Gen. Mark Milley

Constitution is stored, and it's right over there. So what does the Constitution mean to you as the Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff. Well, for us, and I would argue that for all of us in uniform. Uh. You know, we swear an oath um and that oath is to the Constitution, and we're sworn to protect and support and defend it against all enemies. For in a domestic we don't take an oath to an individual, a king, a queen, a tribe or religion or any of that. Will.

We take an oath to an idea of the idea that's America. And that idea is expressed in the documents that you see here, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Uh. And that's a solemn oath, uh, and I and those that came before me and those that will come after me, we swear that oath that we're willing to sacrifice everything to protect and defend that document, the idea that's America. So, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to me, is

one of the great titles in Washington. You're the most important military person. But what does that really mean that be the Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff. What is your real job? By law, the Chairman of the Joint chief Staff is an advisor, uh. An advisor to the President States, Secretary Defense, to the National Security Council and what used to be called the Homeland Security Council. And it's strictly an advisory role. You're not in the

chain of command. The chain of command is the President to the Secretary Defense, to the combatant commanders, and or the secretaries of the military department. So uh, the job is strictly advisory. But at the same time and not in the chain of command, you are in the chain of communication. UH. So, routine communications between the President of Secretary Defense and the combatant commanders typically goes through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Uh. So you're very much

in evolved, but you have no decision authority. Uh. You don't make decisions per se. You advise the President, sect off and the others on their their decisions that they will make. But to be realistic about it, when the President United States wants to do something militarily, he relies on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You're his advisor. When he says I want to do X, Y or Z, I assume you tell other military officials.

So while you're not technically in the chain of command, it doesn't sound as if people are going around you. Is that right? No, typically they don't, But I would say that I am one of the advisors. The Chairman's job is to be the chairman of a body, a group called the Joint Chiefs of Staff, consisting of the chiefs of each of the services the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, uh and and in the National Guard as well.

And so the Joint Chiefs as a body, what I do is I represent their views to include dissenting opinions. But at any time, any one of those Joint chiefs, every one of them, by law is considered an independent advisor to the president. Any one of them can invoke their right to go and talk to the president about a certain topic. In addition to that, the combatant commanders, the field commanders, if you will, UH, they also provide their advice, their best military advice, or what some would

call considered military advice UH to the president. And they should and can and do all the time. So I am one of several advisors. I'm I'm within the law, it's called the principal military advisor, but not the only military advisor. So a couple of years ago, you went to see the President United States, President Trump, and it was reported that you were probably going to become the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, a very important position, UM.

And you emerge from that meeting as the projected chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where you surprised that you got that position rather than one that people thought you were gonna get. I knew when I went over there that I was interviewing to be the Chairman of the Joint chiefs UH and sack youre uh and any other position that the President deemed necessary. The US question. President Trump said to me of The first comment he said was, Uh, you're here to interview to be the

chairman of the Joint Chief Staff. It was myself and uh, then White House Chief of Staff Kelly, and the President. We had about an hour long conversation and at the end of it he said thank you very much. And the following day he called me and made the offer to hav me be his chairman. Uh. And all of us serve at the pleasure of the President. So whenever year asked for any duty position as a soldier, uh,

you execute the will of the president. So when you become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, does your wife call you Mr? Chairman? Your children cheat you with greater respect? How does that work? No? In fact, UH, you know, I'm very lucky to have met my wife and we were married, and she's been with me through thick and thin the entire time. She's an incredible woman to the nurse still practices as a nurse. She keeps

me grounded, and both my son and daughter keep me grounded. So, Um, you've had a lot of publicity for some things you've had to deal with in your time as Chairman Joint chiefs of Staff. That go through a couple of them. One is the events in Lafayette Square. So there you've publicly addressed that. But essentially you did not expect to be seen as a kind of political role because that's not your job. Um, Is that right? Yeah? Absolutely. I

found out very very quickly. As I looked forward and I saw the press being set up, I realized it was a political event, and I got out of the way. And I regret that then, and I made comments about it. You know, some people think, you know, uh, that that that's an okay thing to be walking with the president sort of thing. I don't. Walking with the President's fine. But if it's a strictly political event, and that was I is, and it's not the president, it's me. The

uniform shouldn't be there. We have a long tradition going way way back of an a political military, and we in uniform must make every effort to remain a political not be involved in the actual domestic politics of the United States. And that was a moment where I realized what was happening, and I broke away. Uh. And it's important that I broke away, and it's important that I apologized publicly for it. So that those in uniform know the standard as an a political military. So let's talk

about the events of January six. I assume you've thought about that affair bit in hindsight, do you think that somebody could have done a better job of protecting the capital or somebody whoever it was, could have done a better job. I'll let the January six Commission and all the various investigations, UH, do all the postmortems on it. Uh. It's obvious to me that the capital was breached. It was very significant event, one of the most significant events

in recent history. But I'll let the historians and the commissions and the investigators all sort through all that. All right, You've also had Afghanistan. We've withdrawn from Afghanistan after twenty years. The exit from Afghanistan was one where we lost I think thirteen U S military in the exit process. In hindsight, could the x have been um orchestrated better? There's a few things that could have been done better. One is

the intelligence piece. Um, you know, an army that was on paper three maybe a committed to fifty No one's actually sure of the number. I suppose, but an army and a police force that size and a government that collapses, literally collapses in eleven days. That was a surprise. So that's something that we need to figure out. We need to figure out how and why that happened. It almost sounds like a Malcolm Gladwell tipping point study, but it's it's something that we need to sort out. And why

is it we didn't see that? I think that's really important. Another one I think is the timing of our response UH so UM we had collapsed most of our military UH and most of the NATO allies by the middle of July in the bases associated with them had been transitioned over to the Afghan military. All that went relatively smoothly, without many hiccups, And that was going on really for quite a while, probably the better part of a year,

and that was going pretty well. So the NEO is the piece that you're talking about, the non combatant evacuation UH. That is UH an operation where we ran six thousand UH troops, some of which were prepositioned in the Middle East in the event of that contingency, some of which came from continental United States UH, and we deployed them very very rapidly. UH took control of an airfield, the Kabul International Airfield in a hostile environment. Uh. And we

did that eight and a half time zones away. We set up twenty seven animmediate staging bases around the world, and in a very short period of time, less than three weeks, we were evacuating thousand people. The first two days, first forty eight hours of that was very dramatic. People were hanging off airplanes mass on the airfield, some of them were in the wheel wells. It was very tragic.

And then at the tail end we we had um an incident where a suicide bomber went up to a patrol or or a perimeter man by Marines and killed thirteen of our levin Marines and and a soldier in a Navy corman. Um. And that was a tactical event that happened that has strategic consequence. So let's talk about your own background. Uh. It wasn't pre ordained that you would become Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff when you're growing up. I assumed so your family had been

in the military. Your father was an iwajima and your mother was in the military as well. Is that right? Yeah? My dad uh and mother they were both in the Navy. Actually, my dad was a Navy corman, uh. And then when he finished the corman training, um, he went into the He was assigned to the fourth Marine Division, so he was a Navy corpman. Fourth Marine Division did the assault landings at Kwa Jilina Toll, Saipan in Ewa Jima, saw

an awful lot of combat. Grew up some of Thelle Massachusetts, graduated some of the high school and then from high school and right into the Navy. B Acorman. And my mother she graduated from St. Mary's High School in Winchester, Massachusetts, and uh, she went right into the Navy as well, also into the medical Corps, and she served out of a hospital in Seattle taking care of the wounded coming

back from the Pacific. Very proud of their service. Both of them passed on, but that generation was very special. So when I read about your background, I saw Boston and a very fancy high school, Belmont High School and Princeton. I figured he must be a Boston brahmin, a wealthy Boston family. Is that right? No, not at all, um, No. I mean, neither one of my parents went to college, and we grew up in a very working class neighborhood and UM and my dad never made much money at all.

My mother worked steadily the entire time, which was very rare in those days. UM and they emphasized sports and education. And I was very fortunate went to a Catholic grammar school which emphasized some really good education, had some decent grades, and had an opportunity to go to the school called Belmont Hill which had a great hockey program. And I played for a great coach and uh, and I got recruited by them and played for for that high school

and a really great opportunity. So you went to Princeton and you graduated from Princeton, And were you a star in the hockey? We're all at Princeton, And did you think you could go to the NHL or not? Really? I thought starting out I could go to the NHL, And I quickly learned that the competitiveness of college hockey was probably not the NHL. Probably wasn't in my future. But I was okay. I was just a steady player,

and I was decent, but certainly not a star. That did you lose a lot of your teeth playing hockey and Princeton or not a Princeton. I I have lost four teeth playing hockey. Playing hockey, broke broke my jar and three different places, lost four teeth and probably got more than a hundred stitches in my face. So so

I have a face for radio. Dude. When you were at Princeton, did a lot of people say I want to be in the military or most of your classmates were going into something like private equity or hedge funds or Goldman Sachs and so were you an outlier by being in the military at Princeton? Oh? Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in a neighborhood that emphasized patriotism. Uh and the opportunity that this country was an amazing country that, um, you know that you have opportunities that

are not available elsewhere. So I was early on I decided that I did want to serve. I wanted to be in NHL, but I wanted to serve my country as well. Uh. So when I went to school, there was an opportunity to join OURTCU, and I did that. So I played hockey, joined ARTC and tried to study once in a while. Uh And in the RTC program, I was attracted to it again. I thought Uh. I never thought I'd make a career of the military. I thought I'd come in and do my four years. I

had a scholarship. Uh, do my four years and and then get out and move on. As you say, all right, so you go into the military, and after four years you can discharge your obligation, your r OTC obligation, and then you can go into you know, whatever you want to do. But you decided to make it a career, was not right? Well, I decided to take it in small chunks. I really enjoyed the military. Um, I was

in the infantry and then Special Forces and uh. And I wanted to stay through company command and then that's captain at level. Uh and see how that worked out. And then once I was captain and stay through major. It's just taking it small chunks. I never had a long range plan whatsoever. Actually for my personal career in the military. Got married along the way, had children. But I've never looked back and never had to regret because I've loved the military most see about the people that

I've served with. So when you're playing hockey, you can lose your teeth, but when you're in combat, you can lose your life. So when were you first in combat and you thought I could lose my life? Well, first combat was Panama for me in nine But uh, you can lose your life a lot of ways in the military. Um, the military is a very dangerous occupation, even when you're

not in combat. Uh So, whether it's in training or in combat, our soldiers and our sailors, air memoranes, Uh, they're sacrificing a lot every single day, day in and day seven to keep this country safe. Uh So, losing your life is something that I think everyone wearing a uniform has to come to grips with. It's not just combat. But for me, the first time in combat was Panama. And when that happened, did you think you could get shot and killed there? Were You're worried about that? What

did your parents say? My father actually was pretty upset. Um. My mother very religious, She accepted things and sort of the Lord will be with you sort of attitude. But my dad, who had seen a lot of combat in World War Two, certainly wasn't keen on his son being in combat. Now, did your parents live to see you rise up to be a general or some senior officer. No, my mother passed away in a in the nineties. UM, so I would have been a major. I guess at the time my father did. My father lived to see

me be a generalman. And my father was always proud of our service or my service. Um. And he talked to me about, you know, his experiences many many times. But look at he was a kid. He was he was eighteen nineteen one when the war ended, hit the beach, best friends killed. Uh, just saw some unbelievably intense battles. UM. And he and I talked about his experiences and my experiences frequently later in his life. But he was always very proud. He loved America, loved loved the country, and

loved the loose in uniform. So as we look at the military situation United States faces today, what do you think the greatest military risk the United States faces? That from Russia, China, other places. I think it's China. Um. And I've said that publicly many times. I think as we look to the future, and I think, Um, we are living in his orcle epic actually, Uh, We're we're seeing the rise of a country that is unlike something

we've seen probably ever before. Uh. And it's one of the great historical pivot points I think that we've ever witnessed, which is the rise of China, UH and from the reforms of nineteen seventy nine and dan Xiaoping up till today, which is I guess that's what two years or so,

four decades. They've had an incredible economic run and with that they've developed a military that's really significant as we go forward over the next ten years, there's no question in my mind that the biggest geo strategic challenge to the United States is going to be China. That that I have no doubt at all. Russia is important, not unimportant at all. Russia has very significant military capabilities. Of North Korea Ran is still there, terrorists are gonna be

around for quite a while. But I think China is clearly the most significant geo strategic threat we face as we talked today. There have recently been some reports that the Chinese have a hypersonic missile that can theoretically go into space and then come down with a nuclear bomb, escaping our ability to uh knock it down? Is that something I should be worried about, our all Americans should be worried about. Well, what you saw, and I don't want to get too much into the classification of what

we saw. But what we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic UH weapons system UM, and it is very concerning. I think I saw in some of the newspapers they used the term Sputnik moment. I don't know if it's quite a spot nic moment, but I think it's very close to that. So it's a very significant technological UH event that occurred or tests that occurred by the Chinese, and it has all of our attention, UM, and we're paying it. But that's just

one of that's just one weapon system. The Chinese military capabilities are much greater than that. They're expanding rapidly UH in space, UH in cyber and then in the traditional domains of land, C and A. And they have gone from a peasant based infantry army that was very very large in nineteen seventy nine UH to a very capable military that covers all the domains UH and has global ambitions.

So China is very significant on our horizon. But can I presume that the United States has thought of doing a hypersonic missile as well, and that we are not caught completely flat footed in our ability to maybe produce something like that ourselves. We are clearly experimenting and testing and developing technologies to include hypersonics, artificial intelligence, robotics, and

a whole wide range. Uh. Now, if you take a step back, um, what what we're in in history wise is we're in one of the most significant changes in what I call the character of war. But today, with the introduction of precision munitions, the ability to see all over the world, artificial intelligence, robotics, hypersonics, all of these things together, this is an enormous change in the character war. We're gonna have to adjust our military going forward. In Asia.

Should I be worried about North Korea or not? North Korea. Were always paying attention to North Korea because that's a country that's extraordinarily well armed. They've got seventy percent of their military is arraid within striking range of the de militarized Zone. Seoul itself is only twenty seven miles from the de military zone. It's under the missile envelope of North Korea. Uh. And the regime of North Korea is a brutal, vicious, tough regime, very aggressive, and it's led

by an individual. It's very difficult to figure out. They're always doing provocations over the over the course of time, whether it's missiles or other things. Uh. So, North Korea is something that we always are watching very closely. Our intent in North Korea or China or Russia, we want to maintain a military capability and a diplomatic uh level of effort to deter war. We don't want any conflict.

We want to deter war. But if deterrence fails, were determined to fulfill our in the case of South Korea, our treaty obligations with South Korea. So far, since nineteen fifty three, deterrence has worked, and we're hopeful that it will continue to work. Now we've heard of cyber attacks from China, North Korea, Russia in the United States. Uh. We don't know if they come from their military, but

presumption is that some of it might. Um can you make American people feel good that we have cyber capabilities that are just as good as the ones attacking us? I assume you can't tell us about all our cyber capabilities, but I assume nobody has better cyber capabilities than we do. Is that affair? I would say that we are the world's number one capability and cyberspace. But I would also tell you that China and Russia are very very good, as well as many other countries. UH. In terms of defense.

What we when when the Internet and the cyber world first developed, people weren't thinking of it as a domain of war. They weren't thinking of it in terms of setting up architectures that were robust and resilient for defense. UH. Those days are gone now. So years ago we started working on that, UH, and we have a long ways

to go. But we need to make our critical infrastructure, our financial systems, for example, are electrical systems, and many many other pieces of our of our national economy much more resilient to cybertech because our adversaries are very aggressive in cyberspace. So you have a four year term, you're about halfway a little bit more than halfway through it. When you ultimately reached the end of your four year term, which was all you can have, you will retire from

the military. Is that right? That's great? So you know what you're gonna do afterwards, something important like private equity or anything like that. I have no idea, haven't given an announce of thought to the truth I've got a full time seven job and busy as to be every single day, so I actually haven't given announce of thought. So if someone wants a leader, is it better to find a general or an admiral? I think, as as a chairman of the joint cheese, I'll opt out of

that one, David. That's like asking me to say, who do you love more? Your your son or your data. So I think leaders come in all kinds of forms, and you know, by the way, they don't even have to wear a uniform. I think you get great leaders in all walks of life, uh, and that served this country in many, many different ways, whether they're nurses and doctors or cops and firemen, no matter who they are, whether they're uh, you know, like yourself as a financier

and a philanthropist. Uh, there's there's leaders that come in all all shapes and sizes and stripes throughout the throughout the country, and many of those are in uniform. And I'm very, very proud of the generals and animals that are currently serving. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen