The Ex CIA & Air Force PJ Who Hunts Predators - Nic McKinley | Unsubscribe Podcast 262

At Harmony Bank, we believe that better happens together. We're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success. Our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions. No big bank bureaucracy, just a custom approach to help you thrive. From business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs, Harmony Bank provides a secure, modern experience with a touch of Texas hospitality. We're Harmony Bank, where better happens together. I've felt like I've crushed things before and like actually did a terrible job. Dude, my wife knows about that when I have sex with her. Same. I love how you keep saying lawyer like it's a slur. It is a slur. F***ing lawyer. Anything's f***ing possible at this point. Put another quarter in the Alex Jones was right jar. That's evolved quickly. Welcome to the podcast, brother. Say hi to Eli. He's racially ambiguous, Brandon. His hair is f***ing. F***ing fabulous. Don't I? A dog joke disposition. There's a fat electrician. Welcome to Unsubscribe. Hey, what is up, everyone? I just wanted to do a quick update on the autism goal. We were just trying to break last year's and I mean, go above and beyond. We are just shy of that quarter million goal. But because of that, I'm extending this until Monday. If you head over to Bunker and buy any of the autism related merch, 100% we'll be going towards that. We all just want to crush that goal. And it is truly amazing to see that number. Thank you all so freaking much. Head over to BunkerBranding.com slash unsub. Anything you buy that is autism related will be going towards that amazing cause. I don't think you understand how many lives you are changing with that amount and the families you are helping. I am speechless just knowing we're going to be able to donate the amount we have now. So thank you so freaking much. Y'all are amazing humans. I am so thankful for everything y'all do. Head over to Bunker. Buy some autism related merch. Let's kick some butt. Let's see how big this gets. Thank you all so much. Also, Echelon might or might not have one of our new flavors. Double tap tea. Just go check it out. Just go give a gander at DrinkEchelon.com. We're rolling the audio. Okay, ready? Okay, so at this, we will count down. You gotta crack it. Just in front of the mic. Ready? Oh, this one? No, this one. Sorry. You're good. You're good. Ready? Three, two, one. Oh, that orange cream flavor is actually really good. Yeah, and it's orange now. That helps. Cody says it's good with vanilla ice cream. Yeah. Vanilla protein powder. I could see that. I've also heard it's good with Greek yogurt for some reason. Oh, that actually sounds really good. Fuck. I'll try that. Anyway. That's weird. Welcome to the unsubscribed podcast. I'm joined today by Eli Doubletap. Nick, the fat electrician. Other Nick, McKinley, and myself, Donut Operator. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Donut. Truly appreciate it. By the way, we forgot to bring this up. Demo's dad stopped us. He was at our restaurant. Demo's dad. Matt Carriker's dad? Okay. Yeah, Matt Carriker's dad comes up. He's like, Cody. Or he sees Cody. Oh, man. Dude, how's the race going? It's awesome to see. It's like as Brandon is sitting right next to him. I look at Brandon. He's like, Mr. Carriker, a man who has met both me and Cody. He just goes up like, we're really rooting for you. We voted for you. And me and Eli immediately like, oh, it's happening again. You have to do the thing. You have to do the thing where you send Cody in to sit in your seat for just like one thing where you have a body double go in and it's Cody. That might be a crime. It's fine. Nah. It'll be fine. Just have him like give an interview or something like trick a news outlet into thinking he's you. We genuinely could do that. You could do it. And then just make sure he takes a breathalyzer before. There's a fine line of which Cody you're getting. You know, which is funnier. It might be better if Cody drops a couple of slurs and the news says that a congressman did it and it's verifiably not the congressman. They have the footage. It would be hilarious. Not really because then it blows up and it's still. It's still congressman's best friend. That's not great. Oh, man. I forgot we didn't tell you that yesterday. That's a super relatable story, though. My friends are trying to ruin my career because they think it's funny. And they don't have to know it's your best friend. Oh, well, I mean, his name's literally or his profile picture is literally to the right of my Twitter handle right now because I'm still under his like corporate account. The world knows. I don't even know that man. Q 200 episodes. Subscribe every other piece of condom you've done together. The army of darkness. I've never even seen this asshole before. Oh, man. Mr. Nick, what is up? It is. This is one of the episodes. It'll be a little more serious tone, but also the amount of knowledge. And then your resume is fucking insane. Yeah, but it looks good on paper. But I'll tell you, man. Like, I had a pretty mediocre average career, right? I mean, you look at that stuff that I did and people look at that. They're like, oh, that's really cool. I'm like, yeah, but you should know the guys that I know. Looking good on paper is impressive to us. You told us at brunch you were one of the founding members of Delta, I believe. Well, I mean, you know, I don't like to brag about that. You know, I mean, obviously, I look a lot younger than I actually am going on over probably, what, 80 at this point? Yeah. No, you're doing great. Is it like Pilates or what? John Cena. You know, it's, what were you discussing? It's those peptides. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what it is, right? Lots of, yeah, just stuff I inject. Tanner ones. But no, but for real, I mean, your military career, I mean, on paper sounds impressive, which, because it's probably impressive. It was super fun. It was super fun, yeah. So, for people who don't know who I am, Nick McKinley spent 11 years in the Air Force as a Air Force pararescueman. So, it's good to be, you know, kind of back in San Antonio where 30 years ago. I basically got the crap kicked out of me for me. How old are you? Yes. Oh, I'm 48. Jesus. Yeah, so I'm old, right? So, I'm a pre-GY into GY vet, right? Then after the Air Force, I spent a couple years in the private equity community, learned to hate that real fast, and got recruited to the Central Intelligence Agency. Spent a number of years there. I'm not allowed to say the total amount because that's the rules, and the rules are stupid. But I still got to follow them. So, yeah, I spent a number of years there, and then left 10 years ago to do a number of different things, started a bunch of tech companies. But really, my passion has been fighting child trafficking and trying to create scalable solutions to that problem. And so, that's the journey I've been on for the last 10 years. Bigger guillotines? Bigger wood chippers. Trying to just get them to the guillotines. You know, Andy Stumpf was talking about it when I was on his podcast about guillotines are too fast, and I actually would agree with him. Wood chippers. Wood chippers, way too fast. His idea- That's why you do foot first. But his idea, that's still too fast, man. His idea, which I really liked, was you just duct tape them to a chair, and you just go to work with a potato peeler. And you just keep going until there's nothing left, right? Now, that's going to take a while. It's a relaxing hobby, much like whittling. Right, right. It's woodworking, kind of, right? Just a little bit different. A lot of noise, though. Shut up. You just have the noise-canceling headphones playing. It's like Enya. This is the most happy mood. Or no-go flow, right? Your freaking waterfall puts you to sleep beats, right, as you just go to work on these people. I mean, reality is there's just really, really nasty people in this country. This is an American problem. It's happening to American kids. And someone had to start doing something about it, so I figured, why not me? I don't think a lot of people realize when you say there's bad people. They cannot. Can't count their heads. Yeah, it's just like, oh, no, they're bad. Evil's the word. Yeah, but they don't know that evil because they've never seen it in person. So they're like, it doesn't exist until you've done worse than that shit. This is like my definition. If I had to describe evil to an alien that didn't understand the concept, it's how I would describe it. It'd be like, okay, you could be a bad guy, but if you were a child getting kidnapped, you could run up to 99 out of 100 of the most evil people in the world. You could run up to 99 out of 100 of the most evil people in the world. The most gangbanger dude standing on a corner in Chicago with a Glock switch in his pocket, actively dealing drugs with three prostitutes that he's pimping out behind him. That guy's not my dad. That dude's probably going to help you. He's a bad guy, but he's not evil. Same thing with like a big jack, scary biker dude with hell's angels across his shoulder. Like you can go to bad men in that situation and they'll still help you because they're bad, but they're not evil. It's like prison. They get. Yeah. Also. Another great example. When you are in prison for murders around murderers and they're the pieces of shit, everyone's like, no, we're going to take care of them. That's how bad those that's evil. It turns out a lot of bad guys have kids. Yeah. Yeah. I've got some stories about that. We can get into as well. Some of the statistics around it. I mean, it's, it's not, it's not a, it's not a fun thing to constantly go talk about. Right. I mean, a lot of people are like, oh, you're, you're, you're fighting human trafficking. I'm like, yeah, but I kind of wish I didn't have to, you know? If you look at, I wish the problem hadn't gotten to this level and it was really on our watch that it did get to this level. And I can talk about the way I started the whole organization, but if you think about it, I mean, we can kill people with flying robots from 6,000 miles away, but who's got the ball on the trafficking issue in America, right? So we have a, the examples I like to use, like we have an ATF, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I know you're a huge fan. Oh yeah, they're great. Can't think of a single thing they did wrong in any place, especially in Texas. Yeah. And so we have a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. All three of those things are legal. Last time I checked, firearms is actually a constitutionally protected right. And yet who's got the ball on that issue, on the trafficking issue where 100% of trafficking and human trafficking is illegal. But we don't have anybody who is centrally focused on that. We got great men and women in the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, state and local law enforcement, but where's our ATF for protecting our children? And it doesn't exist. And that was kind of the epiphany that I had when I was working at the CIA. And to kind of back up a little bit, I was actually in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, and I was working with a JSOC counterpart. And we had, the best way to describe it is smoking gun intel on a trafficker that was selling across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And that's the kind of stuff like you join to do, right? And you join the military, you're like, man, I'm going to go freaking go save babies from burning buildings and kill bad guys. Like this is the most amazing job ever. And part of the reason why I went into pararescue, right? It was a really good way to kind of always have a job regardless of what was going on. And intel doesn't work. Like the movies, believe it or not. Now, this is going to shock your viewers. But Jason Bourne is not a follow documentary. You're a liar. Guy doesn't exist. And in fact, I think anybody who's worked at any high levels in the government can tell you there are individual units who are just absolutely amazing. And you're, I'm incredibly honored to have been a part of the units I got to be part of. In fact, it just kind of goes to show that people do slip through the cracks and actually get through those those processes. But at the end of the day, you're trying to do your best at the missions that are put in front of you. So what happens when you have a known trafficker put in front of you, and the Intel can't get to the right place, because it's not even something that the government has a mandatory presidential reporting requirement on? 19:00 JL: Have you seen the memes about that? Like how the movies portray army intelligence? It's like, Oh, he's going to go to the military. He's going to go to the military. Oh, he's going to be in this house behind the blue door. He's going to be in the corner, whatever, like real army Intel. Projected to be about 73 degrees today. 19:14 SJ: The moon will be out, but there will be some clouds. 19:18 JL: The moon will be out. 19:19 SJ: I know. I mean, it's just. 19:21 JL: This is all we're going up? 19:22 SJ: Yeah. 19:23 JL: Yeah. 19:24 SJ: Yeah. And we think. 19:25 JL: Local population, predominantly Islamic. 19:29 SJ: Oh, yeah. 19:30 JL: Three mile per hour winds. 19:31 SJ: And they speak this language, right? Yeah, go for it. And we think he's here, but we don't know. Last time we saw him here was three months ago. Go for it, right? And it's just. 19:41 SJ: Here's a picture from his high school yearbook. 19:43 JL: Yeah. You look at what happens in our country with all the different things that we care about. And basically, I figured out when I was working at the agency that this is just not something our government truly cares about. Lots of politicians say all the right words. And I'd encourage anybody who knows any politicians, right? Especially state and local, go to them and say, "Hey, do you care about the trafficking issue?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's lots of wringing of hands. It's my most important issue, and it's my top priority and all that." 20:00 SJ: Then what did you do? 20:01 JL: The very next question you should ask is, "Cool, show me the budget line item that funds your counter human trafficking unit for your law enforcement." Because we forget that law enforcement, they're soldiers and generals, and they do what the politicians equip and fund them to do. 20:07 JL: And so it's not the police's fault. I mean, the police. You ask any law enforcement officer, I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, but you ask any law enforcement officer and you say, "Hey, would you rather fight trafficking or pull over tourists for going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit?" They're gonna pick the trafficking every single time. But they're forced and mandated to pull over the tourists who are doing 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. 20:23 SJ: We figured out how to tax window tint. We don't know how to tax. 20:25 JL: Right. 20:26 SJ: Well, yeah, not to skip to the end of the story too quick, but the $10 billion question is why do you think that is? 20:32 JL: Taxes. So no, I actually. I think it's much simpler than people think, and I think there's two reasons. One is kids don't vote. And this disproportionately affects the marginalized in our society. And so the proxy here is the war on drugs. Way before the Reagan's, came into office, there's a lot of inner city kids who are dying from drugs. Why did we suddenly get the war on drugs? Middle class white girls started dying, that's why. And suddenly we have the war on drugs. So I think you're starting to see a little more of a groundswell on this issue and people are starting to pay attention to it because it's starting to affect the middle class, the middle class and the wealthy. And we'll get into how the internet plays a role in that. 20:49 SJ: And people are starting to call out the wealthy for doing it. 20:51 JL: Right. That's the second reason. Look at who makes the rules. Look at who is in the Epstein files. You wanna know who the bad guys are, there you go. We literally have them in millions of pages of redacted documents. There have been more people arrested so far this year for selling unpasteurized milk than there have been held accountable for any association with Epstein. 20:59 SJ: Well, it's just like. 21:00 JL: That's just a statement of fact. 21:02 SJ: The meme going around for a while when they're talking about the charges being brought against Ghislaine Maxwell. They're just saying, "Oh yeah, no, this is now the first person to ever be convicted of trafficking despite having trafficked nobody to no one." 21:15 JL: Right. 21:16 SJ: On paper. 21:17 JL: And just facilitated it. 21:18 SJ: On paper. 21:19 JL: Right. 21:19 SJ: It's like, "Well, okay, so cool. So there were no clients and there were no victims, yet you're still looking at this jail time." 21:25 SJ: Right. 21:26 SJ: Methinks something going on. 21:27 JL: Yeah. There's something is in. The maths aren't mathing, right? So I think that ultimately comes down to those two reasons. I'm not saying all politicians are in on it, that's obviously not the case, but they don't care about it because they. Those kids don't vote. 21:42 SJ: Well, and I think it also ties in, and I've seen this not firsthand, but I've seen enough to see where this happens, is a lot of them are wealthy donors as well. 21:53 JL: Yes. 21:54 SJ: So you have a lot of people that have put in, "Oh, well, I contributed $100,000 to your PAC last election cycle. I'm sure that was helpful. By the way, yeah, I don't really know if that's a door you should be looking behind." That's sort of implied strong-arming. I could see that happening so easily. 22:00 JL: Well, we know that happens. I mean, we have so many recorded incidents of that happening and other issues, why wouldn't it be happening on this issue? So that's ultimately the reasons why I think we're in this. In this predicament as a country right now. And it's also something that big tech is involved in as well, but they're just involved in looking the other direction. And we can get into kind of how all of that works as well. 22:15 SJ: Hey, you ever just wake up and felt like your mattress sucks and it beat your ass, punched you in the face? 22:19 CH: That's crazy. Does the mattress also your mom? 22:23 SJ: You ever wake up feeling like you slept in a swamp 'cause you're a disgusting, nasty, ball sweat? I see most of you on Reddit, so I know you have. 22:31 CH: Time to break up with that mattress. 22:34 SJ: Get divorced from your mattress. Get a ghost bed. 22:37 CH: at home. 22:39 SJ: You're worth more. 22:40 CH: You're so strong. 22:41 SJ: Well, guess what? Ghostbed just launched their new mattress line. It's designed to keep you cool, supported in all the right areas, if you catch my drift, you giant hog, and help you get sleep. These beds are built with its patented cooling technology, Brandon. So you can keep your giant hog cool. 22:55 SJ: Yeah. 22:57 CH: Did you know they're built to last? 23:00 SJ: That's right. None of that drippin' here nonsense. Every mattress has a 20 or 25-year warranty. That means if I bought one today, it will outlive me before the warranty expires. I don't have much time left. 23:07 CH: Especially with as much as you smoke. 23:09 SJ: Way to make it real, Brandon. 23:11 CH: Plus 101 night sleep trial. 23:14 SJ: Don't love it? Send that back. 23:16 CH: 101 nights, that's three months risk-free. 23:19 SJ: They got the full setup. 23:20 CH: Adjustable bases and pillows, buttery soft sheets, buttery. 23:24 SJ: And even better, you can get 10% off site-wide when you go to ghostbed.com/unsubscribe and use code unsubscribe. And that's on top of their everyday deals of mattresses, adjustable bases, and pillows already being up to 50% off. Come on, guys, what are we doing? What are we doing? Why aren't you going to. Why aren't you going. Why aren't you going and using code unsubscribe? Hey, go use code unsub. 23:40 SJ: What's happening? What's going on? 23:42 CH: That's ghostbed.com/unsubscribe. Use code unsubscribe. 23:46 SJ: Sleep better. Stay cooler. 23:47 CH: This is a threat. 23:48 SJ: It was one of those things, we gotta see it. Zuckerberg came out last year and he's like, "Yeah, this is. " I was told I couldn't even. do this stuff on his own social media platform for presenting information it was like the covid stuff and yeah like the biden administration like had him purposely suppress things and then lie about it well it's crazy you get to see across all of it's like well it doesn't happen for years everyone's like no they can't do that that's not possible even talking with darnell he thought that was some weird conspiracy i had until we started getting affected by it and he's like holy shit dude like you guys just sound crazy when you talk about it a lot of the times then you start seeing it roll out even how media presents like the rolling stone on that how they talked about you oh yeah and you're like i'm still not sure if i'm gonna sue the shit out of them or not and that's crazy i don't think the word apparent means what they think it is i think they thought it meant alleged it does not uh they they said that uh after my my opponent backed out in the uh the primary because he got caught in a you know i got in a very serious scandal right they said uh you know basically uh gop lawmaker uh basically called him like a sexual i'm like yeah that's pretty pretty accurate uh steps down apparent neo-nazi this this this takes his place i'm like whoa yeah okay all right which i mean it doesn't like i don't think it holds any water because you know they're we're used to them calling us fucking nazis left all day long but for a major publication to throw that slander at me using a word that i think like said i think they threw that out there thinking it meant alleged it doesn't um i i feel like i just feel like more people need to hold them accountable it's like you can't just lie like you can say we think this person does x y and z whatever that's fine that's your opinion when you're informing millions of people informing and you're delivering statements of fact that are provably demonstrably not true come on maybe they're just going off if i heard that you really hate veterans yeah yeah you know despite it wouldn't be the first despite raising hundreds of thousand dollars for him right i mean that's that's how i would uh really project my hatred on somebody is is by like helping them yeah it's like a kink yeah you know it's weird that's cool yeah take that money better oh i like it when you get help i'm like brandon's weird well you like that you like that proper health care yeah you do dirty little bed it's evolved quickly i've said the podcast brother i've said this before the epstein thing like just like i don't like broke your brain because like i feel like it ruins anybody's ability to call bullshit on anything because before the epstein island thing came out if anybody would have told you yeah there's an island where rich billionaires do what happened there and you could just go that's bullshit and now it's like oh that was right now fuck maybe the earth is flat i don't know man like anything's possible at this point like anything's possible at this point put another quarter in the alex jones was right yeah and then two years later it turns out the frogs are gay actually yeah that also by the way true statement well go real quick i want to go back to even becoming a pj because as you said well it's not that impressive how many percent actually make being a pj when i now my date my information is dated so we'll like that's the big disclaimer just anything i say just assume it's wrong um so when i went through it was a 91 attrition rate uh and there's a couple of reasons for that and it's not me trying to say that like pjs are better than anybody else or anything but the reality is it's a water-based selection process and anybody who's ever been through a water-based selection process will tell you that the the pool is the great equalizer it's like oh you're you're really smart that's awesome get in the pool oh you're fast sweet get in the pool oh you're really strong that's amazing get in the pool because every single mammal when you put them underwater starts reacting exactly the same way at harmony bank we believe that better happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank where better happens together and water-based selections essentially are can you keep your brain under control and override that survival instinct in order to accomplish the mission pjs take it a little bit farther in that when i went through at least if you passed out from a shallow water blackout in the pool um you know they not drowning yeah no drowning is like you're dead so near drowning right you're fine uh and so if you passed out you got to do that one time because you didn't know what it felt like so you couldn't have seen it coming if you do it twice you were out and because para rescue's general philosophy was if you're not smart enough to save yourself how can we trust you to go save other people like so so you have the option of like going up for air and no you don't have the option oh well so what's the alternative the alternative is get better at accomplishing the mission before learn how to not need oxygen more nerd yes that's it so it's it's dub brandon it's it's my bad look at this retard what's wrong with you get back underwater yeah he's laughing underwater that was a veteran test that you do so we're also like yeah no that makes complete sense learn how to not need air exactly obviously come up for air but when i when i went through at least uh if you came up before like you tied your knots or you did your ditch and dawn properly or something like if you came up mid mid sequence that you were told to execute that was considered quitting and if you did that three times over the course of a 10-week selection process i don't know how long the selection process is now apparently if you've got a bunch of instagram followers and you are a former astronaut and you're a former astronaut and you're a former astronaut and you're a former navy seal and you're 51 years old we're going to go ahead and give you like an easy way now do you see david goggins just enlisted in the air force i was wondering what you were going to think about oh yeah i was like dude that at that age also you're like oh good job but why yeah anyway well because i mean at the end of the day the guy did become a seal but sorry guys he uh couldn't make the pj standard just saying uh i'm just kidding i love them i love my seal brothers i don't know now uh but uh anyway the the general thesis of uh para rescue selection i think one of the reasons why it gets a little more uh why the attrition rate tends to be a little bit long or harder is just because of the sheer amount of stuff that you're required to do so if you make it through selection right that just means you made it through selection like you still got another year and a half plus to go through the whole pipeline and and the academics in the medical side are no joke uh so you can't like we don't have the equivalent of a machine gunner in para rescue like every single person has to go through that soccum program and has to uh get their civilian paramedic qualification which they're doing it at a civilian hospital which means they have to like not show up drunk uh so every single one has to do that so so why don't you look at me no not not that all i could think of was like how many guys have gotten kicked out of the program for knocking up a nurse during that portion yeah i like that that's exactly where your brain went because yes that happens a lot i mean you're you're taking these guys you're putting them in a civilian hospital and and then the nurses with a bunch of with a bunch of other like paramedic and nursing students and yeah let's just say there's a lot of there's a lot of pjs that are married to doctors and nurses and people they met when they were during during their their paramedic school in uh new mexico yeah there's your average male nurse oh by the way there's these guys like abs working out there's these guys who like you know graduated cbqc six months ago here's captain america that we just taught how to not come up for air this guy doesn't need to breathe guess what he can do with those skills doesn't need to breathe winky face uh so yeah so um anyway that that was the the pararescue uh you know selection program here in san antonio was was awesome and uh and then you've got the whole pipeline right so you're doing like like airborne school like whatever right super easy uh seer school super easy but then you get to things like how i often hear it described yes i'm an eagle scout so like seer school for me was fun i was like i mean i grew up in montana so like i thought seer school was a was a blast i also got the good thing i got to go in the spring which is the absolute perfect weather uh up in washington state i mean it was oh yeah oh you were at lewis no yeah spokane that's where the seer school is right so it was i mean it was awesome uh so it was it was a i mean it was a camping trip really it was super fun and then um but like when i was at halo school is a great example we had a couple of seals fell out of fail out of my halo class we had a can i so you did halo where your training was on the the fucking belly board like when you do that i mean that's when you that's how you start is on the belly board and then you go into a um did they teach you tunnel okay you had tunnel uh yeah so you spend a week back then at least you spent a week at brag doing uh doing tunnel work and you know learning how to pack your parachute and all that stuff and then they ship you off to yuma for a couple weeks and then you do the free fall stuff did the tunnel have the sides i know there was a problem in brag they had the wind tunnel but no edges so people would fly so when i went when i went in they had the nets up but i'd heard about that yeah it's like okay maybe we should have thought this through it's part of like the paraclete place out there or was that no it's it's uh i mean brags had their own wind tunnel for probably i mean i don't know decades oh no shit i've been out of it for a long time and no side and nothing to hold you in yeah so you could like that was like the old school days there's nothing better get good at it yeah terrifying pain is a great uh is a great teacher no in my day they had the they had the nets up uh and then obviously they have the big net over the fan right because i would be a bad uh that would really get the attrition rate up though and you couldn't fly yeah i was just gonna say what you were talking about like the attrition rate being so high because of the pool i'm like ah yes defective scuba equipment no yeah well they purposely make your uh your scuba equipment uh defective right because you're supposed to get through that so you go i went through cdqc which is the army's combat diver qualification course uh because the air force i understand has its own uh air force i understand has its own uh air force i understand has its own combat dive course in conjunction with the marine corps now i believe i'm curious why the air force would have a a diving qualification a combat diving qualification for rescue and combat control so back in the day combat control went through that too so you know you get done with selection and selection was so much harder than dive school that dive school became pretty easy and but when i was at dive school is another good example there were you know rangers sf dudes uh we had a cag guy there with us and you got rangers failing out sf guys failing out those rangers go back to their unit granted they're going to get razzed and harassed a little bit but everybody knows it's really hard same thing with the sf guys if you're a pj student and you fail that you're out of the program like you don't get to be a pj if you're a pj student and you don't make it through halo school you know for stupid reasons um you don't get to be a pj and so and that's part of the reason why the pipeline is so long is because i mean that's a lot of opportunities to fail right those are rare ass schools in general like that you usually do halo and or or just or um combat diver yeah you don't have both but he's got to be some guys do but you well for army so i'm sorry this comes from it's a rare thing to see holy shit even uh the sergeant major during the pentagon episode that's when he sat down i was like holy homie you went to all the schools he was oh he was stacked yeah he was like third bat did everything yeah and then everything and i think pre 9-11 that was a lot more rare i think post 9-11 uh that's there there's a lot more people who go through a lot of those different schools because at the end of the day you don't know what your mission is like what the mission set is going to be right this isn't the cold war this isn't near pier for the most part i mean who knows i might i might start any day now but but for the most part it hasn't been near pure wars and mud huts could be anywhere yeah so so you you really have to be ready for anything and so for pjs you know pjs are attached with keg with damn neck with various odas various seal teams ranger battalion i mean they're they're all over the place doing civilian rescues and so you you have to be able to like if you're with the seals and the seals are diving in well then you're diving in if you're with an oda and they're jumping in and you're jumping in right you've got to be able to to facilitate whoever it is that you're with and then also you look at what just happened in iran right you you no doubt saw the video going around the the internet with uh the the c-130 uh that was gassing up those two uh h-60s right the the uh the the rescue birds so you've got a team of pjs in the back of that 130 and you got a team of pjs and who knows they combat rescues officers with them now or you know maybe a combat controller you know i don't know what their current package is but uh in each one of those birds and so if the person that they need to go after is far enough in front of where the helos can get to like let's say there's a two-hour delay between the 130 getting on station and the 60s getting on station well two hours is life and death and so pjs will and the 130 will free fall out and go to you know like go to work and then the 60s will come in later and pick them up but if they don't need to free fall out well then they'll bring in the 60s right because it's like on top of a mountain or something so so you just have to be able to do everything which is which is why that career field is so freaking cool right you you we don't have radio guys we are the radio guys we are the medics um you know pjs don't at least in my day we didn't have like snipers uh you know things like that because that's not our job um i think they've i think there are there's a little bit of that happening now but you you kind of had to be able to solve any problem that was thrown in front of you you know where the the high angle rescue right vertical rope access experts um so that was a lot of fun because you're just constantly training because it is a lot of work to stay up on top of all those qualifications so it's insane i think i think pair rescue is probably one of the um one of the i wouldn't say most misunderstood career fields but it's definitely one of the quietest i think at least known within the the special operations community hold up i'll hit you with my frying pan yes that's right we are now sponsored by hexclad we were actually super stoked for this because i've let them cook so they gave me a walk they gave 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have their patented hexagonal laser etched steel ridge boost for a ceiling for a very limited time only shop the hexclad's mother day sell for up to 49 off site wide and score big savings with their best-selling sets at hexclad.com slash unsub support our show and check them out hexclad h-e-x-c-l-a-d dot com forward slash unsub u-n-s-u-b just in case this thing you said oh all of us have to get this level of training on the medical side special forces teams you have uh delta yeah they that's the hard one that's the you're going to school for a year and a half and they're great medics yeah they're really good but that's every one of you have everyone do that yeah that's what's wild that is one of multiple jobs in special forces because it's like oh you're going to be gunner so like i think it's like 18 bravo you're specifically focused on the firearms and then demo go down the line it's like oh you're learning all those schools yeah that's it sorry yeah and now you're in a four-man pj team and oh by the way a week ago you got handed a barrett and you're like they're like oh yeah we're going to send you to this school you're going to learn how to shoot this thing and now you got to figure out how to free fall that sucker out of the back of the aircraft right it's just like okay like it it it's uh in some ways the csar missions it it appears that pjs get a little over their skis but they're not in the and you saw this with that with that iran rescue because when the pjs are going to work for a combat search and rescue mission that is the mission right and so all of the us government wraps around that so you might just see a couple of helicopters one c-130 couple dudes on the ground but there might be 70 aircraft on station right glad you brought that up because that was exactly what i was about to ask is that that new iran mission where they were rescuing the pilot um and we talked about that a little bit earlier with that that chick leaking the details from the pentagon but uh yeah because that would have been that would have been pjs then right with with a bunch of support so it was it was uh it was a lot of work but it was a lot of work but it was a lot of it was pjs uh my understanding is it was our our there's a tier one pj team uh often referred to as the hill 24th sts uh or i don't know what they call themselves these days that's what they call themselves back in the day that's so cool here because that's i mean i we've all been associated with them that's the first time i've ever heard of that the hill yeah you're like delta dev like depending on what their names are the hill so that's okay that's their tier one so that's that's a tier one pjs and combat controllers uh so if you look at like bin laden raid allegedly a couple pjs You look at the, you know, al-Baghdadi raid, allegedly a couple of PJs embedded with, you know, the JSOC elements. And so I had buddies on that. Yeah. The one that just the this rescue that just happened. I think everybody knows it was, you know, damn neck was helping with the CIA ruse and CAG was really I mean, do they freaking basically assaulted a mountain as if it was a freaking urban objective? I mean, that's I was unprepared for this level of FOMO. Right. I mean, I'm just completely unprepared. Like I'm looking at that. I'm like, I'm freaking 48 years old. Like, do I still got it? And I don't got it. But man, talk about the mission of a freaking lifetime. Right. And they but yeah, it was there was a PJ team. Right. And then you've got essentially we call it SAR security. Right. So it's your search and rescue security. So you've got your. Yeah. In this case, a bunch of JSOC operators and and that's kind of the way it works. But with the leak, you know, if if the leak hadn't happened and I don't have any special like knowledge or anything, but just knowing the way that it works, if the leak hadn't happened, then most likely you wouldn't have needed that size of a force. I mean, most of the time PJs can get in and out pretty stinking fast. Right. And the the one thing that I don't think people understand about the Air Force. Yeah. And that's the thing that I think people don't understand about the Air Force. since we started actually writing things down we talked about how it's important to take away the ability or the enemy's ability to mobilize and move from one side of the of their plot of land to the other i mean so you can't destroy the moat oh whoa yeah that is a sacred bridge that crosses that you could dickhead move yeah so anyway that was i don't know how we get down that rabbit hole that was welcome notes like yeah welcome i mean like war crime war crimes war crimes weren't really even a thing until the germans started using gas and then we're all like oh we should probably write down some rules which is also wild to think about it it's wild to think about but at the same time like you've got all these people talking about well in international law say that's against international law says freaking who show me the international law i did 30 combat deployments and never once did i see an international law and not only that but i promise you in those 30 combat deployments i freaking broke the international law go ahead and send the international police to my house in montana they see how that works out for them they say i'm the international lawyer they say it with the authority like judge dread is gonna fucking superhero drop out of the sky and bring you to justice it's like well australia just arrested their um their most decorated soldier what but that's australia australia arrested the most decorated soldier sas guy sas guy arrested him for war crimes that he allegedly did 12 years ago with no forensic evidence no anything other than arrested though no he's in yeah he's in custody right now and he's gonna have to go through court and prove that he didn't do something they have no evidence for 12 years ago he just got real nervous yeah you can go back still it's gonna be real eli's gonna be very very selective on what stories he tells on the podcast from here on what were we saying earlier the uh well i didn't but my buddy i watched it happen i heard of a guy who allegedly allegedly yeah that's crazy though the international law don't get me started on that in minecraft yeah well even geneva like depending on your ao it just switches and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going off of what somebody's doing and then you're just going. probably do because i promise you you know more about this actually is it great i'm gonna go on on a limb and say he's talking about hollow points great tip for for a nine millimeter that would be it and for something different in the okay probably five five a one like the uh great tungsten tip shit no oh that stuff is terrible yeah i was gonna say it's so bad it's like freaking sewing needles hollow points in particular are against our our expanding ammunition expanding ammunition because it falls under it actually falls under fracturing ammunition which is a military agreement that predates the geneva convention it's from like the 1800s it's like civil war era i promise you the lawyers in the military don't even know this that's when they were using exploding ammunition so musket balls that would fucking miniature cannonballs that would detonate inside of a person that's that's cool brutal and they're like oh give me that oh it expands oh that's very similar and it's like no hollow points are argue not even arguably they're factually safer yes because a hollow point is less less over penetration i want to shoot brandon hypothetically i don't want to shoot the person behind him you know what i mean i want the bullet to stop in the guy that i mean for it to stop in like hollow point ammunition is safer by any metric you can it also tends to stop the individual more effectively much more effectively yeah a lot of people don't realize that that is hey you don't want a full metal jacket clearing a house because that is just going yeah yeah yeah the tungsten stuff bad bad news even in kyle rittenhouse's um court case like i watched a lot of it and one of the points they brought up is that kyle rittenhouse was using full metal jacket ammunition in his gun and they were trying to say that he did that on purpose with the intent of trying to shoot through people and they were asking him why he didn't use hollow points he was 17 and broke not only that i've never even per i've been around a lot of guns i know they exist but i've never even held seen in person hollow point five five six ammunition a lot of times with five five six and like rifle rounds like that they use like ballistic for it like well they use like ballistic tips so it's like a little red tip where it's like polymer or whatever yeah that just like fills that so it's still ballistically stable but it's like but i remember watching it and i was like oh my god please say you didn't carry it because that's a war crime because he would have been factually correct and it would have been a war crime and it would have been just devastating to the other person's case uh sir i can't do that that's a war crime it would have been hilarious it's against the geneva convention sir yeah yeah well that and also there's ammunition you want your ammunition to be barrier blind right because you need to sometimes shoot through things and you don't want that bullet to disintegrate when it gets to the other side of the thing right and and and so now you're just shooting powder at somebody and so so anyway so i have this ammunition and they're like oh no it's it's uh immediate 24 hour and the brig and so the agency boss and one of the for what like until they could get somebody out there or is that just like i don't know that's just that's that's just what they told me and i was like yeah that's that's not gonna happen man um and so these guys are like like looking at each other like what do we do you just said no yeah we've never had this before and so they're like zach galifianakis with like the fucking numbers going by his head like yeah that's that's not gonna happen um and then and then at the same time they tried to put our guy who is a like super secret indige guy uh in with the other afghans like military indige who had gotten hurt and i'm like yeah that also is not gonna happen like he's going in with the americans and he's gonna be like his identity is gonna be protected and all that and and so one of the cool things about the agency there's there's there's drawbacks in the military and there's cool things about the military there's drawbacks to the agency and there's cool things about the agency and one of the cool things about the agency is at the end of the day you work for one person the president united states and holy smokes the phone calls that you can make and so so the the agency base commander who's there he he looks at this these shore patrol guys and and they're just like just like staring at me like they don't know what to say and these like poor dudes like these are like enlisted like e2s right they're just they're on the crap shift in the middle of the night like you got to feel kind of bad for these guys you're 19 you're 40 you're 30 yeah i was like i was probably 32 33 years old here's some handcuffs do you want to put them on yeah and they're just like they have no idea what to do and uh agency boss comes over he's like what's going on i was like well so here's here's the situation and they're just like nodding like yes that that's what we told him and agency boss is like yeah f no that's not going to happen and and he he went to the agency and he's like what's going on and he's like he went to the agency and he's like what's going on and he's like what's going on and he's like what's out get a cell phone signal comes back in about three minutes later and he's like hey you guys should be hearing something on your radios pretty soon and sure enough it was like i would you know so and so and so and so please report to the you know but they're like talk thing and uh and that was all around freaking and you know because i didn't have the the proper ammunition in my weapon and you've got these freaking lawyers who sit in the air conditioning and and create rules for the people who are actually on the field in fact we had i got into this big argument with an agency lawyer because he said we couldn't have frag grenades because he said they were offensive weapons but but yeah which i was like well that's really interesting what if i need to defend myself against a lot of bad guys well every single military manual says that a frag grenade is a defensive weapon you know what is classified as as offensive flashbangs could carry those all day long yeah could carry those all day long i did not they also said that we could carry a 40 millimeter grenade launcher right with like hdp grenades because those that was a defensive weapons but but frag grenades were offensive it's it's offensive for something a grenade in throwing distance but it's defensive for one if you can shoot it 300 meters go for it yeah all right yeah that and and that's one of the big problems that we have in war fighting today is we have a bunch of lawyers who aren't on the field they're not doing the work like you did combat time did you ever see a lawyer on the field i never did and i never realized like when i was in the military how much freaking pull these idiots have um with different commanders and you know the administrations and things like that it wasn't until i got to the agency where now you're like kind of at the top of the stack when you're in a country um that i was like oh man like i constantly have to check with the lawyers in order to figure out like what i can do today what title authority i'm working under this sucks i love how you keep saying lawyer like it's a slur it is a slur lawyer well i mean there's there's great lawyers obviously like i like my lawyers and and i like uh there's a lot of incredible prosecutors in this country who are doing amazing work we work with them a lot on the human trafficking stuff they love they love our data because it i mean so far in the last 11 years we've had 100 conviction rate on every single case we've been involved in and i've gone to court holy shit there's thousands of cases and the reason why is because the data is so binary it's just a statement of fact it either is or is not true and so there's great prosecutors but lawyers who like are trying to make rules for other people right and they're not they're not actively part or they don't have the consequences of the rules that they're making like i i legitimately have a problem with that if you've never been in a gunfight shut the f up like that's if you've never been on a gunfight shut the f up i don't even care if you haven't been in one if you're not willing to even put yourself in the position to be in one well maybe talk to individuals that do experience and be like you know what i don't how does this rule sound i would present that to from the lower enlisted to soft it's like hey what do you guys think of these rules and that's why you would be a terrible lawyer i know i hate the people on the internet like there's obviously like you know torturing somebody i in situations where it's like whatever so annoying yeah but like where it's something where like somebody drew a gun and somebody shot and it's like now this dude's facing prison because he couldn't make the decision in half a second to know what the exact laws were right to be able to execute them on the fly when it's going to take 17 lawyers six months to figure out if he violated the law or not but he was supposed to know that in half a second that's a great point is insane yeah i never looked at like you know what i mean it's like it takes 17 legal experts to analyze this and decide whether or not he broke the law but he's up for punishment for it because he couldn't do the same thing 17 lawyers couldn't do in six months in half a second it's a multi-billion dollar monday morning quarterbacking industry like it's insane to me i never looked at that what what's interesting about the military is the you can oh they're like we need you to write this down no you can just do that yeah nice that's what's great like because when you remember the military people don't realize like you are the defender of the constitution you are not subject to it right you are in any of the civilian agencies you are subject to the constitution for the first time so you can be like no i'm not doing that no i'm not doing that yeah damn you less jealous it's like god i'm not doing - Dang it. - I have the right to remain silent. - Yeah, it's just different. like you get to hear I have the right to not self-incriminate more importantly hey on Baghdad initially it was unless they shoot at you you cannot engage they contain their guns you can do that and there was some very strict they're like hey they can point their guns at you unless they shoot at you guys you can't do anything and then we went to Mokdia I always compare that drive is like 40 minutes northeast near Iran border to um in Iraq from Baghdad different server yeah it looks like different it looked like the metro three it was a different server it was like metro 3,000 tickets yeah I was like oh we're driving up this road the main MSR and it looks like the moon because it's just id holes everyone like and then they're like oh hey if they have a cell phone and a recording you should engage them we're like yeah whoa these rules have changed or a shovel dressed there was a time when it was a shovel oh dude or a hundred military-aged male with a weapon could be a handgun in a holster military military-aged male with a weapon game on this was they could do this and then yep so they stopped doing anything with these yeah like real quick so we had that opposite end Baghdad was bad we lost we lost I think like eight guys in Baghdad and then we lost the other eight there but just that wild have the other team make out on both of us yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the rules just changed the local T-Mobile went out of business like it was bad it was never changed they would not pull their phones out they were just like no no I ain't answering this shit cool okay mom don't call me now they can be trained what would you call it at lunch uh uh forced respect yeah exactly you're what was it you're like oh yeah people should uh people should you know have a healthy amount of fear for like you know their law enforcement at that degree like well no fear sounds bad like force respect force respect I like that you know it's a better way but you'll be a great politician yeah gangbangers should have that sort of you know yeah yeah for sure it's a good band name force respect yeah it'd be the next metal band oh my god it's the perfect jeans right I can leave get on their shoulders up here big boy try the perfect jeans out as earmuffs Brandon how perfect are they feels like the 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get 15 off it's finally time to stop crushing your balls and wear comfortable jeans by going to the perfectgene.nyc our listeners get 15 off their first order plus free shipping it's lighter softer stretchier and it's not a sex toy not with that attitude that one and again that's free returns free exchanges when you use code unsub15 at checkout that's 15 off at checkout for the perfect jeans Connor loves perfect jeans he does they fit him really nice oh pants so now you got out of PJs you did 10 years or 11 years so 10 years in active duty a year in the reserves uh I was doing some like private personal recovery stuff for banks and insurance companies um that was freaking quite frankly it was just it was really interesting but it was really uh let's just say it wasn't values aligned for me uh so I left that actually did a quick six months in Hollywood because I while I was waiting for my agency clearance to go through just freaking forced gumped my way into working for a very well-known uh Hollywood actor who's like still a good good friend of this day uh and no not just to be honest I'm still a good friend of this day uh and no not security as a as a technical advisor on a movie for him I was smart did a few months in Hollywood decided that was not the life for me I don't want anything to do with that and uh and then my agency clearance went through and yeah I went to uh specialized unit the CIA um goes goes to Hollywood I'd rather go back to Afghanistan war looks I was gonna go the opposite direction with that goes to Hollywood once works in Hollywood decides to dedicate the rest of his life to stopping basically going after Hollywood two things can be true at once yeah well yeah yeah it's just not for me and so I uh you know there's there's people who work there I met some met some awesome people but also met some real real dirt bags and yeah so ended up at the agency um that was super interesting it literally just got a call one day it was like hey do you want to come try out for this program can't tell you what it is the answer to that if you ever get the call should always be yes and so I show up to this nondescript building and um I'm there with a bunch of other dudes who look like me and we go in and sit in these little freaking desks like little like like like the men in black opening scene like yeah like these little like little um I don't know like school desks right with a little little arm that comes up and the little crack your back a little deal there no but I've been this close to buying a school desk just to have it crack my back yeah it's perfectly delete my chiropractor bill uh so I go in and they have you take this test and so I take the test and then you know you leave after that and then they they read off a bunch of names and they're like they read off those names they're like you guys can leave and then everybody else come back into the room so we go back into the room and they're like you probably figured this out by now we're the central intelligence agency this is the last time we're going to talk about that um here's here's what you're going to do for the next couple of months uh if you want to continue to do that we'll pick you up tomorrow morning at the hotel if you don't want to continue to do that no harm no foul and so of course everybody did and then I went to their little selection process for that unit for uh uh and I try to remember I think it was six weeks five weeks something like that and then uh yeah made it through and about two months later I was in Baghdad on a covert action platform so what was the hardest school you did up to with that included was it still in the military side like combat diver PJ selection hands down the hardest uh but then I also wonder like maybe is that just because I I hadn't learned to play the game yet and I was still a new guy and all that because I don't know but PJ selection was definitely the hardest followed by combat diver followed by PJ school itself it's not that PJ school is all that hard it's just you have zero room for error like you like everything is a selection right everything is like oh why did you make that choice why did you do that um you know it it's you're you're you're you're going to make that choice why did you do that um you know it it's you're you're you're you're going to make that choice why did you do that um you know it it's you're you're you're going to make that choice why did you do that um you know it it's you're you're expected to be a thinker there's no like if you just there's no going into robot mode except for maybe in land nav it's going to help you to go in robot mode but after that there's really no going in robot mode right because yeah because it's non-linear problem solving and you are I mean you are in PJ school like this isn't unit training yet you are jumping out of aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean after a boat and you're doing that in PJ school so like yes it's training but there is very little room for error when you're doing that kind of stuff and so um you're doing you know night jumps into uh you know quasi-mountainous terrain you're doing night jumps into the ocean I mean it's uh you're doing a lot of high angle stuff I mean for two weeks you're doing high angle stuff and like try not to screw that up because you know I mean some of those Cliffs are a couple hundred feet so it's uh it's not that it was hard per se it was a freaking blast is what it was it was I mean absolutely I mean you think about it like people have each one of those things for hobbies and you're getting paid to go do that you know every single day for weeks on end and getting some of the best training so but at the same time like you just there's there's no downtime like you have to be on all the time um the the the agency stuff was more of a gentleman's course right because that unit you had to have a minimum of at the time um and there are people who because of nepotism kind of slip through the cracks and things like that but for the most part you had you were supposed to have a minimum of six years of special ops experience and a minimum of three combat deployments under your belt just to go to tryouts so yeah you don't have to I mean I had dudes in my class just freaking just like how do you shoot that fast and that accurately like please teach me your ways i mean it was amazing um that's crazy when you say it like that you're like oh and they looked at you swimming and like what the fuck yeah i mean it was it was like wow um but the it was kind of the same thing at the agencies it was in pj school they're like every every little micro movement you make is an is is evaluated and then you're also peer evaluated so it's not that it's that hard right pt test wasn't that big of a deal um the shooting standards were very high but what the agency did which i had never experienced before is you know how like when you're shooting a qual and you know maybe you're not great at the 25 yard line with the handgun um so you're gonna you're gonna make sure that all of your up close hits are a zone hits so that you know if you throw one it's a like you're still gonna pass because it's aggregate scoring the agency it's 32 separate tests well so you every single one is scored so if you throw a rat if you passed everything and you get back to the 25 yard line and you threw a round you fail never experienced that before i was like well this is new oh so it's like yeah yeah no no go yeah and then you know how in the military you've got a shooting standard at least in in training right at the unit it gets different but um you've got a standard and then your night quals come around you usually shoot the same thing but you're on nods but they'll add a second right because you're on nods they didn't see nope exact same exact same standard it's freaking snowing on us and so i'm like got my hand over my eotech and i'm like trying to like you know keep keep the snow off my eotech and i'm not wearing gloves because i want it i want that dexterity but now my hands are freaking freezing and and it's just like shooter ready and you're just like okay here we go and beep and and they i mean they and they have a student to instructor ratio so that nothing slips through the cracks i mean it's like one instructor to i think like three students on test day so if there's a shot that breaks after the uh you know after the timer goes off like they know exactly what's going on and they're like oh my god i don't know what's going on and they're like oh my god i don't know what's going on and they're like oh my god i don't know who it is and they're like yep it's you right and so now you now you failed the time standard and so it's not that it was that hard i mean anybody who is a decent marksman could could pass this qualification but like you're shooting for a multi-hundred thousand dollar a year job doing what you think is going to be some really cool stuff so if you got that monkey on your back right and you got that pressure and that was uh that was something that was uh just different right it's not that it was harder it was just different i think that's one of those that's the thing people do not think about it is holy shit now all that pressure this is 32 tests you were saying yeah so like 32 different shooting lines and that's the thing it's like oh if i fuck this one up you you just don't get a breathe that entire time it's like oh fuck okay i have to be perfect and then your your cqb testing uh i got hooked up with this uh this former marine uh got paired up with him and he was like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna he was awesome i mean the guy was just like when when captain america pops into your head like that was this dude man super fit really good on the gun incredibly humble like just a just a great human being and i got paired up with him and we're doing our uh we're doing uh i think we're doing two-man hostage rescue runs uh because the agency operates in small teams that's kind of the whole point so this unit specialized in kind of a personnel recovery as a way to think about it right so doing security personnel recovery operational facilitation in very very small teams like and i mean sometimes you are your own team so you have so it's not a lot of what i came from from the military which is like you know there's 12 dudes in a stack there's freaking 30 dudes outside getting ready to come in you know when you call for more help it's uh it's like okay it's you there's qrf and then there's no qr it's you and me right and like that's it and so we're doing our house runs on this and i think we're everybody else had come back and they'd done like three iterations in the house and you're not allowed to talk to each other um about what the scenarios were but it's just like how many times did you go through how much ammo did you go through like you're trying to get some some beta on like what what you need to be prepared for and look at how shot up they are with like utm rounds and stuff and uh and we're going through and and this guy's name is pat and they're like they're like all right pat nick you're good we've seen enough and that's what we hear from the catwalk we've only done two rounds and i was like oh man like we just failed it's really good or really bad yeah and i'm thinking through it in my head i'm like we've seen enough i feel like i feel like we just crushed that and that's the worst because i've i've felt like i've crushed things before and like actually like did a terrible job dude my wife knows about that when i have sex yeah she was talking about that i crushed that new personal record 37 seconds what you got on that babe speed is a company policy yeah so anyway then they uh they're like all right we've seen enough uh and then i'm like we're like walking out of the house with our freaking head hang hung low and they're like hey you two great job like that's that's exactly what we expect to see and i was like oh thank god so like you just never knew like did i do that right and the instructors the whole military will always tell you what the standard is and when i went through this selection process they were just like like okay like pt test um you're gonna run a half a mile you're gonna pick up this 180 pound mr hertz dummy you're gonna sprint 100 yards with that dummy and then you're gonna run a half a mile back okay i'm like yeah what's what's the uh what's the time standard do your best oh what do your best that makes life way more stressful all right pull-up bar how many pull-ups you got to do do your best and you're just like but like do i need to keep some in the tank because like after this you're gonna have me doing like muscle ups on the side of a building like what do i gotta do and that that's a lot of the pressure was just the unknown of just like all right do your best and we'll let you know whether or not you did good enough i'm sure they had a bunch of other like specialized courses and training stuff like that for example like you know agency specific like what to do uh when you have to start a podcast afterward yeah well that that was uh um they don't have that in the agency training i believe that's a phase three of buds is the books and you know pr phase and stuff like that that's a nice way of saying that the uh the agency podcast uh pipeline is still part of operation mockingbird yes yes we're not gonna talk about it we're just we're just putting people into the media right you know guys like you as an example and so we're not gonna talk about it we're we're we're you're not supposed to help me like that oh shoot yeah so the and then the you know once you get to the agency then it was uh a lot of i mean it's just freaking big boy rules it was actually shocking what the u.s government would allow us to do with zero oversight and just like hey there's a problem in this country go figure it out and like in a good way oh in a very good way and then um and then i'll be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh well you know and then eventually i became a team leader and then eventually a country team leader and i had a the guys who really wanted to work hard and do cool stuff wanted to be on my team and the guys who wanted to kind of sit around and play xbox they didn't want to be on my team and so uh you know the the things that i'm like okay i'm gonna submit this for an op oh look that got approved okay well i'm gonna submit this for an op and oh that got approved too and and then one day i i'm in a foreign embassy in a country because i'm helping one of our nato partners and they had a lot of let's just say an insane amount of restrictions on them and my guys could kind of do whatever they wanted and so so my guys were the action element for their op you were the kinetic side when you ran everything right yeah yeah we were the guys we were the guys with guns that was our job was to to carry guns and anger um i mean you don't guns and anger is a good shirt yeah you don't you don't hire dudes with soft backgrounds in order to you know do analysis and because they would suck at it and they would be like yeah there's a guy with a thing he's doing bad stuff um and so i was uh i'm sitting there and we're getting ready to have a vtc with their counterparts at their headquarters in their country and these agencies our agency and their agency have a very close relationship uh obviously for national security reasons i can't say who it was and so the vtc screen pops on and who's the very first person i see deputy chief of my unit he was like i was like oh hey what are you doing there he's like nick good to see you i was like all right so what are you doing there he's like well that's what i'm here to find out and i was like okay maybe i've advanced that line a little too far and that's ultimately why i ended up one of many reasons i ended up leaving the agency was I just looked at and the wars are winding down I don't really want to be part of something like that when we're not in wartime I mean it's just I don't see that as being a good time and I started looking at the upper echelons because I was kind of on a career rocket ship and saying okay like do I want to be that guy and do I want to be that guy and there's a couple of them that I really respected and and really liked and they were great leaders but I didn't want to do their job right and ultimately you have to I think in a organization like that you have to make a decision on are you willing to play the game right are you willing to play that bureaucratic game because the only way for you to continue to be successful is to play that game what's this green Eli if I could read I would be able to tell you ag one I took that class in high school yeah I'm sorry I didn't take corn three boom we're talking about aging one or as nick says ag one is it a multivitamin that combines your pre and probiotics superfoods and antioxidants into one simple scoop not amateur biotics probiotics them kids are dirty the kids are running around with their little counterparts they're touching hands with each other they're getting dirty so it's better to boost your immune system with ag one ag one ah yummy you drank all that yeah all right heading into the holidays it can be hard to maintain a balanced diet and give your body the nutrients it needs which is why a1 comes in ag one tomato tomato them kids is dirty ag one is one of the easiest daily health habits you can start what a great new year's resolution Eli Brandon what are yours other than taking ag one well if you take out ag one that's my all of my new year's resolutions that's all I want to do is I want to drink more of it they come in little packs or travel packs show them the travel pack hot dog style pack as opposed to the hamburger style pack and we use this for the live shows because when we are on the road or touring hot dog or hamburger is very nice to carry around also ag one comes in multiple flavors we have original grass citrus berry and tropical and right now ag one has their best offer ever if you head on over to drink ag one dot-com slash unsubscribe what do you get Eli well you'll get the most out of it if you take out ag one and what do you get Eli well you'll get the welcome kit three free ag one travel packs and three free agz travel packs a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 an ag1 flavor sampler and you'll get to try their new sleep product agz we're drinking it at night that's drink ag1.com unsubscribe for 126 dollars in free gifts for new subscribers I think a lot of your average America is not going to understand when you say that they're like no you can do what you want you're like no you know you have to play the game politics everything we've seen so far is to a degree like there's still to modify even you have to mold yourself or who you are you have to change slightly some of us are better at it than others yeah and that's what I just realized that like what it gets you in trouble you get you you get peepee slapped when you don't sure the thing yeah and and some of us are willing to take more peepee slaps than others and I got I had one of those incidents when I was at the agency where I got to I got my own private flight out of a base because I got fired by the base commander and I was right I was I was right I did the right thing like I will I will die on that Hill but I might have gone about it a little harshly right and and so I just ultimately was like hey the to continue this wasn't going to be a good fit for what I want to do with my life where I was I was really starting to kind of get into the tech side of some of the stuff we were doing at the agency and so wanted to try that and then um also I had just been you know from the time this slash car gods and it happened to the time that I'm in this country and that was a two-year period and I started like I was the CIA rep for that country and on the hostage working group and so I just started seeing it over and over and over and I'm like all right like I really dove into the the data and the the books on it because I'm just a big nerd and I realized that one dollar for dollar the largest human trafficking Market is the United States of America I blew my mind like it's us we are we are the problem two that's why right like if you if you think about it um you know the uh the the Bible and Proverbs says something along the lines of start stop calling out the log and your brother or the spec in your brother's eye and not acknowledging the log in your own and I feel like that's in your brother's eye yeah I feel like that's what we were doing in uh in the in the United States and that's what we were doing in uh in the United States and that's what we were doing in uh in the United States and that's what we were doing in uh in the United States and that's what we were doing in uh in the United States and that's what we were doing in the United States and that's what we were doing in uh in the United States and that's what we were doing in the United States uh in America and so I was like States uh in America and so I was like States uh in America and so I was like all right I I think we can solve this all right I I think we can solve this all right I I think we can solve this problem in America or at least reduce it problem in America or at least reduce it problem in America or at least reduce it significantly because at the end of the significantly because at the end of the significantly because at the end of the day it's the terrorism model like we we day it's the terrorism model like we we day it's the terrorism model like we we have 20 years of fighting these bad guys have 20 years of fighting these bad guys have 20 years of fighting these bad guys and people don't realize that terrorism and people don't realize that terrorism and people don't realize that terrorism is a commodity it's literally like sold is a commodity it's literally like sold is a commodity it's literally like sold um and and people think of terrorism um and and people think of terrorism um and and people think of terrorism they think of just the person who's they think of just the person who's they think of just the person who's willing to blow themselves up what about willing to blow themselves up what about willing to blow themselves up what about the entire chain of the the guy who the entire chain of the the guy who the entire chain of the the guy who makes the vest the guy who makes the makes the vest the guy who makes the makes the vest the guy who makes the explosive the guy who finances all that explosive the guy who finances all that explosive the guy who finances all that stuff the Imam who you know uh yeah stuff the Imam who you know uh yeah stuff the Imam who you know uh yeah like radicalizes the individual I mean like radicalizes the individual I mean like radicalizes the individual I mean it's it's an entire Commerce chain and it's it's an entire Commerce chain and it's it's an entire Commerce chain and we then that's what we ultimately got we then that's what we ultimately got we then that's what we ultimately got really good at fighting and when I really good at fighting and when I really good at fighting and when I started looking at the way that started looking at the way that started looking at the way that trafficking was working in America and trafficking was working in America and trafficking was working in America and the way that terrorism worked it was the way that terrorism worked it was the way that terrorism worked it was like okay we have a lot of correlations like okay we have a lot of correlations like okay we have a lot of correlations here maybe the general thesis was maybe here maybe the general thesis was maybe here maybe the general thesis was maybe this counterterrorism model can be this counterterrorism model can be this counterterrorism model can be modified to working with Indige in modified to working with Indige in modified to working with Indige in America and the indigenous force in America and the indigenous force in America and the indigenous force in America is law enforcement which is not America is law enforcement which is not America is law enforcement which is not perfect it's still the best law perfect it's still the best law perfect it's still the best law enforcement in the world yeah I'm glad enforcement in the world yeah I'm glad enforcement in the world yeah I'm glad you were able to pivot to that because you were able to pivot to that because I know we're coming up, like we got like time constraints on the podcast. I was really hoping we could, we could get to some of this stuff because that we were talking about it a little bit earlier. I find this incredibly intriguing, like how you were able to take that skillset and put it directly into something like preventing trafficking. Yeah. It took me about five years to get it figured out, but now, I mean, I hate to say we have it figured out, but we kind of have it figured out probably more than the government does. So think about it this way. Not as high of a bar as I would like. Yeah. I was trying to figure out how to word that exact same sentiment, but it's, it's the, the problem we have with trafficking. It's not that trafficking hasn't existed for a long time. Obviously it has. Right. And what people traditionally think of as prostitutes and pimps pimps are human traffickers. Like there's no such thing as a good pimp. They are human traffickers. A lot of what people think are prostitutes, like upwards of 80%, like Pareto applies in a lot of this. Are actually trafficking victims. They're not there by will. And even if they're 21 to percent. Yeah. And so even if they're like 21, 22 years old, they're like, Oh no, this is a woman who's making this choice. It's like, is it really a choice when she was first trafficked by her parents for drug money when she was 12? And this is literally what she's been trained to do. Like, that's not a choice people. That's desperation. And a lot of people don't have that mindset where it's like, if you know, know better, this is from a childhood, this is your right. It's the idea of like, what's evil. Yeah. It depends. Like you're right. You're wrong. What nuance? Yeah. And a lot of people just dropped that to the side and like, what are you talking about? Like that girl is not going to know anything. Yeah. It's like, I grew up in this. This is normal. This is what everyone, this is what my parents trained me to do. And that's it. And if your parents taught you that there was just a case, uh, I want to say Portland or, um, Utah where it was a grandfather who had been taking the females and they're just isolated the house, kids and all that. The kids got arrested. The males, they were like 20 to 25 their entire life. They never associated with a single person. They were just told to have, uh, with your sister and then that's it. And then we're making everything right through genetics. You, guys are pure breeds. The world's evil. This is all your experience. Those 20 year old guys went to jail. They're in prison right now. And they're like, we're sorry. We did. We're sorry. They're apologetic. Now that they're in the limelight, they had no fucking clue of anything going on in their head. They were just doing what they were told and they were, uh, isolated from the world. Yes. So just horrifically depressing. Cause you're just talking about that pipeline, you know, when they start, you know, with their parents selling them off at like 13, 14 or renting them out. As crude as it sounds, that was, that was a lot of it. They can't be trusted. Like as a parent, like if you've got like a daughter, like that's something of inherent value and you're supposed to be trusted to protect that and, you know, turn that into a, a, a functional member of society. And certain people just don't have that responsibility. So one of our analysts was embedded with, uh, uh, a Texas, uh, County Sheriff's office doing, uh, counter human trafficking operations a couple of weeks ago. And they had a customer show up, because when we do counter human trafficking operations, and I I'll, I'll get to what that means. Um, we're going after customers, traffickers, and then rescuing victims, right? So we help law enforcement do all three simultaneously in an operation, not treating each one as its own operation. Right. And that's really the way that you should be doing these operations. And so, um, customer shows up, gets busted and he starts crying. And so of course our analyst and she's amazing. Um, Alicia Williams, is her name who was running this, this op a former Marine Corps SIGINT analyst who then went and did spooky things. And, and, and she, she's doing this, this op and this guy starts crying. And so the cops are like, well, of course you're crying because you got, you got caught. And he said, no, he said, I'm crying because my daughter's not going to get a recital dress. And we're like, she's like, we're like, what is, what do you mean? That's a wild, I went, I was, I had just gone to get my daughter's dress for her recital. And he decided that he was going to book a date on his way home to give his daughter, his recital, her recital dress, so that she could go to her recital. And he was booking a date with a 15 year old girl. How old was his daughter? 13. And then his head is just, so like, this is the problem, right? Now is that guy's daughter being, I don't know. I likelihood, I likelihood. And so like this, this is the problem. And, and so how was this guy able to book? Oh, in the girl. So who's the trafficker? The trafficker is a suburban mom with her own kids, suburban single mom with her own kids. And this is how she's paying for like in a, in a, in a neighborhood, like any middle-class neighborhood that you would see. This is how she's paying for her kids. Soccer fees is by trafficking a 13 year old girl. Right. When, so how does all of that happen? How is it that this guy can book a date? Well, this is how, right. Broadband connected microcomputers that are in everybody's pockets. So it used to be right back in the day, you had the red light district and you had the girls walk in the street, right? Harry Heinz, Boulevard in, in, in Dallas. What's it called? Bissonette in, in Houston. So that's, that's the way that I like you say this. And we're just, I've never heard. Oh, sorry. I was willing to go with it. Sure. He hangs out with you have to like associate and know this stuff. And I'm like, I have none of, well, traditionally it was girls walk in the street. It was girls on the reason that backpage.com back in the day was called back page was because it used to be the back pages of the newspaper, right? It was, so this is old internet, actually like go to 2000 pre 2012. I want to say back pages got back, back, no back page got seized in 2018. We were one of the sources of, of intelligence that led to their takedown. No shit. Yeah. It was a big escort problem on it. Yeah. We actually, we actually moved into their corporate headquarters. We've got a screaming deal on it from the bank who owned the building. Cause they were trying to rebrand a little bit. Um, so we had our, our Dallas office there. We've, we've since moved it. Uh, but I was always told like the whole, cause you brought that up, like the escort thing. Like I was always told, and I always kind of assumed it was basically just like a thin veil of legality behind what was trafficking. Yeah. It's it. I mean, they were literally the big box store of trafficking. And so this is a menu where it's just like, click, that's it. So one of the statistics I like to point out is between 2010 and 2015, the national center for missing and exploited children had an 846%. increase in suspected trafficking cases. Why did that happen? Right? 846% increase in five years. Well, I started looking into the data on it. And the reason why is broad adoption of smartphones. See smartphones used to be luxury items. And then AT&T came out with their next program where you could finance the smartphone as part of your monthly bill. And then every other telco provider started doing exactly the same thing. And so what do you have? You have a massive increase in smartphone use. And when you have a massive increase in smartphone use, what directly comes with that it's a one to one correlation, social media use increases. So for the first time in history, you could be a 40 year old man 3000 miles away from a 12 year old girl who just made a social media video about how she's mad at her dad for not letting her wear the miniskirt to the mall. And that trafficker that predator that right slides into their DMS, right at that very point of vulnerability, and starts telling them, Oh, no, it's just because you're so pretty, your dad's just trying to keep you from growing up here, let me let me send you a gift. And then it's take a picture for me. And then it's a nude picture. And then it's now I got you. Right. And so that's the problem we have given. It used to be that predators could only access the prey that they could physically access. What the internet did was it gave the predators access to all of the prey. And the social media marketing algorithms, that was the targeting algorithm for the predator, because now all a predator has to do is get a burner phone, create a burner email address, very easy to do, I'll take you about two minutes cost you no money, and then start up a fake book account. And then like something that a 12 year old girl likes. And then Instagram, Snapchat, everybody goes, Oh, well, you might also like this. Right. And then, just to kind of make the numbers easy, let's we'll use round ones, a predator knows that he's got to talk, he's got to try to connect with 100 girls, to get 50 to connect with him, to get 25 to talk to him, to get 10 to have a meaningful conversation, to get five, to do something they regret, to get two to agree to meet him, to get one to actually show up. And that one girl's worth on average, about $93,000 a year in black market money. So he's not paying taxes on that. Right. And he can run three to five girls at a time. So the internet is what created that problem. And that that's how we got here. Then what do we do? We give kids access to gaming consoles that have internet connections that allow predators to get on companies like to get on games like Roblox, which is one of the biggest defenders. And then pretend that you're a predator, you're a predator, you're a predator, you're a predator. And then pretend like they're somebody else. There's been a number of experiments that have been conducted. And they said that within 15 seconds of showing up on Roblox, a child will will see some type of nudity that actually would be regulated in the physical space do what they shouldn't see. Within 15 seconds. Yes. On Roblox. A child can see what would otherwise be considered regulated. Yes, Jared Ranere: the lobbies. Steve Trang: It's just lobby based. So then it's I'm a kid. I'm joining this because cool. I mean, I guarantee you have actual Jared Ranere: we got we got we got data that Roblox doesn't want us to have. And this is a massive scale because like just on Roblox alone, we've got we so we have a list of confirmed accounts on Roblox. Now many lines are on that list. Jesus, over 400,000. The commercial sex advertisements where these where these kids are in these, these. These victims are advertised these different websites, right? Like it used to be Backpage.com. Now it's a number of them. I'm obviously not going to say which ones because I don't want to drive traffic to them. They're predominantly outside of the US jurisdiction, right? So nothing the US government can do about it. We collect those advertisements at a massive scale on average about 75,000 a day. Right? So we're bringing those in, we have our own engineers, we have our own supercomputers, and we're distributing this data, thanks to the generosity of donors to over 8000 law enforcement officers across the United States. Steve Trang: Well, just real quick, where can people donate for that specifically? Jared Ranere: So that's just deliverfund.org. And that's a deliver d e l i v e r fund, f u n d.org. And, and deliver is, you know, deliver me from evil, deliver the orphans in the rescue, right, Psalm 82. And so what we do at deliver fund by by providing this data to law enforcement, right? People think with my background, the way that we're fighting human trafficking, like, oh, you must be kicking doors and stuff. It's like, no, not because I don't know how to do that. But because that's not scalable. And we have a massive scale problem when it comes to the fight against human trafficking. So it's not a matter of like, some guy who used to be special ops is like, I'm gonna go be a hunter now. Like, no, it's like, it's it's providing the data to the law enforcement officers who are actually doing this. And, and if the government came up with money for this, like, let's just say, all of a sudden, the government put a billion dollars towards the fight against commercial trafficking in America, we would never want to pay for that as taxpayers. Well, but the defense contractors would come in, and they would build all the tools that law enforcement needs. But there's no money for law enforcement to be able to actually solve this problem. So that's why there is a lot of money we just don't use. There's no money that's dedicated to this problem. And so, so we just stepped in and said, Okay, fine, we're able to start solving these, these law enforcement problems. And so what we do, we do three things we equip with technology and data, we train, because you got to teach the cops how to use the technology and data. And then we advise, which is a fancy way of saying we give them intelligence on traffickers. And what that allows us to do is our analysts, because they're actually doing task force operations with these law enforcement officers, they get to stay on top of the pivots that the the traffickers are making in the market, right? They're no longer doing this, they're now doing this, they're, they're advertising miners this way. not this way anymore. Right. And then that information goes to our engineers, our engineers automate that. And then that goes to law enforcement and that cycle just continues to go. Cause there's, there's a lot of law enforcement organizations across the country. They're doing a great job in this regard, but there's also a lot that are woefully behind just like the one that Cody was talking about earlier. Yeah. The, the guy that was saying that, Oh, did, can you believe, like, we just got a briefing today. Can you believe that they're using Bitcoin? It's like, it's like, no, they're actually using the narrow now, but congratulations. You you've graduated to 2012. Yeah. This is, this has been a thing for over a decade. So it's, it's a big problem. Federal government needs to come up with money, but in and like, that's a, one of the solutions, but the other solutions are industry. So I actually wrote a pretty lengthy paper on this. So you can go to 10 points. That's T E N points.deliverfund.ai. And you can see like, there's, there's 10 opportunities to disrupt any illicit commodity sale. Nine of them sit with industry. So one, those victims should never be able to be advertised on the internet in America. Anyway, can't really do anything about those websites because they sit outside of the U S jurisdiction. Well, the next is the phone carriers, specifically a company called cinch and then another company called bandwidth.com. So what they do is they provide these burner phone numbers, right? And they provide these burner phone numbers, right? And it used to be that the burner phone was a, you know, prepaid phone that you could buy at Walgreens or whatever. And it was your anonymous phone. Now it's all VoIP. So it's all software. So it doesn't fall under the same rules as the, this phone. Like you can not go to Verizon and walk out with a piece of hardware with a phone number attached to it without showing an ID and Verizon knowing who you are. You can do that through software apps that you're familiar with. You can download from the app store. So then what happens is law enforcement will try to subpoena that phone record. It goes to a bandwidth.com or cinch or somebody like that on boy. And then they, they are like, well, we sold it to, we sold that number rent or leasing that number to this app company. Now they have to subpoena that app company. And then the app company is like, oh, well, we're allowing this organization to use it now. And it just goes on and on. And so what's the solution there? The solution is that we need, to apply the same FCC rules that we apply to the, the, the regular telco industry to the VoIP companies. And we need to not allow them to sell those numbers direct to consumer without ID. Right. And one of the things that, and I, I can already hear the privacy people in the comments just shut up and let me finish. I was going to bring it up. I was like, because I guarantee you experience like to anything it is. Hey, well this, and it is that. So anonymous transactions are allowed in America. And are constitutionally protected as they should be gun dealers. I can buy a gun with cash. Can I buy a gun with cash without showing an ID? If it's private sale? Yes. Can I, but can I sell that to a minor? No, there you go. So now I understand the impetus on me and there's a lot of gray area there, but the point is, is that the, the telco industry is a regulated industry. So I can't buy tobacco without showing an ID. I can't buy alcohol without showing an ID. Why is it that I can buy a burner phone number on an app for 99 cents without some, without that company knowing who I am? And I'm not, I'm not saying the government should know who I am. The only way the government should know that I'm using that, that number is if there is a subpoena signed by a judge, right. And I have, and they're actually going to collect that information. Right. Which is just like basic fourth amendment level. Yeah. So there's a difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy says you have it's no, it's not the government's business or anybody's business. What it is that I'm doing anonymity says I have no ability to have consequences for my actions. Right. And license plates are a great example. Your license plate on your car gives you privacy, but it doesn't give you anonymity. If you're in a hit and run, right. And you kill somebody. Well, law enforcement has the ability to track you down and try to figure out what happened, but it does your license plate doesn't tell the government, like what you did last Tuesday. Right. And so the, one of the things that we have to come to terms with in America is the difference between privacy and anonymity. Which I like what you said about the, the, as long as there's a warrant signed by a judge, like it's still due process. It's not just like mass surveillance. It's just the ability to, if we accuse you of committing a crime, which would we have reasonable suspicion that you have done, we have an ability to find out who. Yeah. Bank accounts are a great example, right? I mean, personally, I'm, I'm of the kin that you know, that income taxation notice I said, income taxation is theft, but it doesn't mean that we should have anonymous bank accounts, right. Cause anonymous bank accounts, like we tried that for a little while and it didn't work. And we had this massive organized crime problem in America in the fifties and sixties. Right. And we had this massive organized crime problem in America in the fifties we've got the banking privacy act and different, uh, AML and KYC rules that got passed in. Okay. Well now the bank knows who's putting money into the, into the bank and what the source of funds are. It's not a perfect, it's not, it's not perfect, but it's, it's better than we had it where we didn't have that. And so you can't have a, uh, you can't have all the benefits of a, uh, a polite and safe society and not have any rules. And that's where we are on this issue. And so the, the burner phone issue is a great example. You don't have to, um, actually pass a new law. You just have to make the existing law apply to this software technology because this software technology didn't exist when the law was written. Like that's it. So it's not a policy change at all. It's just closing a loophole. And it's a loophole that companies like cinch and bandwidth.com are making millions and millions of dollars on. And the price, is children like it's, it's the innocence of those children. And if I can already counter the devil's advocate, you know, they would say something along the lines of, oh, well, uh, you know, semi-automatic firearms didn't exist when the second amendment was, was written. Sure. It's like, okay, well, a, that's not the spirit of the law. Like it shouldn't matter what kind of firearms, but B firearms are a constitutionally protected natural, right. You know, it's something you have a natural right to defend yourself and to, to, you know, have your own property and everything like that. And you have a right to it's constitutionally protected. Whereas this, what you're proposing is still falling in line with what is constitutionally protected because you're talking about, okay, it's still not violating your right to privacy. You're, you're right to be secure in your possessions against unreasonable searches and seizures because you're still following due process. Right. And there's, there's also like there, there should not be a government registry, just like there shouldn't be for firearms. There shouldn't be for, for phones. However, when the government, when we, we, passed the government, right. The one thing the constitution says that the government is supposed to do is defend and protect, right. It's the one positive Liberty to the government. So when the government is trying to do its job of defend and protect the government should be able with the proper paperwork and the proper fourth amendment procedures, go to the phone company that runs that number and say, who has that number? Because they were just sending, yeah, they were just exploiting a child, right. Which, you know, the federal government has that shit anyway, like in today's day and age, not, not on the burner phones. They don't, it's actually the biggest problem we have in the child exploitation fight. I'm saying it depends on how, how high you go up the ladder. Sure. Sure. Like they have the ability. It's not making it to the County detective. That's my problem. Yeah. It's like your County government doesn't have the ability. It's like, there's you climb that ladder high enough. There's nothing they don't have. They're just not giving that information. Right. And, or there might be actual rules against you using those technologies on us soil or something like that. Right. But that doesn't mean that they couldn't give them to, it doesn't mean they don't collect it. And it doesn't mean that. Yeah. So the point here is that we have, we've made it so that predators can have direct access to children anonymously. And that's a problem. And that's why we have, we've, that's why we have problems like the seven, six, four group on, on, uh, on Roblox, which is literally a satanic cult. That is they're, they're not money motivated. Their motivation is getting children to cut like the, the numbers, seven, six, four onto like their chest, um, trying to get them to commit. Like that's their currency. They're actually trading in this stuff. And so we have to like, we can't just say, okay, we're, you know, we're not going to allow, um, this stuff to happen on Roblox anymore is a great example because, uh, the only way to do that is for Roblox to be able to say, okay, we know that this account belongs to Brandon. And we know that this account belongs to Nick. And so when law enforcement shows up, then they can tell law enforcement who it belongs to. And right now they can't do that. And I think for, with, with companies like Roblox, it's by design. I mean, it seems very clear, like the way that their company has responded to a lot of this stuff that it, they don't want to solve the problem. No, because that would mean friction in signups and frictionless signup, frictionless account creation. Is what's leading to everything from a lot of the problems we're dealing with in, in politics to the, lack of discourse in our country right because other countries are doing this to us as well so what human traffickers are doing to you have the russians doing at a very large scale right within our social media platforms but roblox can report more daily active users never mind if 60 of them are bots and you know another large percentage of them are so when we we look at at this internet anonymity issue right the burner phone issue the fact that these can just set up these accounts at will that's the ultimate upstream problem on why we're dealing with this trafficking pandemic in america and that's what we have to start solving and so at deliver fund we're solving that working directly with law enforcement we work with a lot of industry partners as well but we do it all in a way so that it's all donor funded yeah so Nobody in the government, and we have had this happen where people call us and say, hey, maybe you don't look behind that door. And we say, oh, that's really interesting. We're going to go look behind that door. That sounds like the kind of door you need to look behind. Yeah, we don't have any hooks into us. So that's what we're doing to fight the trafficking epidemic. And it's working. It was a side project that got way out of control. I've got to give shout outs while we're on the Roblox thing. Again, we talked about this a little bit before, but our attorney general, Ken Paxton, for the state of Texas, being, I think, the first to actually go after Roblox specifically for that. Yeah, and there's a number of other attorney generals that then followed suit. And that's great, but is that really going to move the needle on the problem? You're talking a multibillion-dollar publicly traded company, right, that their price-to-sales ratio last time I checked was like a 13. I mean, they're a tech growth story. They just last year switched from a small-time LLC to an actual – they tried to get away with, oh, no, we're a small company. What are you talking about? Yeah, you're a publicly traded, very large – You're making billions of dollars. That was last year. Yeah. They were forced to switch their LLC and how they were filing because they were just – Just too big. Worrying about taxes. They're like, no, we're not. And you're like, homies, you guys are publicly traded. You have a currency. You have an actual currency in your game. Yeah. It makes billions of dollars. What the fuck are you talking about? Well, and what's crazy about that, then, one of the things that they try to defend themselves with is they're like, oh, these are just a few cases that slipped through the cracks. Oh, no, all these lawsuits are proving that this is not just a few cases that slipped through the cracks. But why is – And I think it was part of their own team, too, right? Their own developers. Oh, yeah. Their statement. I've showed this clip with Papa Meat at Meat Canyon talking about it. Yeah. He reads a statement from the owners and the board, and they're like, well, you know what? We're making money. What's the problem? Well, because wasn't it – it was some of their own people. Like, I don't want to go into, like, the defamation territory because this is just what my understanding is. Oh, it's okay. I got the actual quotes written down right here so we can just read them. So you can just do it for me. Because it seemed like people that were on their team were, like, participating in this. So, yes, that has been well documented. But really, at the end of the day, like, what's the CEO's view on this stuff? Like, the CEO's name is David Bazooki. What is his view on this stuff? Well, let's ask him. So he was on the Hard Fork podcast. Which is – this was November of last year, right? So this is relatively recent. He was on the Hard Fork podcast, which is like a – it's a New York Times podcast. And he was asked about the predator problem that was coming out around Roblox. And he said – and this is a direct quote. I'm going to read it. We think of it, it being the predator problem, not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well. What the fuck was the context of that? How do we – How do we allow young people to build, communicate, and hang out together? That was his response to being asked about the predator problem, right? What the fuck? Yeah. Bazooki. Oh, absolutely. Bazooki at the September 2023 Roblox Developers Conference. So where all of their developers, the people who make these games, where they all get together in one conference, right? He's the keynote. And so September 2023 at the Roblox Developers Conference. And then he continued to do it in 2025. He said – and this is a direct quote when he was making his predictions about the direction that the company is going to go. So at the Developers Conference in 2023, he said, Thousands of 17-plus users will meet for the first time in Roblox dating experiences and subsequently form real-life relationships. Last time I checked, 17-year-olds were minors. Is he American? He is Canadian. What are the rules in Canada? That's where Mr. Swirls – I'm sure you've read that story. Oh, well, I know about that fucking story. Canada let him go. Yeah. Three years, and homie was the most notorious in the world. He was like a legit child. But this company is headquartered in Silicon Valley. It is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. This man and his company are completely subject to U.S. jurisdiction. So I just think – and it's one of the things that one of my early mentors at the agency told me. He said, if you listen to what the enemy says, they will tell you what they're going to do, and you should believe them. Right? And in this case – That's why I listen to the World Economic Forum. There you go. He's telling you – like, he's saying all the quiet parts out loud. In July 2023, in an interview with GameDaily.biz, Buzuki was asked, If Roblox would ever allow nudity on its platform. Keep in mind, the major majority of users on the Roblox platform are under the age of 13. He knows this. He knows this, right? Like, he knows who his players are and who his users are. And you know what his response was when asked if he would ever allow nudity on the platform? He said, I would never rule it out. Didn't you already say that, like, you're possibly 15 seconds away, like a child's 15 seconds away from regulated – Related nude content? Yeah. His direct quote was, I would never rule it out. And they went on to say, Based on the company's long-term view of mirroring real-life activities and enthusiasms while also maintaining safe boundaries. And they went on to add that getting to that kind of stuff probably isn't in the short term for us, though. Right? Oh, good. So then, he was asked, also on Hardfork, about gambling for kids. And if you go watch the interview, you'll see the Hardfork interviewer said, like, well, like, it's not like you'd ever allow gambling or something like that, right? You could tell he was totally trying to give him a softball. And Bazooki's response was, he said here, direct quote, he said, that's a brilliant idea. It sounds very fun and obvious. I love that. And then you could see the interviewer was like, no, no, man. Like, like – On the record, like, I think this is a horrible idea. And then Bazooki doubled down and he said, he said, no, it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal. All right, let me back up. So, in this example, you're using an in-game, what is it, Robux or whatever the fuck, like, that currency. Which is tied to – That is purchased by U.S. dollars. Yes. Like, there's a credit card attached – Because Roblox has – I mean, Robux has an actual, like, an actual value, right? Right, because you have to buy it with real money. Right. And then Roblox takes, I believe, 30% of that transaction, right? So, that's how they make their money. So, here you've got somebody who has no problem with child gambling, right? Turning it into a dating platform for minors. Saying that no – Knowing that the majority of his users are minors. Saying that he wouldn't rule out nudity, right? That he wants to mirror real-life enthusiasms, which, like, that's weird. Well, it's – check this motherfucker's hard drive. Well, it's – Thank you. Like, I want to see that browsing history and I want to see that hard drive because I have a lot of questions, but – Christoph Waltz talks about this. When he was interviewed about his character in – No, no, it was – Inglourious Bastard. Inglourious Bastards. And he says, man, how did you play evil so well? He thought he was right. I just played it like my perspective of, oh, this is normal. This is okay behavior. That's why it's so foreign to him. He's like, oh, that's a great idea. Let me implement this. Exactly. Evil's not going to know they're evil. Exactly. They're not going to know they're exploiting individuals. It's okay for them. Right. And then you get statements like that where it is, holy shit, no, homie, like, what are you talking about? What a great way to grow the game, right? Right. Right. Right. Right. And so then they added these age blocks, which is part of the pressure that's come from the Attorney General lawsuits and these other private lawsuits that have been filed, but they still aren't showing IDs. What they're doing is they're using this age estimation software that's terrible. There's actually videos on YouTube of a kid who drew a face on a thumb with a marker and did the age estimation just doing that. Oh, wow. The technology doesn't work. It's freaking smoke and mirrors. There's another one where you can see this little kid. He drew a beard on his face with a marker and it estimated him at like. over 18 you have just for reference if you wonder your average i want to say counter-strike massive game like 10 million players actively daily and that's an absurd number that usually doesn't happen now you look at robux you have 10 billion registered accounts so more registered accounts than humans again right 10 billion monthly users 380 million daily 144 million active daily users and robux 40 40 are under 13 so 40 of us a what like 50 million then 50 million of the active user base daily is under 13 you're the asian oh my god i don't have my calculator and so we've got we've got documentation you are the calculator you're supposed to be at least drop went harder or whatever the fuck you gotta do you well it's like 300 380 million it's like that's the population of the u.s yeah that's so we we have uh we have documentation of people selling basically minor authenticated accounts so they'll they'll they'll sell them to right so uh so they they put in these age gates uh roblox did which i think was also saying the private the the quiet part out loud because on one end of the age of one group so you're allowed to talk like one group down and one group up so what that allows is it allows a 15 year old boy to have a conversation with a nine-year-old girl that he doesn't know and roblox has no problem with that they think it's absolutely fine and i have had conversations with so many people at roblox um and they all like just basically take this like well you don't understand the volume problem and they're like well you don't understand the volume problem and they're like well you don't understand the volume problem and i understand the volume of kids that are getting hurt and this is this is where i'm a boomer on this because i don't know shit about roblox outside of you know super like wavetop stuff and all the shit i learned through this uh there's i'm sure a lot of this is taking place like through dm features and stuff like that so it's taking so the the what parents so like let's get to kind of the meat of this like what do parents need to know a couple two couple things that parents need to know the the process is the the the trafficker right whatever they are because those are actually two different things but we don't get into the the minutiae of it the the bad guy meets your child on a gaming platform pretending to be somebody that they're not right so that's fraud then they off-platform them to discord something like that snapchat something like that um and and what they'll try to do is they'll try to do it through multiple different platforms so they'll send them a message on row on on roblox and then they'll send them a message on discord and then they'll send them a message on snapchat so it's really hard for law enforcement to tie all that together right and that's where our analysts and stuff come in and they do an amazing job of of tying that together for law enforcement and a lot of our technology as well so that's that's kind of the way that they'll do it and so they'll off-platform them and then they're slowly trying to get them to do it and they're trying to get them to do something that they regret that they can use as a handle to extort them and in some cases like in the 764 group which is like literally a satanic group that is trying to target your kids that is happening to every single child who is on a platform like roblox right who is on uh you know a discord server like they are in there and the currency is the kids and so they'll once they off-platform them they get them to do something they regret and it's like okay well now i'm going to get you to do more and i'm going to get you to do more and then it forks so on one hand the human trafficker wants physical control of that individual so they can rent them by you know basically by the 20 minute increment on the other side you've got these sick who want to control that child psychologically and get them to send photos and get them to do more and more terrible stuff in the case of the 764 group they're trying to get the kids to kill themselves and to kill themselves on camera like that is their ultimate goal and if they i hate we can't like youtube kill them well yeah that but youtube i do hate we can't talk about this without getting fucking we have to then skirt around the words and the verbiage sure because then and i don't want you to i'm just saying i some of this you're gonna have to cut i totally get it no we're gonna keep it it's just we have to we hate that we have to censor or skirt around this so it hits the masses which is a whole other problem like so at deliver fund we don't have a tiktok account you know why we don't have a tiktok account because we talk about trafficking and tiktok doesn't want you talking about trafficking right we got to be very careful about what we say on our youtube channel and what we say on instagram and whatnot that's why these like all these podcasts saying the same thing is so important is because you can't uh like you parents need to know this stuff kids need to know this stuff and more importantly our policymakers need to know this stuff so they can actually start getting to the bottom of it and and actually start regulating this i mean there's there are there's not a reasonable argument why an 18 year old boy should be able to talk to a 12 year old girl who's a stranger there is no reasonable argument for that and anybody who thinks that's a reasonable argument wants to defend that like i want to check their browsing history in their in their hard drive right because they're probably in on it and and so we we have to start actually taking these problems seriously and saying okay like children are being abused and being exploited at a rate we have never seen before we understand exactly why in our data that we have at deliver fund i can tell you exactly what companies what they're doing how how they're they're working this and i actually have gone to so many of these companies and said hey your phone numbers are being used for child education um one of them the ceo and i are even in in the same kind of like economics group and he doesn't even have the common courtesy to respond right another one i've sent them i mean i sent them tons of information like spreadsheets of information don't even respond uh and then we'll go check those numbers to see if they're still up and they're still up they don't take any action uh it's the same thing on the advertisements it's the same thing on social media and so that's the problem that we're solving and that's the problem we collectively have to start working together to solve just really quick so it is clear like we cut and censor this the best we can to deliver it to the most people the most yeah people we can otherwise if we just left as is no one's gonna see it unfortunately so that's why if there's bleeps or how it's specifically cut is to reach the masses it's not us censoring it's like oh we care about advertisement we don't we don't give a it is youtube will kill our reach youtube will kill the algorithm then nobody sees it that's the thing it will throttle it and that's i want you all to understand that of everything going on or the beeps or anything that's why which is one of my many problems with the algorithm and the way that a lot of not just youtube but like a lot of corporations run things is because they're it's they're trying to solve a problem and they think one step ahead and not three and the one step is oh well that's a sensitive topic we don't want people to talk about it on our platform and then the same effects of that is we're warning against it and we're trying to show we're trying to expose this stuff a but show what people can do about it to help with it to keep people informed and because that information doesn't get out more kids get over yeah and if that's the long term if youtube was serious or Meta or any of these companies if they were actually serious if the words that came out of their mouths meant something they would actually create their algorithm in such a way so that it promoted this kind of content to get it in front of as many people as possible to warn them and they would even be creating their own content to put in front of people or at least don't penalize it right but the fact that they're penalizing it makes you ask a lot of questions about why they would do that and I've got a lot of because they've got to sell ads to Nabisco yes this really is the short the short uh answer to that yeah not calling out Nabisco specifically I'm sure you're just as corporate as anybody else but Nick where before we move into just this uh the the after show because we are I know everyone's on a restriction and I do want to ask one question that will go on the after show I want the kidnap story like and that's how I'm gonna leave that because now everyone's like what the kidnap story you were there was a situation where it escalated where you're maybe it's not is it there was all the the thing you wanted so like how we're gonna end this so we'll cut this piece right yeah but it's there was something that escalated I was reading or maybe it was just like random information there's like kidnap or escalation when you were overseas oh uh yeah so uh oh so like the the one that I tell in the real Jack Ryan uh documentary uh so that's kind of a funny story um and it just goes goes to show how like things just go wrong in the most random time so well before I went we're gonna hold on that for Patreon but uh where can everyone find you or your information so the best way to find me is uh is just by by following deliver fund I'm not a big social media guy I put some stuff out every once in a while for the most part I'm putting out deliver fun stuff so it's just at deliver fund on every platform where you could find it you can learn more about me by going to nick mckinley.com uh so if you if you need to get a hold of me for whatever reason that's the best way to do it and then i'm personally on all the social accounts at the.nick.mckinley and that's n-i-c spelled correctly uh the two nicks that's right there's two of us um yeah just the.nick.mckinley on all the social platforms and for anybody who uh this resonated with like we we are a non-profit we got to raise the money to keep our servers and supercomputers and engineers going uh year-round and and the financial support is really the thing we need the most and for law enforcement who heard this and is like man i really need to reach out please do you are the reason we exist if you don't take action and you don't do something at all of the work that we're doing is you're not going to be able to do it. for not so if you're law enforcement please reach out we can help you we can give you access to our platforms we can give you access to our data we can train you on what to look for and how to do these operations so so please uh please let us help okay fantastic well seriously thank you so much for coming thanks for having me appreciate it hope to be on again oh 100 anytime you're gonna be a homie homie yeah anytime brother brandon close this out you beautiful son of a bitch all right well thank you guys so much for joining the unsubscribe podcast i was joined today by eli double tap nick the other nick both spelled with a c and myself bro nut bopperator thank you guys so much and we will see you in the next one in the after show oh yeah at harmony bank we believe that better happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank 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