Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast. If you're not already, we would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized, and you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is
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out at patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse. Jack, We're delighted to have you. I'm going to skip the intros today all together if you guys aren't going to get too upset, except for Jack, who needs no introductions, so you lose an introduction to Jack considered the compliment, but really the biggest compliment. We've never said this to a guest. Notice us slavering up front, but please tell us what is just stream the consciousness? Tell us what
is first and foremost on your mind right now? Why in the world I'm awake. I knew that was coming in the morning on our Saturday talking to you guys as much as I love you guys. Yeah, yeah, come on, Jack, You're wasting time. I saw Jack like nine hours ago. D That's why you are the mogul who runs this show. Now exactly find now, Yeah, all right, listen before we start getting complaints from
our listeners about wasting time. Yeah, Jack, So yeah, what aside from that, and aside from all the other things that only trundle through your mind at this time in the morning, That of youers definitely do not want to hear about. What have you been writing about? Maybe I should. Jack's an investigative journalist. Everyone while he's uh, he's warming up gathering stamp
here, you've you've been hiding under a rock and don't recognize him. And I've written a lot of let's see the special the International Sniper Competition just came to an end. Was writing about that third Group logo. Uh, well, the third Group of logo I haven't written about actually, but but do you want to talk about it pretty quick? Yeah? Yeah, we can jump in as long as you want. But I'm intrigued. That's yes. So there's another This says me, guiding the master in his stream of consciousness.
Okay, I'm like his yogi. So this whole thing started with twentieth Group. Twentieth Special Forces Group published a picture and on the picture there's a soldier wearing a patch on his helmet. And I'm going to stop you right there, and I'm going to get complained about but I want to just reiterate what Jack said. Twentieth Special Falces Group posted this picture, all right, and took enough time to blur out the faces so they looked at it.
Yeah, and then when when you look at the patch that's on this soldier's helmet, it is the the the icon, the the symbol or the patch of I believe it's the third ss Panzer Division in the background now, and and it had the original had a swastika in front of the palm tree. This patch had that swastika removed and instead was the SS Death's head skull and
crossbones replaced on there. So either way, I mean the patch had you know, Nazi iconography on it. There's been a lot of yeah, just very quickly, there's been a lot of confusion about the reporting of this. For it's worth the the the emblem itself is this is taken from I mean, the skull itself is taken from the emblem of the third Panzer Division. Everything they say a skull is a skull, now it's a particular it's the angle, it's the expression. It was was unique to the third, says
Panther Division. Well, I said a big deal with the Third sets. Panther Division was formed from guys who are in the S. S. Toton Cult fair Band, which is one of three parts of the SS. The Total Cult fair Band guarded the concentration camps along with the Eisen Group, Ice and Gray Icin Group. And someone's going to run in about but the squad. So the guys who followed in trace of the forward units in Russia to
exterminate Partisans and Jews. So those those were the top topin Colfair Band and the Icin Group were two parts two of the three parts of the SS third part was off in SS anyway, this division committed multiple atrocities. It never served in Africa, So I just want to be clarifying. It's actually what has happened here is the combination of two emblems. One is the Africa Cores, which had a swastika and the palm tree, and the other is the
third SS Panzer Division, which had just the skull and crossbones. So they've taken both of those put them together. So yeah, that that that kind of blew up, and the Special Forces Command initiated and investtigation on it. They've made, you know, public statements saying, you know, this isn't aligned with what we're trying to do here, what our values are. We're
looking into it. And then in the meantime, you know, another somebody else find finds a picture, posts a picture of another it's actually a sticker on a door down at Fort Bragg or Fort Liberty now and it is yet another third Special Forces Group team. And then I mean the ODA number is on the sticker, so you know exactly where it came from. And it's the same motif of the palm tree with the death's head on it. And again it's not it's not just like the skull and crossbones from a pirate flag
or anything. It's very distinct that it comes from the sus And so as I saw all of this this week, I actually went into my archives and pulled up a picture that I posted on the internet, and it is a picture of a third group team that I have in this entire team would where it was the Death's Head the SS Death's Head uh in their version of the emblem that they made has wings coming out of the skull and it says death machine. And they wore that in Afghanistan, you know, all right,
and I'll I read these things and here's what goes through my mind. I Ca'm thaying Devil's advocate here, and trust me, you know I've got I mean, my my father's generation family was pretty much mipe down the second wall. Yeah, I mean, so I have no reason to have anything in common with people who eulogize Nazi memory Nazie emblems. But I but we went through the same thing in the Marine Corps, right, here's my point with Scout snipers and branding, and then you know, when we delve down,
we realized this wasn't ideological. It's just ignorance and idiocy and the sense of hey, this you know, they had some vague notion that it was German and but it but it wasn't that. These kids we were Nazis. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we don't have an extremist problem. We don't have extremists in the military. Course we do. But this isn't an indicator of it. This is just an indicator of willfall ignorance,
especially in a special Operations group. Because we talk about being able to judge our environment and and and and fit in. Well, how do you how do you drag out, you know, a symbol like this and use it without even looking into its background. That's what concerns me is the immaturity. Yeah, who's the photo? And the idocy on the command level, you know, I mean, what the fuck man? No, it's like put it on your unit website. I get it, you guys are reservist.
But come on, yeah, I mean apparently that uh that that company that that team belonged to. They all knew about it and everyone was fine with it. And I have been told like, okay, but those guys weren't racist. You know, they're not a Nazis. And maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I have no idea because I don't know all the people involved, and I can't you know, look inside their hearts and see what's
there. But I mean the question is, of course, if you're not that, if you're not a Nazi, why are you trying to affiliate yourself with it? And that's always the question, And like why can we not if we're not Nazis, why can we not just completely dispense with the Nazi insignia, just completely do away with it. We have plenty of our own stuff that's cool, that's attached to American military history, that that soldiers can
wear. There's a lot of stuff you can wear that's not Nazi. Like yeah, yeah, yeah, So sorry to interrupt, let me ask real quick because I'm still trying to understand all this from what I read. This first popped up in twenty twenty two, I think, and the command said, hey, this is a no go. And then is this new? Is this picture that's popped up again new and it's come back again or is
it somebody just dredged up an old picture? Well, this was The picture was posted by twentieth Special Forces Group, so it wasn't a case of you know, Jack Murphy dredging up the past. I didn't post the picture. I had until this stuff all came out, and I was like, well, it's kind of interesting. I know they the army posted the picture when the picture was taken. I don't know. Yeah, I guess that's probably going to be a part of their investigation, gotcha. Okay, So the
third Group spokesman said, hey, it's been taken out of context. Like I saw that, and I was like, wait, what taken out of what historical context? If you're going to reach that's what eighty years That's what I always ask like when people say like it's it's we're taking it out of context, It's like, okay, what is the context? Yeah? And by the way, the context which has become so confused. Yes, it was a bad, bad group of dudes. They did, but they never
went to Africa. You know the military. I think it's the Military Times. Some military dot com reported that it was part of the Africa Corps. It fought under Romeo. Yes, it did fight under Rommel, but in Europe, all right, Romel in the in the Battle for France, and yes, they did commit atrocities against Africans. They butchered the thousands of hundreds, possibly thousands of Moroccan soldiers, but it was in France. But anyway, yeah, that's a minor point. I My feeling is, there's nothing
to see here, all right here. My feeling is, yes, we have things to see as we dig up what happened on sixth January and the lamentable number of military personnel who involved in that. You know, there's of course, as extremists in military. You guys know all this. What do you expect when you take a cross section of the of American society who are not among the most privileged. You know, we always say, even at the height of our recruiting, we're not taking that. We're not getting the
top of the high school class. We're not getting the kids who are going to go to college with athletic scholarships or academic scholarships. We're getting the guys who are barely you know, her struggling. Eight seventy five percent of US recruits come from one parent families, right as an example. That doesn't mean they're bad families. I'm just saying this is the demographic. It's up to the military to change the way they think. And the change the way they
think isn't giving them a Friday afternoon you know a class. And why extremism is bad, it's learning. It's learning to face hardship and go through all the shit that we have and depending to depend on the dude next to you who doesn't look like you. That's what That's what undermines extremism and racism. It's putting units through that type of tough training they don't have to go to combat. And if we just focused on that instead of all these classes,
I think we'd be on the right path or chasing off the logos. You know, hey, absolutely ban it and spank everyone involved being just stupid beyond belief. But let's not make this an indicator of extremism because it's it's the
wrong trait. It's always the you know, difficult conversation I mean sometimes with veterans but also with civilians to try to like parse out some of the nuances that you know, you're right when you point out there there are studies that have been done that show, you know, extremism amongst military or military veterans is actually a little bit lower than baseline and pointing out that, you know,
the military isn't like an incubator for extremism or anything like that. But then if you drill down into the statistics a little bit more, you will find like some frightening numbers. You know, people who believe in the white replacement theory, and what is that? Let me explain it. I'm just kidding. Go ahead, go for go ahead, Jason, let us let us know what you're doing to us. Yeah, what's your fucking plan?
Dude, I'll lose my car for this, But I'm just kidding. Let me seriously though, So one of my andy what you were going back to what you were saying, and I am going to predict that this is gonna be Wait, what's the white replacement theory? No, go on called the green replacement theory. But we should explain what it is, right if we mentioned it, I don't want to mention it. I don't know exactly what I've been meetings. I don't know. It's just like white supremacist conspiracy theory.
That's pretty prevalent, that, you know. I mean, I guess the idea goes that we're opening up our southern border to let all of these immigrants, illegal migrants into the and the idea is that they will demographically displace white people and be a block, a voting block of leftists that will just vote for communism Like oh oh right, yeah, the demographic the demographic shift that's removing the base on the air that that time is not on that side.
So actually quite excited for that me too. Yeah. So yeah. One of my my first going back to what Andy was saying about learning, one of the one of my first roommates in the barracks when I was in the Marine Corps was a kid I won't I won't say his name, but probably about a week or so after we uh first moved into these new barracks, he just pulled me aside. He's like, listen, man, I
just need to be honest with you about something. I was raised in a clan family, you know kkk, and you know this is all really new to me, he said. Between boot camp and this first did you tell them it was new to you too? Yeah, exactly. Well, come on, man, I'm from this Jersey short it's not rock. So we just sat and talked about it. Yeah, it wasn't like some hallmark moment.
We just talked about and at the end of it, I was like, listen, man, are you going to fucking shoot me in the back when you know, when we're uh, you know, when we're out there. He's like, no, said, are you going to have my back when we're out there? He's like yeah. I was like, then I don't give a fuck, And that's how it was, and we just we got along. He never you know, he went on to do other things, he moved out of the unit, and we never had a problem with
it. And I think, like you said, if we get away from the whole, uh, you know, here's a everybody has to do a stand down on a Friday afternoon and you know, just talk about it. I think if people are able to bring their experiences to these things and say this is what I learned from it, this is what happened, this is
what I learned from it, it will not necessarily work itself out. And like you said, if the bullshit raises its head, whether it's a you know, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever it is, you know, smack the ones who were the perpetrators and learn a lesson. Keep it moving, you know, this once a year talking about it. Sh It is just not gonna be. It's not enough. It kind of feels
like very hr like very corporate, like checking a box. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is, checking a box, and like none of the information gets anyway, Like they literally will hold people's leave until they've gotten this done. You know, they checked that box along like cybersecurity and all the other ship. So it's this is it's usual approach as a you know, as a zero three, zero four hundred hours Zulu or racism will land. Yeah in this unit. Well it's also the classic like this afghan an
an a unit is going from amber to green. You know, it's like very it's a very army thing. Oh and then we're back to then we're back to red again. How did this happen? Yea new Kimmanda. Yeah, and I'm sure we're going to get smacked on clickbait And you know why are we being woke with all this? Well, it's it's something that needs to check. You know. I hate to be that person that talks to the people in the comments, but you need to get over it. This
is real, it happened. It needs to be talked about so you don't like it, Oh, well go you know, go follow somebody else. Yeah, I don't know, Jack was no, go ahead. I was saying that, I know, we took you down that path, and then I feel bad. Now maybe you didn't want to go down that path.
But it was very interesting. Nevertheless, not well, you know, I mean, I mean the symbology, the lack of historical context, the fact that we really do have to understand that that Americans don't learn about history in high school or anything, and so for the most part, and but that there is you know, there is an issue, and we address it, and that's you know, not such make such a big deal of it. M hm yeah, Well we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean,
as you guys maybe implied a little bit. My guess is nothing happens funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's a big stole in a tea cup. And then I think time when whoever is doing the fucking photo shot, maybe pick other skulls. There's a plethora of them out there.
All right, Yeah, what what next? Well, I mean, have vana syndrome is coming back, and I know Jack's it's a it's pretty nascent anyway, like you're still working on it, but we start Uh yeah, We've got our own personal interests with Mark Mark p who he has Moscow syndrome. But it's very very similar to habana. Yeah, incidents is the term we're using. Now. What is that? Anomalous health incidents? I believe
is the acronym AH. But I uh yeah, I'm back on this story or researching it, interviewing people, talking to scientists and doctors and people who are very smart, and hopefully a story comes out of it. I've I mean, I think there's enough there. I've also been talking to some of the victims, people who are hit with something an anomalous health incident, and I'm I do believe, you know, I guess like you know, not to bury the lead. I mean, I believe that some of these people
were indeed hit with some sort of a microwave weapon. And it's just again, it's another one of these stories where you have to drill down into the nuances and you have to look at the data, look at the scientific studies that have been done on the victims, and some of these people have very odd abnormalities that the in the in the MRI machine shows some of those abnormalities I'll have to write about more in depth. So I don't know. It's
it's it's an interesting subject. It's a very complicated subject to pick through. So yeah, poor one, do we have Do we have any numbers and any idea of how many people have been affected with this? I mean, somewhere between two hundred and a thousand. I haven't I haven't seen anything solid. I think there are probably two. I think there's like maybe two hundred and twenty like people who are sort of like on the books, so to
speak, in the as far as the government's concerned. But I mean, at a certain point this story, you know, the victims, the list expands and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I really don't want to be dismissive of anyone, certainly not out of hand, but you do start to wonder, are all of these people really being blasted with something? And
it's a question of picking through all that. It's like a thing, right, Yeah, Because I happened to and I call it accidentally fall into X. I don't know how, And I was reading some of the comments about it, and I guess sixty minutes is coming out with this story story about
you know, revealing some information or whatever. But I was reading some of the comments, and a big majority of them, we're saying things that never happened for one thousand dollars and you know, just saying it never happened. You know, it's a bunch of crap. And I don't know a whole lot about it, But I was just curious if it was like ten people, you know, or I'm assuming that all of these people probably share in common locations, you know, like Cuba, Moscow, stuff like that,
or is it spread out all over the girl. I don't want you to tell too much of your information, your gather. Here's here's like a little like anecdote, and there's many, there's many anecdotes that could be shared. But when people first started getting hit in Havana, there are three CIA agency personnel down there. All three of them get hit and get sent back home.
Then they send another three guys to replace them on tdy people who have no they have no idea why the previous crew was sent back home, all three of them. That scene in the Big Red Onne, all of those three, the three replacements, get hit, they send them back home. They send another three TD wires down there and they get hit. And now by by this point you have State Department people who have also been hit down
there, you have Canadians who have been hit. So the idea that this is some sort of like mass hallucination, like it's just this like psychosomatic shared hallucination that people are having is I think ludicrous and I don't think it's supported by the science or the data. And because especially when you consider that some of this was in the blind. I mean, these people had no idea what Havana syndrome was. It's not like they were all talking to each other
comparing notes. You could make that argument today, but at that time, no, And so people started coming down being afflicted with these very similar symptoms. And and again when some of those early Havana victims were looked at under functional magnetic resonance imagery, the findings do show a difference between them and other people who have traumatic brain injuries, Like if you were to look at baseline TBIs, their brains are different. Something different happened there. So, yeah,
it's it's a lot to it's a lot to pick through. Yeah, cool, cool, and we go ahead, Andy, No, no, no going now, I was gonna say, and again without you giving away too much of what you're writing about. Do we have a suspect here? I keep seeing China? But I mean, do we have any proof of anything? You know? Well, I can say I don't have any proof. I think the United States government has actually quite a bit on this. On this topic, pretty much everyone is pointing the finger at Russia. But
do have I seen proof of that? Have I do I know proof positive that that the Russians were behind it? I don't. I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't show you. But yeah, I don't. I don't want to go too deep into it. But I do know the United States government and especially D O D and like the Jaysak guys actually, to their credit, took this issue very seriously and like kind of leaned into it, like, hey, let's fix the glitch, let's fix the problem. How
do we defend against this? Whereas the CIA was burying their head in the sand and just in denial as it's got worse worse, and giving people settlements but also denying it. Well, they gave a few people settlements to you know, almost it feels like hush money almost, But I mean, I know other people who believe they've been hit with whatever this is, they've experienced an anomalous health incident, and they're like, what are people talking about these
settlements? Like we haven't even begin given like a number to call to even like go like start this process. So I think that it's been very selective in who they've kind of tried to help. Yeah, it intrigues me when you said directed energy weapon? Can you be can you be specific about it? I know, you know, mock mock pee walked about a little bit speculation. I can't be specific until really because we haven't captured a device. As far as I know, it won't happen, But I mean, can
you can you I don't mean the capability a little bit. So microwaves in the way I'm I'm kind of throwing around that term is a bit unscientific. Microwaves can encompass a broad band of different types of waves that can be beamed from a emitter. It could be a single point emitter, Uh, it could be two. There's one theory that it's two emitters and then they cross, they cross, and they get the victim and the cross beam from the
anecdotal you know victim statements. It seems like the device is able to target like an entire room or rooms in a in a residence. So like one guy was telling me about how it hit me in my living room. It was really bad. I went into my bedroom and I tried to like walk it off and pretend it wasn't hurting me. That's the thing, isn't it. The victim can point to, at least for the most part, a point in time when they when they felt suddenly felt something absolutely yeah. And
so it's not like Legionaire's disease where it comes up later. You know, they all had that one thing and come and it's like I suddenly felt when when this particular guy left, who's in his living room, in his bedroom, he was getting hit. When he walked into his kitchen, he started to feel better, Like the kind of the pressure was relieved that he was feeling. There's jeez, you get me talking about this stuff, Andy.
So I think it's interesting interesting thing. The other interesting thing I think is that the United States has this technology. That's that's that's what, and that's what why. It's a little frustrating for the CIA to pretend like or I should say the headshed the seventh for or anyway you know DST the Director of Science and Technology, I'm told in their in their classified assessment, they assessed that there was some sort of microwave beam weapon used on some of these people,
but the seventh floor didn't want to hear that. And it's frustrating for a lot of people that the CIA still pretends that they don't understand what this is or what's happening when we have the exact same technology. We have small man portable microwave beam weapons. Now I have no I have not been able
to find any accounts of them ever being deployed and used operationally. Uh, for a military personnel to turn that device on, it requires very high levels of approval and authorization, like up to n S a level, if not beyond even even to think about turning that thing on. But the point is we do have it. They can fire it in a three to five second burst, and the idea behind it is that you can use it to blow some people out of a safe house. You know, if you've got some
drying risk, you can hit them with this thing. It makes them very very uncomfortable. You'll have a headache that sort of thing, and it'll get the guy up and moving around, hopefully out of his safe house, get him on his cell phone, making phone calls. It's a way to uh coerce the types of behaviors that we might want to see at certain points. So we have this technology. It's not it's not like some exotic novel technology
that is like this mystery. What is a mystery though, is we've never and because we have medical ethics a lot in America, we've obviously never tested this device on human beings. So there are questions about what type of beam you hit people with that replicates the symptoms and in the data that the Havanah victims have. Because we don't know exactly how these waves impact the human body,
we know that it's different than other traumatic brain injuries. We know that you know, a normal microwave will you know, kind of give you a sunburn. But this is something different. It's they're they're getting through the skull and into the gray matter in your brain, and that takes a different type of calibration. And again I'm not explaining that quite well because I'm not a scientist. My point is that it's just a different type of microwave that it
is being tuned in a way to create that impact in human beings. And we're still trying to study the victims and study microwaves to try to understand you know how you know a person, you know, essentially a person's brain is cooked from the inside out. It's I mean, it's potentially an an extraordinarily
useful weapon. You know, it's uh, in the end, it's still I'm not I'm not minimizing what happened to the Havana syndrome victims, but for the sake of argument, you know, it's a non lethal weapon, and, as Jack points out, with effects that are perhaps more useful and diverse than kinetic weapons. So and and potential use by the way, encountering swarms
of drones I had. I had an old school guy, he was chief of station in Moscow, and he was telling me that, you know, the interesting thing about the Russians isn't that they have They're not beating us in like the tech race or anything like that. They don't have any technology that we don't have, But they think about technology and they think about ways to use it that we would never consider. Yeah, that's just an interesting like
little cultural I'll give you a great example of that. And that's a great point, Jack, I think it's very well put. At the outset of the war in Ukraine, the Russians, the Ukrainians started getting a high number of percentage of soldiers with laser burned eyes right blinded. And two things,
Okay, resulting from this. One was soldiers can deal with fear of general fear of death or wounding, but when they know there's a specific fear of being blinded and they've seen people happen, it's a terrifying I mean, you
can imagine that, and they don't know where it comes from. Well, Russians were using laser designators as a reconnaissance by fire, you know, as they came to an area, they were just lays everything very likely op and they were blinding guys, you know, blinding initially reconnaissance units and then soldiers and the Ukrainians had to go into fast production mode on laser's safegggles that they pushed out to all of this. This was this was in the first few
weeks in the wars, as the Russians were approaching Kiev. Never made the news, but but you know, I was I'm not saying I was there, you know, but but I was there and and watching them, you know, react and then think through and adapt in an extraordinary short period of
time to counter this. So yeah, great example of what you were talking about, not new technology, but being used in a way which, by the way, we couldn't use it, but the Russians can always escape by saying, you know, hey, we were designating targets and it's not off. Older people got in the way. Yeah. So then that begs the question, as far as you know, if this is being used seemingly exclusively
against intelligence officers, how do you counter it? I mean, the operations still have to go on, you know, intel somethings that we collected. What do people go out wearing the the literal tinfoil caps, you know, like, how do we count well it's uh what do you mention that? Uh? So, Jack hats one right here there there there is uh there. I don't know how far along we are and developing countermeasures. I can
tell you some like initial conversations I've had with people. There's one idea is that you know, we should have sensors that we can give to our people overseas that they can put inside their residence and it'll warn them. At least you'll have some sort of a warning that something is happening. I spoke to one person who is an expert in his field, and he believes that we can design clothing, windows, drapes, things like that that will actually block
these beams. He thinks it's possible. It would take it takes some really high end technology to do it, and it's not cheap, but there are ways to develop countermeasures. And the other, the not high tech option to to your question, Jason, of course, is retalitly right if there if you know it's that that that scene, uh uh. Sean Connery says, you know they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of
theirs in the morning. Yeah, so I and I think that's that may be actually the reason why the CIA has kind of tried to bury this because they may not want to get into a global tit for tat with the Russians where we're disappearing people. Yeah, that's a little speculative, but I just
have to imagine. I mean, if this was real, Okay, if if the Russians were blasting American government personnel with microwaves, the president could quite clearly sign a covert finding because it'll be ruled uh in it's in self defense and it's directly related to US national security, and so he could sign a lethal finding for something like this, like no questions asked. I'm not a lawyer, but I mean, as far as how I understand how wall works,
they could do it. That's really an interesting theory. And I think this there's some substance to a jack that it's a attribution puts you in a corner. I mean explicit attribution. Now, I mean it was the same thing, Yeah, you're gonna do it. The drone that that hit Talent twenty two, you know, I mean obviously an Iranian drone and and yet it we don't and obviously we know it, but we just and they know it that we know it. But yeah, yeah, it's just it's rules
of the game, you know, you know exactly exactly. It's like this funny thing like you know, we talked about, you know, sabotage operations in Russia and you know, the Russians kind of like shrug it off like whatever, you know. And then I mean another example, of course,
is the nord Stream pipeline bombing. I mean, we still don't know what the fuck really happened there, but it blew up and like very quickly, the governments of like Denmark and Sweden were like, yeah, we're done investigating, like inconclusive, inconclusive, And it's just it's just very funny how we we ignore things we don't want to address much like it's child evidently it just
didn't react well to cold weather. We just didn't think about this because we don't because we don't we don't want to go down these you know, both US and the Russians don't necessarily want to go down all these rabbit holes and get into a sort of tit for tat, be it diplomatic or you know, maybe lethal. So yeah, it's very funny how we we kind of act like, you know, it's like, you know, a little kid coming downstairs and you know, their mom's like, did you clean your room?
And the kid is like, yeah, I did, and the parent just doesn't want to know if they cleaned it or not. You know, you don't want to go upstairs and actually inspect. It's just a very funny sort of dynamic we are. We we've typically in the past just not being subtle enough to play by rules of the game. But I think, you know, we are getting there. I think Syria taught us a lot.
I think it was fortunate that we had mainly a soft footprint in Syria, and so we had to, you know, we had guys who attuned to that to learn how to coexist in the same area with Russian forces. I'm not saying get along. Obviously, know when to draw the line and spank them. But in between that, how to you know, continue steady state and where it really where it really comes to the for is in the Middle East, right, you know what I mean with Israel. Israel has bolla
Iran. They're all you know, Israel will kill Iranians, but outside Iran for the most part until recently, until recently when they blew up, well, someone blew up gas pipelines in Iran. And by the way, there's behind the scenes there is an extraordinary cyber war taking place with pro Israel proxies doing significant things to Iranian infrastructure and what made them use with gas pipelines,
But that wasn't I don't think that was a cyber attack. But anyway, rules of the game, Yeah, subtle understanding them, When do you need to tear to them? And when to break them? Geopolitics one on one, Yeah, I think the second and third order effects of this whole I keep saying Havana syndrome thing because I don't remember the other thing you said is when we know, yeah, when we do come up if and when we do come up with a countermeasure to it or defense against it. Now,
how then does that affect again intelligence or military operations? Because it's like, if it's expensive, as you say, to do it, who do we give it to? And does that now point them out? As an intelligence officer? It's like, hey, this guy or girl coming into this country is State department, but we know that they just gave them this special type of window in their plays, this you know, special type of whatever it
is. So how does that affect those sorts of things? I mean, it's it sounds, it sounds asinine, But I think there's also thoughts behind the scenes. Do we want to develop a countermeasure to a technology that we also have have? Do we want to dump millions and millions of dollars into developing a countermeasure that once our enemies know it exists, they're going to develop that countermeasure as well. So yeah, it's convoluted man, Yeah, definitely,
definitely cool. We will stay tuned to the high Side. Sean Nayler paid me to mention that I am told that your ratings shut up, Jack, please say yes after our last episode of Aazona when you were a guest, but we had astonishingly high number of views because your picture it was on the front. But anyway, they will, Sean, you will. Sean very kindly mentioned that subscription rates for The high Side went up after that episode,
which is good because you should all subscribe to the high Side. Absolutely. Yeah, my free subscription. Yeah, my my. When I finished writing this story about Havanna, it'll be on the high Side and a few other big projects that Sean and I are working on. Awesome, I I'd like to d do we We've got a few minutes, right, We've got Jack, Jack's I'll be here all day if we need him. Oh you know I won't because I'm going up Wait wait, no one contradicts on the
ship Chack. What else? So first of all, as our guest is, I mean, I've got a couple of questions for you that but before we get to kind of rummaging around in the garbage. Do you have what what do you want to talk about on a more cerebral level, because invaribly whatever comes out of your mouth is cerebral. With the exception of that one Friday night in uh where was it down by the river in Alexander? I Dug brets go on what came out that night? It is maybe way too
early in the morning for me to have cerebral thoughts about anything. Okay, yeah, what do you want to I mean, is there anything anything that's that's a burning topic that you think are the the more sophisticated eyes on listeners would would appreciate more sophisticated as opposed to the team house. Mm no, I mean, that's That's about the gist of it. You know, I've got a question for you. I don't know. I've got a question for you. I don't know. And this isn't me delving into pruri and garbage,
but I am. I'm intrigued about what exactly happened with the first group commander form of first group commander. And I'll tell you why, Jack, because uh, for a while, that whole case, you know, you know, the one I mean became within the soft community. It was and I may be at a date here, but it was portrayed as being, hey, here's what happens when TBI and PTSD is left, you know, untreated. And this guy had an exemplary record, and then he suddenly went
off the rails and then troubling comments started coming out. And it concerns me when these things happened, because I hate for all the fact that because it may have happened badly, you know, in one case, that everyone is painted with that same brush. I worded that very badly, but you know what I mean over to you, But there are still people who eulogize this person and say that it was a case of PTSD that you know, well, that was certainly his story. And I mean the person we're talking about
held his family hostage, barricaded inside the house. Yeah, do you want to just give a quick synopsis of the story. I'm sorry that I jumped into it. Yeah, it was this is going back a few years, but it was Owen Ray and he was the yeah, the commander of first Special Forces Group, and then he went on to he was a guy who carried the nuclear football for Obama, for a little while and then his u he went on to he was like a chief of staff at I Corps.
I believe this is going back a few years something my memory. He wait when you read his career, you know in Apocalypse Now when Willard Captain Willard is you guys seen Apocalypse Now? Right? Who has not seen that?
Anyway? Captain Willard's going through Kurtz's file and he's like it was perfect, maybe too perfect, and it's almost like Owen Ray's record, right, yeah, yeah, and you know then yeah, he has this this moment where he holds his family hostage and has an armed standoff with the police and which will affect feel Security arents and in the in the aftermath of all this, you know, yes, he he tried to blame it on untreated PTSD and TBIs and and make it, you know, a soldier's story about and I
mean there's a there's a little bit of a in my opinion, there's a little bit of narcissism involved in. You know, you're still going through like your court trial here, and you're already out front trying to like, you know, spin this story and kind of weave your memoir about a soldier's return home. It's like, you're not quite there yet, and I think he uh as I again, as I recall, I believe he did catch a conviction in civilian courts and and do some jail time. Yeah, uh we
I mean we've had our own cases like this, senior senior offices. It particularly upsets me when senior offices claim that they have PTSD. Uh and then you delve into the records and you think, where the hell did they get PTSD. You know, it's we had our own case, a guy named Shane Tompkom. Actually, you know, we had more than one very similar case. It wasn't holding hostage, but he did criminal stuff and is now in jail in Norfolk for, among other things, sexual abuse of the minor.
But he made colonel in the United States Marine Corps and was the same sort of career. You know, he did time at Jaysark and everyone's like, oh my god, poor dude. No, he was a fucking criminal who masqueraded as a marine officer and made colonel. You know, I mean not just not just did okay, but vaultage in the head. So you know, when we talk about extremism and patches, I think our bigger concern is how we screen officers. Frankly, I mean we have had I mean
you just look at the papers across the board. I mean we have had a lot of reliefs for things that just shouldn't have shouldn't have happened. And also the best of the best, those are guys who get slated for command, you know. I mean, it's there is something fundamentally wrong. And I throw this out for comments for the listeners obviously, but I can say, you know, last time I said he most officers are not warriors. I think that's necessary. The United States military is a big bureaucracy, and
I'm fine with that. I'm not fine with officers who developed this persona that everyone eulogizes, you know, short hair, big you know, big guy. I don't like big guys anyway, good looking, you know, deep voice, and they will go far in the military, all right, especially if they're physically fit. They will make lieutenant colonel, and and they build up this this iconic hey man, he's a warrior. Yeah, he's a meeting owner the persona. Oh god, and then it's impossible it's not.
But then everyone's like shocked. I mean, we could real often name off the name to include many general officers who developed the sun god syndrome and do stuff that is really fucked up. Well, people, you're right, people are are shocked when these folks come unwound. But a lot of that is is also there's like a lot didn't just happen because if you didn't wind back the clock. There's a lot of warning signs with a lot of these guys.
And the military is the Army has tried to put some rail guards in place recently. You know the screening they do for you know, to see if someone is a toxic leader. Yeah, but that's that's screening. By the time that screening for commanda, I mean, if they're a toxic leader, they shouldn't be a fucking officer. They shouldn't have made it. Yeah, I know, I mean, you're still leading people. But let's wait till that lieutenant colonel. Then we're really going to screen them out. Like
the dudes to a psychopaths. It's okay, don't get take don't worry about it. Man, let him into o c S. By the time they reach five, we'll get them out. It's funny, lots of even to see that that board that screens for toxic leaders. You see senior officers trying to intervene because they're the sea daddy. You know, they got their boys out there, their mentees that they're you know, this guy fits the mold. This is he has the persona that the senior guy likes, that wants
to promote up the ranks. And uh, but the the you know, the board convening on toxic leaders to say no, not this guy. And you see the officers trying to intervene in the board and find ways to subvert it. I mean, yeah, actual board that would that would never in the marine calls, right never. So there really is a board, yeah, for for I believe it's for people who are taking a battalion command. And yeah, there is. There is a process like decap or something.
Again, I'm sorry, it's so early in the morning, I can't remember the acrony. Yeah, it's a significant process. They brought it in a couple of years ago. And so when you are eligible for battalion command, you go through you know, they'll take your whole coport and and it's like
I didn't know, it's like us. I mean, I haven't been through it, but when you read what they do, you know, it's they do a PFT, they do interviews, they do a three sixty you know, they there's a three sixty assessment done off them to that point, and then they get peer ee valves done. As they go through this, they
do the leadership reaction courses that we did at OCS. You know, we have to get across a crevass, a fake crevass, you know, with a plank and two pieces of rope and five idiots, you know, all of this stuff. I mean, it just seems bizarre that and it isn't because the Army is doing it say the same thing regardless of service. But it's just that we're testing people for leadership when they get to that stage,
because what is wrong. We're judging them on their on their records, on their performance reviews well, because the performance review system is broken and it's too
inflated. So it it's that, don't bring in this ridiculous you know, Uh, hey, we've got to make up all the ship screening we haven't done to this point three days because I don't understand where the toxic leadership would come out in any of those things, like maybe in an interview, like if you ask them a scenario question, probly like you know what kill them all? But blieve me if you if you are on time limit and some idiot drops the you know, the the package you're supposed to be carrying across
that crevass at the last minute, people revert to their true nature. But you know what I know, But people revert to their true nature. They should have done. They should have They've had all of company command to evaluate these people in I think command. Why are they waiting until lieutenant colonel to give them this weird board? I guess My one My question is is like do they know they're being screened for toxic leadership? Because if they do,
why would they show that during the screening? They're going to put on their best face so that they already said they go. I believe, Again I'm not totally schooled up on the whole process, but I believe they go in the interview like your subordinates and people like that, gotcha? Okay, all right. I'm a big believer in three point sixty evaluation. I think that's one way potentially that we prevent the natural progression towards inflation and performance reports.
I am, Yes, of course. You know. The counter argument is, hey, you're going to get leaders who cater to popularity. No, a guy who's a decent leader isn't going to do that. And marine and even soldiers can tell when an officer is simply you know, catering to them or trying to suck up to them, and they despise that. They would rather have an asshole who was incompetent. I mean an asshole who was competent, you know, who was going to keep them alive even though he was
an asshole, than someone who was trying to be popular. So I think three sixty is a good way of doing it. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water. There were some really good tools that they brought in during these three days. My point is why just bring why why not
just implement them as continual assessment, which is far more effective. You only do a three day board when you haven't had eyes on the person beforehand, you know, for instance, like the Brits do a three day commissioning board all right, where they put them through all this stuff. But anyway, you know, a great, great initiative army, But there are other things, you know, look at your performance evaluation, Look at how bring people in? Look how do you assess them? And then you got anything?
No, I'm good, cool, Jackalope, you got anything else? No? No, all right, guys, listen, don't forget to like subscribe, don't forget to check out the high Side substack with Jack and Sean Naylor. Don't forget to check out Andy Substack, Andy's Twitter. Everything will be in the bio and in the show notes. You can click those links there. It's very easy checks. But yep, those will be there also. And the most important thing, not the most it's the most important thing.
Patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse help support the shows. Both eyes on and the Teamhouse. YouTube is screwing us. I don't want to get into it, but I will. Patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse. Please thank you. How much is that? It's five bucks a month? Get you get ad free audio end video. You get a bonus bonus episodes per month with just the guys shooting the ship, answering your questions. You can have your questions answered live on the team House too. We do give the Patreon subscribers
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