thought Hood was way further away.

I don't think so. Might be thinking about Bliss. Bliss, never mind. Bliss is like eight hours. And it's over near New Mexico. Okay, buddy. I'm retarded. So we have them. It's okay, we accept you. I don't know why or how they're at Cavazos, but we have them there. I think they were there, and then we just brought them together. But they're not working for public affairs. They're like public affairs adjacent. And so...

I don't know. All I know is like when we're doing good stuff, we just changed the Army Fitness Test. I'll go to them and say, "Hey, change the Army Fitness Test. Here's why we changed it. Here's what we're saying about it. You guys want to do something? Please. It'd be great. It'd be helpful to us." And there were times when, and I don't know if we named names or whatever, some of the guys came back to me and said,

here, do you want to see it before it goes out? And I'm like, I don't want to see this shit. Because, you know, if you start worrying about me reviewing it, you know. Now it's on me. No, no, I don't care. I'll take all the risk. I'll take the risk saying, I'll take the risk saying, I purposely did not review it. But,

I always say this like when people are making videos and stuff. You know, you have a Van Gogh. You have a painting that you're very proud of. And then 16 levels of supervisors start putting the post-it notes on the painting. They're like, well, can you add this? Maybe you can make that shade a little bit darker because we're all super experts. And then you end up with new Star Wars. And then you end up with, yeah, yeah. There's a Star Wars thing over there. Bring back Jar Jar. All right.

I'm kidding. That was a bad joke. I regret that immediately. I'm like, these guys are the experts, obviously, based on their success and what they've shown to be able to do. And I trust that they have the Army's best interests at heart.

in in mind and so please just go do don't don't ask me to fuck with your thing because it's not going to be better it's probably going to be worse um so anyway we need to give them the freedom to to do the stuff we need to empower them and we really really like to keep them in the army but there's a lot of money out there and it's you know the army's still

requires a bunch of stuff from you. It's still like a dumb bureaucracy oftentimes. And so we got to try to sort that out a little bit better. Not really different than any large organizations, whether it's corporate, government. You get an entity to a certain size, you're going to have bureaucracy that just fucking sucks. Which is weird because in World War II, like we had...

The threat was existential. So we brought in people who we didn't think were normal for the army, like Oppenheimer. To do the Manhattan Project, we brought in engineers to do something wild. So having people with unique skills that aren't resident at large, it's not new. We're just treating it... People get concerned and they get weirded out. Social media, that's a skill. And you guys know, we talked about it a little bit this morning, what you do is unique and difficult and it's not...

it doesn't scale very well. So bringing those people then same with like technical expertise, same with engineers. So it's, it's not something we haven't done before. It's just people are uncomfortable because it's different. And one of the things that Dave's really good at, and I would say even if it wasn't here is just started going, eh, no, that's bullshit. We're going to do it anyway.

Let's talk about the tech guys real quick. Without naming names. Okay. So we've got... Did you want to throw somebody under the bus real quick? No, I want to like... I was like, can we name names? No, I want to applaud these guys because they're amazing Americans. I warned them first before we named names. So anyway, on the Army birthday, we're going to commission four high-level tech executives from companies that you'll...

very familiar companies, and these guys came to us and they said, hey, we see what's going on and the change and everything. We want to be a part of it more than we are, and we want to prove that we're a part of it by wearing the cloth of the nation. And so they're not doing it for the pay, fellas. No, they're all. We're going to commission them as reservists on June 13th,

Wait, they're actually, so they're in the civilian side already doing very, very well. They're tech executives. And they're joining the fucking reserves? Yep. Dude, fuck. And Brandon's one of them. Yeah. I said, I'm going to go to the Rangers. That's why he's going to Rangers school on the 14th. I'll see y'all motherfuckers in 62 days. We're going to get shipped out by ISIS. Ooh.

But it's super cool. What do you mean, activation? It's like, war were declared. You got the manscaper. Aw, man.

I threw that in there. You're going to... Is that one of your sponsors? It is. That was good. Hopefully it fits right here. Brought to you by Butler. Not endorsing any... Yeah, I'd just get you fired real quick. You're going to Klandathu. I saw one sitting over there, so I was like... The U.S. military does not endorse any brand of ball shaper.

We accept all the ball shavers. No. So we're going to commission them. We're going to direct commission, which is an authority that Congress gave us several years ago as cyber officers because they're all tech executives and we didn't have –

They're not going to be cyber people. They're not going to be doing offensive or anything, but that's the right place for them. It's one weekend a month still? This is the weird thing. It's actually not one weekend a month. It's a number of hours a year. Hours a year, yeah. What we're going to do is, frankly...

And all of us do the same thing. If we give you a hard problem, because what we're going to allow them to do is go to a unit, go, hey, what is the hardest thing that you have? Let me help you think it through. And everybody, all the ethics lawyers were like, oh, they're going to help their companies. No, they're all billionaires. They're literally billionaires already. Their companies don't need the Army's money. So no, they're not going to have insider trading issues. They just want to be there and be like, hey, how can we help you solve your problem?

So 200 hours a year. And frankly, what we're going to do is we're going to count it. They go and spend a day with one of our units and they go home and they're like, Hey, I'm going to think about this and like help you out. That counts. I mean, we'll get thousands and thousands of hours. They already spend a lot of that time. Because they already in bed with us. So we're going to commission them as Lieutenant Colonels. We got the SECDEF approved it. Congress is tracking. Damn, they're starting as Lieutenant Colonels? Yep. Well, they're of that age now.

Five weeks a year is essentially what you're asking from them. Basically. Dude, can we be lieutenant colonels?

Jesus, Eli. Eli's just twisting that screwdriver. Morally or ethically? That's for all of us. We all become lieutenant colonels. It is funny, though, that you mention that because you're like, these are already tech billionaires, whatever, because people have the concern they're going to pad their own pockets. I don't think those people have ever met anybody who's reached the $100 million line. No. Because maybe you take out some bankers and real estate people, whatever, those types out of the equation. But the

the people who made it by building a product just because they're smart guys and they just want to solve problems, they're built different. They are. And I had an opportunity to, um, so I know all of them personally, which is, uh,

i'm very thankful that i get to like know these people and work with them and help solve problems i spent hours with them in a van going out we took them to ntc like the greatest place on earth ford orwin california yeah um and it was just one of the greatest times we spent three hours going one way three hours going the other way just going like hey how do we think about this problem how could you solve it they just care about america enough to go i'll do this yeah so it's it's very cool that's a nice little teaser

for June 13th. But, uh, so what's up for the, what's on the horizon for you guys after the two 50, just back to work, uh, back to work. Yeah. We've got a, we've got a, uh, what I call in the infantry consolidate our gains and, and, um, uh,

Consolidate, reorganize. So once we go through kind of the budget cycle and cut all this stuff and we're reinvesting it, and then so we've got to move the Army to reorganize based on that and to change our training and our doctrine based on all the new stuff. Yeah, so through the rest of the summer –

The thing we keep mentioning and we actually haven't talked about it is the SECDEF signed out a memo called Army Transformation Initiative and told us to do things like consolidate two of our four-star headquarters, consolidate some of our forces command with some of our Army North and Army South. So the rest of the summer is working through how do you do that mechanically? Like where do you put those people?

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do we keep those people? Cause some, like the other thing that the president and the white house and the sect F are saying is slim yourself down. Like the headquarters have gotten too bulky. There's a lot of fat to be trimmed thinking through how do we do that? And then frankly, and this is like the unromantic unsexy thing from the Pentagon perspective, how do we set some of these things in motion and just let the army function and make sure that this stuff's there for them, for them, the being soldiers and units. Hmm.

Yep. And it's kind of a big deal. We're cutting a bunch, we're cutting a four-star headquarters. Actually, yeah, one main four-star headquarters. We're consolidating a bunch of commands.

cutting 40 plus general officer positions. So General George has really been doing this since he got to be the chief, but the Secretary of Defense gave us the directive and the kind of permission to do it. And so we're leaning out all the top heavy stuff in the Army and getting the numbers back into the force. So you have non-commissioned officers and you have soldiers in the formations and not

surrounding four-star generals somewhere. I bet you could probably help with some of the budgetary issues and whatnot if you guys just did an auction on the Millie portrait. Ooh, yeah. No comment. No comment.

I would be very curious to see what that would sell for and I know it's sitting in an office somewhere. So you want to talk about a tank? No. I had to. I had to. Sorry. It's like, fuck you. No, but like the other... I was not expecting that. No, but in...

There's a lot of other cool stuff going on. So like the headquarters stuff, that's all like bureaucracy stuff. If you want to know the cool stuff the Army's doing, like we're going to do live fires on the new tank. Like I'm going to go up to Detroit in July and see live fires. And like, how do we do that? We'll drive it in December. We'll do new rocket tests in July. We'll fly our new drones all through the summer. Can we be part of any of that?

that is it probably need to bring out yeah it will figure it out not open to the public but you know what I mean like yeah like it's not classified and and I love being able to tell taxpayers here's how we're spending your money here's how we're spending our money we're doing the right thing so yeah like it'll be on our dime we'll fly out there if you give us no I'm talking about like with like with like the tank stuff um yeah we'll still fly out hell yeah but if you let us shoot that that'd be awesome

No, I hate you, Moutari. It's like I hate the USAID shit where it's like, oh, we went to Sudan and spent $2 billion on male circumcision. God, man, I really just fucking hate the IRS. I see a tank blow up some shit from a mile away. I'm like, I can pay it.

We'll think about this. This new tank is kick-ass. It is. I don't even know what the new one is. It's called the M1E3. The Abrams is an amazing tank. It is the best main battle tank in the world. You definitely can. The M1A2V3, the Abram, best main battle tank in the world. It was hidden in a tent. Is that it? No, that's a webpage.

Yes. That's like the mock-up. So one of the things that's about that is it has an auto-loader. So how do you take... The same way that your rifle, you pull the trigger once and it cycles, right now inside of an Abrams...

fucking pull it and a dude literally opens her hands and fucking gets in there. What if we just automated that? So we'll start doing that. To my understanding, the Soviets were super big in the autoloaders, right? Yeah, Russians got really good at it. But that was one of the weaknesses of their tanks is that the autoloaders basically you hit anything into the turret and all those rounds go off. And it'll fail. Holy shit, the camera's on that bitch.

Yeah, so... I'm assuming that's a solved problem in this. Yeah, so that's what we're going through testing on, so that if you take a round... The main battle tank should be able to tank a round, right? And not...

self-destruct so yeah well the soviets weren't very good at that part yeah true lol but the other thing is their budget the reason they have so many cameras is what if that tank was also like i don't know optionally manned what if it was a robot itself and what if we had

I don't know, like F1 seats in there that were comfortable to drive and you could have software driving it for you and help you so that you don't have four dudes in a big metal box that have to crawl at the back of something catastrophic happens. That's what I was like. So a lot of the, you were even saying with breaching, it's like, hey, we can just have something, uh,

An object, a remote object breach, and then you don't have to worry about a soldier getting fucked up. Yeah, which we've done, by the way. The remote breaching. No shit. So, have you heard of the Miklik? Mine...

Oh, my gosh. Mine clearing. Shoots at a big charge. Yeah. And then blows up. It's like a big thing at deck court, essentially. Exactly. Exactly. So right now, soldiers drive that up there. You drive it up to the minefield, and you have to clear the minefield. And everybody knows where you're going, and everybody's shooting at you. So what if you just had a robot do that? Or even better, what if you had a robot drive up...

and like a bunch of small drones come off of it, go find the mines because they can have a camera and just go boop and blow up the mines. So you actually have something like, what if we just didn't put soldiers in really shitty situations all the time? Because we have robots to do it.

to think i want meat shields that's where i was well the russian army has some new openings they have five rounds and one rifle and you just figure it out it's funny though it's an important point though because it's funny at the end of the day right as savage as we are human beings are um

You're not... Wars are won by putting soldiers in the mud, taking and holding terrain. So we still need it. All this drones and the robots and stuff and all this stuff that this guy's developing in his evil bedroom at night or whatever the fuck. Why do you say evil? It's very dark and scary. And bedroom? Why did I say bedroom? That's my thinking space. Yeah.

Anyway, it's not going to replace soldiers on the ground. And so our stuff is built around getting soldiers into position to take and hold ground. But not making them do the shitty jobs. Well, the dangerous ones. God, I joined way too early. What are robots good at? Dull, dirty, dangerous. That's what robots are good for. And all the things that...

Like soldiers will always do dangerous things. Like we expect them on behalf of the country to do like terrible things on our behalf. Driving, finding every port-a-potty possible. Like what, like what if some of the things that we know, we know that we can like stop that. Like what if into the breach, like into the first dude in the door, what if that was a robot every time?

instead of just one of our guys. That'd be cool. Right? So second guy in isn't soaking up all the fire because the robot's gone. And if the robot blows up and dies, okay, we'll build Wall-E 2.0. Well, I mean, according to my Marine Corps friends, the first guy in is usually an M67 frag grenade. There is that. But what if the robot threw five of them? With googly eyes. Yeah.

Hey shit-ass! Assalamu alaikum! What is it, fucking Craighead? Hello, Muhammad! Butler's just sweating.

So, but what's replaced with frag grenade? So we are sending now a drone in, you know, like the high-end special operations units. Baghdadi, others were killed. The drones are going in first. Oh, dude. Dogs with cameras. Yeah, actually, one of my buddies was on that raid. No shit. Yeah.

Cool story. But yeah, they were on that and the dog because the way they actually pivot, they said the dog died and dog was fine. Yeah. The work was fine. Yep. And the robot dog.

No, the dog-dog. Dog-dogs. Oh, they sent in real dogs. Yeah, fucking canine. Real dogs, cameras, drones, explosive drones. Yep. Sending all that shit in first. So like Mrs. Regiment doing some of their FPV stuff where that's their shoot house and they literally flew the drone in and then cleared it. No shit. Whoa, whoa. That's fucking dope. Cool.

So it's just the little drone that goes in first. Yeah, and think about it. You put a 9-banger on. And you don't care about the drone coming back. But you fly a 9-banger in, and you clear it, and the first dude in. Everybody's before the first guy reaches. We could do that every time. That's fucking wild. Yeah, Baghdadi clacked himself off before. Yeah, because he was a pussy. So you got dollars and everything from it. Yeah.

And then that's the one I showed you about earlier. That's the ISV with all the gun mounts on it. I'll show him that. That's his wheelhouse. Oh, that absolutely is just Warthog-esque. Right? I'm like, where's the Gauss cannon? Shit.

But, you know, the Rangers have to gun it up. And I'm like, it's not for fighting from, guys. No. It's just mobility. It gets you there so you don't have to walk in 12 miles. Lots of guns on it. So is every acquisition process as fucking as much of a shit show as the NGSW program?

Yes. That's not fair. So it's super easy to shit on acquisition people. There's a lot of really good ones. Like our acquisition. Alex used to be an acquisitions guy. No, I'm qualified as an acquisition professional. He's got the acquisitions tab. Yeah.

It's like PowerPoint Ranger. So our acquisition military deputy, he's a three-star. He's phenomenal. I've worked with him for a decade. He is a changemaker. Our current principal deputy for acquisition, you just came from Congress. He's a changemaker. And not to shit on the guys, but the process. The process itself. Okay. So we're changing. We are changing. So during GWAT. Characterization of needs. Yeah. So during GWAT, we had a way better way to do this. If you were like, hey, I need something. We were like,

Yeah, why wouldn't we buy that? And we just bought things. We bought the right things. Black credit card, go for it. So if it was legal, moral, and ethical then, it's legal, moral, and ethical now. So what we're doing now is instead of like, we do this stupid thing where we have a requirements document and somebody who's making up words and they sound really cool and the document's like this thick and nobody ever actually reads it. And I mean that. Nobody probably just got really offended. I don't care. Nobody actually reads those things. So what if we just said, hmm, it should work.

It should probably do like these things. It should work. It should work. It should probably do these things. So you're describing like outcomes instead of specific things. So for our command and control stuff, and everybody here has seen TAC or iTAC or ATAC where it's literally like an Android app on a phone. You've got the phone in there. So as we redo all of our command and control things, like we just said, hey, what if commanders could see to their unit from a tablet?

what if we could just see everything from a tablet? Like build the architecture that does that because I can see everything on Google Maps. I can put tabs down. Like we know the technology exists. Like the unit did this a decade ago. It's simple. People can already use it. Yeah, exactly. The UI is already like if you've used an iPhone, you know how to drop pins. Like everybody already intuitively. It's the reason why the baseball grenade. Exactly. That's a great example. So if we told industry –

Well, like 97% of kids coming into the army have never thrown a baseball. It worked in World War II. It did. Wait, what? Oh, wait, pause. So let's go back to the afternoon. Okay. So what if we just told industry, like the best of industry, like the companies that we have working on the first tranche, and I can say this, nobody should get offended, like the Palantirs, the Andrals, the Microsoft, the Googles, the Kavinis, the Sierra Nevada. Like what if we just said, hey, it should sort of work on a tablet, figure out the rest of it so it doesn't suck.

And we just let them sort of work together, like literally sit at a table and go, like, here's what it should look like. Here's how we should work. It should be as easy as we give it to you. It's on an iPhone. You figure out if it's something that doesn't work, you tell us and we'll fix it. What if we just did that instead of this whole bullshit process that takes seven years and you are like out of the service by the time we give it to you? It's almost like the Hellfire or the drones where it's like, hey, just give them to a –

give them an xbox controller yeah and then these kids know how to do it exactly like there's a reason that companies design the way they do for our everyday lives um what if we just did that so we did so we we put some of these guys on contract we said get around the table figure it out four months later they came up with the first prototype we took it to ntc we gave it to an armor formation so we gave it to a bunch of tankers we gave it to a striker unit and we said does it work and they went this is way better than anything because

Because they could see themselves. They could see the enemy. They could task each other. They could talk to each other. And it was super simple. So we told them, hey, don't watch PredPorn all the time. That chews up all your bandwidth. And we know we all like watching the strikes, but don't do that. And they went, okay. Did they have the option to? Yeah. Oh, that would be a hard one not to watch. It's the bad habits of GWAT. You're always pulling in.

Like you could see it. You had access, so you watched it. Full motion video. It's just like...

Oh, they're going buzzer on. They're going buzzer on. So we said, like, hey, what if we were just smarter? What happened to my frame rate? What are those three guys doing over there? Is there a goat? So what's going to happen to the goat? Life finds a way. Oh, no. No, no. And then what if we, like, said, hey, there's Starlink.

antennas and starshell antennas, we could give you bandwidth. So we let them iterate on that for a year. And that is going to replace all of our command and control systems. So all of the, the, like the fire systems, which are,

We've had those for 30 years. It's really good at what it does. What if it was just like, there's a target I don't want to strike it. What are my options? Or what if AI was like, Hey, there's a target. You can strike it. Here are your options. Here's the best one. It's the AI saying, and here's the best way to fire at it. Yeah. And so you don't go like Winchester on everything. Yeah.

But just to describe what the old fire system was, it's standalone boxes, standalone computer boxes with its own satellite trailer. Every single thing we have is a standalone system that requires men, women,

maintenance the whole thing and now what if every app on your iphone i had to give you a new iphone like that's the thing yeah you had to have carry like 17 different iphones just to yeah like function in life i love the ai process of it because then it is no different than chess ai it's like hey here's the the greatest move that you can do here's the second best here's the third best it's just doing that for you but there still needs to be that human

Yeah.

Tomahawk, Tomahawk. You'll definitely kill it with a Tomahawk. One dude, Tomahawk. One tank, Tomahawk. Well, once you develop the meta. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, then we were like, hey. 100% results. What if we didn't have infinite Tomahawks? What if the GameShark wasn't on? That's easy. I just hit you there. I'm fine. I'm fine.

I pictured that fucking meme video of like the nose of the aircraft going. And they're like, Oh, no more Tomahawks SM three. It's like, what if we didn't have that? So it's like, how do we train these things so that they actually do the things that are useful. So if the, so you actually have what's useful in a fight. Cause not everything's going to get like Tomahawks and everything's going to get a B two strike.

so it's it's training and then some stuff should lots of things like we're just gonna glass it yeah that's that's one of my thanks

That's one of my personal favorite upgrades in this administration is the fact that the president of the United States will post on social media just through the official White House account flat out just thermal war porn. Bro, that was the most wild thing to see. It happened again this week. I've never seen that, dude. Oh, yeah. He basically just like, oh, these are 10 Somalis that were a problem and now they're not. We send that to group chats because it's like, yo, and then you check where it comes from and you're like...

That's a silver button. Now soldiers don't need to pull that in from the internal network. They can just go to Twitter or to social and go find it. Yeah, that's a valid target. But like...

How do we recover from this? The AI stuff though is just, there's one more level on the targeting because like what we're seeing, there's a little bumper sticking out of a thing. And so human eye, drone footage, you might not pick that up, but AI is like, no, that bumper's an enemy bumper. Like two of the exact same thing. They could be Hiluxes, they could be PTRs, they could be whatever. But what if like,

What if I was just like, now my AI can go, hey, that's the one you were tracking. Like that specific dent in that specific place, that's the one that we were looking at before. This is the same target. We can track it all the way through. Dude, people, we talked about the other day with the chess AI and how it can develop. Someone got caught cheating in an AI tournament on a low level and they're like, oh, they didn't cheat. Was it Lupo? It was Lupo. Which means wolf in Italian. Does it? Yeah.

I just retired a guy named Pete Lupo. Oh, I did not even know that. Just so you know. Now it's your problem. Now you do. But...

Cheating on chess is the easiest thing to catch. And when a dude is... AI will give you every strongest move. And then if somebody else does a dumb move, then it's like, oh, well, here's the next best move for that. It's calculating everything, as you said, at this level of a degree. So that's where human error is not going to catch that. But AI 100% is going to catch that. And faster. And yeah. And it's a skill thing, right? So everybody...

AI is like a buzzword. Everybody loves it. And we use it all the time. Like I don't, I used to know how the algorithms for ways work and I just stopped caring because it works enough for me. But that's, that's a version of AI. It is, but it's,

Yeah. It's like Skynet's on the way. And I'm like, I, for one, welcome our glorious robot overlords. Please don't kill me first. I definitely also welcome the American version more than the Chinese one. Yeah. Totally. People act like if we don't do it, then nobody else will. That's right. They're absolutely not. The social credit score is a real thing. That is all facial recognition tied to your personality. I'm safe. My eyes. Yeah.

i am not wait how do you get your square up i'm just asking just wondering if you have to if you have to ask social media social media is how you get your credit score social media score what is it social social credit score yeah we'd be good

Think I'm not kind of social no, I think it's not based on the things like how citizen you Know we were all weird. We're definitely all going to the gulag. Yeah, I'm gonna find the best rock if you've ever if you've ever compared glorious leader to Glorious

Okay, well, AI conversation's done. I actually think you guys have to start getting on this one, so actually get this wrapped up. First off, where do we find, well, Army, Army, or where do we find you guys? GoArmy.com. Yep, that's the easiest way. I'm the best Army spokesman. I'm like, what's our website? GoArmy.com. GoArmy.com. GoArmy.com. Anything else you guys want to say while we still have you here?

Thanks for having us on. Honestly, what you guys do is unique and it's certainly important.

You like it's just a group of dudes that sit around table and BS like any of us could but then you stumble on some really important things and so like you did in Buffalo and and Things like having us on we really really appreciate that and I mean it from by my heart and from the secretary and chief Thanks appreciate you guys a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Can I be like a zealot for the army for a second? Um

I want to reiterate, we have a badass army.

Like, we do everything everywhere, every day on every continent. Like, people don't understand the global response force for the world is 18th Airborne Corps. The immediate response force for the world is 82nd Airborne Division. The Homeland Defense Brigade under 10th Mountain is under 4th ID is 2nd Brigade. We are the Corps of Engineers. National Guard does all of the humanitarian assistance. Like, your army is responsible for literally everything, every day, every mission around the world. And

And that is why – it's certainly why I get up every day and go to work. I know it's the same for Dave. I know it's the same for General George. I know it's the same for Secretary Driscoll. But as we think through what the future of the Army is, we are literally thinking every mission, every day, every hour, every continent. And thank you guys for letting us have a platform and sharing it with you. We appreciate it. Thanks for making the trip, guys. Glad you guys are here. Cody, do your job.

Bye, everyone. Thank you for coming to the Unsubscribe podcast. I'm joined today by Eli Doubletap, Dr. Alex Miller, Colonel Butler, Brandon Rarer, and myself, Donut Operator. Thank you so much for coming out. We love you. Thank you, guys. See you all at 250. We'll see you next time.

Yeah. Yeah.

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