Welcome to bid rats before the Navy Middle Blogs, Communities, top bloggers, special latest development, long term friends and the way forward for the Navy Marine Corps team and all things Maritimes. And good morning everybody, our afternoon or evening wherever you are. We are really appreciation time to join us here for today's mid Rats. As you probably heard, all my notes just hit the
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intro that we updated since then. Yes, we've been at this thirteen years, but we have only recorded two intros and I wanted to put our first intro out there because we've got a returning guest today that was with us from the start, and actually we can assign either credit or blame to him for mid Rats being with us. But today we're going to have with us author, historian, teacher, and all around good friend Claude Barrabay, and we're
going to talk about the third novel in the Connorstark series. It just came out titled The Philippine Packed, and you can find links to it on the show page. Another Philippine Packed, we see the returning to some of your favorite characters from the first two books in the series, The Aid and Effect Sirens Song. He brings some new players onto the stage as well, and as always of Claude's novels, they may be fiction, but they bring stuff
to the front, usually a little bit ahead of the news. So Claude, welcome back to Rats is glad to have you on board. I'm glad to be back. Thanks so much for having me, and I guess probably the easiest way to kick things off is double listeners a bit. What is the Philippine Pact about? The Philippine Pact is about a potential conflict in the South China Sea and Chinese influence on the region with a specific target. What
we find at the beginning of this novel is CONNERSH. Stark, the former naval officer turned mercenary or private security officer if you will, has his company working with the Philippine government on the island of Balabac, which is the southernmost island in the Philippine Islands, very small island, and during this exercise he finds that things are taking on a very real aspect contrary to what they had planned for. And so we find Connor with the private security folks on the
island. The two subplots to this will find the characters that we've we've seen
before. Damien Gozari is now a former Diplomatic Security Service agent and he is in Paris investigating a human trafficking organization, and mostly at Camp David, we find the National New National Security Advisor, Ambassador C. J. Sumner, who we saw as one of the primary figures in the Aid and Effect and we saw her briefly at the end of Sirensong, and she's advising the President on how to deal with this growing crisis in the Philippines as a as a
government is about to be brought down, as a cyber attack is launched, and as more diplomatic difficulties emerge, and strangely enough, you know you said that sometimes these things reflect reality. And what I didn't expect when I was writing this about a year and a half ago, when I selected Ballaback Island
and the Philippines. Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw in the news that there were US military exercises with the Philippine government and one of the four sites was Balla Back Island, and be frank, I didn't I really
didn't know that there was any kind of military presence on Balla Back. But it's it's always good to see some of these names in the news and to really tell the tale of what's going on in the high Seas, particularly with China's growing role in the world, and how Connor Stark's company tends to find itself in the middle of some of these small wars. Yeah, you've you've in all three books, you've you've put the locations on major sea lines of
communication. And I assumed, I assumed that was intentional. And you've you've carefully selected Aiden and UH, Sri Lanka and UH and the Philippines. I talk a little bit about that. What what what when you're when when you're sitting down you say, I've got this a series of books in mind. I assume you had the series in mind to beginning, didn't you know? Do you lay out this is what these are important issues, this is why this area is important. And I'm going to base my books on that because
everybody needs to know that this these are potentially troubled waters. Absolutely right.
And I would go back to a few years ago when when the Music Naval Cabin Museum held its first Navy Con and over the years, you guys have both been involved with those and my intent for a Navy con was to expose UH Navy operations that the United States does every day, issues that we deal with every day to a much broader audience, namely the science fiction community who actually understand naval operations, but only in terms of the you know, whether
it's the Honor Harrington series by David Weber, the Star Trek or Star Wars series, Babylon five, etc. I just wanted to take those navy stories and educate and inform a broader public with Navy count The same is true for these books. Not a lot of them take place simply on land, and if they do, it's mostly islands or island nations. And that's exactly what
I do. Eagle one is when I have an idea for a book, I'll take a look at a general region and the criteria I use number one it's there's got to be a geographical interest for the United States, so that we can inform people about why is this particular region important. So that's why the first one took place with the Gulf Aaden, and I wrote it, you know, as Somali piracy was real expanding, and it came out the year that I think it reached its height. And then the next thing I
do is I look more broadly at the region. Okay, which countries do I really want to learn about? Which ones have a real impact on this, So that's why I chose Yemen in that case. And then obviously Sri Lanka very important in terms of maritime operations because you had the Tamil Sea Tigers, the terrorist organization and probably one of the best efforts to develop a maritime terrorist organization in the past thirty or forty years, and that's why I selected
that one. In this case, I still wanted to deal with China. I wanted to deal with it closer to home, and I had to look
at the major routes. Did I really want to do something on something in the waterways right between Taiwan and China or something a little off the beaten track, And that's why I chose the Philippines because it has so many islands, so many opportunities, such a rich history, such a history with with domestic terrorism from international terrorism, from switching back and forth on who they alli with, and to show the criticality of that nation in terms of geopolitics. So
that's why I chose this one. And you're right, the other books that like I'm working on run right now U and the others will also have a very heavy maritime component. And it's you know, when I write the novels, part of it is I want to entertain. Like when I go, you know, on in the summer to vacation, or go on a plane or go on a ship, I want to read a book to be entertained. But you can use that those novels to educate, uh and inform in a broader way and to get people to think, Okay, well, yeah,
this is fiction. However, why why is this area so important? Why are large scale exercises so important? Why is the decision making or the personnel who are involved in some of these operations so critical? What if you have the wrong person in charge? And what if you have the right person in charge? So, especially with the Aid and Effect, I really wanted to study two things beyond the geopolitics. I wanted to study how individuals who
are different behave to the same issues or challenges. So you had so I came up with these three characters, Stark, Golzari, and Sumners. So Stark is the guy who is believes an injustice over the law. Think of it in terms of what I wrote on the very first page of The Aid Effect was a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. In letter from a Birmingham jail, and that is everything Hitler did was legal. Everything the Hungarian resistance did was illegal. In this case, Connor Stark is the Garyan resistance.
In many cases, the second character represents law and order. That's Scholzari, the diplomatic Security Service agent. And the third one Ambassador Sumner, who is the diplomat who believes in soft power humanitarian operations to support allies and partners. But what you start to see through this series is how each of them changes in each of the books and almost becomes opposite of what they originally were envisioned. As you know, you're going through some of the recurring characters there,
and when you look at you know those are the primary characters. You also ask some secondary characters to show up again. But when you look at Connor Stark's company, Highland Maritime Descent, in a lot of ways, it's a land of misfit toys. And the fact that and also some of the related characters as well, that these are not people that if you lined up all their their fit reps or their official records would be seen as success. But in you're a historian by training, so you know this better. Than I
do. But it's usually those types of misfit toys in history that either are able to do things, are to see things in a certain way that really can create an impact when you look at those characters the outlined where there's some actual individuals from history that people can see echoes of our flavors of in your characters. Not necessarily in history all the time, but some of them are based not on real characters, but on real events that I saw. And
yeah, there are some misfit toys. There are guys like Jay Warren, the crazy engineer from the Upper Peninsula, who is he He's the CUE of Highland Maritime Defense, who's always coming up with these ideas, but had been kicked out of as being a civilian in the Navy because you know, he was doing catnip. But there are other characters who were essentially either drummed out
of the Navy or left the Navy who were really qualified. I think of the junior officer Bobby Fisk that we see as an ensign on the Nubie insign on the USS Bennington, and we see Jamie Johnson starts cousin and she is Naval Academy grad commands a Navy destroyer, but they leave because of a toxic leadership. And in the character of Admiral Rossberg, we see him first as
the unnamed commanding officer of USS Bennington and Aid in effect. We see him as an admiral, a rear admiral in Sirensong, and we see him again yes, in Philippine Pack. He initially was based sort of on a one commanding officer I had twice, but not in a bad way. They're one
of the finest naval officers and finest individuals I've ever known. Guy by the name of Darryl Hancock retired as a captain, And basically I took all the good qualities of Daryl Hancock and I simply inverted them and created the character of Admiral Rossberg. And then later I realized that admir Rossberg was getting to be very similar to an actual CEO I had in the in the Navy Reserve.
So he's sort of a congomoration of all of these characteristics. So his summer named from history, I mean Connor Stark why people asked me sometimes, well, you know, it's not very original. I mean, you've got Tony Stark from Marvel, Marvel comic, and you've got all these things. I said, yeah, But this was in nineteen eighty eight that I first envisioned having a not being doing a novel. And at that time I was writing
my senior thesis on General John Stark of the American Revolution. I was up, I was in college up in New Hampshire, and so I said, you know what I'm gonna have when I write a novel. It's going to be the descendant of General John Stark. And on the other side we see a Russian mercenary, and we see a lot about Russian mercenaries today in Ukraine, and one of the Russian there's a Russian mercenary in this novel that we
see briefly in Sirensong, and now he's taken a more prominent role. His last name is his Makaroff, and he's I don't think I actually say this in the book, but I had envisioned him sort of as an alternate to start where he's now the descendant of Admiral Stepon Makaroff of the Russo Japanese War. So I really try to mix in history, but a lot of what I observe in characters, and just a final thought on that, I the characters Stark, Glzari, and Sumner, this triad, especially in the first
book and now in the second book. I was very heavily influenced by a particular writer in the eighties and nineties and early two thousands before he passed, and wanted to reflect and honor that as well. And then the final there's a very brief introduction of the Filipino president, And as I was writing it, all I could imagine and envision was the president from the expanse. So every time I wrote one of her few lines, I had her in mind
and what that would sound like. Well, I would like to clarify that I was even though I was in the reserves, I was never your commanding officer. So, Admiral Rosberry, there's not I don't reflect any aspect of him, but I must admit that there have been quite a few CEO in my career that reminded me very much him, And you know that. I think one of the things you point out with him is it he's he's he's where he is because he's a political He's a benefit of a political system,
and it you know, do you as you write these things. Then another one of those things, the points you're making that there's a danger in the politicization of our of our senior leadership in the military. Uh, So I want to be really careful again the views expressed my own and that those of
the United States Navy or Enaval Academy. Uh. That being said, prior to working at the Naval Academy, I did work for two US senators and I did see a lot of interesting political maneuverings, uh, and how people would answer or how people would prepare testimony, and a lot of other considerations. So yeah, that's uh. Again, you're spot on with that that, uh, would something happen like this potentially? I mean, I'm right now, I'm working on I'm just finishing a book about Admiral Rickover. I've
been working on this for a while. And you know, Rickover was passed over for captain, sorry, he was passed over for rear admiral. And it wasn't until Congressman Said Yates of Chicago and a number of other members of Congress really pushed the effort. That's why he became an admiral, That's why he got his second star, why he got his third star while he got his fourth star. There were a lot of politics with Rickover's rise through the flag ranks. I'm not saying that's bad in that case. I mean,
look what the result was. We had the father of the nuclear Navy. But these things do happen, and I don't think we should we should ignore it, ignore realities. You mentioned the fact and most of the listeners amid
rats. No. I mean, you've taught at the Naval Academy for for a while, and you're a historian by training, and you've written both fiction and nonfiction books, and as you outlined earlier when you're talking through you know how you kind of built the bones of the plot line of the book that requires imagination looking at human interactions, you know, like a couple of couple of friends of mine's kids going through the academy and I think I must say,
hey, you needed to sign up for doctor Brube's class. And but they're all in stem majors, and the Naval Academy it does specialize a lot in producing stem majors. But there's something about not so much history, but the creative writing process, especially in the venues such as yours, that is in the national security segment of the book writing area. You have to take
facts in reality. Physics has to imply, unlike science fiction where you can't have these great well, we're just going to go warp factor ten, so we can go real fast in books such as Yours, water is wet, displacement matters, electrons or electrons to debate the laws of physics. People are people, and you have certain personality types that throughout history show up. But
it requires the writer to think, to be imaginative. And when you look at a lot of the challenges that we've had in the national security arena, it's been I mean, people say it all the time. We never expected that it was a failure of imagination. Nobody briefed this as a possible course of action. So in the background there's a hint that one of the things the Imperial we don't do too well is to have an imagination and to think.
And when you look at your students that are in your class, as we have all these physics and chemistry and engineering requirements that we have that we think is what we need to, you know, get our minds around to be leaders in the Navy. As a writer, and somebody who's had to force themselves to go through the fiction writing process and that intellectual effort. Do you see a window where creative writing classes are you know, short story there's
quite a few contests out there for short story writers. Is that a process you see that can activate certain parts of the brain than in a nineteen twenty twenty one year old shipman might be good to have exercise for when they're twenty
eight, thirty eight or forty eight. Absolutely. In fact, the first thing that I thought of was some of the incredible English professors we have, especially the poetry professors, who really do creative projects with their midshipman, the same as with a former professor now that I worked with on recreating a Roman Carthaginian naval battle, a Battle of Dropana, where we wanted to teach midshipman about galley warfare, and instead of reading and writing about it, we got
thirty kayaks of different colors from the fiz Ed Department and held the battle on the Severn River right off the Naval Academy. But prior to that, the professor had them do orations Roman orations to figure out who was going to be the admiral of the Carthaginian Fleet and the Roman fleet, and the best orators then were selected by their people, and it was to show the importance that
absolutely we need STEM majors. We need those math and science people too, and the engineers, but we also need people who can aulate why we where we need to go, why we need to go somewhere, how we need to get there, who can sort of bridge that gap. So absolutely, and we do have a lot of English and poly Sign majors. In fact, I think every I think every helopilot on my ship was a poly sign major. If I'm not mistaken, Um, I'm pretty I'm pretty sure.
Um. But right, I mean, writing is so an integral to what they're going to be doing in their careers. They I just don't think they understand it yet. So that's why I, Charlotte'm a fit rep like you have. You have this amount of space to write a good fit rep. How do you do it? What words do you use? Um? And the I think a bigger challenge quite frankly as reading. You've we've got we've not got a generation. And this is not on the on the academy,
since I think this could be of anybody. Uh, You've got a generation of TikTok folks who have short attention spans, who can't sit down for twenty or thirty minutes to read ten or twenty pages of a book, and that's that could be problematic. It's great to be able to have ideas, but where do you get the ideas from if you're not learning from the past. And I think Mattis was a general Mattis was a perfect example of that.
He says, look, you're not always going to be in a war, so you better read about war to see at least get a sense of what it's like. So absolutely, I mean, I think that the broad range of courses that they take at the academy is absolutely fantastic. But they just need to read more. And I found that that's been far more difficult as I've seen them progress in the past eighteen years. Eighteen years ago, they might have read a little bit more than they do now. But a lot
of Americans don't read books anymore. I think it's the last figure I saw was fifty percent haven't read a book in a long time. And that's that's a problem. That is a problem because well, you have to the background to understand what's going on, and that they're not reading about it, then they're just getting there where they're getting their information. One of the things I really like about your books, and I think maybe you've done this to give
yourself some flexibility. But you, you and I have long talked about private maritime companies, uh, private private military agencies whatever, And of course we never talked about the Russian folks. But the the uh, the freedom you've given Connor Stark in this is he started his own PMC and he uh and then he's he's able to do things like become a privateer and says or he gets a letter of mark from the from the Sri Lankan government. Uh was
was your thinking just so he could freem up? And it gives him excuse to have used the uh the sea hunter uh shift and all that is is that's where you went with us. Yeah, I uh, I wanted to see this sort of like the A team goes to see. Initially it wasn't. It was only something that was that was envisioned in the background for the first book. And I should say aid and Effect was was not the first
book. It was the first book that was published, but twenty five years ago, I actually wrote a Conner Stark novel that takes place in Canada and the and Washington DC that that's actually the prequel, and I'm gonna be rewriting that as as one of the follow ons as as a prequel, but definitely Sri Lanka. And in this case where they're where they're fighting with the private security company, is fighting with the the Filipino Navy partners that they have against
against the bad guys, it absolutely gives me a lot of flexibility. In fact, several years ago, uh gosh, I guess it was like seven or eight years ago, there was a producer screenwriter who was really interested in in pitching this as a series as well as a separate Damien Gozari TV series, and you know, worked with them for about a year along with another screenwriter, and they pitched it to Hollywood and it came down to two series and at that time they said, you know what, it would just cost
too much to turn this into a series as as much as we like it. So it's one of those almost but again it showed because I had to do a treatment of ten episodes just to show the viability of a series and so I came up with, you know, two or three paragraph storylines for ten episodes, and in each case there is flexibility. And there's always something going on around the world. Pick up the newspaper, pick up the economists,
and there's something going on in the high seas. I mean, there's a there was just an incident with a forty fourth task Escort group of the Chinese Navy was just got deployed I think two or three weeks ago, and you know, they had a Chinese trawler in the middle of the ocean, thirty nine people and the Indian government is trying to work on rescues. So
you can really develop something out of that. But I also think that the fact that we've got now forty four Chinese task forces that have gone to the Horn of Africa, who have built up all this experience is part of what I talk about and evolve in the in the in the books. I think we've we've talked about this before on a on a separate topic. If not, I'll surprise you with it now. But um, we're roughly the same
age. So one of the things is I was reading the Philippine Pact that came to mind was m yet Claude sees it too, and I know for
a fiction writer networks in relationships, um they helped move things along. But the older, the older I get, and it's really clicked for me in my mid thirties is the importance of personal networks, you know, like RM said, the perfect circle of acquaintances and friends and one thing that keeps the action moving on a really a global scale, which in today's communication item environment,
it's quite easy. I've seen it with my youngest daughter who will be up on a zoom call with friends that she's made in Burma or Myanmar, depending on who you are, Austria, Australia, England, Germany, herself up in Canada, and they're all talking in real time. But your characters have developed a network that can leave them from backwater bars all the way up into the White House, and you spend a lot of time in DC.
I know you've seen similar networks. If you ever had an opportunity to talk with some of your midship and who might be interested in the work you do, to talk about not just uh the art and effort of being a writer, but how network such exists. They do exist in a personal and professional environment. It's not just the plot device. Yeah. And by the way, I have to apologize. My dog is just going crazy and it's in the way the house is. You're going to hear them, and I apologize
to your listeners. Um. Yeah. I actually do tell my students how important it is to network. And I think back on my own career, and you know, first coming to Washington, d C. In nineteen ninety one, and some of the people that you know, I started off with are now in very senior positions, especially in the Biden administration. Because this was a I was working for a Democratic senator at the time. And but
you spend enough decades in a particular region and or overseas. I mean, I can think of it was kind of funny that I think it was. I met him my second on my second for a senator, and I was flown off my ship to the Milius and the Milius pulled in got me to Djibouti and then I had to take a sea one thirty from Jibooty to Bahrain. Well by the time I arrived in Bahrain, it's about midnight, and I you know, my mind is mush. I had to I had to
be flown home on an emergency leave. My mother had just passed, and I'm coming off the C one thirty and who do I see but this guy shoe Bob carry And I was just like, shoe Bob, what are you doing here in Bahrain? He goes, well, I was just about to go home for the night and I was looking at the names of people who were coming through. I saw your name and I wanted to come by,
say hi and see if you need anything. And you know, if you wrote that in a novel, it would be seen as as disingenuous or unrealistic. But these things happen all the time. I'm sure you guys saw this as well, that somebody you meet in d C or back home you run into again. And yeah, I do want that reflected in the novels.
I think it is. And networks are so important to Connor start the friendships he's developed, and sometimes even some of the enemies with regard to the nefarius mister who isn't who's in charge of a Chinese company that will follow you your whole life? And you're You're absolutely right. Networks are incredibly important, and I also tell them my midst this is that you know, whatever they do at the academy will follow them positively or negatively throughout their careers because people will
always remember that. It may not be the same if you if you're an ROTC or if you you know, you were a DIRKM reservist like me, but when you spend four years in a very tight environment, Uh, those people are going to know you and do something bad, They're going to remember
it twice as much. Well, that's a that's an interesting problem. One of the things that you you know, we've kind of hit on this before, but you get you get a a screamer for a CEO or a CEO who's bad for some reason, and you get these, you know, a negative fitness report, and the way the Navy works says you're well aware of that that that will haunt you for a long time and may even permanently haunt you. Um. And yet the Connor Stark offers up an alternative to two
people who got trashed by the admiral. Uh, is there a way just this is kind of a side question, but is there is there a way around a system that the tars people so early potentially so early in their careers not because they did a bad job, just because they had a bad boss. Yeah, and I've seen this. I've known officers who have left. I mean, I knew one former student of mine who just incredible. She was one of the best I've ever taught. And I couldn't believe when she
left, having just made lieutenant commander. I was just kind of gobsmacked. And I talked her about it, and she said, you know, I've had some great assignments, but this last one on the ship with this CEO was just so bad that I just said, forget about it, and I'm not going to the reserves. I'm not doing anything. Could these people come
back? I would love to see some sort of program, But it's really tough once you have that tarnished relationship with a larger organization to bring them back into that same organization, because you never know that that commander or just right, who was a captain at the sorry commander at the time, might now be an admiral. And no, you're telling that young officer, yeah, we want you back, but we've also promoted somebody who's you know, a
screamer or whatever. You know. I I've told people that I've known, I said Look, if if the active duty community isn't for you, then at least stick it out in the reserves and what you can do. There are opportunities to go back when you want under certain conditions, either at sea or overseas, and it's a great opportunity and you can still bring your skill set. But more and more I'm seeing just a lot of people leave.
There's a large percentage of people who leave after their first first tour or so. And it's I feel bad because I see all the potential we are losing in our Navy from these incredible, incredible junior officers that I've known since they were pleads and who on whom I've I've had high hopes. Uh, you know, a lot of them I selected for when I was on active duty
of the Academy. You know, some of them I selected for the Intel program, had incredibly high hopes, and now they're out because it for whatever reasons. And that that's one of the things that bothers me with with regard to great power competition, and is that and I wanted that reflected, especially in this large scale exercise you see in the in the Philippine pack. How
many of those officers in that briefing room. After seeing Admiral Rossberg do what he does, how many of them are going to stay in And I do want people to think about that when they read the book. That's not only there, it's not some sort of gratuitous scene. It's to make people think about what are the consequences of those particular actions on our general capability as a navy if we're losing really qualified people like some of the junior officers you see
in that in that oh, that briefing room. Yeah. A phrase I've used talking to a few people is incentives and disincentives do people have? And motivators and demotivators. And it's not an insignificant problem like like you've seen um and I continue see. I just had two individuals, classic cases that I've seen in the last year, who know, no organization is perfect, but you spend you know, a dozen to fifteen years in the Navy and inexplicitly
you're put on an off ramp with no recovery. It can really impact people and how they not just view the Navy. But what's really tragic, especially if it's a byproduct of a toxic personality, is how they view themselves.
And you know, one of the sounds cynical, but I think is actually healthy for for people's mental health is you never forget that you may love the Navy, but the Navy probably doesn't love you all that much, and it can really you know, one of the individual I just talked with again a few months ago really took it harder. But there are options and ways that people can can turn the corner. And I like what you said about the
Naval Reserve. I've seen quite a few people who for whatever reason, they they they hit, hit a hole, or fell into a swamp on active duty, but they took their skills in their background into the reserves. And in fact, one of the individuals actually retired as a flag officer in the reserves. I remember him as a lieutenant. He had a list of pros and cons of staying in the Navy or getting out of the Navy, and he had nothing on get on staying in the Navy, but you a lot
of working out just five for him in the reserves. M great guy. I never never busted him in public once he made flag officer, but we all have stories speaking of stories, as a guy who on my Twitter profile if people ever go there. I identify as my home as being a Navesa island, which those who have spent time in the Caribbean know where that is. I'm also a big fan of Jan Mayan. But in in your novel Quad, you seem to have a similar predilegion that I have. There's a
soft spot in your heart for isolated and weird islands. For instance, in the Eighting Effect we had the Culture and here we have Ballaback Island. As as a ride er is there besides the fact it's just fun to talk about something nobody else talks about. Is there something about these relatively unknown geographical areas that happen to be in some of the most well known and important parts of the world that kind of draws you to you to to help wrap a story
around. Sure, I think it's a mystery, you know. I've I've been very fortunate to be to go to a lot of places around the world, but there are a lot of places I haven't been. I did actually sail past Scocha Island, so Culture Island in two thousand and five, and it's this appeal to mystery. I want to unravel the mystery of a place
and I want to learn about it. And in the case of Socotra Island, I was going back through really ancient texts and some of the first mentions and seeing one of the apostles may have gone through through uh Socotra Island. But more importantly it's because they really lend the opportunity for me to use the private security company ships in a way that I couldn't if this was a story, you know, based in Mongolia. There's there's just the reality of the
ocean. But there are a lot of islands. I have to really pick the islands that are near these either strategic choke points or these major trade routes that could be that could well be disrupted if if something happens there and it gives me a chance to learn about it. And Socotra Island is still one of those places I would love to visit if if the opportunity came about, because it's known as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean has some of the most
unique floora and faun in the world. But even Balaback Islands. As I started researching it and looking at the options of the Philippine Islands, I was going to use there were unique things to that as well, and so yeah, I'm I'm very much drawn to these islands. There was one case where I almost use used an island that I went to and flew over off the west coast of Sumatra, Similou Island, which was very close to the epicenter of the two thousand and four tsunami. We were flying over in a sixty
Bravo and that really appealed to me. And I figure, if if I'm going to write about something, I might as well write about something that appeals to me that I want to unravel the mystery and I want to take the time to research and tell and incorporate into the storyline over eagle on you there. Yes, but I pushed the wrong button. So when you when you push muting and talking doesn't nothing, nothing happened. It's a right. A
lot of people push mute when I start talking. The uh my dog was barking, okay, let's see um A lot of a couple of years ago, I was reading some articles on people who were suggesting that one way to
help handle China is to go to private teering route again. And I started that that struck me that when I was reading your books that somebody's been thinking Connor Stark style, and what do you think is mister Start going to get involved in in privateering activity other than the letter of market I had from Sri
Lankros is going to be a thing of the future. I think doing a letter of mark for Sri Lanka in the case of the second book is a different case because it's an isolated, relatively isolated region and one in which you're not going to have the entire Chinese government coming down on you. I mean, I imagine that if there were privateers being used against China, China would would deal with them in the same way they deal with the wagers. There would be a mass approach to it, and you know, kind of a
take no prisoners. I don't know how effective privateers would be, and we're talking a very different era when you know, when you're looking at letters of mark of the age of sail, they could be effective because the ships that the merchants had were more or less and I know there are differences I teach naval history, but more or less they are very similar. The weapons used aboard a privateer would be very similar to those you might find on a small
warship, a sloop or a schooner. In today's case, what is what is a privateer going to use? Are they going to use a slow freighter? Probably not, those are just a target. Are they going to use a super high speed uh, you know, super Bazos level cruise ship or or excuse me, a personal yacht where you wouldn't be able to mount very many weapons or have access to them. Quite frankly, so, I don't think that there's a realistic use of that, unless you were talking about trying
to somehow take over or sink or do whatever to Chinese merchant ships. And again I I just don't see that as a realistic endeavor to the level that you would need you would given the size of the Chinese merchant merchant fleet. I don't think you would even put a dent in that. And then you'd have to worry about very you know, logistics processes. You know, in the age of sail, you had sales. All you had to really worry about was having enough beer aboard, you know, two gallons a day roughly
for each sailor, and you can sail. You can't simply take a modern privateer sail at five thousand miles and then expect to find fuel somewhere unless you were working with a particular government. So from a practical standpoint, I just don't see how that might be employed. That being said, one of the first articles I wrote on this issue was called Blackwaters for the Blue Waters, the promise of private naval companies. I wrote it for Orbis in two thousand
and six or two thousand and seven. But I didn't say, take these new twenty first century privateers and attack a nation's merchant fleet or anything. What I envisioned was taking these private security companies and doing low end operations, whether it's drug interdiction in the Caribbean or at that time protecting doing convoy duty of ships in the Gulf of Aden, in order to free up our assets, our destroyer at that time, our cruisers to redeploy where they are truly needed
in great power competition. There is no reason, for example, when we when Somali piracy was really major, that you had a small sailboat that Somali pirates had taken with four I think it was two Americans Canadians. The sv quest you had you had two destroyers, a cruiser and an aircraft carrier surrounding
that sailboat. Okay, this is a bit much. I think if you had had the model of private security ships for the Gulf of Aid, and I think you might have been more effective globally by shifting over your big assets elsewhere. I guess this might be considered a a spoiler, so spoiler alert though it is revealed early on what the common thread is here, So if people don't don't want any any quasi plot reveals early on, go ahead and
go walk the dog for the next couple three minutes. But in research and a fiction novels, sometimes you can pick some areas you need to research that can really take you some dark places and without showing too much leg Here, one of the common threads has to do with international human trafficking, really modern day slavery. How how deep did you dig into that topic and where there's some surprises plus or minus that you discovered in the course of research in that
area. Yeah. So there were a couple of things that I really tried to do deep dives on. The first one was actually the drones that are used in here are based on an actual company's drones DPI out of Philadelphia, and I actually call them by name in the book, and I got from from the CEO of the company, and I'll be going up here to Philadelphia in the next couple of weeks to talk with him again and do a little
video. But yeah, on human trafficking, you know what, I started off with a baseline of the GMT, the general military training that we all get on it. And then I just started going through you know, the the figurative rolodex that I've I've had over the years and talked to law enforcement officials. I talked to some folks overseas, and you know, you kind of pull the thread that way. It's like, Okay, if I'm talking to person a here that I maybe I knew in college, say okay,
I need to understand this. What do you see here in the big cities in the United States? Do you ever work with people outside of the country. What kind of organization would I need to talk to? So, yeah, I did. I did talk to people who dealt with human trafficking, both domestically and internationally to try to get a better understanding of that. And I try to do that, you know, in all the books, I
really tried to do the research. Uh, you know, in the first book, it was like, I wanted to understand, what's what would it be like to have dinner with Muttahar the merchant slash you know, multi gazillionaire that it turns out what kind of food, what's what does the food snow like? What does it taste like? What are the ingredients to these to these things, just to lend some reality to it. In some cases it's light reality, and in cases of the human trafficking thread that I have in
this particular book, it's you know, the dark realities. Yeah, I want I want to go back a little bit to the to the private military companies as the private naval companies in the case start, because what we saw in the the Smally Pirates was the yeah, we we we were way overkill
as far as worships go. But what what seemed to have the most effect was when we started putting private security guards on the merchant ships uh and using um parsenal ships to you know, so the countries that are worried about having too many weapons a shore UH didn't react to that, but I mean it was kind of It's not quite the same as having private ships UH fighting fighting the pirates, but you know, it is the functional equivalent I would I
would think, is that is that off based? And I know that. I think in one of the books you kind of discussed those armed security guards on the hundred merchant ships. Yeah. I think that was my second or third nonfiction book on It was on private security at sea in the twenty firth century. But yeah, um no, I think that still stands. Any ship that had private security armed guards aboard was never taken by Somali pirates. And now Somali piracy is a thing of the past more or less. But
during that time, I think that's that's really telling. And at the beginning of this whole thing of the whole Somali piracy trend. I remember being at a securitytime security conference and I was talking about how much about this concept of black waters of blue waters and I had There was a guy at the back of the room in DC and he got up and starts yelling at me, says, you don't know what you're talking about. There will never be armed guards on any of our ships, bla blat. I was like, Okay,
I appreciate, thanks, I hope, I hope not. And about a year later, his company pretty pretty large company I learned was using armed guards board because they had to. And so I've always learned, you know, never say Never's a that's a really dangerous word when you're talking about security. Yeah, that's one of my favorite things to hear people say, especially
if they say it with a lot of emotion. That will never, that's like we have to those those two words I usually have followed by my favorite word in English language, why, which is very triggering to people who aren't used to having people ask that question. Now we see from the aid and effect on that the center of the tactical action. Though the webs go globally,
keeps moving further east. And I don't know if you'll be comfortable revealing what's knocking around your head here, but if you look east of the Philippines, are there a few places that if it doesn't result in a Connor Stark novel, but it's something that you think people should be looking at, because I know your mind is always bouncing around looking looking under rocks for the unseen.
So, like Christopher Columbus's Gold, if you go further and further west, eventually you'll find yourself in the east and right back to where you came from, and that that's where this is roughly going. You're going to be going so far east so Gulf of Aden, Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, South China Sea. The next one is going to be coming around the globe and it's gonna start hitting closer to home. Yeah. Um oh, very effective, you know, China, China, just effective they are. Yeah.
Yeah, you mentioned the your your the non fiction maritime private security book of Dewich. By the way, I didn't interest of full disclosure, I could contributed a chapter. Um, how about the other books? The book on Captain Stewart? Is that is that has that reflected in your in your fiction writing some uh so Siren's Song towards In fact, Captain Charles Stewart commanded a ship called Siren during the Tripoli War. That was his second command when
he was a lieutenant along in the Prebble's squadron. And that's why toward the end of Siren's Song, for those who haven't read Siren Song, I won't I won't, you know, expose a surprise, but there is an age of sale incident and I try to do that. I did that at the end of Aid and effective that at the end of Siren Song where Stark really
uses history to solve a tactical issue. So in that way, I can use some of the stuff that I've researched inn for my naval history class or for my books and actually employ it in a way that I would hope my
students do. In fact, the past couple of years, I'm not going to do this next year, but I had students for their final exam say that they were the Cno, I'm the president, and they have to Their final exam is to write a formal memo to me that we are going into ethnic Clashestan, it is going to be a naval conflict, and what ten pieces of advice would you give me in conducting this war? And with each of those, give me three examples in naval history that they studied that support
those recommendations. So I'm trying to get them thinking. And that's why I try to do that in the books, is bringing a little bit of naval history into into the novels as well, and hopefully it'll inspire people to look at them more. I mean look at you know, you'd go down the
Wikipedia rabbit hole. But before there was Wikipedia, you know, when the three of us were kids, you know, and I'd go to the library to pick up a book and I'd see a sentence in one book, I'm like, I want to know more about that, So I'd go pick up another book and figure out what that meant. And that's Those are some of the rabbit holes that I'd like to see people go through, uh in not just being entertained again, but in learning about something from these books that they
might not otherwise. One thing I hope that the reader does, it's a it's a predilegtion of mine. I love globes, I love garth. I
like making a little measurements and stuff. But when you look at the geometry in the Philippines, and again, without doing another plot spoiler, as I watched a couple of the threads developed, especially in the in the second half of the book, it reminded me in that five thousand year history that China has as a reference point, we are our history is but a sub chapter compared to their larger book that in their Nearer Abroad, not just Ashore,
but also in See It One Time reached all the way out to Okinawa, included Korea, a lot of the islands in the South China Sea, in those purphyle areas, they had, lack of a better phrase, not allies, but subservient kingdoms to them, and they they see them cells as that is their rightful place in there, near or abroad, not unlike what we used to think about in the Caribbean, in Central and South America, and especially a portion where you look at what the Chinese could move forward in the
Western Pacific out of emergency compared to what the US Navy can with a big
asterisk therapy, be careful how many allies you're leaning on. But is that something you would hope that the reader, when when looking at this, would pause for a moment and maybe maybe look at a look at a map and dig into the little history a bit about not just how the neighbors look at China, but perhaps more critically, with her strength, how China views the proper place for those lesser nations it spinds to its south and its east.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And again, without give spoiling the second half of the book and what happens, I think we see that play out and how China can try to exert its influence by dividing allies and gaining partners. However, small, even a small island, can be a very powerful ally. And I, you know, I think back,
and I think it's two thousand and six. I visited six Caribbean islands and what was strange at four of those or no, I think it was all of them had those Chinese arches and big construction of cricket stadiums, and Chinese were everywhere, and you know, this is seventeen years ago, and I would ask. Finally, I asked one of the guides, and I said,
what's going on here? Well, the Chinese are our friends. They're building these cricket stadiums for the International Cricket whatever it was in two thousand and seven. And so when I came back to the academy, I talked to one of our experts on China and all I did was I slapped down the names of those six islands I went to, and without giving him any context, I said, what can you tell me about these in China? And
he says, huh, that's interesting. Four of these, just in the past couple of years, have switched their recognition at the UN from Taiwan to mainland China. So we see this this soft power emerge. And now I don't think Taiwan has more than ten countries that recognize it in the United Nations. So when you're talking about China playing the Long Game and Salamander, you you've had this The Long Game series on your blog, that's exactly what they're
doing. And again that's in our own backyard. Caribbean is I won't say it's our South China, see, but we've been down there a while and we've got a naval base, you know, right smack dab in the middle of the Caribbean. And I think that will play out for some very interesting events in the coming decades. Well, I hope it's not that interesting. I would like it to, but I think i'm I'm I'm hoping against the odds there. Well, you mentioned your your work on a Ricover book.
We've taken up a you know your hour and but we could of course talk for hours and hours and hours as we have in the past. Tell us a little bit about the ricoverbook, tell us what you know, what your what your expectation is for being published and and do you find him to be a fascinating figure uh was he was? He just I mean a lot of people have up and down opinions about him, did great things. Not necessarily
the nicest person on the planet, but different. So first of all, I yeah, I do have an agent, and I've got to give him a rewrite for something, to add something in here, and he's going to be taking care of the pitches with the big publishers. But this goes back a few years ago when I started meeting with missus rick Over his second wife, Eleanor. She passed away. I guess it's a year and a half ago now, but before she passed, she and her co executors bequeathed more
than a hundred boxes of his personal papers to the Naval Cab Museum. And so I've been working with special collections and archives and an initial cataloging of them. But these go back to nineteen twenty nine. These include daily love letters to his first wife or his girlfriend who became his wife in the nineteen thirties, that are incredibly detailed and show such a different aspect of Rickover. I could not believe this was Rickover, and I don't think anybody else will.
But it goes throughout his career I'm going to include a few congressional hearing excerpts those are publicly available, but he gave hundreds of speeches that he wrote on his own on a variety of topics. He has letters with presidents, c and os. He did memoranda for the record just for his personal files. Every time he met with another admiral, a senator, a president, he
wrote up a page or two on this is what we discussed. That is incredible primary sources, and then also the transcripts of telephone conversations he had with journalists, with cnos, with the whole gamut of people that we talked about. And it is more than one hundred archive boxes. I think it's closer to about two hundred and fifty. It was one hundred regular boxes, but in archive terms, it's closer to two fifty. So it's taken a long
time to go through those. But I really think people are going to get a very different perspective on parts of Rickover's life. I think it will also validate a lot of the things that we've all come to know and learn about Rickover and in terms of being acerbic and etc. But he was a very complex individual and I think these documents as primary research will show that, and I'm going to be doing it in a very different way than than a traditional
biography. So I'm pretty much I've got maybe three or four more weeks of research to go through the last sources and then it's right to the right to the drawing board and trying to get this out. Well. At least we have one more reason to invite you on to mid Rats again, and Claude again, thank you very much for for an hour to come on. Best of luck, and again for the for the listeners. The book is The
Philippine Packed. It's the third in the Connor Start series and I saw via my Amazon tracker that some of y'all have decided to go back to the very beginning and to start with the first book. And that's but you can pick it up solo. You don't have to start at the beginning. And I hope you have a great summer, Claude, and look forward to the next opportunity. Thank you very much to both of you. I really appreciate it. Have a good day, take care, con and thank you very much
everybody for joining us for another edition mid Rats. And until next time, I hope you have a great Navy day. Cheers having all things like maloney, want to marry me and please be comely, all your being to blame for love, family to ald me, silly holding you all of the same. It's a long way to it's a long way to go. It's a long way to many. I don't bye pcdially, Well, let's talk to it. It's a long long way to dip a n it, but my life right there.