Jocko Podcast 303: Always Look for New Information. The Psychology of Military Incompetence.

2021-10-14T06:37:18Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @davidrberke @kerry_helton 0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:44 - On The Psychology of Military Incompetence. Norman Dixon. 2:28:21 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 2:51:59 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

So maybe if I know you too and you both were raised in this super strict way and yet Kerry was like, you know what, you know my mom was just a little bit crazy and that's cool and but Dave was like, it couldn't let it go. This book is going to be, there's so much in this book and I'll start to speed up a little bit I think as we push into the next podcast, hit some of the high waves for the section where they cover the historical disasters, but like I said, it's not like he just talks about the historical disasters and explain what happens. You know, I feel like that's the generic go to, right where it's like the rebel, you know, came from that strict Catholics school, you know, whatever, they just go the other way. So, it's like, you know, like when you're, if you're maybe you support a local bike or gang, but you're not in the bike or gang, but you got friends, you can wear that bike or gang stuff, but you got to have support on there. I don't like, and hey, no criticism of that's your game, but like, in the stuff that people put in there and like, I put in the sugar cup, I shake it up when I drink it and there's nothing I want to echo Charles over here. But when it comes to military stuff, I like military books that are written by military people, not books that are written by theorist or even historians and academics that haven't been there. Again, this is where you know, you get into like, you know, Freud and how you're raised and all these little things that are in your childhood and they, and I don't know if that's right or wrong. Ouch, he wrote this in 1976, just saying he's like, hey, if you go to the military right now, you know, this tentative supposition is based on the fact that fewer and fewer of the young consider the military to be a worthwhile career. And the reason I think I don't dip as much into the childhood stuff is I've known people that had authoritarian parents and didn't end up like this, right, had whatever hyper-religious, strict parents and ended up, you know, in every level, every type of different person. What, you know, if you're a in college and you like uniformity and you're looking at your dorm room going gosh, I wish everyone would just be quiet and you're like, oh, you're not enjoying them. Like we know what kind of, we know you're, you're like lean and really hard. So like, all you do is the like, you shouldn't write a book, like exactly, you're the reason why. So here's the original quote, according to the memoirs of Field Marshal Vaughan, Falcon Hein, side by Own Clark Field Marshal, then Ludenhürf's comment, the English soldiers fight like Lions was greeted by his friend, major general Max Hoffman with true, but don't we know they are Lions Led by Donkeys and they got a picture in this book of some general giving a young soldier own award and the caption is Donkey Decorates Alliance. And there's a scene where he's leading this platoon and he runs into, like, I think it's like he's maneuvering to get to some objective and, and he ends up up against, like, a barbed wire face. I feel like they become, you know, if you start to get emotional, which which can happen, especially when you've got wives at stake or you're, you know, you just pointed to hack where it's book. Like, oh, I could see people going, oh, bees the best example because he got the most information. So just to both of what you're saying, that idea, like, oh, those things you go, man, I don't want a bunch of yes men uniform thinking, you know, a group think. So he's having conversations with people telling he's going to write this book and they're like, well, why are you going to do that? Like, hey, if you're a business and you're in the authoritarian, okay, cool, you're going to, you're going to drive some people crazy, whatever. I got to line up in my closet or my, my pantry, but it's, it's like, um, you know, it's like afterburner orange for me. I like to eat sure, but you know, some people, they, they, they, they have like a hole. Professor of Military History University of North Texas director of their military history center, and this is his, his forward to the book, which the reason I wanted to read the forward is because it starts to lay out the themes inside this book and you start to get an understanding of where this guy's coming from. He says, this book is not an attack upon the armed forces, no upon the norm upon the vast majority of senior military commanders who in time of war succeed in tasks which would make the running of a large commercial enterprise seem like child's play by comparison. but it's not supposed to be any spends all this time reacting to the idea that this fence was not on the map and the people are on like, sir, but it's like a barbed wire fence. Norman Dixon's on the psychology of military incompetence is a classic that should be read not because it is true in every detail, but because it offers the military historian analyst or student and important method to discover and rank the manifold reason for military error and defeat. And there's a certain military, like a military bearing, right? And meaning people can start acting crazy and you know having people say no they're not like, okay. But the book is, I mean, you're going to see real quick that this book is pretty incredible book and I don't know how many podcasts we'll do on it. He's like, no, I kind of am used to these type of things going the way that people don't expect it. You run that loop until you figure out what you should do, which is pretty straight, which is seems complicated and you, you know how it tells me, hard, it's going to be hard to make a really like a solid decision. They're going to surprise you because the situation is going to their circuit breaker is going to pop and it's going to blow their minds. So, if you're, if you're about those layers, if you listen to the podcast, you're like, yes, like I'm about the layers, check out the shirt locker that goes cranking out a new shirt every month with a different layer from the podcast presented on them. If you aim this book at yourself and you every time I hear a four every time I say a fouritarian theme instead of thinking like about your boss or about some subordinate leader that you have, if you instead think, oh, how am I a fouritarian?

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocopontcast number 303 with Carrie Helden and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Carrie.
[00:00:07] Good evening. Also, joining us tonight is Dave Burke, Good evening, Dave.
[00:00:13] So Dave, I've been sitting on this for a while, sitting on this book for a while.
[00:00:17] I think I've been sitting on it for almost a year, almost a year I've been sitting on this book.
[00:00:23] And I've been waiting for the right time to cover this book. And I don't think there's a better time than right now.
[00:00:32] The reason that I don't think there's a better time than right now, you'll figure out, as soon as I say, the title of the book.
[00:00:38] The title of the book is on the psychology of military incompetence.
[00:00:46] And what does that mean? Well, one thing it means is, as we look at military leaders, a lot of times people think, oh, this individual isn't a military, they must be awesome.
[00:01:04] I mean, it happens 100% in the SEAL community. Oh, this guy was a SEAL, he must be of the highest character, must be an unbelievable leader, must be a great runner.
[00:01:15] Right? Must be great at pull ups and swimming must be the best shot. Right? So, so people make assumptions about the SEAL teams. Oh, if you were sealed, then you must be able to survive at a minimum of 78 days with, you know, nothing but a loincloth and a toothpick.
[00:01:35] That's kind of, you're picking up what I'm putting down, right? Same thing happens with leadership. You think, oh, this individual isn't in the military, they made life and death decisions. They must be incredible leaders.
[00:01:48] And we can also attribute that to leaders in the past too. Well, this person was a general, this person was, you know, a military leader in the 1800s and the 1600s, they must have military brilliance.
[00:02:04] Well, this book disputes that not whole, not not as a whole. And he makes it very important point.
[00:02:15] And I had this discussion with Jason Gardner the other day after the Afghanistan podcast, Jason's like, well, there's a lot of good leaders, nice to have you there and I've worked for a lot of incredible leaders in the military.
[00:02:28] But to blank it all leaders in the military and say, oh, they're in the military. So they're awesome is a bad move. And you can actually say throughout history, there have been some really bad leaders and it's relatively consistent that you get bad military leaders, bad senior military leaders. So this is something I was interested in. This book is written by a guy named Dr Norman F. Dixon.
[00:02:55] I don't really remember where I originally heard about the book. It might have been one of the like, Algarith Nick recommendations which
[00:03:04] Do we hate the algorithm kind of, but sometimes we're a little bit stoked about the algorithm. So I might have been an algorithm. It might have been maybe somebody recommended it to me.
[00:03:13] But I look at it. And obviously I like the military. That's what this podcast is. We do all kinds of military subjects on this podcast. Obviously I like psychology as well. And the much of the jockel underground podcast. We've covered a bunch of psychology.
[00:03:30] But when it comes to military stuff, I like military books that are written by military people, not books that are written by theorist or even historians and academics that haven't been there. So I don't normally like those kind of military books that are written by someone that wasn't a military.
[00:03:49] So I wasn't sure if this book would make the great. Then I did some research and here's the deal. The author Dr Norman Dixon MBE, which is British like thing.
[00:04:03] Most excellent order of British Empire, which you're given for your achievements in the arts and sciences. He received his doctrine philosophy in 1956. Dr. Science 1972, 1976 he was awarded.
[00:04:19] Sorry, 1956, I say 1956, Dr. Nphilosophy, 1956, Dr. Nphilosophy. Dr. Science 1972, 1976 awarded the University of London Carpenter Medal for Coorcov exceptional distinction in experimental psychology.
[00:04:35] So the guy has some cloud bringing home some hardware. He's bringing home some hardware. He's a professor, a meritist at of psychology at the University of University of
[00:04:50] London. Author to other books besides this one, once called our own worst enemy, got to like that title, another one called unconscious processing another one called subliminal perception. So that's all impressive.
[00:05:04] He wasn't sure if it made the great, but what tied it all together for me is that prior to all the stuff that he did, he was in the British Army from 1940 till 1950 and that means he fought World War II was wounded in World War II wounded.
[00:05:20] This is according to him, he was wounded, called largely through my own incompetence, which is we're coming out of the gate with some humility, which is nice, but it gives it means his perspective is he has that perspective of a soldier of someone that's fought, of someone that's been in combat, then he can overlay that on his academic knowledge.
[00:05:43] But the book is, I mean, you're going to see real quick that this book is pretty incredible book and I don't know how many podcasts we'll do on it. I'm assuming it'll be two maybe three.
[00:05:57] I don't know how much we'll even be able to get through today, but with that, I'm going to start off with the forward of the book, which is written by a guy named Jeffrey Wawro, hope I'm saying that right, if not, I apologize to Jeffrey Wawro.
[00:06:14] Professor of Military History University of North Texas director of their military history center, and this is his, his forward to the book, which the reason I wanted to read the forward is because it starts to lay out the themes inside this book and you start to get an understanding of where this guy's coming from.
[00:06:37] Anything? Makes sense so far. This is a book that I was burning through highlighters.
[00:06:46] It's almost one of the books where you might as well just stop highlighting because you're highlighting everything. So here we go.
[00:06:53] The forward to normed, Dixon's on the psychology of military incompetence. Norman Dixon's on the psychology of military incompetence is a classic that should be read not because it is true in every detail, but because it offers the military historian analyst or student and important method to discover and rank the manifold reason for military error and defeat.
[00:07:14] That's a bold statement coming out of the gate. What he's saying, the manifold reasons for military error and defeat are found in this book coming out of the gate strong.
[00:07:25] And there's a couple notes in there, not true in every detail. The reason for that is the way the book is laid out. It covers a lot of historical battles and wars.
[00:07:34] And I think that Dixon was sensitive being an academic about the way historians would read it. Well actually, a date is wrong. And so he covers that himself to and says, look.
[00:07:48] Ballpark where in there, this is what happened. It's not an adding going fact check everything, but ballpark, this is what happened. So it's not a historical reference. And he says that later, continuing on Dixon just deployed psychological theory in a lucid accessible way and applies it in several case studies spanning the 19th century and 20th centuries.
[00:08:08] He is in some ways constrained by chronology. The British officer types he scrutinizes are creatures of their age, Boris conservative and authoritarian.
[00:08:20] And this authoritarian piece that he's talking about. This may be the underlying theme of the book, this authoritarian attitude and personality type.
[00:08:33] And what it means and what it does to you and what it does to your people.
[00:08:38] Continuing on, they went to stuffy boarding schools and endured tyrannical parents and school teachers. They enlisted in a class system that expected snobbish conformity.
[00:08:47] And yet the deeper you read into the book, the more you realize that the specific circumstances of a raglan, haig, Montgomery are less important than their lifelong enlistment in the military hierarchy that constrains an often warps behavior.
[00:09:02] And you can see he's starting to throw out names, raglan, haig, Montgomery. So that's what this book is. He refers to individuals and shows what they did well, what they did bad and he does cover good leaders as well.
[00:09:16] At the heart of this book is a thesis that all can accept.
[00:09:20] All human decision makers are victims of a chronic hazard that emotion and motivation unconsciously distort and bias all fought and perception.
[00:09:31] Right? It's like crazy. This is what we talk about all the time.
[00:09:38] Detach from your emotions. You get distorted what he's writing in E.E.E. Go clouds all decisions.
[00:09:47] Right? That's what he's talking about.
[00:09:49] Man's needs biological, social or neurotic act on his perception of the world around him and the decisions he makes. No one in other words operates cleanly.
[00:10:02] What a good thing to remember. No one operates cleanly. You all have it going on.
[00:10:09] I did a underground podcast a while back and I talked about the fact that we're all insane.
[00:10:16] And that is something the definition of insanity is that your world doesn't match reality.
[00:10:24] And the fact of the matter is my world doesn't match your reality, Dave.
[00:10:28] I know we're probably pretty freaking close because we work in the same job. We have a similar background.
[00:10:33] But there's no way that you see things exactly the way I see it.
[00:10:37] Kerry, you and I have a similar background. But there's no way that we match up our realities don't match.
[00:10:46] So that means we're all insane. It's just a matter of what degree.
[00:10:50] And that means everyone you interact with is kind of insane. That means their reality is different than yours.
[00:10:56] So when you're in a leadership position, you're dealing with other people.
[00:10:59] Their reality is different than yours. So when you're making a decision and they hear that decision, their reality is different than yours.
[00:11:09] No one in other words operates cleanly.
[00:11:14] Singleness of mind, a key ingredient of successful command is always under siege by doubt, worries and distractions.
[00:11:22] We all churn through a sludge of life experiences that have formed us and left us with key strengths and weaknesses.
[00:11:30] The challenge for military commanders is all the greater because the stakes of their decisions are so high
[00:11:35] and because they operate in stressful environments, a made hunger, fatigue, heater cold, sleep deprivation,
[00:11:41] and the relentless ticking of the clock.
[00:11:45] Not for nothing, didn't Napoleon call unforgiving time. The grand element in warfare, which is epic because lately I've been talking about the leadership loop.
[00:11:58] And the number one thing I said you have to consider the number one thing that's in the front of my mind all the time in any leadership situation is time.
[00:12:05] What does he call the grand element? Time is what you have to think about.
[00:12:09] And sometimes the thought is, oh, we got plenty of time, which is cool.
[00:12:12] But you got to think about that. People that don't keep time in front of mind, they're always behind. They're always behind.
[00:12:24] Bro, we're two paragraphs.
[00:12:27] And I'll just said something.
[00:12:29] Go ahead. Go ahead. What do you got?
[00:12:31] I just, I always like hearing how these people write.
[00:12:34] And the word, like, this is a good writer. This is a right swell.
[00:12:38] This is just the full world, bro. But the fact that he went through all those things he was talking about, he called and I don't remember all the words.
[00:12:45] And when he got to time, he added the additional component of ungrateful ending.
[00:12:51] Because the heat, we can, it can relent, or we've got maybe some technology that we're going to wear a coat or some cold weather.
[00:12:59] We can mitigate all these other things.
[00:13:03] But time is unrelenting. There is no mitigation. And that is, that will be forever forever.
[00:13:10] We're not going to technology our way out of the time issue. Like, oh, we'll just slow time down.
[00:13:15] Like, we can manage the heat and all those other elements. I just like the way they, he adds that piece to it.
[00:13:20] And what's already, they can just a good, the way he writes is awesome.
[00:13:23] That's why as a leader and as a person, it has to be the number one thing you think about.
[00:13:27] It's the only thing that will give you no slack whatsoever.
[00:13:31] No, zero. That's it. That clock is ticking.
[00:13:38] Dixon uses several cases studies to elucidate military incompetence. He begins with a crummy and war,
[00:13:44] which Britain undertook in an era of rapid industrialization, prosperity and commercial dominance.
[00:13:49] Wouldn't it, wouldn't you think if you've got rapid industrialization, prosperity and commercial dominance,
[00:13:53] you just go crush everyone on a battlefield, wouldn't you think that?
[00:13:57] Victorian Britain was the last word in efficiency? Yet its military stumbled from one blood
[00:14:04] disaster to the next piling up 21,000, mostly avoidable dead.
[00:14:09] How could this be in view of Britain's world leadership?
[00:14:13] Much of it, Dixon finds, had to do it the command performance of 66-year-old Lord Ragland,
[00:14:20] an extreme introvert who died of severe depression during the campaign,
[00:14:25] and drifted like a rudderless ship. The officers under him suffered a familiar dilemma.
[00:14:29] If they took matters into their own hands, they could be accused of in subordination.
[00:14:34] If they let the rudderless ship drift further, they could be accused of incompetence.
[00:14:39] That's a catch 22.
[00:14:42] Ultimately, nothing was done.
[00:14:46] And the British troops and taxpayers bore the brunt of their systemic and command incompetence
[00:14:53] of which the notorious charge of the light brigade was but the thin end of the wedge.
[00:14:58] Since a foretarian organization, again, you're going to hear this word.
[00:15:03] And it took me a while to pick up on it. Even though it's really obvious to me right now,
[00:15:06] this authoritarian attitude is like this underlying one of the underlying themes throughout this.
[00:15:12] Since authoritarian organizations like the military are masters at shifting blame,
[00:15:17] the time-honor tactic of the cornered child.
[00:15:21] The British army survived the fiasco of the Korean-Korean war unreformed.
[00:15:27] So they went through all that 21,000 dead who knows what the price tag was, no reforms.
[00:15:34] A major theme of this book is in the incuragibility of military organizations.
[00:15:39] They must be removed from their pedestals cracked open and filled with daylight,
[00:15:43] which is another way of saying subjected to rigorous scrutiny and review.
[00:15:47] Unfortunately, they rarely are.
[00:15:50] Raglan's folly, which made the Crimean War.
[00:15:54] In Dixon's judgment, the prototype for protracted military incompetence was followed by the Burur War.
[00:16:01] Somehow, despite the similarities of the two campaigns fought far away for imperial interests,
[00:16:08] Britain applied no lessons learned from the Crimean campaign.
[00:16:13] London's performance in 1899 was even worse than 1855. It's, quote, military incompetence,
[00:16:21] straining, credibly, to the breaking point.
[00:16:25] Indeed, the British officers took pride in their amateurness.
[00:16:28] Their clubbing, good fellowship and their conviction that any effort at self-improvement or bad form.
[00:16:35] I'm going to say that again.
[00:16:37] Imagine you're in a group of people where self-improvement is considered bad form.
[00:16:44] They clung to unhelpful routines like sand crabs clinging to seaweed in storm time.
[00:16:51] They battled guerrillas on the South African Velt with luxury and baggage, including pianos,
[00:16:58] gramophones, chests of drawers, polo mallets, and mobile kitchens and bathrooms.
[00:17:06] The fight begins with the Burur's savages.
[00:17:11] Just horrible.
[00:17:13] General Redverse Bullar commanded the expedition like Raglan.
[00:17:19] He was in over his head. He lacked command experience imagination and confidence.
[00:17:23] He was passive and defiedists. The booer swept over him like a turnt.
[00:17:28] He never stopped retreating and the press nicknamed him reverse bullar.
[00:17:35] Field Marshal Douglas Hague's commanded World War I is an obvious place to stop and relish the psychology of military incompetence.
[00:17:44] Since Dickson's book, there has been a vigorous debate about Hague, foreign against,
[00:17:48] but few would dispute that Hague's psychology had much to do with his mediocre to a bismal performance as British expeditionary force commander.
[00:17:58] He was an old cavalryman with an outmoded view of warfare.
[00:18:03] He'd been ruled as a boy by a stern religious mother. He was solitary, aloof, and inspired by an obsessive need for orger.
[00:18:12] And this is another one of those things. That's sort of the authoritarian mindset.
[00:18:16] Everything to be organized. You want everything to be in order.
[00:18:19] And I'll say, and I'm not a super psychological nerd or psychology nerd,
[00:18:25] but he definitely dips into the childhood stuff. Probably a little bit more than I would.
[00:18:30] And the reason I think I don't dip as much into the childhood stuff is I've known people that had authoritarian parents and didn't end up like this,
[00:18:38] right, had whatever hyper-religious, strict parents and ended up, you know, in every level, every type of different person.
[00:18:48] I've known people that had total hippies for parents and led the kids do whatever they want,
[00:18:52] and I've seen those kids end up in different places on the spectrum.
[00:18:56] So I don't know if I, I don't know if I correlate these things as much or put as much weight on the upbringing as Dickson does.
[00:19:07] But that's just me. It's interesting to know. Could be it's definitely a contributing factor depending on how your personality reacts to it.
[00:19:15] Because I mean, we, you and I have kids, Dave, the kids are different.
[00:19:21] Like the kids are different. You could put them in a controlled environment with the exact same situation.
[00:19:28] Because you know, oh, the ones in the middle child, the ones in the oldest. And so, oh, this so that means you treat them differently.
[00:19:32] Well, even if you put them in a controlled environment, they got personalities. And that personality is going to come out.
[00:19:41] So obsessive need for word. It took him too long to grasp just how radically technology like machine guns and heavy artillery had changed warfare and rendered most of what he'd learned at staff college in the 1890s obsolete.
[00:19:54] Incredibly, he consisted to the end of the war that the battles he was engaged in were not quote normal warfare,
[00:20:01] which is just a bizarre mindset. Like this is normal.
[00:20:06] We'll get back to normal. This is just happening right now. This is normal.
[00:20:10] That's again, that reality versus mindset or perception. Like this is reality. This is your normal.
[00:20:17] Yeah, yeah. Then he hasn't figured that out.
[00:20:20] Negative. He's insane.
[00:20:22] Insane.
[00:20:23] Worse, he gave his subordinates the singular gift of the authoritarian defined by Dixon as to a terrible crippling obedience.
[00:20:36] Officers had to implement Higgs vague instructions. He left much and down because he was so unsure of himself or be replaced and disgraced.
[00:20:46] Higgs influence was awful.
[00:20:48] Officers under him were expected to attack and show quote offensive spirit even against the most invincible defensive fire.
[00:20:56] This was to demonstrate quote pluck and quote dash and quote optimism.
[00:21:02] Can you even fathom that shit?
[00:21:05] You're in World War One and my address to you Dave is like, hey Dave, alright, listen mate, what I want you to do is just I want you to charge with all your heart and show that the show the enemy that you got some fucking
[00:21:18] dash.
[00:21:20] By the way, yesterday you watched your entire Bethalion get mode down or your friends Battalion get mode down.
[00:21:28] To shelter in the trenches was to exhibit the disqualifying sin of pessimism.
[00:21:35] Danny, what's wrong with me? What you doing down there in the trench?
[00:21:39] Won't you get up there? Go on. Go on, son.
[00:21:43] It's that's the disqualifying. It isn't like hey, hey, let's let's pull Dave out of his funk here. He's like, oh, he's in capable of doing this because he's his behavior reveals that he's the pessimistic pessimistic about living.
[00:21:56] And this is a guy who you said I think the quote was took too long to recognize the impact of the machine gun.
[00:22:01] How many engagements with a machine gun do you need for ego? Oh, yeah things are different now.
[00:22:06] You don't even need one complete engagement by the way.
[00:22:09] You get you get one volley of fire. You go oh shit just changed to everybody get back in the briefing room.
[00:22:17] We need a new point.
[00:22:20] All armies began the great war like this, but only a hege kept it up until 1917 coldly firing officers who wouldn't follow his ghastly directives.
[00:22:29] And he's brutally dispatched from a shadow dozens of miles behind the lines. Dixon's brilliant description of the military authoritarian fits hay like a Savile Roe suit.
[00:22:42] Superfishal toughness and ordering orderlyness are quote a brittle crust of defense against feelings of weakness and inadequacy.
[00:22:51] The authoritarian keeps up his spirits by whistling in the dark.
[00:22:54] He's the frightened child who wears the armor of a giant. His mind is a door locked in bolted shut against that which he fears most himself.
[00:23:06] The imagery is outstanding here. This guy is yeah he's sitting on the.
[00:23:12] All readers will appreciate the drift of Dixon's book, which might be summarized in George Bernard Shaw's wartime clip that quote, the British soldier can stand up to anything except the British war office.
[00:23:23] Mike Roe managing and stifling of initiative are byproducts of the hierarchy of military system.
[00:23:36] A yearning for old certain teas like the horse and the battleship, even when tanks and aircraft carriers made them obsolete, is understandable only when psychology is deployed.
[00:23:46] Unquestionably in any military, in any epoch, a prevailing culture of obedience and group loyalty, a deliberate process of military socialization.
[00:23:57] As two esteem psychologists wrote in their 1989 work on the social psychology of authority, once the military culture of obedience is established by training and service, men are quote,
[00:24:08] governed not so much by motivational processes, what they want as by perceptual ones, what they see required of them.
[00:24:20] Dixon sees fear as the common denominator in the general psychology of military organizations.
[00:24:28] And this is interesting fear of the bad performance review. Not fear of getting shot, not fear of machine gun, but fear of a bad performance review, not surprising even fear of failure over shadows hope of success leading to complacency group thinking bad decisions.
[00:24:43] So if I'm afraid of a bad performance review, I'm probably don't want to do anything.
[00:24:50] I'm proud my go to is like I'm just going to sit here and we're not going to do anything. Best I'm saying, well if that's a day is doing I guess we'll all get in trouble. Dave will get in trouble first, so I'll do what he's doing.
[00:25:00] Status quo. Yeah, status quo all day.
[00:25:04] Attacking the flaws in a military plan was as dangerous to an officer's career in 2003 as in 1901.
[00:25:13] Officers around Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and US Central Command sent com leader General Tommy Franks had to bite their tongues when even the most preposterous plans were floated.
[00:25:26] The same went for officers in Vietnam, pushing for a low intensity counter insurgency war as opposed to a high tempo conventional one was not the way to get ahead in an army that had made firepower and mobility its mantra.
[00:25:42] Military organizations Dixon tells us can create incompetence, uniformity and a graying hierarchy.
[00:25:51] The system all too often creates mediocrity as bright officers adapt to the plan and institutional priorities which are frequently at odds with reality and best practices.
[00:26:03] A recent example of this would be the US Army's decision not to deploy large numbers of ground troops to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 2001.
[00:26:13] He was trapped in eastern Afghanistan near the Kyber Pass.
[00:26:17] The army had only to cordanoff his cave complex and escape routes with troops.
[00:26:23] But so insistent was Secretary Rumsfeld on keeping this force small in order to demonstrate the stripped down power of the army and its expeditionary potential and to leave troops off ramped for an invasion of Iraq that sent com commander Tommy Franks didn't insist on reinforcements.
[00:26:41] Nor would he have anyway. Nor would he have anyway for Franks for Franks took pride in never contradicting the famously can tankerist Rumsfeld.
[00:26:53] In the clinch Franks lacked moral courage and common failing among ingratiating authoritarians.
[00:27:03] The law not escaped and would remain out large for ten more years. Cognitive dissidents is another danger of the military organization. Memoirs from sent com and Washington remind us that most clear thinking officers recognize the failures of Rumsfeld and Franks even in real time but felt compelled to keep silent.
[00:27:22] But one who didn't army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki who insisted that massive numbers of US troops would be needed to stabilize it defeated Iraq was ridiculed and driven into retirement for the crime of speaking truth to power.
[00:27:41] This reinforces Dickson's point that it is not stupidity that leads to incompetence but rather the dead hand of the authoritarian personality.
[00:27:52] Which is an interesting take so he has to say that throughout the book because it's really easy to say these guys were stupid but they're not stupid.
[00:28:00] In many cases they're really freaking smart military organizations all too often force their members to act in competently.
[00:28:09] When asked by president George W. Bush to distinguish his views on the 911 wars from Rumsfeld's general Tommy Franks weirdly replied, Sir, I think exactly what my secretary thinks what he's ever thought what he will think or whatever he thought he might think.
[00:28:32] Given the dreadful stakes in the wars this was incompetence on stills Franks like General William Westmoreland is a fine example of the Peter principle also referenced by Dixon by which leaders are promoted beyond their capabilities to an unimagined level of incompetence and efficiency.
[00:28:49] So the Peter principle says that oh Dave did a good job as a squad leader let's make him a platoon leader okay did a good job as a platoon leader let's make him a company commander oh he did a good job as a company commander let's make him a battalion commander but he's not capable so he's not capable of that's his position.
[00:29:07] He's not competent in that position but that's his position and what you end up with is everybody promotes to now you don't get promoted to brigade commander but it doesn't matter you're a battalion commander.
[00:29:17] So now we have a bunch guess what all the other battalion commanders are most of them all the same thing that I'll promote it to the level of incompetence.
[00:29:24] Right of course General Franks thought that he was being submissive and funny he was speaking what Dixon calls throughout the book bullshit.
[00:29:35] Keeping up appearances in this way is the essence of authoritarian structures proving ones reliability even a bad even in a bad cause the internal politics of bullshit in war or peace.
[00:29:45] And actually become a substitute for incisive thinking this decreases initiative and increases dependency.
[00:29:52] There is a huge irony for the pattern of modern warfare from Dixon's period to our own has been to require more and more independence and initiative as information and intelligence pass more quickly and in greater volume down the chain of command.
[00:30:08] So even though we've gotten worse and we become more authoritarian the flow of information and the ability to maneuver and think for yourself has increased.
[00:30:18] So we're going in the wrong direction. Dixon forces us to reconsider the assumption that military organizations operate as effective teams.
[00:30:30] In fact they are often anything but effective.
[00:30:34] The difficulties Britain's interwar reformers JFC follower and Basil Ladelle Hart had in introducing the British army establishment to quote.
[00:30:47] Thresh the grist from the trough chaff in conventional theories of war as fuller ported our legendary. Fuller in the 1920 saw new technologies like the tank and the airplane as able to leap from the muscular warfare of the Great War to a faster quicker deadlier less destructive.
[00:31:06] The United Warfare that would administer quick relative bloodless shot through the brain not the intermanable pounding with flesh and guns that characterize world war one.
[00:31:18] So you had people after World War One that and we've covered in great detail.
[00:31:23] We've covered in hard in this podcast. We don't need to do it that way that way didn't make much sense. Ladelle Hart in 1926 considered the British army's problems of institutional rigidity and stuffiness. So great that he equated it with illness.
[00:31:38] For the army's quote, a noculation with the serum of mobility. The army was unmoved forcing god flies like Ladelle Hart into early retirement.
[00:31:52] You know what? We don't really like what you're saying. Why don't you retire?
[00:31:56] Gickson's account of Ladelle Hart lacks the more recent scholarship on the rather slippery British theorist. But he rightly sites that the captain has just a sort of man a military organization finds intolerable.
[00:32:09] Brash bright insightful eloquent and opinionated. That's who we don't like. That's who we don't want. We don't want someone that's bright. That's brash. That's insightful. That's eloquent and opinionated. We don't want that person.
[00:32:26] It's a potent human being. It's a potent human being. It's got to watch out for it.
[00:32:32] And it's interesting because you know, maybe if Ladelle Hart had read his own book and maybe taken a little bit more of an indirect approach on some of these things. He might have done a little bit better convincing the chain and command.
[00:32:44] Right? 100%. He didn't get to read his own book. He never loves you. Unfortunately for him.
[00:32:49] Because he went hard and told them they needed to be anoculated with the serum of mobility. That's a rough thing to say up the chain and command. You're telling your leadership. They need to get a noculate.
[00:33:01] You need to completely change what you're doing. You need anoculation. That's a that's a bold attack. That's a frontal attack. That's a directed attack.
[00:33:08] And I've been in direct about that. He became what? He became a prophet. He was a prophet and what happens to prophet? He told us what happens to prophet. They get fired.
[00:33:19] They get stoned. They get stoned. They get crucified. That's what happens to prophets. And he was a prophet. And what happened to him? Got drummed out of the army.
[00:33:28] There seems to be a place where there's a transformation that happens where these, I don't want to call him students, but these kind of rebels become the prophet though.
[00:33:42] Like where there it goes from a kind of a detached perspective to a, no, this is what needs to happen. Why won't you listen, you know, putting that kind of thought forward.
[00:33:54] I feel like they become, you know, if you start to get emotional, which which can happen, especially when you've got wives at stake or you're, you know, you just pointed to hack where it's book.
[00:34:06] Hackwork reached a point where he was trying to persuade people and talking about how we should do it and did it with his own battalion and showed it with the results were.
[00:34:14] When you do account and urgency, we need to be not going head to head. We need to act like gorillas, right. We need to fight like gorillas. He was doing that. He was showing the results.
[00:34:25] But at a certain point like you just said, you are correct, certain point. They say, you know what? We got to stop doing this and they become a prophet. And they become martyr.
[00:34:36] And Ladell Hart became a martyr and got drummed out of the army. David Hackworth became a martyr, got drummed out of the army. Whether that helped or not, didn't help immediately.
[00:34:50] Ladell Hart's last act in uniform was to submit an essay on the mechanization of the army for a military competition. Ladell Hart lost to an essay titled limitations of the tank.
[00:35:06] That's crazy, right? You can't make that up. You can't make that up.
[00:35:11] Little bit of iron either. And they about to get blitz cragged like you read about. You know what I'm saying? They got blitz cragged straight up. That's what went down.
[00:35:22] Yeah.
[00:35:25] On Britain's failure to embrace armored warfare in time to affect the fighting of 1940, Ladell Hart recalled, if a soldier advocates any new idea of real importance, he builds up such a wall of obstruction compounded of resentment, suspicion and inertia that the idea only succeeds at the sacrifice of himself.
[00:35:47] As the wall finally yields to the pressure of the new idea it falls and crushes him. So that's him saying he did become the marker, right?
[00:35:56] This is the process of military incompetence vested interests bureaucratic turf's defensive services and uncertain leaders all contribute to a stifling of innovation and all too often escape,
[00:36:11] unless of certain they're actually worthy of innovators' inevitably-dixon sights of great French statement forge clean Zoom
[00:36:18] in this context quote,
[00:36:21] woah is too serious a business to be left to the generals?
[00:36:28] That's no joke.
[00:36:32] Who had commanded Britain's tank corps in World War I, later said, fighting the Germans as a joke compared
[00:36:39] with fighting the British.
[00:36:41] The Blumpish Generals, conservatives of a dead military epoch, simply would not be budged.
[00:36:48] To be fair, there was no easy solution.
[00:36:50] Britain had to prepare for war simultaneously and Europe against the Germans, and all
[00:36:53] across its empire against a range of potential enemies, like Italy, Japan, and Indian
[00:36:58] or Palestinian nationalists, tank smite work against the Germans, but they'd be acquired
[00:37:03] at the expense of the tools needed to fight the small wars around the fringes of the empire.
[00:37:08] That was no excuse for lethargy.
[00:37:12] Yet lethargy is precisely what flourishes in the world of the authoritarian, where vigorous
[00:37:17] debate and reform are interpreted as a frontry.
[00:37:22] Can't even debate.
[00:37:24] Can't even debate.
[00:37:25] Why not even having debates around here?
[00:37:27] And you can picture that authoritarian, platoon commander.
[00:37:32] He doesn't want to hear debate about the way we should do this mission.
[00:37:35] Doesn't want to debate about that.
[00:37:36] The authoritarian CEO of the company does want to debate about how we're going to move
[00:37:40] into this new market area.
[00:37:42] He wants people to shut up and do what I told you to do.
[00:37:48] In France, Charles De Gaulle battled the same sort of establishment.
[00:37:52] He wanted a small professional army, highly mobile and leverage with air power.
[00:37:56] His ideas broke against the power of the old sweats, like General's Maurice Gainland
[00:38:02] and Philippe Petain, who looked back serenely on the victory of 1918 and saw the future
[00:38:09] as just an elaboration of that, not something new.
[00:38:12] Tank's patane characters, the police noted, are the Sancho Ponsis to weighted down to
[00:38:18] fight.
[00:38:19] This is a character in Don Kiodi, like a comic relief, but that guy that can't really fight.
[00:38:28] That criticism from recalled Don Kiodi himself, who told Sancho one fine day, too much sanity
[00:38:33] may be madness and madness to see life as it is and not as it should be.
[00:38:42] And of course, there was no more twisted authoritarian than Joseph Stalin, who literally
[00:38:46] destroyed the reforms of Marshall, Mcleo, Turkachewski.
[00:38:51] Turkachewski's deep battle idea might have made the red army as formidable as the
[00:38:56] Germans in time for World War II.
[00:38:59] It called for, quote, linked and simultaneous destructive operations and, quote, mechanized
[00:39:04] operational warfare carried on the backs of tanks.
[00:39:09] Stalin killed Turkachewski and all of his accolades in the purge of 1937.
[00:39:14] It's got some good ideas, whatever.
[00:39:17] The general had studied the Germans to closely he appeared threatening and suspicious
[00:39:21] to Stalin precisely because of his restless mind and broad professional circle, the two
[00:39:27] things that should have made him a fine model off, sir, not a criminal.
[00:39:32] The army that survived the purges was a scarcely improved version of the clumsy peasant
[00:39:37] force in World War I.
[00:39:39] They were performed about as well and it's early campaigns.
[00:39:45] Imagine your France and you get done with World War I and you're like, what do we need
[00:39:49] to change?
[00:39:51] We won.
[00:39:54] And you know, the Germans were like, we lost, what can we change?
[00:39:57] Maybe if they were to one, they wouldn't have changed what they did.
[00:40:01] Want to come up with the bullets Craig.
[00:40:07] We can have which for the victors of World War I, the victory proved intellectually crippling.
[00:40:14] Old weapons, mean old tactics and whereas the Germans were plucked clean of weapons in
[00:40:19] 1919 and forced to begin a new with tanks and aircraft, the victorious allies clung to
[00:40:24] what it worked, infantry artillery and field fortifications which reached their aptitude
[00:40:29] with the magnoline, all of this reinforced military tendency to do nothing.
[00:40:36] Nothing was safer in the crabbed minds of these men than the risk of failed ventures.
[00:40:44] To Dixon's mind is the military of Theratarians lack of emotional maturity that makes
[00:40:48] him or her so dangerous to the organization even once he deliberately with other authoritarians,
[00:40:55] passive dependent insecure they are in Dixon's word frightened children in the army in the
[00:41:02] armor of men.
[00:41:04] The worst mischief happens when they are promoted to supreme command not because they overreach,
[00:41:10] but because they have risen to that rank by obeying orders.
[00:41:15] Suddenly with no one above them, they become unmord which is a scary thing, right?
[00:41:20] Who gets promoted?
[00:41:22] I'm promoting the person that obeyed me.
[00:41:25] If I'm in a foreritarian who's getting promoted?
[00:41:28] That's the way I should have framed that question.
[00:41:30] I'm promoting the person that obeyed me.
[00:41:32] I'm definitely not promoting Dave Burke that asked me a bunch of questions every time I
[00:41:35] put out some word.
[00:41:36] I'm definitely not promoting Carrie who's got some common at the end of my briefing.
[00:41:43] That seems a little bit undermining.
[00:41:44] You're not getting promoted.
[00:41:45] Neither you.
[00:41:46] I got a yes man over here.
[00:41:47] Get promoted.
[00:41:50] They compensate for this weightlessness with procrastination, with more bullshit or busy work.
[00:42:00] They retreat into familiar routines and habits in battle.
[00:42:04] They might waste their men or suffer a paralyzing compassion for them.
[00:42:08] I don't know.
[00:42:13] In the Navy, well maybe I'm getting this from Hollywood.
[00:42:19] I don't know.
[00:42:20] No, I think it's from the Navy.
[00:42:22] We call polishing your boots, chicken, chicken shit stuff.
[00:42:29] Do you guess have anything like that in the Marine Corps?
[00:42:31] Definitely have that term.
[00:42:32] Would you apply the term chicken shit to polishing boots, to pressing your uniform, to
[00:42:39] startching your eight-sided cover, doing things that you know mean nothing.
[00:42:45] Chicken shit, Marine Corps, Carrie, confirmed?
[00:42:48] So, this confirmed?
[00:42:50] Negative.
[00:42:51] We didn't use chicken shit and your duration.
[00:42:54] Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:55] New Corps.
[00:42:56] Yeah.
[00:42:57] You guys call that chicken poo.
[00:42:58] You keep it.
[00:42:59] I'm not going to show you.
[00:43:04] But that's a real thing.
[00:43:05] So, what's interesting is he goes into this and says, you know, if I don't know what to
[00:43:10] do with Dave, I'm not sure what the guess what I do.
[00:43:13] You knew polish your boots.
[00:43:15] That's the distinction.
[00:43:17] Because as I'm saying, I'm like, hey, the message isn't like, you don't need to shine
[00:43:20] your boots or have a good looking uniform.
[00:43:23] Because that stuff doesn't matter.
[00:43:24] But that stuff matters in a different, much like when we hear what hackers rules
[00:43:28] were, hey, here's what we're going to do.
[00:43:30] Here's the reason why those things are important as opposed to if I got to do all
[00:43:35] out of punishment and I got to make you do stuff with your time that it's a complete
[00:43:39] and total waste of time.
[00:43:40] That's what the term, my recollection of maybe a generational thing is like, what
[00:43:43] are we doing we're sitting around?
[00:43:46] We're going to, what would we do the strip of the floor?
[00:43:50] Yeah, that's what we're going to strip of the floor is going to.
[00:43:52] Why?
[00:43:53] So I was in Listeria.
[00:43:54] There you go.
[00:43:55] Yeah.
[00:43:56] So that's the distinction.
[00:43:57] Yeah, that's the distinction right there.
[00:44:00] And there's a meme out there now.
[00:44:02] And this is famous picture.
[00:44:03] It's a picture of a marine with like a squeegee, like squeaging the predict in a rainstorm.
[00:44:09] Yeah.
[00:44:10] We got it.
[00:44:11] Just get it.
[00:44:12] We did have a green weeny was the go-to.
[00:44:15] You're getting the green weeny there.
[00:44:16] Was the floor we called that.
[00:44:18] Right.
[00:44:19] So I mean.
[00:44:20] Yeah.
[00:44:21] Another thing he was talking about kind of the hallmarker, though, I don't know, fricking
[00:44:27] sentiment in this authoritarian regime, he said, lethurgy in parallelization.
[00:44:35] And there's this type of language that that kind of punishment, dulling out, does to
[00:44:41] troops that it's just this, I don't even care.
[00:44:46] Like I just don't, I don't care.
[00:44:48] You know, and that's kind of that chicken shit or green weeny vibe that you get when
[00:44:53] that's the kind of, kind of, leadership.
[00:44:59] History is littered with such examples.
[00:45:01] General George McLean was paralyzed by his vast responsibilities as Lincoln, Lincoln's
[00:45:06] General and Chief, General Ludwig Benedict had excellent chance to destroy the Prussian Army
[00:45:14] in 1866, but he didn't dare.
[00:45:18] General, General, Bazane stood with a concentrated French army between widely separated German
[00:45:26] armies in 1870, but failed to strike in any direction, effectively permitting the Prussian
[00:45:31] to unite the armies and win the Franco-Prussian War.
[00:45:36] One historian accurately described Hague's command in World War I as a, quote, floating
[00:45:43] helpless whale.
[00:45:45] So slow was Hague's, slow, slow was Hague to issue detailed direct instructions to his
[00:45:50] subordinate commanders and solve the problem of the German defensive fire.
[00:45:54] Officers with General Maurice Gamelin, who commanded the French army in May 1940, when German
[00:46:01] Panzers knifeed across the Muse described Gamelin as, quote, stricken by a dull and pervasive
[00:46:08] fear and quote.
[00:46:11] Instead of leading a counter attack against the Nazi invaders, the French General sat
[00:46:16] passively in army headquarters at Vincent's, a colleague there described him, thus, quote,
[00:46:23] he was like a submarine without a periscope and quote.
[00:46:26] US General John Lucas landed on undefended beaches at Anzio 1944, yet fearfully dug in instead
[00:46:34] of thrusting to Rome, giving the faraway Germans time to react and circle him and lengthen
[00:46:39] the war.
[00:46:41] That fear of making a call.
[00:46:47] That's everyone of those examples is just I'm afraid to make a call.
[00:46:51] The best generals, Dixon concludes, have been the Mavericks, leaders like Erwin Rommel,
[00:46:57] Horace Yonelsson and Napoleon Bonaparte, men who had the intelligence confidence to resist
[00:47:02] and roll back the negative psychology of the military organization.
[00:47:06] Unfortunately, the average general is not this sort of man.
[00:47:10] These are notes that military leaders are often chosen for their affability or appearance,
[00:47:15] like general bull are big bone, square jawed or general, neolrichia tobrook, a great
[00:47:21] era of decisiveness.
[00:47:24] But the bluff appearance too often masks doubt and pessimism as T.E. Lawrence would say in
[00:47:31] the same context too much body and too little head.
[00:47:35] You know what's interesting about this is I was talking to somebody at an event I was just
[00:47:41] at.
[00:47:43] And there's a certain military, like a military bearing, right?
[00:47:47] We use that term military bearing.
[00:47:49] People can utilize military bearing and you see leaders do this in the military all the
[00:47:54] time.
[00:47:55] They utilize military bearing as a, it's like a defensive mechanism.
[00:48:00] You know, you talk like this, you put the word out.
[00:48:03] You fur your brow a little bit.
[00:48:05] And you say, no, this is what we need to get done right now.
[00:48:08] And they get good at it.
[00:48:10] They become brow beaters, but they're so good at it that people are like, oh, I mean, okay.
[00:48:16] I mean, that's, they kind of back off and becomes a technique.
[00:48:21] So it's beyond just the way that they look, but they start to learn how to act.
[00:48:25] That's going to just kind of allow them to sort of get away with either not doing something
[00:48:30] or doing something that doesn't make sense.
[00:48:32] These kind of, you know, drop their voice a little bit and sort of, you know, stand up
[00:48:37] straight, get that posture going.
[00:48:39] That looks someone in the eyes and say, you need to stand down.
[00:48:42] So Dave Burke, as he says, Hey, boss, I'm wondering if we should worry about that.
[00:48:47] Hi, Greg.
[00:48:48] Hey, Burke, you need to worry about what you need to worry about.
[00:48:51] And people get good enough at that little act that Burke submits, right?
[00:48:57] Because you're asking it on this question, but you're not quite, it's an earnest question.
[00:49:01] You're not even, you're, you're asking a real question.
[00:49:04] And I come at you with the, Hey, Burke, you didn't don't need to worry about that.
[00:49:07] You used to say, New Lane, I got discovered.
[00:49:10] And your response is like, Oh, okay, you know, drop, drop, drop.
[00:49:13] That plus seniority.
[00:49:15] Oh, yeah, plus a little bit of the rank or whatever on the collar there.
[00:49:19] I mean, that's, that'll shut down all kinds of pushback.
[00:49:22] Shut down all kinds of pushback.
[00:49:24] Is that how you operated Dave?
[00:49:26] Do you see that?
[00:49:31] I call that brow meeting.
[00:49:33] You guys haven't heard that term before.
[00:49:34] brow meeting?
[00:49:35] Yeah, I call that brow meeting.
[00:49:35] There's plenty of leaders that, that's their leadership style.
[00:49:39] That they, you know, they could write a book.
[00:49:41] If they were to try and write leadership strategy and tactics, it would just be called
[00:49:44] like leadership through brow meeting.
[00:49:45] And they could go through, listen, when someone starts asking questions, first of all, you
[00:49:49] know, elevate your voice a little bit.
[00:49:51] You know, elevate your voice just a little bit.
[00:49:52] So they know, you need to throw your brow, which I'm a pro at, right?
[00:49:57] I got a, I got his born with a fur brow.
[00:49:59] You could throw your brow, elevate, you know, get your posture a little bit more rigid.
[00:50:04] So they can see that you're not backing down, raise your voice and speak in very direct tones.
[00:50:09] Burke, look, you need to worry about your part of the mission.
[00:50:14] And that, like you said, that's shut stuff down.
[00:50:18] That's the frequency right there.
[00:50:20] That's right in there.
[00:50:21] Right in there.
[00:50:22] Right in there.
[00:50:25] Right in there.
[00:50:26] It's interesting.
[00:50:30] Just PID.
[00:50:31] I just PID to think, right?
[00:50:33] I've been seeing that quite a bit lately, too.
[00:50:38] Without a sharpened adaptable mind, the incompetent general succumbs to cognitive
[00:50:45] dissidents rejecting or ignoring unpalpable news or intelligence.
[00:50:50] General Arthur Perseval at Singapore was this type simply refusing to credit that
[00:50:55] the Japanese attack is fortified island base.
[00:51:00] We ran through that on this podcast that guys get reports.
[00:51:03] Hey, the Japanese are literally surrounding us.
[00:51:07] He's like, yeah, they're not going to attack.
[00:51:09] To explain the average general, Dixon has to resort to ego psychology.
[00:51:14] The average general, like so many average men and women, is trapped in the neurotic paradox.
[00:51:20] And here's the neurotic paradox.
[00:51:22] The need to be loved leads to twin quests for admiration on the one hand and power and
[00:51:29] fame on the other.
[00:51:30] So you want to be liked, but you want to be powerful.
[00:51:32] And you got this thing going on all the time.
[00:51:34] Naturally, the two quests collide violently.
[00:51:36] More power means that more people dislike or envy you.
[00:51:40] The great leaders rise above the paradox by performing confidently and taking praise, promotion
[00:51:45] and criticism in mature, measured, stride.
[00:51:49] Like kiplings, ideal man, they quote meat with triumph and disaster and treat those two
[00:51:54] imposteres just the same.
[00:51:59] But most of Dixon subjects and the reason, look, Dixon concentrates on the bad.
[00:52:05] So that's when he says most of Dixon subs, he concentrates on the bad.
[00:52:08] He doesn't concentrate on the good leaders.
[00:52:10] Plenty books about good leaders out there.
[00:52:12] Most of Dixon subjects, like most of our own, are not great, but merely ordinary, weak and
[00:52:17] often petty, hence the need to understand and apply the psychological component of history.
[00:52:24] Dixon's book is in two parts.
[00:52:25] The first presents the case studies, the second, the psychological behaviors such as snobbery
[00:52:30] and anti-affemnacy, which contribute to institutional, langer.
[00:52:36] In every man and earthy, hungry, id battles with an intelligent, tactful ego overseen
[00:52:43] by a watchful super ego.
[00:52:45] This is good.
[00:52:46] And Dixon writes, is basically a battlefield, a dark cellar, in which a well-bred
[00:52:53] spinster lady and a sex-crazed monkey are forever engaged in mortal combat, the struggle
[00:53:00] being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk.
[00:53:04] That's what's going on in your head.
[00:53:08] This is the fate of every human, excellence, mediocrity, or incompetence hinge on how smoothly
[00:53:13] the monkey, the spinster, and the bait clerk settled their differences.
[00:53:18] Reading about older wars, one might suppose that modern times deliver more modern officers,
[00:53:24] that the Victorian parenting and grim public schools that form Dixon's case studies are
[00:53:28] relics of an irrelevant past, not true.
[00:53:32] American parenting and high schools have apparently contributed no less to military incompetence,
[00:53:37] consider the record.
[00:53:39] In World War I, General John Blackjack Pershing had to fire two American corps commander,
[00:53:43] six division commanders, and 1,400 brigadiers, colonels, and other officers for incompetence.
[00:53:49] This was remarkable carnage considering that America fought for just six months in that
[00:53:54] war.
[00:53:55] Damn.
[00:53:58] George C. Marshall, who served as a colonel on Pershing staff in World War I and then
[00:54:03] presided over the US Army and World War II as chief of staff was anything but incompetent.
[00:54:07] Marshall was in many ways the modern, the model general.
[00:54:11] Sounded mind and body he wrote in 1920 that an ideal officer was of, quote, the optimistic
[00:54:18] and resourceful type quick to estimate with relentless determination and possessed in addition
[00:54:23] a fund of sound common sense which operated to prevent gross errors due to rapidity of
[00:54:30] decision and action.
[00:54:34] For Hague optimism, and that's the World War I general, for Hague, optimism had been an
[00:54:39] abstract and silly concept.
[00:54:42] The spiritual willingness to always to attack for Marshall was a human concept.
[00:54:48] The spiritual inclination to see a glass is half full to find a way around difficulties
[00:54:54] and win in spite of them.
[00:54:55] That's a big difference.
[00:54:57] Hague thinks optimism is you just go.
[00:55:01] Marshall optimism is you figure out a way to win.
[00:55:04] It's a big, freaking difference.
[00:55:09] You've been warning people for a little while now and I've been stealing this about the
[00:55:13] idea of lessons learned actually being a problem.
[00:55:16] There's some risk in there.
[00:55:18] As we fight against bias, you've talked about bias and a lot of ways and certainly on
[00:55:24] the leadership consultancy side when we're talking to people about ways to make sure that
[00:55:28] you don't run into problems in the future.
[00:55:29] Lessons learn can actually contribute to making mistakes in the future because you will
[00:55:35] pull these lessons thinking somehow that it sort of predetermines the next outcome with
[00:55:40] the situations the same.
[00:55:41] We know what the lessons are.
[00:55:42] We're going to apply those lessons.
[00:55:43] We're going to control the outcome.
[00:55:44] There's a little part of me just really struggling here hearing you read this.
[00:55:49] And yes, there's some hindsight being applied here, but how do you look at World War
[00:55:55] I, in reflect on that and say, we won.
[00:56:00] When you like barely didn't lose and you could play semantics all day long, yes, I
[00:56:06] know we won compared to the Germans who lost.
[00:56:10] But in a sense, this is a validation of the tactics that we input.
[00:56:15] This is a lesson learned of what we did work because we won and the idea that we can take
[00:56:22] that and capture this as a reinforcement that the things that we did were the right things,
[00:56:28] that's why we were successful.
[00:56:29] And setting and stone again, there's a lot of heights I hear.
[00:56:32] I understand that.
[00:56:33] Looking forward to knowing new in 1919, what was going to happen in 1940s, there was
[00:56:40] we have that understanding now.
[00:56:42] But even in that time, how do you look at that war and reinforce that what we did was
[00:56:48] the right thing when you're on the quote, winning side.
[00:56:50] It's insane.
[00:56:51] It's insane.
[00:56:52] We won.
[00:56:57] Yeah, we won.
[00:56:58] Let's do it again, Roger.
[00:57:00] Yeah, that's one of my favorite sarcastic favorite.
[00:57:05] Jitsu coaching calls is, oh, Kerry, that on-box not working, do it, harder.
[00:57:10] I've heard it.
[00:57:13] Marshall also insisted on flexibility of mind to nullify authoritarian tendencies.
[00:57:22] He blocked the rise of time servers and other mediocrities.
[00:57:27] Marshall called them calamity howlers for the way they exaggerated difficulties and spun
[00:57:32] excuses for their failures.
[00:57:34] And noted that such leaders inexorably demoralized their units and infected them with negativity.
[00:57:40] Man, exaggerating your difficulties.
[00:57:47] Of the 42 senior generals who took part in the US Army's last maneuvers before Pearl Harbor,
[00:57:52] only 11 would command units in combat in World War II.
[00:57:56] That's freaking savage.
[00:57:58] That is savage.
[00:57:59] They were firing some people.
[00:58:02] The rest had to be fired or sidetracked as deadwood.
[00:58:04] Dozens of American generals will lose their posts in the course of the war.
[00:58:09] Your officer in American Army that expanded 35 fold in three years.
[00:58:15] Marshall put every candidate through his pace as shifting them into ever more burdensome
[00:58:18] and pressure-packed jobs promoting those who excelled.
[00:58:22] Those who fail, largely grimly noted, are out at the first sign of faltering.
[00:58:26] Which is interesting to me.
[00:58:27] I thought I immediately thought to myself, oh, so that's zero defect, right?
[00:58:31] So now we're scared.
[00:58:32] But then it doesn't say failing.
[00:58:35] It says faltering.
[00:58:36] It means when the time to step up came, you might have made it.
[00:58:39] Okay, bad decision.
[00:58:40] Okay, well, you're okay.
[00:58:41] But if you faltered, what the do?
[00:58:44] You're out.
[00:58:45] Later, that's a huge difference.
[00:58:47] Maybe I'm reading a little bit too much into that, but I'll go with it.
[00:58:51] It's a pretty specific word to choose there.
[00:58:52] Yeah, falter.
[00:58:53] Right, falter.
[00:58:54] Not fail.
[00:58:55] Not, you know.
[00:58:58] Marshall was the exception who proved the rule by 1944 and 1945.
[00:59:02] The United States enjoyed massive superiority over the Germans and men, tanks, guns, and aircraft
[00:59:07] yet plotted into Germany.
[00:59:09] The dynamism of 1943, when Doidey Eisenhower and Marshall had pruned the deadwood and
[00:59:15] shot younger officers up the latter was replaced with an emphasis on the particle teamwork
[00:59:20] that would harness America's material superiority.
[00:59:24] It was like war by general motors, with a risk of a corporate strategy, more concerned,
[00:59:30] not to lose than to win swiftly.
[00:59:32] This was precisely the attitude that shaped the post-war US Army and Korea in Korea and Vietnam.
[00:59:39] Officers could no longer be relieved for cause as that would generate embarrassing publicity
[00:59:45] and congressional inquiries so they were often left in their jobs.
[00:59:51] 70-year-old Douglas MacArthur, who commanded the Korean War from Tokyo, possessed every trait
[00:59:57] of Dixen's most incursible authoritarian and committed every possible error, nearly precipitating
[01:00:04] an American defeat and World War III in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland's disastrous
[01:00:10] leadership was initially viewed with great hope.
[01:00:12] Westy succeeded a string of incompetence who had misconstrued the war, then given the South
[01:00:17] Vietnamese relentlessly bad advice on how to win.
[01:00:21] First Samuel, hanging sand, well, hanging sand, Williams, then Lieutenant Colonel, or
[01:00:25] then Lionel Splithead Magar, then Paul Haskin's, the last derided by Defense Secretary
[01:00:32] Robert McNamara as, quote, not worth a damn.
[01:00:36] Westmoreland was supposed to be different.
[01:00:39] But he proved the perfect military incompetent, dim, blinkered, unsure of himself, lost
[01:00:45] and unmore as a commander.
[01:00:48] He had actually refused to hire Vince Lambardi as coach of the Army football team when he
[01:00:52] was superintendent of West Point in 1960, quote, this was not the kind of man I wanted
[01:00:57] around cadets.
[01:00:59] Westy said of Lambardi.
[01:01:01] His game plan in Vietnam would be no shruter.
[01:01:06] One might ask how it could be otherwise the Vietnam War was directed by a particularly
[01:01:10] vexing incompetent general Maxwell Taylor, the ultimate pleaser who, as presidential military
[01:01:16] adviser Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Ambassador South Vietnam flattered,
[01:01:20] first John F. Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson in the believing that they could eat their
[01:01:24] cake and have it too.
[01:01:25] That is, fight the Vietnam War with limited means and public support and still win it.
[01:01:31] I read that, not great.
[01:01:33] Limited means and public support.
[01:01:36] He's saying limited means and limited public support and still win it.
[01:01:40] Like the military and civilian advisors gathered around George W. Bush in 2003, Taylor
[01:01:44] was obsessed with White House access and was willing to suppress conflicting opinions to
[01:01:49] conceal stubborn facts to keep it that way.
[01:01:53] On the ground in Saigon, Westmoreland, rather too eagerly brought Taylor's fraudulent
[01:01:58] talking points to life and Westy, after all, was just the sort of average Joe who got
[01:02:04] his ticket punched in the US Army of the 1960s.
[01:02:08] He'd never been to Staff or War College, only to a cooks and baker school and then a
[01:02:13] 13 week management course at Harvard.
[01:02:16] He never read so Harvard Business School formed him into a McNamara-like organization
[01:02:21] man, all charts and graphs that PowerPoint general avant la lecture.
[01:02:26] I don't know what avant la lecture mean.
[01:02:29] I had to look that up.
[01:02:30] Means he was a PowerPoint general before there was such a thing as a PowerPoint general.
[01:02:35] Literally means before the letter.
[01:02:38] His search and destroy strategy was an unmitigated disaster, not least because of the destroying
[01:02:44] the world went on in the south, not in the north of Vietnam.
[01:02:49] Westy dog at least sheld bomb burned in poisoned hundreds of villages, succeeding mainly and
[01:02:53] increasing the number of insurgents and losing support of the South Vietnamese people.
[01:02:57] The United States dropped twice as many bombs on allied South Vietnam as on the enemy
[01:03:03] north.
[01:03:05] More bombs in fact that have been dropped in all theaters in World War II.
[01:03:10] Westmoreland's mantra was firepower.
[01:03:12] Like Dickson's incompetence, he hid in the only thing that he and artillery man knew.
[01:03:19] A man intending to lose a war could hardly have done it with more efficiency.
[01:03:24] That's a freaking rough assessment.
[01:03:27] The fact that his civilian commanders were no more acute in their judgment in no way
[01:03:31] excused his incompetent strategy he was relieved in 1968.
[01:03:37] The Iraq War reprise the Vietnam and competence with the incurious unassertive Tommy
[01:03:43] Frank succeeded by General Ricardo Sanchez, who won historian labeled the William Westmoreland
[01:03:50] of the Iraq War Sanchez at leap from division to army command and was the embodiment
[01:03:55] of the Peter principle.
[01:03:56] As a state department onlooker set of him, all trees no forest, not a strategic or political
[01:04:02] fought. When General David Petraeus took over in 2007, he introduced effective counter-insert
[01:04:08] counter-insertancy strategy but too late to prevent the dissolution of Iraq and desectarian
[01:04:13] fragments or to buttress plummeting American support for the war.
[01:04:18] Senator Chuck Hagle asked the marvellously prophetic question about Petraeus's troops
[01:04:23] search. What if the point of bringing the violence down with US troops if it will merely
[01:04:32] resume once the US troops are withdrawn?
[01:04:36] Hagle had served as a grunt in Vietnam. He knew military folly when he saw it.
[01:04:43] Nixon's deactailed case study ends in 1944, but he has a go at more recent history in
[01:04:48] the last chapter, surveying the martial lunacy of Vietnam and the staggering irrationality
[01:04:57] of the Bay of Pigs invasion clearly implying that there is no end of military incompetence.
[01:05:04] Indeed, the military inept to to displayed in the decades since Vietnam most shatteringly
[01:05:10] in the Iraq War shows that military incompetence and its psychological roots cry out for
[01:05:14] continued study and application. This book is a template and deserves its classic reputation.
[01:05:20] On this psychology of military incompetence is also a vital corrective to what we are
[01:05:26] experiencing today. The uncritical adoration of veterans, troops and their officers by the
[01:05:33] American public and more ominously by presidential candidates in Congress.
[01:05:38] Living as we do in an age of nonstop semi war, the need for clear, unsendamental thinking
[01:05:45] is more important than ever. It has become routine for candidates running for commander
[01:05:50] and chief to describe their global strategies, Voss, quote, I would check with my generals
[01:05:55] and follow their advice and quote.
[01:05:58] Nixon jerks us back to reality with our civic responsibilities. What if the general or
[01:06:03] Admiral is an incompetent authoritarian blind to the true situation leading the country into
[01:06:07] a ditch? What if the general is a well-master authoritarian type who cannot learn from experience,
[01:06:12] who denies rationalizes, deflects blame and creates scapegoats? The last usually quote,
[01:06:18] the folks in Washington.
[01:06:20] Indeed, what deficient American commander has not made this his swan song quote.
[01:06:27] At least in blank, I knew who the enemy was. Here in Washington I don't.
[01:06:32] A failed Iraq war commander was the last to try that weas and old perennial that bloomed
[01:06:39] during Korean Vietnam too.
[01:06:42] Read this book, absorb its lessons and you will be on your guard against this infantilization
[01:06:49] to revere the uniform without first peering inside. Indeed, Nixon sites a path breaking
[01:06:57] swish child's psychologist in this regard quote, the adult who is under the dominion of
[01:07:03] unilateral respect for the elders and for tradition is really behaving like a child.
[01:07:12] That was just the forward of this book.
[01:07:17] That's Jeffrey Wawro. He wrote that in 2016 or that's when this edition is, I got an old
[01:07:24] tradition too. I got the old school hard cover one. Because I know when we, when this podcast
[01:07:29] comes out, people can go out and buy those old school ones. I've got mine. I tried to get as many
[01:07:34] of them as I could off the market.
[01:07:40] We roll into now in the Dixon's preface.
[01:07:45] And he starts this off and I probably could have, I probably could have and probably should have
[01:07:48] started off this whole podcast with this note that he makes out of the gate. He says,
[01:07:52] this book is not an attack upon the armed forces, no upon the norm upon the vast majority of
[01:07:58] senior military commanders who in time of war succeed in tasks which would make the running
[01:08:04] of a large commercial enterprise seem like child's play by comparison. So, I should have
[01:08:09] started the podcast with that. Because let's face it. They're going to go hard in the paint.
[01:08:14] We're already feeling that. And it can be very easy to think that any critique of the leadership
[01:08:21] of these wars or people in leadership position specifically, it can be very easy to interpret
[01:08:28] this as shots at those people. But really, and I think this is what's going to be done in the book,
[01:08:33] too, is it's going to be more a breaking down of these leadership, failing leadership tactics
[01:08:41] and leadership roles or how these guys are doing it more so than these guys themselves.
[01:08:49] You know what I mean? In my close there. Unfortunately not. No, Dixing goes hard. Dixing goes hard
[01:08:57] in the paint. He's just straight calling these guys out. He's just guys are going to get called out.
[01:09:00] Okay. Well, based on his note there in the preface he sounded like he was going to go a little
[01:09:04] different route. But he's going hard. Yeah, he goes hard. He goes hard. There's no punches
[01:09:08] brought to that. But he but and he doesn't spend as much time. He does he does talk about some of the
[01:09:14] good military leaders. But he spends most of his time talking about the bad military leaders and how
[01:09:21] just bad they were and why they were bad and the mistakes that they made. And it wasn't like,
[01:09:25] well, he was really making a good decision based on the information he had. No, he wasn't.
[01:09:30] Right. He was, you know, we're going to get some stories that make you sick your stomach.
[01:09:34] Oh, shit. Some of these stories will make you sick your stomach. And you know, Dixing
[01:09:37] served a World War II. Dixing was wounded. Right. This guy knows what's up. He's probably had some
[01:09:42] incompetent leaders. So he's going to go hard. But the and look, I served with incredible
[01:09:51] leaders in the military, incredible leaders, incredible individual. I don't know if there could be
[01:09:58] better leaders than some of the leaders I served with the military. So this book isn't an attack on
[01:10:03] the armed forces or all leaders neither am I. And that's not what we're doing here. But
[01:10:10] there are some bad seats. And we need to learn from that. Because there's some legit things you can
[01:10:19] do to take corrective measures and watch out for this, especially if just like everything else,
[01:10:25] if you aim this book at yourself. If you aim this book at yourself and you every time I hear
[01:10:32] a four every time I say a fouritarian theme instead of thinking like about your boss or about
[01:10:38] some subordinate leader that you have, if you instead think, oh, how am I a fouritarian?
[01:10:43] Because that doesn't, oh, I do that. Oh, I'd lean in that direction. If you start thinking like that
[01:10:49] right now, that's that's the benefit. That's what you should be trying to do.
[01:10:57] Pretty much a webbed. I have my page and notes here.
[01:10:59] Oh, I just did I just reject your notes? No, that's legit, man. I kept, I, you know, like I've said
[01:11:04] this a thousand times. I get the cool part about being on the podcast. I hear this stuff in person
[01:11:09] live for the first time. Did you order this book when I told you ordered it like a year ago? Yes.
[01:11:13] We, but you've been sending me screenshots of like you've been dabbling with this thing for a while.
[01:11:18] I know this thing's common. So it's cool. But it's still mostly brand new. Like then
[01:11:25] this is all new and I get to write stuff down and part of it is just to think about how this
[01:11:31] makes sense in my own head. And I wrote down like five minutes ago. There's a lot of risk with this book.
[01:11:36] And the risk as I'm listening to you is that it's going to be a validation for the listeners
[01:11:42] that there's a bunch of other screwed up people out there and they're the problem.
[01:11:46] Oh, the other people. The other people. Yeah. And why wrote down and go, you mitigate that risk
[01:11:50] by this by assuming this guy is talking to you. Not about other people. He's talking about you.
[01:11:56] And the risk that you are a reflection of those behaviors and the only other thing I wrote down that
[01:12:03] that I was thinking about in sort of anticipation of this is that it's not just these individuals
[01:12:08] as flawed as they are. And I'm glad that we are, I'm glad all of us are taking a minute to go,
[01:12:13] hey, listen, this is not just us taking shots at all these people in the military to be critical of them.
[01:12:18] Because leading us hard, the military is hard. And there's a whole bunch of reasons.
[01:12:22] But there are flawed individuals, the other piece that compounds that for this, which is again,
[01:12:27] something we can all think about is that there is a system that promotes that, that validates that,
[01:12:33] that reinforces that it helps create and take the worst of these behaviors and magnify them.
[01:12:38] And does your company, does your team, does your family, does your household, does your business
[01:12:45] do the exact same thing? And just to add one more little thing that you said, which is 100%
[01:12:52] right, you're right. The military can in many ways take these people with these tendencies and promote
[01:13:00] them. They can do that. It also even prior to that attracts these people. Because you know,
[01:13:06] if you're a military and a person likes things to be controlled, likes uniformity.
[01:13:12] What, you know, if you're a in college and you like uniformity and you're looking at your dorm room going
[01:13:19] gosh, I wish everyone would just be quiet and you're like, oh, you're not enjoying them.
[01:13:22] I'm going to join the military. The idea of rank to that person. Exciting. You mean,
[01:13:27] you mean to tell me, yeah, I put this on and people will listen to me. They'd have to do what I say.
[01:13:34] I'm in. The idea of uniformity is not a bad thing. It's an attractive thing.
[01:13:40] We literally wear a uniform that attribute is a positive in so many ways for those of us
[01:13:48] interested in the military. So just to both of what you're saying, that idea, like, oh, those things
[01:13:53] you go, man, I don't want a bunch of yes men uniform thinking, you know, a group think. Actually,
[01:13:59] uniformity is hailed as a positive attribute in many ways across the military. So much so I like
[01:14:04] 100% the more you look like the person next to you, the better you are. Yes. And that uniform
[01:14:09] looks exactly like this regulation. You're my guy. Yeah, you think about who's getting attracted to this.
[01:14:14] Look, do you get guys men and women that are patriotic, men and women that want a challenge,
[01:14:19] men and women that want to take care of their people and meet absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
[01:14:23] You do. I get all kinds of it. Do you get someone that just wants to put that right in
[01:14:27] going and finally get less and two, lieutenant Callie, right? In a norm, they, you know, you do
[01:14:33] read the backstory on Lieutenant Callie from the, from the Meelei masquer. It's like, oh, he was
[01:14:39] unknown, respected in his life. He had to go through OCS a bunch of times. He wanted that freaking
[01:14:43] rank so bad. It was probably like the most rewarding thing he ever got. It was to get that
[01:14:49] finally, get that rank and people just shot up and listen to me. So that's what you, that's what you're
[01:14:53] tracking. So we, are you doing that in your company? What kind of people you're tracking in your company?
[01:14:57] Scary. It is however an attempt to explain how I'm a minority of individuals come to inflict upon
[01:15:07] their fellow men, depths of misery and pain virtually unknown in other walks of life. That's freaking
[01:15:14] every step. Like, that's true. Like, hey, if you're a business and you're in the authoritarian,
[01:15:18] okay, cool, you're going to, you're going to drive some people crazy, whatever. Right?
[01:15:22] Well, you're in the military, you're causing depths of misery and pain virtually unknown in all
[01:15:28] other walks of life. This book involves the putting together of contributions from a great many
[01:15:34] people, a historian, sociologist, psychologist, and, of course, soldiers and sailors. It is hope
[01:15:38] that none of these will feel misrepresented in the final picture, which their contributions make.
[01:15:43] For air is a fact, and for the opinions expressed, I alone take full responsibility. Okay,
[01:15:50] stay in some ownership. In the writing of this book, I also owe a great debt of data to gratitude
[01:15:56] to all those who gave generously of their time to reading and discussing earlier drafts,
[01:16:01] their encouragement, criticisms, and advice had been invaluable, and he goes on to think about
[01:16:05] a freaking page and a half of people, names, names, names, names, names, names, and then finally,
[01:16:12] he gets to this port. And by the way, one thing that's interesting, that you couldn't have
[01:16:17] predicted is this guy is really funny. He's got that dry British humor, humor throughout the
[01:16:21] entire book, and he's awesome. So he brings the heat. Now, you know, you carry like, I'm sure he's
[01:16:28] not, you know, take it. Oh, he's taking shots, not as he takes shots, but some of them are pretty
[01:16:32] damn funny. So he says this, he says, finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to that handful of people
[01:16:39] who would probably prefer to remain nameless, whose hostility and dismay that anyone should write
[01:16:45] a book on military incompetence, provided considerable, if unlocked for confirmation of the relationship
[01:16:53] between militarism and human psychology. So like, all you do is the like, you shouldn't write a book,
[01:16:59] like exactly, you're the reason why. You are the reason why. So that's his opening. Now we get into
[01:17:09] chapter one. Like I said, this is going to be a slow roll with this book. It starts off with a quote
[01:17:15] at least it's a really short book. Yeah, classmates. We only wish to represent things as they are
[01:17:24] and to expose the error of believing that a mere Bravo without intellect can make himself
[01:17:29] distinguished in war. And Bravo can be used as a noun. I found out after reading that quote.
[01:17:35] Means someone that's like a daring man. Daring man isn't good enough.
[01:17:40] But now most people have been have become accustomed to one might almost say,
[01:17:48] blaze about military incompetence. Like the common cold, flat feet, or the British climate,
[01:17:55] it is accepted as part of life, faintly ludicrous, but quite unavoidable.
[01:17:59] Surely there can be nothing left to say about the subject. Please come out of the gate,
[01:18:02] look, wave, yeah, military incompetence, whatever. So it is like flat feet. Some people got it.
[01:18:07] In fact, military incompetence is largely preventable, tragically expensive and quite absorbing
[01:18:14] segment of human behavior. It also follows certain laws, it's a bold statement.
[01:18:21] The first intimation of this came to the writer during the solitary reading about notorious military
[01:18:28] disasters. These moving often horrific accounts evoked a curious deja vu experience. For there
[01:18:34] was something about these apparently senseless goings on, which sent one's thoughts along new channels,
[01:18:40] making contact with phenomena from quite other, hitherto unrelated context, and then back again
[01:18:46] to the senseless facts. Not now quite so senseless until gradually a theme continues as a
[01:18:53] hairline crack could be discerned throughout the stirring tales of daring due. Those big sentence.
[01:18:58] What's he saying in that? What he saying is he started reading about all these military disasters,
[01:19:05] and as he read them, he would think about another one and he'd think about another one. And what he
[01:19:08] started to see was a thread that connected them all together. If this pattern was real and it
[01:19:14] meant one it seemed to mean certain predictions would follow. These were tested and found correct.
[01:19:19] Yet other pieces began falling into place until gradually the mosaic of elements took on the
[01:19:24] semblance of a theory. This book is about that theory. It is concerned with placing aspects of
[01:19:29] military behavior in the context of general psychological principles. This sounds fine. A cheerful
[01:19:36] marriage of history and psychology. Unfortunately, however, such a union may not be entirely
[01:19:41] agreeable to some of potential in laws. Judging from the attitude of some historians, putting together
[01:19:47] of psychology and history is to say the least bad form while putting together of psychology and
[01:19:51] military history is positively indecent. There are at least two reasons for this anxiety. The
[01:19:56] first is that since there are a few things more annoying than having one's behavior explained,
[01:20:02] there exists a natural distaste for explanations of historical figures with whom one perhaps
[01:20:09] identifies. So he's saying, look, I'm going to write this book. It's about psychology. It's about
[01:20:13] military history, and that's not going to be popular. Because a lot of people relate to those military
[01:20:21] figures, those historical military figures. When you start talking about why they made those decisions,
[01:20:25] some people are going to get offended by that. So that's the first reason why this is a risky book.
[01:20:33] The second reason is a distrust of reductionism. Of the idea that anything so complex as a military
[01:20:41] disaster could possibly be reduced to explanations in terms of the workings of the human mind,
[01:20:47] and this by a psychologist of all people. So you can tell me all this stuff took place and it was
[01:20:54] because of this dude, you know, had a weird psychology about something. That's what we're going to say.
[01:21:01] An answer one can only say that his of course historians know more about history than do
[01:21:06] psychologists. Of course, historical events are determined by a complex set of variables.
[01:21:11] Political, economic, geographical, climactic, sociological, but ultimately history is made by
[01:21:20] human beings. And whatever other factors may have contributed to a military disaster, one of these
[01:21:27] was the minds of those who were there. And another, the behavior to which these minds gave rise.
[01:21:34] So there's all kinds of things that are plain into these disasters. And yes, the climate and the
[01:21:42] geography and the economics to all the things are plain into it. But you also had these human beings
[01:21:48] minds and how did their minds end up that way? Now these are complex variables. Hence, it has been
[01:21:55] necessary to play down the other factors in order to focus more clearly upon the psychological
[01:21:59] permanence. Consider the enogalous case of aircraft accidents. They've worked glad you're here.
[01:22:06] Nobody would deny that arrow planes crash for a number of different reasons. Sometimes,
[01:22:12] working independently, sometimes in unison. But this does not mean that the selecting out for
[01:22:17] particular study of a single factor such as metal fatigue necessitates dwelling on other such
[01:22:22] variables as bad weather in different navigation or too much alcohol in the bloodstream of the pilot.
[01:22:29] So just because the pilot was drunk doesn't mean you can't look at the metal fatigue that
[01:22:34] put on the wings. The case for a reductionist approach, however, also rests upon other considerations
[01:22:41] namely that the nature of military incompetence and those characteristics which distinguish
[01:22:46] competent from incompetent senior commanders have shown a significant lack of variation over the
[01:22:51] years despite changes in other factors which shape the course of history. So you see failure,
[01:22:58] failure failure failure, all these different failures. And there's been a lack of variation
[01:23:04] of what caused the failures from a psychological perspective even though the factors, the
[01:23:10] environment is totally changed. So it's not like, well, you know, you had horses. And so
[01:23:14] but you failed and you had tanks and you failed way to second. What's the common thread? Oh,
[01:23:21] the mind. Whether they are well equipped or ill equipped, whether they are in control of
[01:23:28] men who are armed with spears or tanks or rockets, whether they are English, Russian, German,
[01:23:34] Zulu, American, or French, good commanders pretty much remain the same. Likewise,
[01:23:39] bad commanders have much in common with the other which is what we say all of the time.
[01:23:44] Sometimes we'll get asked the question, well, you know, what makes this type of person a good
[01:23:50] leader? It doesn't matter what. It doesn't matter if they're a frontline infantry leader or a
[01:23:55] financial consultant company or a construction company. The leadership characteristics that make
[01:24:01] the good leaders are all the same. Humble leaders usually do better. No matter the situation. It's ridiculous.
[01:24:08] One reward rewarding byproduct of writing this book has been the many of joy-obile
[01:24:12] conversations I've had with people in the armed services. Here again, however, a small minority
[01:24:18] viewed the enterprise with dismay as something lacking in taste, if not actually boarding on
[01:24:22] sac religious. So he's having conversations with people telling he's going to write this book and
[01:24:25] they're like, well, why are you going to do that? He got a little footnote here. It says it is fair to
[01:24:32] add that certain common characteristics of those civilians and service men who took extreme view
[01:24:37] provided a very useful clue as to the possible origins of military incompetence. Yes.
[01:24:46] Sacrifice. You should not write a book like that. Okay. To this understandable sensitivity,
[01:24:55] I can only say that no insult is intended. In point of fact, for the devotees of the military
[01:25:00] to take exception to a study of military incompetence is as unjustified as it would be for
[01:25:06] admirers of teeth to complain about a book on dental carries, which means decay.
[01:25:13] In an imperfect world, the activities of professional fighters are presumably as necessary
[01:25:19] to society as those of police prostitutes, sewage disposers, and psychologists. It is just because
[01:25:25] we cannot do without these calling this, except possibly the last that any series attempt to
[01:25:30] understand the peculiarities should be welcomed and indeed taken as a compliment.
[01:25:34] For it is a token of their importance that we should merit such attention. So we're freaking,
[01:25:40] you got to be kidding me. Why wasn't this book? Why isn't there just like decades of these books
[01:25:46] being written for every situation, every war that's taking place? Moreover, is only by
[01:25:55] contemplation of the incompetent that we can appreciate the difficulties and accomplishment of the
[01:26:00] competent. If there were no incompetent generals that might appear that the interaction of armies and the
[01:26:04] waging of war were easy, task well within the compass of all who had the good fortune to reach the
[01:26:08] highest levels of military organizations. However, it is not only when contrasted with the
[01:26:13] inept that great commanders look their best, but also when seen in context of the organizations
[01:26:18] to which they belong. The thesis will be developed that the possibility of incompetence springs
[01:26:23] in large measure from the unfortunate, if unavoidable side effects of creating armies and
[01:26:28] naivies. This is to your point earlier, Dave. We create these things and they kind of produce,
[01:26:33] or at least have a tendency to produce incompetence. And therefore, when you're a good leader
[01:26:37] inside of an organization that produces incompetence, you're actually doing double good. You get two
[01:26:42] gold stars. For the most part, these tend to produce a leveling down of human capability at once
[01:26:49] encouraging to the mediocre, but cramping to the gifted, but cramping to the gifted,
[01:26:53] viewed in this light, those who would perform brilliantly in the caring of arms may be considered
[01:26:59] twice blessed. I guess I just stole that from him. For they achieved success, despite
[01:27:07] bad features of the organization to which they happened to belong. This alone would seem to
[01:27:13] justify an unabashed excursion to the realms of military incompetence, but there are additional
[01:27:17] grounds if anything, more pressing, they concern the related issues of cost and probability.
[01:27:25] While few would dispute that the cost grows exponentially with the growth of technology, so that
[01:27:32] the price of wrong decisions must now be reckoned in mega deaths. The chance of military incompetence
[01:27:38] remains a matter for debate. We might hope that this would be a declining function for better
[01:27:45] education, more realistic values, greater fear of immeasurably worse consequences and an increased
[01:27:51] decrease in jingoism. But there are strong grounds for taking the pessimistic view that the chance
[01:27:58] like the cost continues to increase with positive acceleration. This is getting worse. What are you saying?
[01:28:03] Hey, don't you think I look if you were going to go out and fight with swords and you are a bad
[01:28:07] leader, you're probably going to get a 50 guy is killed. Now you're going to go out and fight with
[01:28:13] artillery and machine guns. Now you're going to get a thousand people killed. We must be making
[01:28:19] improvement. We're not. In fact, it's getting worse. Several reasons may be advanced for this
[01:28:27] depressing hypothesis. Firstly, the gap between the capabilities of the human mind and the
[01:28:32] intellectual demands of modern warfare continues that expansion which started in the 18th century.
[01:28:37] It is probably opening from both sides while modern war becomes increasingly swift and deadly
[01:28:43] and the means by which it is waged, increasing the complex, the intellectual level of those
[01:28:48] entering the armed services as officers could well be on the wane. Ouch, he wrote this in 1976,
[01:28:55] just saying he's like, hey, if you go to the military right now, you know, this tentative
[01:29:01] supposition is based on the fact that fewer and fewer of the young consider the military to be a
[01:29:06] worthwhile career. Again, this is post-nomies right in this. One has only looked at contemporary
[01:29:12] recruiting advertisements to realize the evident difficulties of finding officer material. They
[01:29:17] spare nothing in their efforts to convince an unresponsive youth. The services are depicted as
[01:29:23] glittering toy shops where handsome young men enjoy themselves with tanks and missiles while
[01:29:28] basking in the respective lower ranks, hardly less godlike than themselves. In their eagerness to
[01:29:34] drum up applicants, these calls to arms attempt the mental contortion of presenting the services
[01:29:39] a classless society in which officers nevertheless remain gentlemen. The clear, clear, implica,
[01:29:46] implication of such expensive pleading can surely be that the market for a military career is shrinking
[01:29:52] to say the least to meet this fall off an officer recruitment. In sufficient has been done in the
[01:29:59] writer's opinion to improve the real as opposed to the advertised incentive value of military
[01:30:04] career. Again, this is written in the 70s. So you didn't have long lines at the recruiting offices
[01:30:11] in 1973. You can see how one might have this outlook on the military during that time.
[01:30:18] For sure. Yeah. Skip a little bit here. In short, possibly less able people are being
[01:30:27] called upon to carry out a more difficult task with a heavier price tag and the highest levels
[01:30:34] of responsibility, which are staggering. In the Vietnam War alone, the military commanders were
[01:30:38] responsible for executing policies which cost the United States $300 billion.
[01:30:45] Seems cheap now coming out of Afghanistan to trillion dollar price tag. They were responsible for
[01:30:49] releasing 13 million tons of high explosives more than six times the weight of bombs dropped by the
[01:30:55] United States and all theaters during the whole of the second world war. They were responsible for
[01:30:59] the delivery of 90,000 tons of gas and herbicides and they were responsible for the deaths of
[01:31:05] between one and two million people. These are great responsibilities. Ears of general ship on this scale
[01:31:12] would be very costly. Of course, many of the arguments put forward in this book are equally applicable
[01:31:18] to other human enterprises. That's why we're freaking interested in this stuff. Indeed,
[01:31:25] there is no reason to suppose that incompetence occurs more frequently in military subcultures
[01:31:29] than it does in politics, commerce, or the universities. There are, however, apart from the heavy
[01:31:35] cost of military disasters, special reasons for studying cases of military enough to do.
[01:31:39] So this applies to everywhere. That's why, I mean, this is what we do for a living in
[01:31:43] national and on front. This is what we do for a living. But he's going to call out the reasons why
[01:31:49] he's going to focus on the military. The first is that military organizations have a particularly
[01:31:53] propensity for attracting a minority of individuals who might prove a menace at high levels of command.
[01:31:59] And the second is that the nature of militarism serves to accentuate those very traits
[01:32:05] which might ultimately prove disastrous, which is what we just talked about. Dave Burke likes people
[01:32:11] to listen to him and he realizes there's the place he can go and put a freaking gold bar on his
[01:32:17] collar and he becomes the man. In theory, then, errors of general ship could be prevented by
[01:32:25] attention to these causes. You would think, thirdly, the public has, at least in the democracies,
[01:32:32] some real say as to who should make its political decisions. This does not apply to generals.
[01:32:37] So you look, we get to vote you out. If you're a president or you're a senator or you're a representative,
[01:32:44] we can vote you out. Chairman of a board, you know, look at business. Yeah. You know, anything like
[01:32:50] that, not the case here. Yeah, we can fire you from your position. 100%. Even the worst government
[01:32:57] and the most inept prime minister could come up for possible dismissal every so often,
[01:33:01] this is not true of armies and navies. We have, we may have the governments we deserve, but sometimes
[01:33:07] had the military minds which we did not. Fourthly, if one of the main differences between
[01:33:11] military and political organization, organizations is the degree of public control that
[01:33:18] between the military and commerce lies in decision payoffs. If he's got this notice, so relatively
[01:33:27] trivial and unimportant are most academic decisions that it would be arrogant to discuss them in the
[01:33:32] same breath. This guy takes shots at the academia quite a bit for a guy that's a freaking
[01:33:39] professor or he was a professor. A wrong decision by a company chairman or board of directors may
[01:33:47] cost a great deal of money and to press a sizable population of shareholders, but military
[01:33:51] or has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, lives and untold misery to civilians and soldiers
[01:33:57] alike. But the case for a study of military and competence rests upon other issues. Not the
[01:34:02] least of these is the need to examine a view of military behavior diametrically opposed to,
[01:34:07] though in no way less extreme than that of people who would vehemently defend senior commanders
[01:34:13] against even the faintest breath of criticism. Well, as I was talking about earlier, we think,
[01:34:17] oh, this guy was in the military, so he must be square away. No. This other hypocritical stance
[01:34:27] seems remarkably widespread. Thus, for many people with whom the author discussed a central topic
[01:34:34] of this book, the notion of military and competence struck as an immediate and responsive court.
[01:34:39] Rejoiners range from you will have no shortage of data to surely that's the whole of military history.
[01:34:46] So when he told people was going to write this book, they go, oh yeah, you got plenty of data on
[01:34:49] incompetence and isn't that just the entire military history? But when press for details,
[01:34:55] there was a tendency to become vague and retire behind a 1066 and all that attitude to the subject
[01:35:02] psychological causes were usually reduced to a single factor, low intelligence or as one historian
[01:35:07] put it, the bloody fool theory of military history. So look, you got people that made bad decisions,
[01:35:13] they were stupid. Doubtless this view has been contributed to by such books on military
[01:35:22] ineptitude as Alan Clark's The Dunkies and a brace of critique of the generals of the first world war.
[01:35:28] Certainly, it's title taken from the famous conversation between Ludenhurf, Ludenhurf and Hoffman
[01:35:36] and such captions as Donkey Decorates Alliance. So this book, the Donkeys, this is a quote that
[01:35:42] you guys ever heard the quote, Lions Led by Lambs. So here's the original quote, according to
[01:35:48] the memoirs of Field Marshal Vaughan, Falcon Hein, side by Own Clark Field Marshal, then Ludenhürf's
[01:35:56] comment, the English soldiers fight like Lions was greeted by his friend, major general Max Hoffman
[01:36:04] with true, but don't we know they are Lions Led by Donkeys and they got a picture in this book
[01:36:12] of some general giving a young soldier own award and the caption is Donkey Decorates Alliance.
[01:36:19] The contents of this book imply however that while stupidity may have possibly played a part,
[01:36:27] limited intelligence was certainly not the cause of the behavior for which the generals have been
[01:36:31] criticized. Judging from the spate of books among which the donkey, the donkey's appeared, it looked
[01:36:38] as if the taboo had been lifted on peering into the military wood shed. But mixing our real metaphors,
[01:36:46] the Ernst Walsh sacred cows were once more being transmorgified into nothing more than
[01:36:54] very unsecret asses. Transmorgified, had to look that word up. What is the, it means magically change,
[01:37:02] that magically changed. So transmorgified. Thus one historian has described a series of military
[01:37:08] misapps to bone-headed leadership, another spoke of quote, the long gallery of military
[01:37:14] immacility while a third has set of British soldiers that their fate was decided for them by idiots.
[01:37:21] So that's what they're normally, you know, this guy was just stupid. And as you read this,
[01:37:27] as you read this book, you realize these are smart people in many cases. And that's such a
[01:37:31] dismissive take on that, you know, it's just like, oh, that guy was dumb, you know, it
[01:37:37] yeah, that's exactly the point he's making. Right. Is oh yeah, the guy was just stupid.
[01:37:45] And you know what's funny is how often do you, how often did you hear throughout your life? Oh, yeah,
[01:37:51] that guy's smart has no common sense. Right. That's like a common thing. Oh, that guy's,
[01:37:56] all of us say always really book smart, which is a dig. Right. It doesn't matter how smart you are,
[01:38:03] if you can't make good decisions. And these people are actually smart in many cases.
[01:38:10] The view taken here is that besides being unkind, these views are probably invalid, the hypothesis
[01:38:15] of intellectual, intellectual incapacity leaves two questions quite unanswered how if they are so
[01:38:19] lacking intelligence, do people become senior military commanders, which is an accurate same in,
[01:38:24] mean you can't be a senior military commander if you're stupid. Maybe maybe occasionally.
[01:38:29] And what is it about military organizations that they should attract, promote, and ultimately tolerate
[01:38:34] those whose performance at the highest levels may destroy the organizations that they represent.
[01:38:41] To answer those, these questions, however, it is first necessary to discover what the job of
[01:38:46] general ship entails and how it could be done so badly or so well. This, the bare bones of
[01:38:52] good and bad general ship is examined in the next chapter in terms of information theory.
[01:38:56] Okay, as I was going through this book trying to decide what, what I'm going to read,
[01:39:02] I just had to go hard in these first couple chapters to lay down the background, the context.
[01:39:10] And so it's almost like all that right there is starting head towards what we're talking about.
[01:39:17] The main part of this book is divided in two halves. The first is concerned with case histories,
[01:39:20] examples of military andeptitude over a period of some hundred years or so.
[01:39:23] Much of this material will no doubt be all too familiar to the reader. It is included here
[01:39:28] and the selections made with two main purposes in mind to provide an aid, memoria.
[01:39:33] And because it is believed that common denominators of military and competence emerge most clearly
[01:39:38] when looked at in a longitudinal study. One special virtue of this approach is that the highlights,
[01:39:43] it highlights the influence or more often regret, regrettable lack of influence of earlier
[01:39:49] upon later events. So throughout he's covering these histories and as you cover these histories,
[01:39:56] you can see that there's just nothing learned. You know, it's even, I guess maybe worse or at
[01:40:01] least the same ballpark as you're talking about Dave. Oh, they took these lessons learned and they
[01:40:06] made them rigid and just as bad as that as we just didn't learn anything.
[01:40:12] For the most part, cases of incompetence have been taken from British military history
[01:40:17] far from being unpatriotic. It's apparently one sided approach. Springs from a sentimental
[01:40:22] regard for the forces of the Crown, whose record of valor and fighting ability is second to none
[01:40:28] and whose ability to rise above the most intense provocation either from a civilian
[01:40:32] population as in Northern Ireland today or from the lapses of their top leadership in days gone by
[01:40:38] must surely occupy unique position in history of warfare. So he's like, hey, I'm going to talk about the
[01:40:42] brets. Nothing against the brets. In fact, the brets have the unbelievable history, but
[01:40:49] that's what we're going to look at. The second and half of the book is devoted to discussion
[01:40:54] and explanation and is subdivided into two parts. The first concern with the social
[01:40:59] psychology of military organizations and the second with the psychopathology of individual commanders.
[01:41:05] And what's I'm telling you, I was like, oh, we'll maybe just do this. Maybe I'll just do that.
[01:41:10] Maybe it's the one part. The context is so strong and he doesn't play around. He doesn't,
[01:41:17] he isn't waiting till the end to start explaining things. He's doing it throughout the book. So
[01:41:23] and as you said and as I said, you know, you got to aim this book yourself. Man, it's uncomfortable
[01:41:28] sometimes. You're reading this thing. You're like, oh, oh, man. Like, oh, I did that. I did this.
[01:41:34] You know, you can feel it. The approach here is essentially eclectic drawing upon
[01:41:42] ethylogical psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories. It attempts to explain military and aptitude
[01:41:48] in light of five inescapable if unfortunate features of human psychology. These are.
[01:41:57] One, man shares with lower animals certain powerful instincts. And again, these are like the
[01:42:03] root of what he's talking about. These five inescapable parts of our brains.
[01:42:12] So we share with lower animals certain powerful instincts too. Unlike lower animals, most
[01:42:18] men learn to control frustrate, direct and sublimate these instinctual energies. So
[01:42:26] right, we got control over some of these things. At least we're supposed to. We can at least
[01:42:30] frustrate them. That's a good word, right? We can at least frustrate them. Three. While by far the
[01:42:37] largest part of this learning occurs in early childhood, it's effects upon adult personality
[01:42:43] are profound and long lasting. Again, this is where you know, you get into like, you know,
[01:42:47] Freud and how you're raised and all these little things that are in your childhood and they,
[01:42:51] and I don't know if that's right or wrong. I don't know if that's right or wrong. Because I think
[01:42:55] I've seen people that have been raised all kinds of different ways and end up all kinds of different ways.
[01:42:58] But I think the end result is you end up with a personality. Regardless of where it comes from,
[01:43:04] you end up with a certain personality or certain personality aspects that we can PID. We can identify
[01:43:12] for residues of this early learning and in particular unresolved conflicts between infantile
[01:43:18] desires and the demands of punitive morality may remain wholly unconscious yet provide a
[01:43:26] canker of inexhaustible anxiety. Again, really tying our behaviors to what, how we got cheated when
[01:43:34] we were kids and if you got, you know, the room had to be clean. You had to clean your plate. Like
[01:43:40] all those little things. And again, chime in if you guys think I'm wrong. I've known people
[01:43:45] that were raised in a totally strict environment and they end up on one of the spectrum and I've
[01:43:51] known people that had raised in a totally strict environment, they end up in a totally different person.
[01:43:55] Are there some root things that are overlapping sure? But I think we have to look
[01:44:01] and maybe it's just the way psychologically things play out, you know, but
[01:44:08] there there. Does he say unresolved? Yes. So I think that has, I think that word jumps out at me
[01:44:15] the unresolved part. I think a lot of times people are able to come to terms with something from
[01:44:22] their childhood and then cut own it right and move past it. I think it's the unresolved
[01:44:29] part that lingers right where there's still, there's a bit of broken something there that hasn't
[01:44:35] been addressed and because of that it continues to plague the individual as they try to move forward.
[01:44:40] So maybe if I know you too and you both were raised in this super strict way and yet Kerry was like,
[01:44:49] you know what, you know my mom was just a little bit crazy and that's cool and but Dave was like,
[01:44:55] it couldn't let it go. Maybe that's what makes Dave a little bit harder than that respect or
[01:45:02] maybe you're both raised by the hippie parents that didn't care and Kerry was like, yeah,
[01:45:08] I don't need to care about anything. It's all good and Dave was like, I don't want to end up like that.
[01:45:12] You end up with a more militaristic mindset or a trauma hippie mom wrecks the van. Johnny moves on,
[01:45:21] you know Dave doesn't. Dave bears the scar right. I'll just say a little bit.
[01:45:34] I really do. I think he does that. The last one, when this anxiety becomes the driving force
[01:45:43] in life's endeavors, the fragile edifices of reason and competence are placed in jeopardy.
[01:45:48] So that's scary. Again, regard for me, regardless of the source of this personality trait that you
[01:45:56] end up with, if that be, it doesn't matter where it came from. If you have it and it becomes the driving
[01:46:04] force in your endeavors, that's where we run into a problem. And I don't want to say it doesn't
[01:46:08] matter where it came from, but regardless of what you think of that, we know someone that's
[01:46:16] hyper either ego is out of control. It doesn't really matter, I shouldn't say it doesn't matter
[01:46:21] where it came from, but there's nothing we can do about where it came from, but if I understand
[01:46:24] that Dave has a massive ego, I'm not sitting there going, well, do I need to have him sit down on
[01:46:29] the couch? Let's go hip-nutism and break down where he got this giant ego from or my,
[01:46:36] I'm just going, okay, he's got a big giant ego. How do I work through this? How do I get this?
[01:46:40] How do I approach him with ideas? So we can dwell on that a little bit, where these people,
[01:46:46] how these people end up like this? And I think that is important to extend. Is if you can
[01:46:50] understand somebody a little bit better, you can maneuver better, but regardless, they end up,
[01:46:56] you end up with these personalities, different personalities. I knew a guy,
[01:47:03] that's the, I mean, I know you know, there was a whole slew, because when I got in the navy,
[01:47:09] so it's 1990, this had to be similar for you. There's a whole slew of my friends in the
[01:47:13] sealed teams who parents were just straight hippies, just freaking hippies, like conceived
[01:47:18] that would stock and whatever, like, just straight up hippies. And yet they took the most militaristic
[01:47:25] life that they could, being a commando, right? So how's that work? Yeah, maybe it's a reaction
[01:47:34] to that, you know? And vice versa, have you ever known someone that had that hardcore, strict religious
[01:47:39] upbringing and what, how do they end up wild, freaking maniac? You know, I feel like that's the
[01:47:45] generic go to, right where it's like the rebel, you know, came from that strict Catholics school,
[01:47:51] you know, whatever, they just go the other way. And it's weird, because you, that's not,
[01:47:57] neither one of these things is, oh, you went to a strict Catholic school, now you're up, no,
[01:48:00] there's plenty of people that went to a strict Catholic school, they become strict Catholics.
[01:48:04] So, that's, I think this is why, and again, I'm not a psychologist and I don't even know enough
[01:48:09] about psychology, but I'm saying regardless of my opinion, because that's all it is, in opinion, the
[01:48:15] result that you get is, oh, this person has a very rebellious attitude and he's in my platoon,
[01:48:19] how do I deal with him? Or this person has a massive ego, he's in my platoon, how do I deal with him?
[01:48:29] It says here in due course, we shall examine the scientific basis for these
[01:48:33] propositions and their relevance to a theory of military incompetence, because this is a book
[01:48:37] about incompetence, rather than competence, about disasters, rather than successes. These chapters
[01:48:42] may appear to take an unnecessarily jondist view of the military profession and to dwell more upon
[01:48:50] what is bad, rather than what is good, and man's attempts to professionalize violence.
[01:48:56] But without teasing out and enlarging upon the less pleasant features of a multi-faceted phenomenon
[01:49:04] there could be no theory to account for, those human aberrations which have caused so much
[01:49:09] unnecessary suffering as war. As clouds wits, rotovor, this is the way in which the matter must be viewed
[01:49:18] and it is to no purpose. It is even against one's better interest to turn away from the consideration
[01:49:25] of the real nature of the affair because of the horror of its elements,
[01:49:28] excites repungents. So we shouldn't not look at war just because it's freaking savage.
[01:49:38] To the reader who recoils and discussed from these chapters, I can only say that the theory
[01:49:43] they advance is based upon the emergence of a pattern of which each small piece may in itself
[01:49:49] seem trivial, possibly ludicrous, even obnoxious, but which when put together with other pieces
[01:49:54] begins to make sense. This interdependence between the parts necessitates keeping an open mind
[01:50:01] and however much one may dislike or disbelieve the existence of the individual trees,
[01:50:06] postponing judgment until the wood is seen in its entirety. For the reader who is obsessed with
[01:50:11] trees and thinks that history should be left to historians, ideas about soldiering to soldiers,
[01:50:16] and that psychological fear rising should never go below the belt. This is the moment to stop
[01:50:21] reading and save yourself some irritation. We're rolling into chapter two, which is general ship.
[01:50:31] War is the province of uncertainty three-force of those things upon which action in war must be
[01:50:35] calculated are hidden more or less in the crowds of great uncertainty. In a situation where the
[01:50:42] consequences of wrong decisions are so awesome where a single bit of irrationality can set a
[01:50:47] whole train of traumatic events in motion. I do not think that we can be satisfied with the
[01:50:52] assurance that quote most people behave rationally most of the time and quote.
[01:51:00] This is a quote that I say to clients all the time, hey people are crazy, including you.
[01:51:05] You've got to deal with all these crazy people. So assuming that people are going to behave
[01:51:08] rationally as a dumb thing to assume. And the additional layer that you already talked about
[01:51:13] earlier is what's rational to me is not rational to you. So we're going to say expectations of what
[01:51:20] I think you would do as you consider rationally like this is a totally rational thing for me to do and
[01:51:24] it's exactly opposite what I would do. Which is crazy that you and I can have those two
[01:51:29] opposite views. But that's the reality.
[01:51:36] War is primarily concerned with two sorts of activity, the delivering of energy and the communication
[01:51:42] of information. This is a crazy thing to think about the delivering of energy.
[01:51:48] In war, each side is kept busy by turning its wealth into energy which is then delivered free,
[01:51:54] gratis and for nothing to the other side. Such energy may be muscular, thermal,
[01:52:00] kinetic or chemical. Wars are only possible because the recipients of this energy are ill-prepared
[01:52:06] to receive it and convert it into useful form for their own economy. If by means of say,
[01:52:13] impossibly large funnels and gigantic reservoirs, they could capture and store the energy
[01:52:17] flowing at them by the other side, the recipients of this unsolicited gift would soon be rich.
[01:52:22] So and the other side so poor that further warfare would be unnecessary for them and impossible
[01:52:27] for their imponer opponents. It's a very interesting way to it.
[01:52:31] I've never heard it. Put that way. It's the truth. It is. Creating energy and thucking it
[01:52:39] at the other side for free for free. And only because they can't handle it.
[01:52:45] Unfortunately such levels of technology have not been reached and have yet not more alone.
[01:52:48] The United States delivered to Indo-China enough energy to displace 3.4 billion cubic yards
[01:52:54] of Earth 10 times the amount dug out for the canals of Suez and Panama combined.
[01:52:59] And enough raw materials in the shape of fuels, metals and other chemicals to keep several
[01:53:05] major industries supplied for years. In fact apart from a little slum clearance, this abundance
[01:53:12] of energy was wasted, consumed in the making of 26 million craters. And laying waste of 20,000
[01:53:19] square kilometers of forests and the destruction of enough crops to feed 2 million people for a year.
[01:53:24] However, while the reception of energy is still totally uncontrolled,
[01:53:27] this is certainly not true of its direction in delivery. Indeed these have become a matter of
[01:53:31] some sophistication and the prime concern of the military and naval commanders. There's the job
[01:53:36] of deciding how, when and where to dispose of the energy which their side makes available,
[01:53:40] they do this by occupying nodal points on a complex communication network.
[01:53:45] In other words the ideal senior commander may be viewed as a device for receiving
[01:53:49] processing and transmitting information in a way which will yield maximum gain for the minimum
[01:53:54] costs. Whatever else he may be, he is part of a telephone exchange and part computer.
[01:54:02] These the common denominators of general ship are depicted in figure one. And now he's got this
[01:54:07] figure here. And this is a, we're going to go like a little bit of Uda activity. So Dave can get
[01:54:13] all excited. He's got this first section which is input. This is what this is the input that you're
[01:54:17] getting. You've got the program that you're on, the broad strategy, the directives from the
[01:54:23] government, the orders from higher military authority, etc. You've got information about the
[01:54:27] enemy, about your own troops, this includes strength, disposition, morale, intentions, supplies,
[01:54:33] capabilities. You've got miscellaneous information, weather forecast, time, a year, moon,
[01:54:37] tides, limitations, and staff communication. Now, so you've got all these things that are, you've got
[01:54:41] your input. Now the input that you get as a leader gets pre-processed by the staff.
[01:54:48] The, what the staff is doing is they're receiving it, they're putting it through a decision
[01:54:56] process, they're running it through a program of their own previous experience. They got their
[01:55:01] memories, how good is their memory? And then you get this output which eventually brings you
[01:55:10] results. And by the way, that's a loop the whole time. So you got, that's the decision thing that's
[01:55:14] happening. You've got information, you're processing it, you're bouncing it off your experiences,
[01:55:19] you're bouncing it off your, your staff. You run that loop until you figure out what you should do,
[01:55:28] which is pretty straight, which is seems complicated and you, you know how it tells me,
[01:55:31] hard, it's going to be hard to make a really like a solid decision. And then you got this other
[01:55:36] section here, which is called noise. And this is what, this is what screws you up. External,
[01:55:45] enemy action inadequate intelligent sources, deluded chief of staff, etc, etc. Internal,
[01:55:56] defective senses or memory. So those are, like you got all kind, we could list a million
[01:56:00] things that are external, that are distractions and noise. Internal, you got defective senses,
[01:56:04] emotion, rigidity, stretch, stress, dissonance, alcoholism, neurosis. So those are all kinds of
[01:56:10] things, freaking, you're disaster. You're disaster is what you are. So he says, so, so I just kind of
[01:56:19] like described what this diagram looks like. For those who don't relish and flow diagrams, let
[01:56:23] it suffice to say that on the basis of a vast conglomerate of facts to do with the enemy, his own
[01:56:27] side geography, weather, etc. Coupled with his own long-term store of past experience and specialist
[01:56:32] knowledge, the senior commander makes decisions that ideally accord with the directives with which he
[01:56:37] has been programmed ideally. But these ideals are hard to meet. For there are two main reasons.
[01:56:44] The first is the senior commanders often have often to fill a number of incompatible roles.
[01:56:50] According to Morris Janowitz, these include, include a heroic leader, military manager and techno
[01:56:56] crap. So that's what you got to do if you're a leader in the military, heroic leader,
[01:57:00] military manager and techno crap. To these we would add politician, public relations man,
[01:57:04] and father figure in psychotherapists because that's what you're doing. The second reason for
[01:57:09] breakdown is what communication engineers call noise in the system. Noise is what interferes with
[01:57:15] the smooth flow of information. It's destructive power hinges on the fact that senior commanders
[01:57:19] like any other device for processing information are channels of limited capacity. If they want
[01:57:25] to deal with more information, they will tend to take longer about it. If they don't take longer,
[01:57:31] they will make mistakes. Here we are using the term information in a special and perhaps
[01:57:36] it's most important, since as the that which reduces uncertainty. So that's what information is.
[01:57:44] Information is that which reduces uncertainty. Let me expand on this a little. A acquiring knowledge
[01:57:53] involves the reduction of ignorance through the acquisition of facts, but ignorance is rarely
[01:57:59] absolute and its reduction rarely total. Doesn't matter. You're not going to know everything.
[01:58:06] And you're not going to know nothing. Hence reducing ignorance can be regarded as reducing
[01:58:12] uncertainty about a given state of affairs. It follows that an unlikely or unexpected fact contains
[01:58:16] more information. IE reduces more uncertainty than one which is already expected. He's going to go
[01:58:22] into that hard. That what I just said it follows that an unlikely or unexpected fact contains more
[01:58:29] information. IE reduces more uncertainty than one which is already expected. We are expected.
[01:58:35] It well doesn't really help me that much. But an unexpected fact is less readily absorbed than one
[01:58:42] which was expected. Ooh. Well, I wasn't expecting this to happen. So I'm going to kind of reject it.
[01:58:47] If this is less than crystal clear, consider the following example, cast an assudable,
[01:58:54] suitable military context. The message in this case consists of an intelligence report which states
[01:59:00] quote, enemy preparing for counter-intact attack and quote. It goes onto detail strength,
[01:59:07] disposition date and likely sector for attack. Now this message factually so simple contains
[01:59:13] amount of information which differ greatly from commander to commander. To general A,
[01:59:20] who anticipated such a counter-attack, it conveys very little. It merely confirms a hypothesis
[01:59:26] which he already held. In fact, since he had already made extensive preparation for a counter-attack,
[01:59:31] the intelligence report when it came was largely redundant. So that's general A. Hey,
[01:59:36] I was expecting this quote. Got it. In the case of general B, however, the same message was quite
[01:59:43] unexpected. So little had he anticipated an enemy counter-attack that the news was charged with
[01:59:48] information. It reduced a great deal of ignorance and uncertainty. It gave him plenty to occupy his mind
[01:59:56] and much to do. And I'm going to dive into that part right there because this is really important.
[02:00:03] Finally, we have general C for whom the message was so totally unexpected that he chose to ignore
[02:00:09] it with disastrous results. It conflicted with his preconceptions. It clashed with his wishes.
[02:00:15] It emanated so he fought from an unreliable source. Since his mind was closed to its reception,
[02:00:22] he found plenty of reasons for refusing to believe it, like British generals after the Battle
[02:00:28] of Cambrae or American generals before the German counter-affective in the Ardenes of 1944.
[02:00:35] He ignored it at his cost. Its information content was just too high for his channel of limited
[02:00:43] capacity. And so those three examples. And when I first read this, I thought,
[02:00:53] generally, it doesn't contain much information because he was already expecting it.
[02:00:57] General B got a lot of information from it because he wasn't expecting it. And it seems like
[02:01:01] General B might be in a better situation because he got more information, but that's not true.
[02:01:06] And it all boils down to this last thing. Its information content was too high for his limited
[02:01:11] channel of capacity of his limited capacity. I think an advantage that I have,
[02:01:22] and that I try and teach other people, is to have an open mind and to not
[02:01:29] renew information arises to absorb it and accept it and be like, okay, this is new information.
[02:01:36] I take it with a grain of salt, of course, but I'm not, and go even further than that.
[02:01:43] It's not just that my mind is open. It's that I'm actually trying to anticipate what's going on.
[02:01:49] I'm actually thinking, well, what are they probably going to do? They're probably going to do this.
[02:01:53] And but I don't dig in on that. You know, the enemy can probably get a attack from the west.
[02:01:58] But I'm going to go know the enemy's going to attack. The enemy's going to probably
[02:02:01] get attacked from the west, but they could also come from the south. And you know what they could
[02:02:03] come from these north. Doesn't matter.
[02:02:09] I think that when you said the word anticipation was the piece, as I'm hearing you talk about a bit,
[02:02:15] you hear the three generals and you think, oh, be the right guy.
[02:02:18] Oh, no, you thought that's true. No, no, no, I know. I actually, I'm trying to explain the logic.
[02:02:23] Right, right, right, it seems a face of value as an unfolded in my head. Yeah. Like, oh, I could see people
[02:02:29] going, oh, bees the best example because he got the most information. Oh, man, this changes everything. Holy cow.
[02:02:35] And clearly sees the worst because he's like, I can't accept that in my brain. So we're not doing that.
[02:02:39] I don't acknowledge it. And to his following, like it's going to, the whole team's going to go
[02:02:42] wiped out. But when you said anticipation, because I think of it as you, as we talk about it, as we teach it.
[02:02:48] And as, as you've discussed it, which is I'm going to do these things. I'm going to make these moves. I'm going to,
[02:02:52] I'm going to try to create a situation that unfold a certain way. But I know, I know it doesn't
[02:02:59] go the way that I expect, which is I am anticipating a bunch of other potential officers. Now,
[02:03:05] I don't necessarily know which one it's going to be. But when you come back and say, it didn't go,
[02:03:10] let me say differently. It went this way. And no matter what this way is, you go, okay, I can see that.
[02:03:15] I can see how our moves created this outcome. And maybe not even what you want. Or maybe not even
[02:03:20] what you expected. But the other ones aren't unexpected, which makes it so much easier to go, okay,
[02:03:27] cool. Now I've got an information. Here's the adjustments we're going to make. Or hey, we'll continue
[02:03:32] down the path of it so we want it. But the anticipation that the outcome is not what you want.
[02:03:37] That word, that's the piece for me that resonates, which is the best situation to be in as,
[02:03:41] oh, it was different than I wanted, even a little different than I expected. And I'm not surprised
[02:03:45] by that. I don't get caught mentally off balance very often because you don't pre-determined the
[02:03:52] outcome. Because I don't lean too hard now. I'm not saying I don't lean. But I don't lean so much
[02:03:58] that when that resistance is there, I just fall in my face. Yeah. And I, I, I, I steal a
[02:04:05] comment that you made with from from your second platoon commander over and over again. The
[02:04:09] contact he was using, it was someone on his, on your team doing something wasn't really smart.
[02:04:14] And it's just the simple saying of, you got to expect these things to happen. But I overlay that
[02:04:19] onto everything I can think of, which is, oh, that didn't really go as expected. But I'm not that
[02:04:24] surprised by it. Like, yeah, I kind of expect these things to happen. And just the idea of saying,
[02:04:29] you got to expect those things to happen. Other people thinking, holy cow, this is a level
[02:04:33] 10 emergency. This is an unsolvable tragedy. He's like, no, I kind of am used to these type of things
[02:04:39] going the way that people don't expect it. And we can actually solve this. I can absorb it and
[02:04:43] make some changes. No factor. Yeah. Yeah. Don't over commit to your brain. Over can
[02:04:49] admit the outcome. The, the other thing about this example is with this mechanical like dissection,
[02:04:56] he's doing of all this stuff. There's he talks a lot about the capacity. And with general A,
[02:05:04] you've got very little capacity left over from what you were expecting, right? So you've got
[02:05:10] your expectation of what's going to happen. And you've got some capacity left over to to
[02:05:16] dedicate to what's actually happening. Guy B, or the general B, let's say, he, it takes him
[02:05:24] by surprise. So now he has to do so much more back in work that general A's already done. And he's
[02:05:31] got all this free capacity. But now he can dedicate to what's actually happening. And the third
[02:05:36] guy has got so little, you know, that he just, he chooses to willfully ignore what's happening
[02:05:45] rather than take on the challenge of, you know. Yeah. If you did one of those games where you have
[02:05:51] to look at something for a short period of time and remember as much as you can. If I said,
[02:05:55] okay, Dave, I'm going to show you a car in this next picture. It's a Ford Bronco. And I want you
[02:06:01] to remember as much about as it could. You'd be like, okay, here's the color. Here's the
[02:06:04] last one. But if I said, hey, Kerry, I want you to go and I'm going to show you a picture.
[02:06:09] Tell me as much about it as you can. You'd be like, get half, a quarter of the information because
[02:06:14] you just don't have that much capacity. Your capacities already taken. It's overflowing, right,
[02:06:20] with stuff. Try to make sure. So the color, right, like you're trying to figure all this out.
[02:06:24] And you're just overwhelmed. So that's what we're trying not to do, right?
[02:06:28] And I think also, too, just from a leadership standpoint, you're thinking about people. There
[02:06:32] aren't three versions of people out there. There's seven billion versions of that. So this is a,
[02:06:37] this is a dial across all those spectrums. And certainly you can categorize that. And those examples
[02:06:42] are good examples. But even inside there, you don't just get three. If you got a team of 26,
[02:06:47] you're not, don't bend them into three categories and presume they sit in those, those bins.
[02:06:51] I bet you that you could probably break it down into weight classes, though. And not end up with
[02:06:57] seven billion but end up with like nine laying classes. You know? And it's really just, there's a
[02:07:03] spectrum inside there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're between, you know, 170 pounds and 180 five pounds.
[02:07:09] Like we know what kind of, we know you're, you're like lean and really hard. We know where you're
[02:07:14] going to know. Yeah. This continues. One particularly hazardous aspect of the relationship between
[02:07:22] information and decision processes concerns the revising of decisions. It seems that having
[02:07:31] gradually and perhaps painfully accumulated information in support of a decision, people become
[02:07:37] progressively more low to accept contrary evidence. So this is everything we're just talking about.
[02:07:45] You make a decision. You've got some information. And now we're not want to accept anything different
[02:07:50] as Edd's words and his colleagues have shown the greater the impact of new information,
[02:07:55] the more strenuously it will be resisted, which is actually crazy. It's actually crazy.
[02:08:00] Dave's like, I'm head north. I'm head north. We're head north right now. We made the call. And I'm
[02:08:05] like, hey, actually brothers, like, enemy up there. And you're like, we already made the call. Like,
[02:08:10] are you sure total resistance? There are several reasons for this dangerous conservatism.
[02:08:16] New information has by definition high informational content. And therefore, firstly, it will require
[02:08:22] greater processing capacity. Secondly, it threatens a return to an earlier state of knowing
[02:08:27] uncertainty. And thirdly, it confronts the decision maker with the nasty thought that he may have
[02:08:32] been wrong. No wonder he tends to turn a blind eye. I mean, I talk about this in one way or another
[02:08:40] all the time. All the time. Isn't it scary to think I'd rather just be wrong than go back to just
[02:08:47] being uncertain? Look, we're going north. Brother, there's enemy up there. Yeah, but at least I know
[02:08:53] where I'm going.
[02:08:56] Rick and disaster.com.
[02:09:01] So much for a broad description of this most vital dimension of knowledge. It's prior improbability.
[02:09:07] Let us return now to the other side of the coin, the problem of noise. Noise, as we saw,
[02:09:12] is the enemy of information. Noise takes up channel space and thereby disrupts the flow of
[02:09:17] information. The more limited the channel capacity, the greater disrupting effects of noise.
[02:09:23] The more noise, the less information can be handled. And, and, um, again, as I read this,
[02:09:30] I look for some of the things that I do wrong, some of the things I do good. Man, I am an
[02:09:33] noise eliminator. I may freak in noise eliminator. There's stuff going on around me that doesn't matter.
[02:09:40] I, like, give it no snow. I don't give it a second of my energy. Just to be able to recognize
[02:09:47] what is noise. And go, hey, that's noise. We're going to filter that out as opposed to the overreaction
[02:09:54] the most people have. And, and I keep in my own head going back to things that I recall. As you're
[02:10:00] reading this, I've been thinking a lot about Band of Brothers. And there's a character in there.
[02:10:05] If you haven't heard it, the book is awesome. The, the, the TV series is like incredibly good. It's
[02:10:13] very rare that I take a book and we'll see the, the TV version. I'm going to go, I was really,
[02:10:17] really good. The TV version is awesome. There's this character, Captain Sobel, who is kind of like
[02:10:21] this tyrant of a leader. And there's a scene where he's leading this platoon and he runs into, like,
[02:10:25] I think it's like he's maneuvering to get to some objective and, and he ends up up against, like, a
[02:10:29] barbed wire face. This fence isn't supposed to end here. It's not on the map and it's guys like,
[02:10:34] Sir, we can, we could just go, we could just cut the fence. And he's like, yeah, but it's not supposed
[02:10:39] to be any spends all this time reacting to the idea that this fence was not on the map and the people
[02:10:44] are on like, sir, but it's like a barbed wire fence. We could get through this thing in literally
[02:10:48] five seconds. But that noise of the fence that's, it's not supposed to be here. And he was
[02:10:55] incapable of responding to what appeared to be this, and it's the inability to go, oh, oh,
[02:11:00] hey, this is a distractor. Hey, this is noise. We need to filter this out. I would say that's actually
[02:11:04] a better example of this isn't what I expected and therefore I can't accept it. Well, card of
[02:11:09] that, yes, it's beyond noise because noise is like, well, there's other stuff going on, but here's
[02:11:12] the, he's seeing something with his own two eyes. And he's like, hey, this isn't supposed to be,
[02:11:18] the map doesn't have this. Well, it's funny you said that because I've been thinking about him for about
[02:11:23] 30 minutes and I chose this as the example, but where it really indexed for me was when you gave
[02:11:28] to those three examples, you know, I don't like dude, that's Captain Solbowl man. This is in the
[02:11:32] character that he talks about in this book to reveal what this character was like and it brought
[02:11:36] me back to authoritarian. You know, he do uniform inspections if you had one thing off
[02:11:41] you lose a weekend. He was just such a follow the, to the, to the detriment of every himself and
[02:11:46] everybody around him, but you know what the military loves, a uniform platoon, they all look the same.
[02:11:51] It's just a character, but it's, it's that idea that the incapacity to, to acknowledge those things
[02:11:57] and be able to deal with him and happening real time and go, hey, this is no factor. And there's, oh,
[02:12:01] okay, cool. It's just a character, but it's also a complete and utter caricature of this authoritarian
[02:12:06] lead. We can probably just start referring back to him throughout the rest of this book. It's so
[02:12:10] very strong. Um, a glance back at figure one suggests that not only does a senior military commander
[02:12:19] receive more than more than his fair share of information, but the communication system of which he
[02:12:24] forms a part is a peculiar, particularly susceptible to noise. This may be external and origin
[02:12:32] ranging from the static on a radio link to the delusions of a chief of staff. Or it may be internal
[02:12:40] ranging from such peripheral sources as poor eyesight, a common feature of the generals of the
[02:12:45] Crimean War to such centrally central and usually more disastrous causes as defective memory
[02:12:53] brain disease, neurosis and alcoholism. Noise from all these sources may act upon the flow of
[02:13:03] information through a general's head and eventuate indecisions varying in gravity from the mildly
[02:13:09] inept to the utterly catastrophic, but decisions hinge upon more than available information. They also
[02:13:15] depend upon quote payoffs. The anticipated consequences of choosing one course of action rather than
[02:13:21] another. Payoffs may be positive or negative beneficial or costly. They are the criteria according
[02:13:28] to which decisions are made. Obviously, if a commander gets his criteria wrong, if the possible loss
[02:13:35] of self-esteem or social approval or fear of offending a superior authority is given greater
[02:13:42] waiting than more rational considerations the scene is set for calamity. So there you are trying
[02:13:50] to make a decision and you're weighing if you're going to lose self-esteem or if you're going
[02:13:56] to lose social approval which is crazy. But we know that happens. The possibility of this happening
[02:14:04] is increased by the fact that the fog of war, unlike uncertainties which attach to most civilian
[02:14:08] enterprises, extends not only to the input, but also to the payoffs. Not only does the general
[02:14:13] have to make decisions on the basis of a great volume of dubious information and a meet.
[02:14:18] And me to program of perhaps questionable validity, he may also not know the cost and benefits
[02:14:25] of what he does propose. He is like a man who places a bet without knowing the odds or where
[02:14:30] the book he might be found once the race is over. This is a freaking hard job.
[02:14:35] As well as those problems which are inherent in any communication system, the human decision maker
[02:14:41] is the victim of another hazard. Namely, that attention, perception, memory and thinking are all
[02:14:48] liable to distortion or bias by emotion and motivation. As needs arise, whether they be social or
[02:14:55] biological neurotic or adaptive, so they act upon a way man perceives his external world what he
[02:15:02] attends to, the sort of memories which he conjures up and the decisions which he makes.
[02:15:09] He is like a computer which has not only to receive store, process and deliver information,
[02:15:14] but also has to postpone sleep, cope with hunger, resist fear, control anger,
[02:15:19] sublimate sex and keep up with the Joneses. When it is considered that the capacity for perception
[02:15:26] and response for memory and thought presumably evolved for the satisfaction of needs,
[02:15:31] it is a remarkable achievement at the best of times to keep these informational processes of
[02:15:36] mind free from bias by the needs which they were originally designed to serve.
[02:15:41] So you got all this stuff going on in your head. You're genetically built this way to have these thoughts
[02:15:47] and have these poles and have these biases and it's hard as hell to keep that stuff
[02:15:54] and make your operating system as clean as possible. And then he says, in war, such an achievement
[02:15:58] borders on the miraculous and this for very one simple reason, the effects or needs, the effects
[02:16:04] of needs upon cognition are maximized when the needs are very strong and external reality is
[02:16:11] ambiguous or confused. It is under such conditions that need and emotion have the greatest
[02:16:16] freedom of maneuver, the greatest capacity for imposing themselves upon the uncertainties of thought.
[02:16:22] These are the conditions which obtain in war and that is freaking important.
[02:16:29] This whole idea that emotion has the greatest freedom of maneuver
[02:16:37] and the greatest capacity for imposing itself on you during times of uncertainty. And this is why
[02:16:43] this is why people get crazy. This is why people get crazy when you go on deployment in a
[02:16:47] combat zone. This is why somebody that's acting normal and seems to be good to go and all of a
[02:16:52] sudden you get on deployment and they get crazy because that emotion starts to come out.
[02:17:01] I remember I wrote a note to my buddy, a good friend of mine, just to recount this idea.
[02:17:07] When I was lucky enough that I was one of the first units to deploy after 9-11 to go to
[02:17:12] Afghanistan and start dropping bombs out there which was at the time like the best thing ever was
[02:17:16] what I wanted to be doing. Oh, not 11 happened and everybody was sort of scrambling to go and
[02:17:20] came back and then Iraq was we knew that Iraq was going to happen relatively shortly after we
[02:17:25] came back within the year. And I remember writing a note to a buddy of mine who was getting ready to
[02:17:28] go to his first combat deployment. And I just said that people around you were going to do crazy things.
[02:17:33] People that you think you know are going to do things that totally catch you, of course. I was like
[02:17:37] my first lesson from just and that's a very small degree compared to what he experienced World War II
[02:17:42] and the biggest takeaway that he was asking, hey, what can I expect? It had nothing to do with
[02:17:48] the tactics. I said the people around you are going to do things that catch you off guard.
[02:17:53] They're going to surprise you because the situation is going to their circuit breaker is going
[02:17:58] to pop and it's going to blow their minds. Yeah, and that's a warning I've given people as well
[02:18:04] of your, you get right on the planet. I remember explaining you someone, hey, it's going to get wild.
[02:18:10] And meaning people can start acting crazy and you know having people say no they're not like, okay.
[02:18:17] You know fast forward two months. It's like, bro, what's happening with this dude? I'm like,
[02:18:22] remember what I told you people were going to get crazy. There you go.
[02:18:25] Contemplation of what is involved in general ship may well, may well occasion surprise that
[02:18:34] incompetence is not absolutely inevitable that anyone can do the job at all. Particularly
[02:18:41] is this so when one considers that military decisions are often made under conditions of a
[02:18:47] enormous stress when actual noise fatigue lack of sleep poor food and grinding responsibility
[02:18:55] add their quotas to the ever present threat of total annihilation. He's like, hey, bro, it's a
[02:18:59] miracle and anyone can pull this shit off. I love this end. Actual noise. Actual noise and that's
[02:19:05] an italics. Totally man. I hope I said it in italics because it's in italics. Indeed, the four going
[02:19:12] analysis of general ship prompts the thought that it might be better to scrap generals and leave
[02:19:17] decision-making aspects of war to computers. A similar argument has been made as been
[02:19:22] advancing connection with medicine. Why leave diagnosis and therapeutic decisions to
[02:19:27] fallable human brains when a computer could make them with far less chance of error. The
[02:19:33] answer, of course, and this no doubt contributes much to the relief of generals and doctors that
[02:19:38] computers make poor leaders and indifferent father figures. They may be quick and efficient,
[02:19:45] unpredgidous, sober and alert, but with all remain cold fish. They do not inspire
[02:19:51] affection with its consequent desire to please nor do they exude a bedside manner. Paradoxically,
[02:19:57] they are also perhaps just a little too infallible. They are more over as we as far as we know
[02:20:03] avoid a feelings what is worse quite indifferent to outcomes of their decisions. But while all
[02:20:10] this militates against computers as leaders of men, so called leadership qualities and
[02:20:15] military commanders are just as dependent upon the various factors outlined in our flow chart
[02:20:21] as are any of the other responses which a general mix. Pregnits, fear of failure, over conformity
[02:20:32] and sheer stupidity may disrupt leadership decisions as surely as they interfere with planning
[02:20:38] or technical decisions. All are products of the same brain. Man, there's a lot going on.
[02:20:47] One last point, a senior military or naval commander does not invite cannot act in lonely isolation
[02:20:55] but is fettered by the organization to which he belongs. He is like a computer or telephone exchange
[02:21:02] whose motive operandi is based on rules which may have little relevance to the tasks it is called
[02:21:08] upon to perform. Imagine a telephone exchange that for the honor of the post office has to follow the
[02:21:15] rule that all telephonists should have red hair, 38 inch busts and heavily-litted eyes and one as
[02:21:23] some idea of the restricting effects which an organization may have upon its own functioning.
[02:21:28] In these chapters that follow we shall be examining some well-known cases of military incompetence
[02:21:34] to discover if possible the precise reasons for and the common denominators of these events.
[02:21:40] For the moment, however, let us consider one brief and less well-known incident which illustrates
[02:21:46] how the smooth flow of information through the brains of senior commanders may be so distorted
[02:21:52] that their decisions prove catastrophic. The culprits in this instance are naval, not military commanders.
[02:22:00] The place is Samoa in the date 1889, seven warships, three American,
[02:22:07] three German and one British are lying at acre in the harbor of apia.
[02:22:13] They are there as naval and military presence to watch over the interests of their various
[02:22:19] governments in the political upheavals that are taking place ashore. Accordingly, they anchor
[02:22:25] in what has been described as one of the most dangerous anchorages in the world.
[02:22:30] For to call apia a harbor at all is at best an unfortunate euphemism. Largely occupied by coral reefs,
[02:22:39] this saucer-shaped indentation lies wide open to the north, when the great
[02:22:44] Pacific rollers come sweeping in. In fair weather apia provides an uneasy resting place for no more
[02:22:51] than four medium-sized ships. For seven large ships and numerous smaller craft
[02:22:59] under adverse conditions, it is a death trap. This was the situation in which the seven
[02:23:05] men of war witnessed the first bleak portents of an approaching typhoon. They're got seven
[02:23:12] ships inside this little harbor which this little harbor actually has an open mouth to the sea.
[02:23:17] Full of reefs, full of reefs, full of reefs. It's big enough for four ships. They're seven in that.
[02:23:24] Even to Eland's men, a rapidly darkening sky and falling glass, squally gusts of wind,
[02:23:32] and then a law would bow to ill. For seven naval captains, the signs were unmistakable. They knew
[02:23:40] they were in a region of the world, particularly subject typhoons, which in a matter of minutes could
[02:23:46] lash the sea into a furious hell of boiling water. They knew that such storms generate winds
[02:23:51] traveling at upwards of a hundred knots, gusts that could snap masks like carrots, reduced deck
[02:23:57] fittings to match wood, and throw ships on their beams. They knew that this was the worst month of
[02:24:04] the year, and they also knew that only three years before every ship in apia had been sunk by such a storm.
[02:24:13] In short, and in terms of our flowchart, their stored information
[02:24:19] coupled with present input pointed to only one decision to get up and get out.
[02:24:25] And as if this was not enough, the urgency weighing of weighing anchor and putting to sea was
[02:24:31] respectively suggested by subordinate officers. So you got a freaking massive storm approaching
[02:24:39] by the way, what was it a year? Three years before every ship in the harbour had been sunk.
[02:24:44] We got subordinate officers that are saying, hey captain, we should get out of here.
[02:24:51] But the captains of the warship, but the captains of the warships were also naval officers,
[02:24:56] and so they denied the undeniable and stayed where they were. Their behavior has been described
[02:25:03] as an, quote, error of judgment that will forever remain a paradox in human psychology, and quote.
[02:25:10] When the typhoon struck, its effects were tragic and inevitable.
[02:25:16] Without sea-room, their anchors dragging under the pressure of the mountainous seas,
[02:25:20] their holes in rigging crust by the fury of the wind, three of the warships collided before
[02:25:26] being swept onto the jagged reefs of coral. Another sank in deep water. Two more were wrecked
[02:25:31] upon the beach. Of all the ships in the harbour, the only survivor was a British Corvette,
[02:25:36] which thanks to its powerful engines and superb seam and ship, squeaked through to the open sea.
[02:25:43] Why did the naval commanders burst in the ways of the sea and provided with ample warning,
[02:25:49] thus hazard their ships and their lives of their men? A superficial answer might be pride,
[02:25:57] or fear of appearing cowardly, or fear of criticism from their superiors.
[02:26:03] These matters are to be pursued in later chapters. For the moment, the apparently
[02:26:07] incursible behavior of these men illustrates how decision-process can be thrown into disarray
[02:26:14] by noise of internal origin and how, in this instance, any way, incompetence cannot be attributed
[02:26:22] to ignorance or ordinary stupidity.
[02:26:31] It's an inter, the focus of that is this is an internal noise, it's internal. They knew what
[02:26:39] was coming, they could see what was coming, there's no lack of communication, they were watching
[02:26:44] the storm come. They have the history, they have they know what's happened in this harbour
[02:26:48] for this, and like everything is clear and yet the decision by seven captains. I guess
[02:26:55] six, one of them made it out, sounds like he squeaked out though, they all make the wrong decision.
[02:27:01] How does that happen? No external factors can be blamed in the situation.
[02:27:06] It's internal, it's internal noise that comes from our own psychology.
[02:27:20] So, well two and a half hours deep. I say we call it for today.
[02:27:26] This book is going to be, there's so much in this book and I'll start to speed up a little bit
[02:27:38] I think as we push into the next podcast, hit some of the high waves for the section where they
[02:27:45] cover the historical disasters, but like I said, it's not like he just talks about the historical
[02:27:50] disasters and explain what happens. He starts to explain why decisions are getting made,
[02:27:55] where the ego comes into play, who's offending one another, what these internal decision disasters
[02:28:03] are caused by, and I'm telling you, it is a great warning for all of us, military, civilian,
[02:28:13] business, family, and you can probably already see the, this is what we talk about all the time.
[02:28:22] This book, these these topics are what we talk about all the time and the examples,
[02:28:27] bring them to, to even clearer light. We'll get into it on the next podcast.
[02:28:37] Until then, Kerry, we are, we are trying to prevent our own
[02:28:46] incompetence as much as possible in every aspect of our lives. We are. What, what, what can you
[02:28:51] recommend us to try and mitigate our own incompetence? That's not a very high goal, is it?
[02:28:58] mitigating our own incompetence. What do you got? So we want to battle in competence. We want to be
[02:29:05] more capable, not less capable. We want a clean operating system. Oh, my, like where you're going
[02:29:13] to this. A break clean, right? So how can we do that? We're going to do that with a little bit of
[02:29:20] jacophil, a little discipline go, a little RTD, and again, possibly some afterburner orange or
[02:29:30] mango mayhem from the big dog echo Charles. Who? The big dog echo Charles, the Hawaiian.
[02:29:38] That name rings a bell. Oh, the guy who's job is a girl. Oh, yeah, I forgot his name. The big dog
[02:29:46] echo Charles. Well, people look at a freak out. Oh, man. K dogs on here. They're like,
[02:29:51] wait a second, what happened to echo Charles? Cover move. Okay, about that. So he could make it today.
[02:29:57] Echo Charles was otherwise detained. Right on. So K dogs had to step up to the play. How did
[02:30:03] feel in the hot seat over there? Can you been behind the scenes? I've been behind the scenes a little
[02:30:08] bit. I've been in the background. You've been on the side of the camera. Yeah, yeah. Now you're front
[02:30:13] and center. Now we're in here. Maybe Echo is like, he's on the ropes. Echo is an institution as far
[02:30:22] as I'm concerned. And I, I, that makes one of us. I am happy to fill in, though, man. Honestly,
[02:30:30] it's it's super cool to sit at the table. I've said this to you and probably Dave too, man,
[02:30:35] hollowed ground. The people who've sat around this table, man. It's something special. So
[02:30:40] super cool to be able to do it today. For sure. Right on. So we're getting some
[02:30:45] jockel fuel, jockelfield.com. Jockelfield.com. We're getting some discipline go going to walla
[02:30:51] and just clearing shelves. That's where we're at. If you go to walla and you clear a shelf, let me
[02:30:56] tell you what you're doing. You're helping every other trooper in America. That's what you're doing
[02:31:00] because as other convenience chains see what's going on at walla, they're like, oh, oh, okay,
[02:31:07] we got it. So roll into walla and just get some just clear shelves. Um, while was got something going on
[02:31:14] right now, right? We do. Yeah. If it's October, if it's listening to this, yeah, right on you, you,
[02:31:20] you buy one and you get another one for a buck. Maybe missed it. Which is kind of dope. I don't
[02:31:24] mean, miss any of this comes out tonight tomorrow night. Yeah, right on. Kadaox just going to roll
[02:31:29] right in. Hey, get out the wall for that bogo action. Uh, oh, look at you. That's not got one though.
[02:31:37] Oh, it's in luck. By one get one if you were a dollar right. Yeah. Uh, joint warfare. Super
[02:31:43] curl. Um, these these things are all battle against that noise we're talking about body, body,
[02:31:50] noise, physical noise. That elbow noise. You got some elbow noise. Oh, always. Well, not, you know,
[02:31:58] I got some shoulder noise. If I'm telling you, if I don't, if I if I miss out on joint warfare,
[02:32:03] it's a problem. That's why I don't miss out on it. Joint warfare and super curl. That's my,
[02:32:08] that's my go to man. Get rid of that noise. How about that moke?
[02:32:14] Dave, you could all night walk train. Are you still on strawberry? Yeah. Did you even on strawberry
[02:32:18] for a while? I don't know what's going to ever. I mean, I have them all. I got to line up in my
[02:32:22] closet or my, my pantry, but it's, it's like, um, you know, it's like afterburner orange for me.
[02:32:28] That's what I'm going to. It's strawberry's the best. Do you, so right now you're drinking
[02:32:33] what, back savage? What do you got over there? I got a deck right in front of them. So at the, at the,
[02:32:36] at the gym here, we were out of afterburner orange, which I know is no big surprise to you.
[02:32:43] But do you ever think, uh, I almost wavered today on chocolate Palmer. I was like, you know,
[02:32:49] maybe I'll go to traffic thunder. Because traffic thunder, especially when it's cold,
[02:32:54] it's freaking legit. But you're still strawberry. Yes. And milk strawberry. That's it. Dude,
[02:33:01] I mixed nothing in that. It's strawberry and milk. And that's it. I don't like, and hey,
[02:33:08] no criticism of that's your game, but like, in the stuff that people put in there and like,
[02:33:11] I put in the sugar cup, I shake it up when I drink it and there's nothing I want to echo
[02:33:16] Charles over here. He's got to go to the grocery store. What, bro, no, I'm saying the frozen banana
[02:33:21] game changer all day, all day that frozen banana, something about that. Tell us it's not word.
[02:33:26] Oh, man. How does it, when you, when you, you got to blend it then, too. Yeah. That's a whole
[02:33:31] issue. Well, here's the thing with me. I like to eat sure, but you know, some people,
[02:33:37] they, they, they, they have like a hole. It's a, it's a ritual, right? And they're going to get,
[02:33:42] they go to the store and they're like, picking stuff up and then they try to rip the grill. And
[02:33:47] now I got a nice grill and everything, I, I, you've, I'll put in the microwave, like, I'm not,
[02:33:52] I'm not firing that thing up. I'm one of those people. We're looking for a fish. Yes. Oh, I will,
[02:33:56] I will open up a can of chicken from Costco and just, that's dinner. If my wife didn't make good
[02:34:03] food, I would just be eating, you know, a can of, of chicken. You'd be on that K dog. Yeah. I put on the
[02:34:12] K dog routine. It's for the single life. Oh, yes. It is for long eating. Yeah. Two cups of green
[02:34:18] beans, some Hawaiian rolls. You're ready to rock and roll. So, but you know what is good. That's
[02:34:25] why I'm not, I'm not exploring the freaking half frozen well ripe banana or whatever it is we're doing.
[02:34:31] Right. I'm over here. I'm with Dave. I'm like milk. Milk. We're good. But here's a thing for me. That milk
[02:34:37] milk combo. Yeah. My scale. You know, I'm giving it. I give it a 10. Yeah. I'm giving it a 10. It's like,
[02:34:41] I'm just suffering through the 7 6.0. It's a 10. That's it. We're all this other stuff you're doing.
[02:34:47] You know what's going to get you to a 10. Yeah. That's where I'm at right now. So I don't need it. Yeah. I'm the same way.
[02:34:52] Now I will say I'm, I'm not solo on one flavor right now. I'm, I'm bouncing around. I
[02:35:00] used to go like one month on a flavor and then I go in three weeks on another flavor. They go
[02:35:05] back to another flavor for a month. I'm kind of, I'm kind of getting crazy right now. I'll be, you know,
[02:35:10] I'll be even doing, you know, it makes it up during the day. You know, lunch is going to be some
[02:35:15] painter butter. Dinner's going to be some men, right? Got some, you know, I'm over here close
[02:35:20] minded. Not free thinking. Yeah. I got strawberry. I'm going to stick with strawberry for about 25
[02:35:25] years. We'll just some other time. I wrote a lot for the drinks. Vitamin shop. Get all the stuff
[02:35:32] at the vitamin shop. And Jockelfuel.com. What? Commissaire? Oh, that's right. Maybe commissaire. That's right.
[02:35:39] That's right. Good call. K dog. 100% we're in there. We're in there. Jockelfuel.com. If you, yeah,
[02:35:46] also subscribe. If you subscribe, you get this shipping for free. What up? Just where do we stand on
[02:35:53] greens? Okay. We have greens. Jockelfuel greens. They're amazing. Dude, they're amazing.
[02:36:03] Yeah. Really, truly are amazing. Yes. They are, they are, they're hard to make. If you look at
[02:36:11] the ingredients list, it's all organic. The whole product together is not certified organic because
[02:36:17] we haven't gone through that process yet. But every ingredient in there is, or I think every ingredient
[02:36:23] is organic. So it's hard to make it. So that's why I'm not talking about it at all because
[02:36:28] people that are kind of in the know. I'm like, I'm not trying to screw them. Just tell everyone
[02:36:34] that this is the greatest beverage. Yeah. It's certainly, it's certainly is the greatest greens.
[02:36:40] But, and not even close. It's not even close. It tastes delicious. The go look at the ingredients
[02:36:44] list too. It is the best quality sweetened with monk fruit. You know what I've been doing?
[02:36:50] Is I've been having that? Like, let's, because sometimes you know, I get done with the steak at night.
[02:36:56] And I want dessert. But I'm full. So that monk is sort of looking like a little bit much.
[02:37:04] Outcomes the green. Outcomes the greens. Like wine people. They drink whatever it is.
[02:37:10] Apport. Right? Apport. Can I get a glass of port? When I'm feeling that way,
[02:37:15] since I'm a frequent savage, I'm just ordering up a glass of greens. Shake it up the green.
[02:37:21] Shake it up some greens. I brought it up and I don't want to alien it. The listeners who maybe
[02:37:26] don't have access and you can edit all this stuff out. If it feels people have access, but here's
[02:37:30] the deal on the greens. You want to go back to the three categories of leaders, which is the
[02:37:35] fully anticipates the outcome. Shocked by the outcome and can't process the outcome. When I
[02:37:40] drank my first container of greens, I was really in category C like what is happening?
[02:37:48] The delta between what I expected and what I got, it was insane. Those things are, it is unbelievable
[02:37:56] how good they taste for what you think it's going to taste like because it's greens. It was an absolute
[02:38:02] mind blowing experience. I've been doing it in the morning and it everyone else gave you like a
[02:38:07] little bit of kick, right? That other kick. It's just good to go. So yeah, listen, if you go online
[02:38:13] you order the greens awesome. If we're out, we're making them more as fast as we can. I apologize,
[02:38:19] logistics, wins or wars. We're working it. We're losing that war right now. We're in the game
[02:38:25] and we'll try and get you some more. That's the kind of thing you want to subscribe to.
[02:38:29] Because you want that order getting filled. Don't want to be waiting for you.
[02:38:34] No, you're drinking it, Dave. Everyone. It's like, so just immediately into my habit pattern.
[02:38:39] I haven't since I got it, haven't missed a day. It was, it's everything you just said. I just want
[02:38:45] people to realize like what you think you're getting with greens. Like everybody knows what greens
[02:38:49] are cool. They're healthy. You sort of need to stomach them and just kind of like hold your
[02:38:52] nose and get to them because they're good for you. Yeah, go to your lawnmower. Get the clipping
[02:38:56] out. That's what you think. That's what you think you're getting, right? And you're not. The
[02:39:01] original media team did this double blind video, double blind study video from the emerging
[02:39:07] cap and it's awesome. People are just like, oh, hey, oh my gosh. This is green. It doesn't even,
[02:39:13] it doesn't even compute. That can be that good. So, there you go. It's a good origin.
[02:39:20] Speaking of origin, we got a geese, rash guards apparel coming out of origin USA.
[02:39:25] Right. Yeah. Doing boots up there now. Yeah. We're doing it all. I'm going to, we're going to make
[02:39:31] everything that we use in life. That's the goal. The goal is to make everything that we use
[02:39:38] in life and we're going to make it in America. And let me tell you what, that's a, that's no
[02:39:43] small task. And we're getting it done. Jeans, boots. We got work pants coming out.
[02:39:49] I saw those on the ground. I'll tell you what, man. That's another thing like we're going to make
[02:39:54] them as fast as we can. As soon as people get a pair or see a pair, they're, they're going to be gone.
[02:40:02] And, you know what, we're, we're up in our capacity. Again, logistics wins wars. I know that.
[02:40:07] And we are working it. And it's, we're in a good place because the rest of people that do this,
[02:40:14] they got to rely on a foreign supply chain. Even in some cases, a communist supply chain.
[02:40:19] With literally fabrics that are made by communists who, you know, have a dictatorship in their
[02:40:26] country. And they're paying people, you know, $1 a week to make the material. So,
[02:40:33] this is like a strategic for America, strategic for America. That's why we're doing it.
[02:40:41] Could we, hey, could we freaking cut some corners and up that profit margin by whatever? Sure,
[02:40:47] we're good, but we're freaking not going to. So, if you want some, if you wear clothes,
[02:40:54] then you might want to get your clothes from a strategic partner of yourself. And that is us at
[02:41:03] Origin USA. What up? I got nothing else for that, man. Dare to the shirt, baby. We, if you're also
[02:41:11] looking for clothes to say represent the path, you can find those on jacostor.jacostor.com. We got
[02:41:20] discipline equals freedom. We got, um, take the high ground on there still. I like how you're
[02:41:27] co-opting some of it echoes phrases. You're kind of like you're utilizing them, you know,
[02:41:33] not totally copying them 100% but you're catching the vibe and you're putting your K dog spin on a
[02:41:40] it's been watching the master work from the corner. Shout out at Kotrols. Yeah, man. So,
[02:41:49] got all that going on at jacostor.com. Also have a T-shirt subscription from the big dog echo
[02:41:56] Trolls called the shirt locker where he makes rad shirts with layers from the podcast. So,
[02:42:04] if you're, if you're about those layers, if you listen to the podcast, you're like, yes,
[02:42:08] like I'm about the layers, check out the shirt locker that goes cranking out a new shirt every
[02:42:13] month with a different layer from the podcast presented on them. You're both of you are wearing
[02:42:20] good shirt locker. Sure. I know. Check the sock. The sock T shirt. We represent right. We come here to
[02:42:26] to get after it and we're representing that. Right. And so me and echo like sometimes show
[02:42:33] where in the same shirt today, me, Dave Bart showed up rocking the sock shirt, which is legit. The
[02:42:41] sock support. So, echo showed it to me. He's like, he's approved for a nice day, man. We can't
[02:42:46] be running around just throw and sock on to a t-shirt and being good with that anymore than you can
[02:42:53] just throw a tried in on a shirt and be like, oh yeah, I'll just represent. So, the way we got
[02:43:00] around that is by putting support on there. So, it's like, you know, like when you're, if you're
[02:43:05] maybe you support a local bike or gang, but you're not in the bike or gang, but you got friends,
[02:43:11] you can wear that bike or gang stuff, but you got to have support on there. You're because you're
[02:43:17] not trying to claim at all. You don't want to try to claim sock. But we freaking support. It's
[02:43:23] 100%. 100%. 100%. Absolutely. So, all that's going on at jaccostore.com. Yeah, uh, subscribe to this podcast,
[02:43:32] wherever you subscribe to podcast, we also have jacco unraveling and that's with Darryl Cooper DC.
[02:43:38] We just did want about Afghanistan. That was kind of the lead up to this one a little bit just because
[02:43:46] we were debriefing what happened on Afghanistan and clearly there's some military incompetence that
[02:43:53] has risen up in the ranks and we started to address that on on jacco unraveling with Darryl Cooper.
[02:44:00] Got the grounded podcast which we haven't done a while and were your kid podcast. I know I got
[02:44:03] to get back on that one. So, subscribe to those. Check them out. Also, we have jacco underground
[02:44:08] jacco underground.com. We have a secondary podcast where like I started off talking today about
[02:44:15] how we talk about psychology on that one quite a bit because that stuff interests me and that stuff
[02:44:21] also helps you understand the world. And if you understand the world and you understand people,
[02:44:24] you can be a better leader, you can be a better person, you can be a better mom dad, whatever.
[02:44:28] Yet it didn't quite some of the subjects don't quite fit into this podcast. So, we made
[02:44:34] jacco underground jacco underground.com and that's that podcast is like a little reward for support
[02:44:42] because we wanted to create an alternative and alternative platform in case of these platforms.
[02:44:51] Which they haven't caused me problems yet. Hey, we're on board. We're here. We appreciate it.
[02:44:55] We appreciate the platforms. But you can't put all your reliance on something that you have no control
[02:45:03] over and we don't really have any control over these large platforms. So, we want to make something
[02:45:06] just a case. Hey, we'll be here. But just in case things get wild, we got the jacco underground.com.
[02:45:13] So, thanks. If you want to subscribe to that cost $8.18 a month. If you can't afford that,
[02:45:17] we look. We still want you in the game. Email assistance at jacco underground.com.
[02:45:21] Appreciate that. We got a YouTube channel where we put up this video. You can see the new
[02:45:26] sog underground or a sog shirt locker T shirts on there. Which is cool. Subscribe to that.
[02:45:34] And also origin USA. If you want to watch what's going on at origin strategic partner of America.
[02:45:39] You can go to origin USA. Check that out. Psychological warfare made in album. Tell an echo.
[02:45:46] So, help an echo, Charles. Get through some moments of weakness. Maybe he needs one for
[02:45:54] coming to work. Definitely check out Psychological warfare. Very legit though.
[02:46:01] Flipside Canvas. Dakota Meyer. If you want to hang cool stuff on your wall, check that out.
[02:46:05] Books. New book coming out. Final spin. Dave. What's your assessment? Read it. It's so good.
[02:46:12] And stand by for the audio book. There's some. Oh yeah. So on the audio, if you get the audio book of
[02:46:17] that, I read the audio book. And then we did Dave and I did about an hour conversation about just
[02:46:27] a review talking about the characters, the character development, the lack of character development,
[02:46:31] the plot development, the lack of plot development. The words used, the lack of words used.
[02:46:37] Just all these things that will definitely be interesting. And it's been amazing so far.
[02:46:43] The books that books coming out should do like a virtual book signing or something would be cool to
[02:46:46] get that out there. I think I am doing a virtual book signing and I'm not 100% sure where. And
[02:46:52] actually check this out. Speaking of virtual book signing in November, I'm going to do two
[02:46:58] jockel lives. Jockel lives. Ready one in looks like San Diego, California, November and then
[02:47:04] Austin, Texas in November. I think those are the only dates. Look, things are wild right now with
[02:47:09] the COVID and the protocols and all this stuff. And people are really sketched out, especially some of the
[02:47:16] some of the places you can give. You can do these events. Some of them have
[02:47:20] whatever. They're freaked out about it. So we found some places that are down for the cause.
[02:47:25] So we're going to do a gig. I'm going to do a gig, jockel life, November, in San Diego and November in
[02:47:32] Austin, Texas. So keeping out for that. It'll be an intro to final spin. It gives you time to read it.
[02:47:38] The book does not take long to read. So you'll be able to get the book. Get the book when it comes
[02:47:43] out November 9th and then by the time November 13th or November 20th, which I think of the
[02:47:48] dates on those two. I'll be there. And you can ask me questions about it. I'll talk about some of
[02:47:54] somewhere all that came from the darkness in my brain. That's final spin.
[02:48:00] Leadership strategy tactics field manual. The code, the evaluation, the protocols,
[02:48:05] discipline, the curriculum field manual. Where the warrior kid won two, three, four,
[02:48:10] Mikey in the dragons about face by hack worth extreme ownership and the decademy,
[02:48:13] leadership. Check out these books if you like books. If you don't like books, get the
[02:48:18] audio books. That's my recommendation. Ashland front. We have a leadership consultancy.
[02:48:23] Leadership is the solution. What's the problem? The leadership is the solution. What's the problem?
[02:48:31] Leadership is the solution. That's what I'm trying to tell you. And that's what we will tell you.
[02:48:35] And that's what we will teach you. Ashland front. Go to Ashland front.com. Look, if you want to
[02:48:39] come to one of our live events. The next live event that we have is in Las Vegas. The
[02:48:44] Master October 28th and 29th. Two days, it was a deep dive into this information. We also have
[02:48:53] field training exercises. And we have a thing called EF. That'll field where we go into our
[02:49:00] battlefields. Check out all that stuff. Go to the events at Ashland front.com. If you want
[02:49:04] to come work with your company, the same thing. We also have an online training, a academy called
[02:49:12] Extreme Ownership Academy, Extremeownership.com. This stuff is not easy. And you don't get good at it
[02:49:19] by reading a book. And they're, oh, cool. I'm good to go. It doesn't work that way. You need to work
[02:49:23] at it continually. Go to extremeownership.com. Come and ask me a question on there. I'm literally
[02:49:29] live. How long are we on there for today? And I want to have, yeah, I want 20 minutes. I guess.
[02:49:34] And Dave and I are responding to your questions. Life is on there. Jamie's on there.
[02:49:38] Like we are there. J. P's on there. You want to ask us a question? Come and ask a question.
[02:49:45] Life. And it's not crowded. You will get your question answered. How's that?
[02:49:51] Extremeownership.com. If you want to help service members active and retire their families.
[02:49:56] Gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. She is
[02:50:02] helping all kinds of people get through all kinds of struggles. Go to americasmightywariers.org.
[02:50:14] If you want to check that out. And if you want more of my lengthy lectures, which today was absolutely
[02:50:21] one of them. You want, you want to hear carries chime in in. You want to hear Dave's analytical
[02:50:30] appraisals. You can find us on the you know, website on Twitter on the Graham on Facebook.
[02:50:36] Echo is at Echo Charles, but he's not here today. So don't follow him. Instead, check out K-Doc.
[02:50:42] What is it K-Doc? Carry Helping. Carry underscore Helping. You couldn't get carry no underscore
[02:50:48] Helping. I tried. I hit the guy up and everything. No response. He denied you. Oh, you were trying
[02:50:53] to make that social media move. 100%. Now give me my name bro. Is he his name carry Helping, too?
[02:50:59] Yeah, yeah. All one word. And yeah, as shot a message, I was like, you know, very civil. Hey,
[02:51:04] dude. You know, interested in your handle. So that's something I could get off you. He's like,
[02:51:11] that's my name, bro. No response, dude. Yeah. Seeing left me on red at her. But you can find me at
[02:51:17] carry underscore left me on red left me on red. So he had read the message. You know, just no,
[02:51:22] so my kids harass me because I do that in real life. Like they're talking. I just don't respond
[02:51:30] walk away and they say, oh, you're going to leave me on red. Wow. Yeah. Nice. And I think I do that
[02:51:38] fairly regularly. I mean, you've done it to me. Oh, sure. You got 100%. David, can you relate to this? No,
[02:51:44] if I left no red before. I try not to interact too much. But sure. Actually, you just set me
[02:51:55] if I was like stupid busy over the last few days and you I just remember that you sent me some
[02:52:02] text that were absolutely left on red. And then Dave Burke at David R. Burke. And look,
[02:52:13] it thanks to all the men and women out there right now in the Army Navy Air Force Marines,
[02:52:18] who are competent leaders, who are holding the line in a violent and unpredictable world.
[02:52:26] And also thanks to our competent police and law enforcement firefighters,
[02:52:31] paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correction officers, board patrol, secret service all first responders.
[02:52:36] You have an incredibly difficult job, but you keep us safe and we appreciate it and everyone else out there.
[02:52:46] Open up your mind. Don't be the person that is love to accept contrary evidence to what you
[02:52:55] already believe. Don't be that person. Don't get stuck in that rut. Open your mind free your mind
[02:53:02] and become better by continuing to always absorb new information. In fact, look for it.
[02:53:13] Seek it out and keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Carrey and Jocco out.