Gen. Brunson on Holding the Line on the Korean Peninsula

[Music] You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs. My name is Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode I sat down with General Xavier Brunson. He is the commander of United Nations Command, our OK U.S. Combined Forces Command, and U.S. Forces Korea. He's been in that role for almost a year now, just about a year by the time this episode comes out. We talked about all things, Korean, and regional security. Really interesting conversation with a very interesting leader. This episode is brought to you by Legion. Every military professional knows that AI is critical for maintaining an advantage, but in most solutions, compromise security the moment you put them in. Legion changes that. They provide secure, agentic AI for the nation's most sensitive environments. On premises, air gaped, or in GovCloud. And their platform never trains on your data. Trusted by the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, Legion helps agencies work smarter with AI for search, content creation, and workflow automation up through IL-6 classified environments. You can learn more about Legion at War on the Rocks.com/Legion. That's LEG-I-O-N. What made you want to be a soldier? Growing up in North Carolina, my father was a soldier and my dad's a retired Sergeant Major. And it's all I ever wanted to do in B, because I saw the way that he reacted to people he got the opportunity to work alongside, and I saw the way that they treated him. Tons of respect, admiration. And I just thought, you know what? I could do that with my life. And so that's really what led me to it. I never wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a fireman, or a policeman, or a cowboy. I never wanted any of those things, but I did always want to be a soldier. Was that the Vietnam generation? Your family? Yeah, my dad served in Vietnam. The last war he fought in was Desert Storm. Oh wow. And so over the course of his 29 years in service, you know, I was alive for every one of them. So just to do that, and my first salute to graduating college in ROTC was to my dad. It was the Sergeant Major Brunson. And so my brothers followed right along with that, because it's what we saw our dad do. Yeah, you mentioned to me you have two brothers who were twins that both just took the same job in succession in the Pentagon. It's pretty funny. Yeah, the second time they've done that, in the 528 Special Operations Support Brigade, they changed company command together. And we thought, well, this is a one-off. And then just now before my brother, Havi moved to Fort Hood to take command of the 13th ESC. He traded out as the exo to the Army G4 with his twin, Tavi. So Tavi's there now. That's great. Before you became a general officer, what was the best job or best posting that you had your favorite anyway? Yeah, I would say that it would have been from the time period of probably 2008 to 2012. And really before then, even, we were all at Fort Bragg together. Both my brothers were at Fort Bragg. I was there. My wife was in the service at the time. She was there. And we were all in Yusosok for a period of time. And we got to come to the Association of the United States Army, you know, AUSA, big function as the Yusosok family of the year. And that year probably in 2012 was one of the best years that I've ever had in the Army because I was with my family always. Which deployments had the hardest lessons for you? I would have to say for me, it would have been because again, I didn't go to Desert Storm. My dad was in Desert Storm, but I didn't go. The first time I went to combat was in 2003 in the 100 and first. And it was the first time I'd seen somebody die. And I remember the recrimination that I felt and did I plan well enough for us to make what was ostensibly a simple movement. But we came under fire and we lost a soldier at that time. And I won't mention their name here, but we lost somebody. And when we lost them, I started thinking, you can't get everything absolutely correct, right and proper sometimes. But what you have to do is make sure that you never have to look back on, did I ever, did I do everything that I should have done. And I wrestle with that for quite some time because losing that young lieutenant, it just, it just cast me into thinking about, you know, was I really ready for what I was going to face. And then it's something that I faced for the next six years of deployments that I've had total to a rack and to have to stand right. Yes. And who was there? Your favorite boss who was not a general officer. Oh, wow. I would have to say that would have been my battalion commander Jake McFarron in third battalion, 505th parachute infantry regiment. And that's just born out by the people that were in that unit, whether it was Jim Roll retired drew popus or major general retired Mark Stammer, lieutenant general retired JP McGee, great. I mean, just on and on Trevor Braden camp, just so many great officers in that battalion. And just the way we dealt with one another, just absolutely cordial, collegial and a heck of a lot of fun. Do you have to stay airborne qualified at your rank? No, I do not. I am both military free fall qualified and airborne qualified. I'm a jump master. But at 59 years old, I can tell stories about jumping out of planes, but probably will not jump out of the plane again. It's nice probably to look back and I mean, I'm sure it's there's been some injuries. I think everyone goes through them, but to have all your fingers and tell us from all those jumps. Oh, yeah. And you know, I'm over 300 right now. And I don't need another one. So one of the things I find fascinating about your job is it's actually three jobs, which I don't think at least in terms of command in combat and command. I don't think there's any job quite like that. That you have three different jobs in Korea. No. And you know what's also interesting is they follow sort of a gambit of things that they help us to do sort of operationally. So it starts out with the United Nations command and the United Nations command is responsible for the armistice. It's which is a cessation of hostilities. There's no peace treaty that came out of the Korean War. And the United Nations command helps us to ensure that we maintain that armistice, that peace, that fragile peace that exists between the North and the South. And then you've got the combined forces command, which is the true and direct representative of the will of the United States to be part of a bilateral command, a lion structure that ensures that should we get beyond competition and move into crisis that we are prepared regardless of the adversary because there is no adversary mentioned in the mutual defense treaty, regardless of adversary that will stand together with our ally in Korea. And then there's the United States forces Korea, which is another representation of the United States will to meet our obligations forward. They have forward station troops and on the Republic of Korea the only forces that are on the continent of Asia that are there to meet our obligations region wide across the Indo-Pacific. How do you know when you're doing which job that might be a silly question? You know, the greatest example is is our secretaries sent out an order to request a certain capability to move from Korea and go elsewhere in the globe. And as a UN commander, I'm like, "Hey, USFK commander, don't move my stuff. I need this to maintain the armistice." And the CFC commander goes, "Hey, that's my stuff too." And then the USFK commander says, "Hey, I got an order and that stuff needs to move because we've got other objectives in the globe that have to be answered." And those other two hats that I wear both go, "Okay, but we're not happy about this. You better figure something out." Now, what's interesting is even though that Korean security was such a, I think, especially perilous issue a few years ago, now it's not the things are quiet, but they're certainly quieter than they have been. I mean, there was just a short-range missile test, I believe, that the North just launched and there's been some DMZ. I've read about some potential violations there, but we're not at this sort of brinksmanship saber-rattling phase. Right now, do you think that's a fair? I think that's an absolutely fair assessment of the way things stand now. I would say, however, that it requires constant vigilance. And I am absolutely pleased with the way that the Republic of Korea forces continue to equip themselves up in the demilitarized zone. I'm also very, very pleased with our ability to see, sense, and understand across domains on the peninsula currently. And I think that also votes well for us in the future. The more that we can understand by the careful calibration and use of the assets at our disposal, I think the more we keep ourselves in that state of peace, which has been enjoyed for over 70 years on the peninsula. Can you give our listeners just a glimpse into the tactical and operational environment in the demilitarized zone? How does it work? What's so dangerous about it? The potential for miscalculation comes about in terms of everybody's not afforded the opportunity to use their own data. And so we continually discuss on both sides of the border, the north and the south, to ensure that we have the right data. And what people don't understand is there's a military demarcation line right down the middle. 2,500 meters north is the buffer and 2,500 meters south of that line is the other buffer. And what we want to try to make sure that we do is number one, we don't allow that area to become politicized. We want to maintain the peace, which the United States, the people's liberation army signed in the North Korean Forces DPRK's army, the KPA signed. We signed an agreement to say that we will maintain this buffer here. Miscalculation can occur as technology comes in the fore. So if a drone were to cross over, say for example from north to south, that would be a problem in a violation. When soldiers are moving along the line and they cross over, that's a violation and those incursions can oftentimes lead to miscalculation. Now a thing that's happened recently is a greater awareness of where those lines lie. So we'll continue to work alongside the forces of Republic of Korea to ensure that we have the right data so that we understand where the line is and we don't violate that ourselves. Why is that such a challenge? Because it seems like on its face it would be a relatively simple thing, but it's obviously not. Yeah, because things move around. And so for example, you know, they'll be flooding along certain portions of the demilitarized zone. And that might move a marker from one place or another. And remember, some of these markers were put in place in the 50s. And so we have to continually go back and sort of proof those lines to make sure that we don't inadvertently cause problems by misunderstanding. And we have means of talking to the Korean People's Army from the DPRK that we've got to continue to engage there so that we ensure that miscalculation doesn't lead us out of just competition into crisis. And our South Korean allies, I believe they've proposed some new mill mill deconfliction channels. Is that right? They have, but what governs our behavior is the armistice. And we've got to adhere to the standards put forward in the armistice. And as long as we do that, there won't be any challenges. What we can't do is seek to change the way we do business in abrogation of a legal document, which is the armistice. That makes sense. You've been closely watching. I'm sure North Korean military activity and support of Russia and Ukraine and what lessons they've learned and what they're bringing back with them. What do you think that experience has been for the North Korean military and how important in terms of their readiness and their evolution and their evolution as a threat? I think that a great many times as new technologies are spun into the DPRK forces, we see that in their training cycles. And we watch these things closely. They are getting combat experience at this point in time. I look at our own forces in the leap ahead that we made from 2003 to 2018, the things that change in our force. I think that one of the things that we probably don't pay as much attention to is strategic movement changing to operational maneuver. So there's a strategic movement that brings forces out of North Korea and places them in Ukraine. And then they begin their operational maneuver. I think they've learned small unit tactics as well. I think that they've understand the, you know, you could talk about the ubiquitous nature of a drone, but the application of that technology to do things like fire support and to orient forces into different directions, to use one-way munitions. I think these are things that they're learning right now in Ukraine as they fight alongside the Russians in Kursk, for example. And I think when we see those things, the tactics, techniques, and procedures, the technologies when they start to come back into North Korea, I think that what we have now is we've developed their force in ways they would not have otherwise. I do think a lot of people forget that the Asian tie-ins to this. I believe it's still true that South Korea has provided more artillery munitions to Ukraine than all of Europe. And so both, you know, both North Korea and South Korea have made their own investments in this war and are drawing their own lessons, of course. How do you assess North Korea's ability to produce drones and feel themselves in the wake of this experience? I think that like a great many things they're doing right now, whether it be with their ability to jam in the West Sea, for example, right? That was technology they didn't have before Russia gave that to them. We see those things. And so I can only expect, or what I would anticipate is that they will continue to utilize techniques and things that they're learning from the Russians to change the way that they develop things. I think that they're going to get technology from the Russians that they're going to then put into their own factories. They've got a captive population, which they could apportion to that effort. And I see them doing that in increasingly larger ways to produce drones at a far faster rate than Russia could themselves, or great many countries could themselves, because the means of production are theirs to direct. Nothing in North Korea, of course, can be separated from the repressive apparatus. How did you see that, you know, deploying soldiers abroad for them is a big deal. I don't believe it's ever happened or maybe not from it. Maybe during the Cold War at some point, I'm not aware of it, but I don't think it has. And how did you see them maintaining political control over these units deployed so far away from Pyongyang? Yeah, I think it was in the selection of the units that they sent forward. These were highly trained, highly indoctrinated troops, which they sent forward. So there was no, you know, there's no Komasar that has to go alongside them to ensure that they follow the party rules. They took those who were well fed, well remunerated, well trained. They took their best soldiers to send them forward. And now to have them come back and to be able to share their lessons learned, share things that they learned from being in combat, I think is the surety that they've gained, and that we sent our very best. They are now coming back to train the rest. I think that's the thing that they're getting out of this. And I think that because they sent those folk who were absolutely full on allegiance in terms of allegiance to their government, I think that that kept them from having to worry about some things. And then now to be able to use them back in North Korea to train, I think, puts them in a good position right now. You know, as you know, much better than I do, the ethos for the forces you command is really fight tonight. A big part of maintaining that readiness and this capabilities is cycle of exercises. Could you talk about their importance on how they've evolved in the years since you've taken command? Yeah, so I think that what we have to remember is that these exercises allow us to continue to develop. If we don't have these exercises, what we're not able to do is to see where we might need to change our organizations, might need to look at different capabilities to achieve the same things. They also allow us sort of a barometer on how we are doing in the alliance. Modernizing the alliance is very important. And the only way we can modernize the alliance is understand how are we applying what we have now to future problem sets. So a big thing that we've got to really start getting after is how do we deal with cyber? How do we deal with EW? How do we deal with space? And how do we do that in a combined fashion? And the only way we can find out how to do that is by exercising. And so the more that we exercise, the more we're able to tailor our force to deal with contextual challenges. Because the alliance is changing by virtue of the principal adversary. I'll call I'll say that. I think I can say the principal adversary in DPRK. There are tremendous amounts of adversaries in the region. If you look at the association between Russia, North Korea, and China, until let's for extent Iran, when you look at that salient that's created in the same region, we've got to be prepared to face all those adversaries. And there's a deterrent effect that comes about from alliance being exercised. It's not left on the shelf. And when we achieve that, I think the deterrent value far outweighs any other issues that people might bring up as it relates to exercise. We obviously get North Korea's attention because there's this endless cycle of recriminations and condemnations and responses that they, how do you see that evolving? Yeah, I think that our exercises are defensive in nature. What might we do if something happens? And I think as long as we maintain that as the thing that underpins all of our exercising, then we can just treat that as noise. I think we should just treat it as noise because what's what's required of us, the expectation of us by the people in the United States and by the people in the Republic of Korea is that we are ready in the event that we have to be used. We can exist in a state of competition for years and years and years. But when crisis comes, it's going to be too late then to say, man, I wish we had exercised this when we had an opportunity to do so. We're going to take a quick break for a short conversation with Ben Van Rue, the CEO and co-founder of Legion. We spoke about Legion's company culture and how critical veterans are to that culture, as well as the company's work with Special Operations Command. How do you think about establishing and then being the guardian of the right company culture? There's a couple parts of the culture that I think we've stayed pretty true to who we are. One, if you look at a good majority of the team, we've all worked together in the past at companies helping the national security community or some pretty forward-leaning tech companies. And so we have an attribute of our company culture where we're all just pretty close. It's a relatively mature group that's been around for some time. I think two, a big thing that's helped our culture is that from day one, customer one, impact one, we've just been thinking about SoCom and the Orphiter. And so it's not been a weird, inorganic thing as a tech company that's now trying to go and do DOD stuff. It's just who we are. 15 to 20% of our company right now, our veterans think about 25% of our company as a clearance. And I think three-quarters of our board has clearances. So we've just been very aligned. And I think AI is in a very interesting moment where it's growing and it's transforming. But the reality is there's a lot of people and handholding an engagement that still has to happen. One of our big aha moments, you know, the things that excited me about where we were as a company is that we went to GRTC to go in an exercise and a try our technology there. And the technology works and we could deploy it in an air-gapped environment and that was incredible and we could prove that. But also we just had some people that understood the users that could communicate with them that didn't drive the DOD mad when we were stuck in a box with them trying to figure this stuff out. And it felt like that was a good cultural moment as much as it was a technology moment to say, hey, we could go and prove that going to an exercise, there's a lot of value, we could quantify it. There was good feedback on the tech and the people. And so what we've done with the culture is not just try to market or be all over LinkedIn or whatever and proclaim how awesome we are, but we just go to event after event that we can get invited to and keep testing the technology. And frankly, showcase our people. And so far, that's been very successful for us. You can learn more about Legion and their work at warntherocks.com/leagen. And now back to the show. Among career watchers, there's sort of two schools of thought. Most of the experts I know believe the Kim family regime is really mostly just interested in regime preservation and its independence. Others come down and say, actually, they've never given up on the goal of forceful reunification or or through subversion or other means. Where do you come down? I guess I come down in the space that says, I'm going to believe what your constitution says. So Kim having changed his constitution and naming South Korea as his mortal enemy and that he sees two nations on one peninsula, I just take him at his word. I don't think that you can, I think you should separate that from regime change or forceful reunification. I think you take people for what they say. That's what your constitution says, which means that you are entitled in the South to what your constitution says. Somewhere in there though, there's got to be dialogue and communication that happens that says, hey, I recognize you as an independent nation. Do you recognize us as an independent nation? And because remember, there's a buffer between these two states regardless of what side you fall on, there's a buffer because we have an armistice and we don't have a peace treaty. So I just fall into what does his constitution say right now because that's what I believe he's oriented on. He doesn't recognize South Korea as a legitimate state. No. So one of the big things that you're responsible for is this idea of op-con transfer and plan first before we get into the details, just in plain language, how would you describe this to someone who doesn't follow these issues closely? First thing you have to understand is that the Republic of Korea is organized right now in support of the armistice, which ended, you know, actually the kinetic pieces of the fight in Korea. And so under armistice, the chairman, the rock chairman, the Republic of Korea chairman of their joint chiefs of staff is in command of all the forces in Korea, the Korean forces. In crisis, I become the nominal commander of all those forces and employ them to restore the armistice. Op-con transfer, with that operational control of those forces, that transfer is really about a rock general being in charge of those same forces, all their forces in a conflict. I think that so many times what happens is people begin to try to think that, well, you know, this should be done on a time limit, why isn't this not been done before? Well, there are conditions. It's a bilaterally agreed upon set of conditions that need be met so that we can do this transfer. And these are spelled out. They're absolutely spelled out. And I think as long as we adhere to those conditions, we won't ever find ourselves having to go backwards again. And so we'll continue to work alongside our Republic of Korea allies to ensure that we can work toward meeting the conditions so we can do this. We are not trying to hold this up at all. What are these conditions about? It's about the South Koreans being able to perform at certain levels of readiness capabilities. Absolutely that. So there are material things that exist out there. There are ways that they're organized their forces. Things, a great many of the critical things that we do right now, we want to ensure that they are prepared and ready to accomplish those same things. I mentioned a lot of times as I'm talking to different groups. The fact that we want to make sure that, say for example, integrated air missile defense, we can't miss on that because we're on the front right now, right? And so I think that much of the protections provided for the United States and for the Republic of Korea, begin in Korea. And we've got to make sure that we've met all those conditions, whether they be operational, whether they be material base, whether it might be something as simple as protection that those things are all in place before we go and do this. You've also said these conditions should be contemporary. What do you mean by that? I mean, we have to look at the threat. You know, the one of the things that's sort of a military truism is the enemy gets evoked. And as the capabilities of the adversary begin to change in the region, then we've got to be able to counter those things. Because at its base, that's the expectation of the people whom we protect is that we can meet those threats and challenges. Yeah. And there's one of the things that's been happening over the last few years is South Korean defense industry has had this explosion of international sales, you know, I think most prominently in Poland, but other places as well. How does that affect your job if at all? Well, I think one of the things is is that it proves that K-defences a thing. It's as big a thing as K-pop demon hunters, right? It's thriving. And what's really exciting about this is that those capabilities as they're continuing to be developed in the K defense industry, as those things spiral into the force, it increases the capabilities of our ally. And as allies, capabilities increase, now we can start to begin to focus strategic flexibility on applying ourselves to other problems in the region. The Indo-Pacific is huge. And what we want to make sure that they do is that they continue to develop their forces or developing these exports, if you will, that the force continues to benefit from those things. What are some of, you know, when you look at op-contransferring the conditions, these are sort of measurable metrics and performance metrics and things that either exist or don't exist? What are some of the upstream policies and reforms that you still think our South Korean allies need to enact to get closer to that? Well, not really a policy or anything like that, but I think one of the things that Korea, you know, and I've talked a lot about the centrality and importance of the Republic of Korea to the entirety of the Indo-Pacific by virtue of their economy, by virtue of the size of their military, by virtue of their ability to continue to develop technologies, they are just preemantly important to peace in the Indo-Pacific. And their most recent participation in exercise like talisman saber, I want to see more of that. I want to see them sort of stretching their legs. They're going to have a great opportunity during RIMPAC, RIMPAC, the Pacific exercise, where they're going to lead an enabled task group. And I think all those things are incredibly important in terms of leadership in the region. And that changes people's deterrent calculus when they see the Koreans, for example, go all the way down to Australia and participate in exercise. And having gone down and seen the great Korean soldiers in their participation in talisman saber, acting in an artillery life fire with some of their great artillery pieces, you know, back to the exports you were talking about to see those things in action on that stage, I think is incredibly important. So to pull away from the peninsula and become more engaged, I think, is where we want to try to drive their military to ensure they have opportunities to participate in some of these large exercises in the region. It's really a mindset shift. I remember 10 years ago, exactly, I was in Japan. And we were meeting with a very senior Japanese official and he said, you know, there's that old saying when the whales fight, it's the shrimp who suffer. And he said, South Korea's problem is they don't realize their whale. Yeah. How much do you think that's still an issue? I think that is true. I mean, there is so much growth that's occurred. I mean, if you just look at the period from 1953 to today, I mean, just the seminal change that's happened in their world, I think it's incredible. I watched a a documentary that was shown at a memorial ceremony recently. And you know, as we're in the 75th year of UN command right now, I sat there and watched this, you know, seeing the wholesale destruction that occurred within the Republic of Korea and seeing where they've come to now. Sometimes you can be lost in your successes, I think. And I don't think that they realize it. And it's one of these things that you might realize it, but acknowledgement is wholly different. And for them to acknowledge the fact that so much growths happen might be a bit hard sometimes because you're dealing with the immediacy of the now, but they are a leader not only in the Northeast Asia region, but in the whole of the Indo-Pacific. What was the day you took command last year? It's almost a year now, right? Yeah. December 20. So you came in just weeks after this coup attempt. The Declaration of Marshal Law. Sure. Well, I will, I will call it, I call it. You could call it for palace coup, whatever you want to call the Declaration of Marshal Law. I know it's politically sensitive subject. And I know, you know, from what I read, the new, the wounds are still quite wrong in South Korea. But coming in at that time must have been an unusual time to take command without, you know, without commenting on the politics of it. What was that like? And how do that create challenges that you perhaps didn't expect when you were spending up to go over there? I will tell you, it was, it was an interesting experience from the standpoint of me recognizing, and really understanding for the first time what my nation was counting on me to do as a commander of US forces Korea. You know, I was being asked questions by people like, hey, what's going on over there? And I'm like, I'm just here to command the forces, you know, I'm not involved in any of this stuff. But what it also showed me is is that I've got to, I've got to improve my ability to communicate on a variety of levels across the dime. In fact, to diplomacy and diplomacy and military economic intelligence information, military economics, I've got to be able to communicate my view through a military lens on all these things. And it's not just opining on, hey, here's what I think. Nobody cares what I think. What's going on? How do you report through diplomatic channels? And oh, by the way, shortly thereafter, the ambassador, the sitting ambassador left Korea. And we had a charge of fare that was there. But the one thing that I took away from that is while democracies are messy sometimes, they work. That's what I took from all that that's going on, whether it was acting president one, acting president two, acting president three to the current president in the Republic of Korea, the system just works. And there's a military dimension into this, of course, is uniligently one of the things he tried to do was provoke North Korean military incident of some sort. And so once you got in, you're looking across the DMZ, what sort of behaviors were you seeing in terms of North Korea's appetite to take advantage of that moment or where they just kind of trying to stay quiet at that time? I was really amazed. And I can remember remarking to my staff that I believe that KJU wants to be seen more statesmen like the not. Because there wasn't. You would have thought it was, it would have been a whole lot of talking about, hey, look at them. You see us over here. We're doing good. Look at them down there. But there was none of that. The first time we really heard any mention from them of anything was as we ramped up for my first exercise in March. Before that, it was just radio listening silence. That's interesting. But as we moved toward the exercise, then it became a thing. And I thought, that's how that's sort of like state craft in a way. Like, you don't need to comment on something that's happening. It's happening. You know, you can just be quiet. But the minute we ramped up for the exercise, then that's when the rhetoric started again. You know, this is a little sensitive talk about. I know, so I'm not sure how much you can talk to it. But in the event of a Taiwan contingency, you know, troops that currently belong to US forces, Korea might might be asked to order to deploy towards Taiwan. How would that work? Is this something you're training for to the extent you can talk about this? Yeah. I can't really talk about that. But what I can say is this is that it's it's incumbent on all of us to look through our area of operations and our area of interest to understand what are bosses. I've got a boss, the Indo-Pay Com commander is my boss. What he might need from me. So I've got to think sort of across domains. What do I have that could be committed to a thing? And how might I apply the capabilities under my command to assist my boss and accomplish in his mission? I think that's fair to say that. Yeah. And it also would change. I imagine your force protection posture quite a lot. A lot. You recently wrote an article on what you call an East Up map. What that means is it takes Korea from the periphery and places it in the center by rotating a map 90 degrees. And what you have is in the sort of ordinal north you have Japan and then straight down from there you have South Korea. But what it really highlights to you is if you look at this salient from Russia to the DPRK to China, what you see is the true centrality of Korea in terms of the potential to impose cost on adversaries. So in the EC it makes it more clear that there's this line, this this line that exists from let of off stock down South through the EC and you can see how forces in South Korea capabilities resident in South Korea could impact that. You see in the Bohai Gulf in the West Sea, the potential to impose cost in that area as well. And most notably what you see is how close we are to the adversary from Korea. And a lot of times we'll talk about the first island chain, but inside that first island chain you have the Republic of Korea that sits on the Asian continent. And you start to also be able to divine some other connections the triangle from Tokyo to Seoul to Manila through which 47 to 52 percent depending on your favorite economist that percentage of global trade goes through that area. And so what it also highlights is that anything that happens in that region won't happen in a vacuum. And I think it would entail everyone being involved in it. But that's also a triangle that includes our three mutual defense treaties in that region. Yeah, I mean it goes back to what you were saying earlier about calling North Korea the main adversary, but there's also contingencies that might involve Russia, China. It's right in that neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. What's a book that meant a lot to you at some point earlier in your career, not recently, but when you were younger? The soldier in the state. All right, Huntington. Why didn't that mean so much to you? Yeah, I think it meant so much to me because it was a thing that I felt had to be accepted early. That premise had to be accepted early if you were going to do this and do it well. The premise of what exactly? The premise of civilian control of the military, which kind of gets to a thing we talked about earlier. You can't afford to be tied to or bothered by the wrapping of a thing. You have to look at the thing. If service is my aim, then that means that I'm okay with those whom I serve and those who are placed in leadership above me. You can't quantify or qualify them as, yeah, this guy's good. This guy's bad. No, they just are. They're the leadership and you have to be willing to assume that the right folks are there and that you're going to do those things that they're going to ask of you. What's a book that you read more recently than left and impression? Full spectrum thinking by Bob Johansson. I haven't heard of that one. Yeah. He's a futurist and I think that one of the things that we don't do enough in uniform is actively pursue thinking. It's an active pursuit. You can say, "I'm going to think big thoughts today." That's not how that works. You have to put yourself in the proper posture where you can just sit and think about how would I solve this problem. I think that right now why it's so, so critical is whether we realize it or not. We are in the interwar years and this time is characterized by innovators, and initiators, and investors. We've got to figure out where do you sit in that? So in the space that I sit in, I think I've got to be an investor. I've got to try to get people to actively pursue thought in such a way that I'm creating these conditions wherein they can take time to think about how to solve the problems of the day. Because if we don't sort of make space and time for people to think the first solution that hits us will just ockham's razor everything. Like, "No, no, here it is. Bam, we're done." And I don't think that's the way problems in the future are going to be solved. You're of course in a role where your employing force is not generating forces, but you must be falling very closely. Our own defense industrial developments and acquisition reforms and your army transformation initiative and other things. What are some of the capabilities that you see coming out of the pipeline that you'd like to have more of in Korea? I'm really, really interested in all things directed energy drone swarms. I saw a report on 60 minutes, maybe two or three years ago, about these swarms that were moving like swallows. I'm really, really interested in that and the potential to almost have this fully autonomous force across domains. Imagine if you would, you've got surface and subsurface in the maritime domain that are autonomous. And you've got an air domain, you've got things that are autonomous. You've got, of course, satellites, but they could take benefit from the satellites and even communications. These antennas that might move from place to place and provide you sort of this intranet of things with only with smaller apertures back out to a higher level or a higher echelon so that you could reduce your signature. And I'm just really, really interested in now sort of changing the way things work for, you know, the microwave was invented in DOD. We invented the microwave oven, you know, and that microwave technology. It's an AFN commercial. I just saw it the other day. And we have defense technology in our office every day. Yeah. But I think now what's really, really interesting is that things are being incubated elsewhere and now they're coming back into the military. So how do we bring in the newest technologies and sustain them and bring them to our forces? And I think that's a, that's a paradigm shift because they're able to do things a lot faster than we bring them in and then we, we find the military application for that technology. We're here to four because of the size of the Department of Defense. We were in Department of War. We were able to develop things and then push them out because we got everything we needed out of it. Now just push it elsewhere. But what I'm really excited about is directed energy and small aperture drones that could go and do things that we can't do right now. Right. Well, thanks for this fascinating conversation. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to this conversational General Brunson. Hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to check out our membership program at warrentheirox.com/membership and learn more about the sponsors of this episode, Legion at warrentheirox.com/legendmentslegion. Stay safe and stay healthy.