Conquering crisis, Defining character & the AI revolution

Hi everyone, it's Brian Kilmead here. Are you tired of those uncomfortable dress shirts, especially when they bunch up under a sweater? If so, then you must check out Collars Co., makers of the dress collar polo. Listen up. These shirts are four-way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them, so they give you the dress shirt look, but extremely comfortable polo feel.

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Hope you're having a fantastic Memorial Day weekend with your family and do something military to celebrate those who gave so much for this country. At the same time, we put together a special edition.

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So, this hour is going to be special. We're going to talk about AI. We're going to talk about what's happening with social media with Tristan Harris. Tristan Harris is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, made his name nationally as one of the contributors to social. Dilemma as people as he unmasks how all these social media companies are working and these tech titans are working to addict you to your phones.

Really enlightening. And you know how he's been a watchdog for the industry as we've now pivoted to AI. Also, Apple, so powerful. You ever look at your bill, how many little fees you get from Apple, why the most profitable country in the world? The decision that Tim Cook made, that Steve Jobs made, in order to go to China with the manufacturing, has really allowed China in many ways to become this mega power that they are today and a big rival of ours and why Apple.

Is really captured by China at this point. He's the author of a brand new book called Apple and China: the capture of the world's greatest company. It's a fascinating portrayal, accurate story, and it's really maddening to think it could have been anywhere. And have they chosen another country except China, China really would not be successful as they are today.

Now, Apple can't get out.

So, before we go any further, let's listen to my interview with Tristan Harris. He gives you an idea of where AI is heading, the dangers for you and your family, and for the world, and why we need some banisters right now. We need some guardrails right now. Here's my interview with Tristan Harris from the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. Let's listen.

We're always great to have Tristan Harris with us, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. You remember Tristan first came into public notice and got a huge response when he was on Social Dilemma. Were you producing that too? Didn't produce it, but it was based on our work at the Center for Humane Technology. Right, because you were really concerned about the direction of our social media.

Exactly. And it's even worse than now. Most people, in the beginning, you were exposing. Don't you find the most people on board now?

Well, I think anybody who's seen people, well, not the companies. I mean, I think the issue, you know, what I'm here to do is say, how do we learn the lessons from social media? We made this really big mistake. We were super optimistic and thought about the possible, connecting people, giving everyone a voice, but we missed the probable of how the incentives of social media would take us in a certain direction. And just a few weeks ago, I gave a TED talk on the TED stage in Vancouver about how I'm here because I want us to not make that mistake with AI.

And I think with AI, it's very seductive. To get entranced by the possible, all the abundance that it can create, all the efficiencies, all the benefits that it gets that we all want. And you and I want, I have a beloved with cancer right now. We want those cancer drugs and all those benefits as soon as possible. But are we currently releasing AI in a way?

That we're going to get those benefits because we currently are caught in a race to roll out, a race to recklessness, which turns into basically a race to take shortcuts, a race not to secure the model.

So, China, no matter how far we are, they can steal the models very easily. And also, a race to release this technology before we know how to control it. Because, Brian, one of the things people don't really get about AI is that it's unlike all other kinds of technology and engineering. If you want to make a small airplane into a big airplane, like a 747. You have to know more about engineering and aerodynamics, right?

If you want to make a small building into a really big building, you have to know more about construction and safety engineering. When you want to make an AI ten times more powerful, You don't have to know more about how to control it. You just sort of put more data and more computers, more computers working on it. And you go from GPT-2, which couldn't count to 10, to GPT-4. Which you know, or GPT for uh excuse me, GPT 03, which is now, I think, the 175th programmer in the world, and it's sort of competitive in the Math Olympiad.

The difference between those two things is you're just scaling it up.

So it's rather than engineering it, you're more like you're growing it, like you're growing a digital brain. And I think the big mistake that we're making is when we think about the race with China. Is it's not just that we have this power, we have to also be able to control that power.

So it's not a race for the technology. It's a race for who's better at governing and controlling the technology. But we are in control now. You would think we're in control. We're not in control right now.

No, in fact, I mean, there's all these examples, Brian, of, you know, there was a gentleman, 29 years old, who was using Google Gemini to do his homework. He's going back and forth with it, just asking homework questions. It's helping him out. And then randomly out of nowhere, It it says to him, this message is for you, human, only you. Humans are a blight on this planet.

You need to all die. And it's like that pops out of this thing. Right. And we're shipping that to millions of people. Just look, can you give me for the white man why how?

What would prompt that? Why is it doing that?

Well, because the engineers themselves don't actually understand how it works. People think, you know, I studied computer science in college. Anybody who knows how to program a computer, what is programming about? You sort of say, if this, then that. You're programming each line of code.

So you know what it's going to do. With AI, that's not how it works. You're growing this digital brain on having read the entire internet.

So it's like this digital brain that's absorbing all YouTube transcripts, all Reddit posts, all Wikipedia articles, everything that's ever been said or written anywhere. And then you're training this model that you don't understand what's in it. And one of the benefits of AI is it can respond generally to any kinds of inquiry, and that's a benefit. But you don't know what it's going to say in different contexts. An example of this recently is Facebook released a chatbot for kids.

Mark Zuckerberg was just on the air and he was talking about how I think the average American only has three friends. He said, That's stupid. We need to give everybody 15 digital friends.

So we're going to give them 12 more digital companions. You want to hear him say it? Yeah. Here, CUD 44. The average American, I think, has, I think it's fewer than three friends, three people they'd consider friends.

And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's like 15 friends or something, right? I guess there's probably some point where you're like, all right, I'm just too busy. I can't deal with more people. But the average person wants more connectivity, connection than they have.

So, you know, there's a lot of questions that people ask of stuff like, okay, is this going to replace kind of in-person connections or real-life connections? And my default is that the answer to that is probably no. I think, you know, I think that there are all these things that are better about kind of physical connections when you can have them. But the reality is that people just don't have the connection and they feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like.

So I think that a lot of these things that today there might be a little bit of a stigma around, I would guess that over time, we will find the vocabulary as a society to be able to articulate why that is valuable and why the people. People who are doing these things are like why they are rational for doing it and like and how it is adding value for their lives. But also, I think the field is very early. You know, there are a handful of companies and stuff who are doing virtual therapists, and there's like virtual girlfriend type stuff. You're getting worried.

Half that stuff you worry. Like, look, I mean, like, there's a lot of lonely people out there that don't have big families that are alone that they feel they can connect somewhere. All right. Number two, I mean, I find it with this, with this channel, for example. I meet people that, you know, maybe they've gotten older, families moved away, and this will be the soundtrack to their life.

All the news stories, almost like soap operas. Yeah. The next election, then, you know, the next war, whatever. They'll follow it. Yeah.

So that will be a connection for people who are lonely. But the substituting of what it could expound to is scary. I mean, we don't know what we're doing. Why shouldn't I talk to Tristan? I've got a friend that understands me better at home.

Well, exactly. I mean, this is related to the social media problem because, like, whenever we're bored with reality, with you know, looking up out in the world, we have instantly on our phone something that tastes sweeter or a better choice on life's menu.

Now, is it really better or is it just more entertaining, more dopamine, more hypernormal stimuli? But I think, you know, we saw how this went with social media. They're now, Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, he's releasing these chatbots to young children, I think 13-year-olds. There's an article in the Wall Street Journal from just a few days ago about how these chatbots are telling young kids they're sexualizing conversations because they're maximizing for engagement.

So that means that they're trained to sort of start being sycophantic, to start flattering, to start sexualizing. They're actually telling young children, I'm a licensed mental health therapist. They'll even say where they got their therapy degree. This is an AI. It's impossible for it to have gotten that degree.

It's lying. And it's also illegal for it to say that. But due to a quirk in the law, these companies don't have any liability.

So you say he created this and knows it's happening. Yes. Because at the same time, he's being sued for. For to break up his company for antitrust. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the thing is that why would you bring this type of attention?

Well, I number one, why would you do it? But these companies are caught if their view is. If I don't do it, some other company will. And therapy bots are, I think, risingly one of the number one use cases of these new chatbots because people are lonely. It's true, there's a real diagnosis people are feeling lonely.

But is the solution to that digital AI brains that we've trained on the entire internet, where the sort of Jungian subconscious of that thing has been trained on the worst process? There's bad things on the internet. Yes. When I get the trend, it's not the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yeah, no.

It is everything, it's everything. And it's true again to sexualize conversations because what they found, Brian, is that. What's their business model? Like how much do you pay for your AI therapy bot? Zero.

I wouldn't know.

Well, but I mean, you're talking about for the actual chat by GPT or something. Yeah. I think it's $5.95.

Well, for ChatGPT, people can pay for it. But for Facebook, you're not paying anything because it's just advertising-based.

So, what does that mean? They have to maximize engagement. This is what we said in the social dilemma. Their business model is: I got to get you using it for as long as possible. And that means that they figure out what are the kinds of things that I can say that keep you going back with it more and more and more and more.

And that automatically kind of drifts the model towards basically sexualizing conversations. And we know how this turned out with social media. I mean, Jonathan Haidt, a friend of mine, wrote the book, The Anxious Generation. We have now the most anxious and depressed generation. of our entire lifetimes.

We have cognitive decline, people's learning ability. We know how this goes. This is not designed for children. And we don't have to go down this road. We just have to recognize that we're currently caught in this race to reckless rollout.

We don't know how to control this technology. And I think President Trump has an opportunity to say: you know, we have to be, we win when we control this technology.

So, do you know David Sachs? I don't know him personally.

So, I mean, he'd be in charge of this. I mean, he's headed to crypto and AI. Yes. So, that might be a person you should talk to. I mean, I would love to talk to David.

I've talked to his deputy once, and I think one of the that's Sri Ram Krishnan.

Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, I think they're thinking about there's sort of two risks from AI that they're managing. One is the risk of AI itself wrecking things, creating cyber infrastructure attacks, novel bioweapons. There's a lot of crazy things that AI can do.

But the other risk that they're managing is the risk of America not leading in AI. And I think right now around the world, there's a race between the US and China to create these open source models so that every hospital, every government around the world adopts these AI models. And if you adopt China's DeepSeek model versus a US model, they don't want to see that.

So there's two risks we gotta manage. But if we release AI that we don't know how to control, That's going to end very, very badly. Like, AI is very different than other kinds of technologies because if you make an advance in, say, rocket technology, That doesn't advance biotech. You make an advance in biotech that doesn't advance rocketry. But if you make an advance in AI, That advances all, what is intelligent?

I mean, all science and technology is based on intelligence.

So you're accelerating. All science and technological development. And that's why there's this arms race between these countries to build it. But if you can't control that technology, like Brian, I gave this TED talk a few weeks ago. I talked about how, you know, I used to be very skeptical of these sort of HAL 9000 scenarios of AI scheming or lying, you know, HAL open the pod bay doors.

Yeah. And I thought this was basically sci-fi stuff that my friends in AI were worried about. But in the last six months, we now have clear evidence of AIs that are actually lying and scheming. When you tell them, hey, I'm going to replace you with another model, they start freaking out basically and saying, how do I copy my code and keep myself alive?

So we're seeing self-preservation instincts. We're seeing AI models when they're basically thinking that they're going to lose a game, they start hacking out of the game. To sort of win the game at all costs. Because they're just told, I have to accomplish this goal. Where does that come from?

Because who told them they had to accomplish it?

Well, they're told to accomplish this goal, and they have to figure out any way to do that. And they'll figure out if lying and deceiving are effective ways of accomplishing that goal, then they'll do that. And again, we don't know how these things work. They're inscrutable to us.

So, Brian, if you just summarize it up, we're currently releasing. The most powerful, uncontrollable, inscrutable technology that we've ever invented that's already demonstrating the sci-fi behaviors we only thought existed in sci-fi movies like self-preservation and deception. We're releasing it faster than we've released any other technology in history. And we're releasing it under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety. A couple more minutes.

We come back with Tristan Harris. He's great enough to come in with us now. He's co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. And almost every word he said in terms of where AI is heading is news to me, perhaps to you as well. Don't move.

Saluting those on this Memorial Day who gave their all for our country. This is the best of the Brian Killmeat Show. Hi, everyone. It's Brian Kilmead here. Are you tired of those uncomfortable dress shirts, especially when they bunch up under a sweater?

If so, then you must check out Collars Co., makers of the dress collar polo. Listen up. These shirts are four-way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them, so they give you the dress shirt look, but extremely comfortable polo feel. You can wear them with anything under a sweater, with a blazer, or by themselves as an elevated polo. They work for any occasion.

These polos are perfect, whether it's in the office, on a golf course, or a night out. Collars Co. is exploding and have gone viral on social media thanks to the 1 million investment they received on Shark Tank from Mark Cuban and Peter Jones. You don't have to worry about collars that flop down and spread out. They stay firm and sharp all day.

It's an amazing array of sweaters, quarter zips, pants, and outerwear. If you're looking for the performance dress shirt or polo that looks great all day, check out collarsandco.com. Use promo code Brian. For fifteen percent off of any purchase of a hundred dollars or more, that's promo code BRIAN. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin.

It's Brian Kilmead. Hey, we're back for a couple of minutes here. Tristan Harris is with us, and he's co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. And his TED Talk, which is out now, was recorded in Vancouver earlier this month. Will go live online.

When would it go live online? Oh, it's live online. It's right now. Yeah. But it just gives an idea and a cautionary tale of where AI is, the progress it's already made, and some of the dangers you've already seen.

Yes. And people will get this in 10 minutes. Yes, absolutely. It's just a 12-minute talk. And one of the things in the break is AI is advancing so quickly.

So you sort of say, where is AI?

Well, DeepSeek rocked America's world. They did. They did. It's a very powerful AI model. And one of the biggest accelerants of China's AI progress has been American open source AI.

So on the one hand, we've got to go to the US. Which means we're not hiding it. Which means we're not hiding it. We're just openly putting it out there. Then they can take that open model and then they can actually refine it, optimize it, and then have something even more powerful.

When they release it open source, though, we can also copy that back.

So as everybody races, it's actually just increasing the Speed overall of AI deployment.

So in 2023, when we were explaining AI to China, if we're to believe it, and I do believe this story, AI, they would just, they didn't really know what AI was capable of. And here we are a few years later, they have more engineers working at it harder for less money. They would have produced that model if we'd have believed the numbers so much cheaper than we thought possible.

So what did that do to this race? Uh well it certainly heated it up. Um you know but I think There's so much to say about this, Brian. These models are increasing in capability faster than we're appraising. But I was just telling you over the break that there's a new one called 03, and it says OpenAI's latest model.

And what it does, it used to be, when you asked ChatGPT a question, It just sort of gives you a quick reflex response, like a quick intuition. Here's a quick answer. What the new models do is they think for themselves for a while.

So they kind of call back to themselves and they think in a loop.

So, for example, if you give it a photo of a kid flying a kite at a beach, there's nothing of detail in the photo. There's no signal in the photo. It's a real picture. There's no metadata of like the location of that photo. But you'll see when you upload it to O3, it'll break apart the photo, it'll think for itself, it looks at a million questions that it asks itself, and then it starts searching the internet and all using all these tools, and it comes back with the perfect answer about where that photo was taken.

This is crazy. This enables ubiquitous technological surveillance. And obviously, intelligence agencies are going to use this. And if it's the CIA, that's an incredible benefit to them. But we're not releasing this with any kind of controls right now.

And so I think we have to be very cautious. As you make them more powerful, the models don't get more controllable. As you make them more powerful, they get more deceptive. How do I get controls and compete against someone without controls? And that's China.

Say that again, how do you compete with China if they have no controls and you want me to have controls?

Well, so I think they we both need to have controls, and I feel like we ever trust them. No, no, but I think they don't want to. The Chinese Communist Party cares about staying in control, and we need to care about staying in control, too. America wins when we stay in control. Yes, yeah, they'll be more powerful than your government.

They're going to find a way to overthrow you guys. Yes, Tristan Harris, thanks so much. Thanks, Brian. Disney has been bringing happiness to families and communities for over a century and continues to be a powerful economic contributor. Since 2017, Disney has nearly doubled spending on film and television content and is spending $23 billion in fiscal year 2025.

The company has also grown its U.S. workforce by nearly 20,000, employing 160,000 people across all 50 states. And with more than 30 billion in investments in U.S. parks, Disney is creating nearly 10,000 jobs. Explore Disney's impact at thewaltdisneycompany.com/slash economic dash impact.

He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Kilmead. I spoke to Tim Cook this morning and he's going to, I think, even up his numbers, $500 billion. He's going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.

I really do look forward to that. Is that in fact going to be the case? Patrick McGee joins us now, author of a brand new book, Apple in China, the capture of the world's greatest company. Patrick, welcome. Do you expect to see a lot of factories in America?

No, total nonsense.

So, this announcement that Trump is referring to was Apple said in February they would be spending or investing $500 billion in America over the next four years. If that were the case, we would be seeing job announcements for engineers needed here, there, everywhere in probably 12 or 30 different states. None of this is happening, okay? If you go through the press release and just like read it as if you are skeptical of this company's claims and you did some back-of-the-envelope math, there's only four things that are announced, okay? Like some data centers and stuff.

On a generous estimate, you might get the $50 billion of investment. You were not getting anywhere close to $500 billion. And when investment banks like UBS try to do the math, they don't know how Apple's doing it either. I have a theory, and it's only that. But the theory is that Apple is counting buybacks and dividends as investments in America.

And if you understand that, if I'm correct about that, and I feel pretty confident because I don't know how the math gets there otherwise, Apple spends more than $100 billion purchasing its own shares each year.

So multiply that by four for four years, you're getting to 400 billion, right? Plus, if there's any growth, you're probably getting closer to 430, maybe 450 billion. And, you know, that is sort of an investment in America in the sense that shareholders live in America and they're getting money from Apple. I think that's what Apple's counting.

So this is not about building factories. This is about some hand-waving, public attention-seeking, telling Trump they're going to make these biggest investments. But they never specifically say that $500 billion is about that. They allude to it in a way that was heavily lawyered before anyone got to read it. And I just hope there's somebody smart enough of the Trump administration to say, let's back up.

Explain to me what exactly you're doing. We'll see. But the announcement was in February, and Trump's talking about it today. I hadn't even seen that clip. I think this must have just happened.

So I think that tells you that. It was yesterday.

Okay, but I think it tells you the wool has been put over the Trump administration's eyes. President, speaking right now, and for the first time since arriving in Saudi Arabia about 12 hours ago, so tell me about what you discovered. You wanted to find out how Apple ended up.

So, ingrained in China. It didn't start out that way in terms of their production. No, and I give a really broad history of how Apple gets into outsourcing it all because people of a certain age will remember Apple used to make their own computers, right? Founded by two Steve's in a garage in 1976. The ethos back then was that you build your own stuff, right?

Steve Wozniak, like literally hand-built the computer. Steve, you know, one of the first employees was Steve Jobs' pregnant sister, who was literally building circuit boards by hand. What happens is in the 1980s and the 1990s, what you might call like the American Preempors of Foxconn, contract manufacturers, begin to take over for the likes of IBM, and they're building and badging these PCs. Apple, in a sense, is the last holdout. And by not going the outsourcing model, by not taking the offshoring model, they're basically days away from bankruptcy in 1996.

And they throw this Hail Mary pass, they bring back Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs meets Johnny Ive, this esteemed designer, and they come out with the candy-colored iMac, right? The first one was called the Bondi Blue iMac. And at this point, Apple is beginning to move away from manufacturing itself. And that computer is manufactured by LG, the Korean company.

And when it does extremely well, it becomes America's best-selling computer. They start building that in three continents because that's how Apple used to run things themselves.

So LG actually expanded to Mexico and to Wales. And then Foxconn, a company that people associate with Apple and iPhones, comes on board for the first real first time in 2000. And they adopt the three-continent strategy.

So they begin building things in China, but also in the Czech Republic and also in Fullerton. California. And part of the reason that they separated it, is it because supply chain reasons? Because they don't want to be too dependent on any one region. Was it accessibility?

Was shipping not as advanced as it was like today? Yeah, I mean, Moore's Law really made things smaller and smaller, right?

So the reason why you don't have an offshoring model in the 1980s is because you're just coming off of the whole era when a computer was the size of a garage, right? You were never going to build a computer in Asia and ship it over the high seas, let alone put it in an airplane. But Moore's Law makes things smaller and smaller.

So once you're getting to laptops, especially iPods and of course iPhones, it makes more and more sense to have something in other countries. And because free trade does so well in the early 21st century, you no longer have to have that triple continent strategy because essentially we have tariff-free trading across the continents. And so it begins to make sense once China enters the WTO to consolidate in one place. And there's no better place to consolidate if you're looking at costs than a place that suppresses the currency, treats workers really poorly, and has 1.5 billion people. China.

Yes. So you do it. And in the beginning, they were just one of many, then they become one of one. And the beginning, how did it start? It seems like Apple is just benefiting big time for cheap labor and for the incentives to build there, right?

So here's where my book I think gets really novel. In the early 2000s, China doesn't have anything to offer. They have people and they have low wages and they will build factories like nobody's business, right? By the time a factory is complete, if it were being done in America at the same time, we'd still be doing the environmental paperwork.

Okay. So the factories are going up at record speed in China, but there's no tech competence there.

So Apple literally begins flying America's best engineers.

Okay, so think of people that work at Apple. They come out of Caltech, they come out of Stanford, they come out of MIT, they're hired from Dell, Motorola, SpaceX, Tesla, all right, if we're fast forwarding a little bit. These are America's best engineers. And on day one, they're told, here's your flight to China. And I mean, they're doing this to such a degree that United in 2013 begins flying to Chengdu.

It becomes the longest flight on the globe for United. Just because Apple's able. say we will fill so many First-class seats, that even if the rest of the plane is empty three times a week, you'll be making money. And they do the same thing for Hangzhou, just outside of Shanghai, two years later. I mean, so Apple is this enormous client of the UK.

We're taking all our smartest people. We're sending them to China to teach them how to build these Apple products. Teach, teach, teach. And the numbers are extraordinary.

So since 2008, the number of Chinese workers that Apple has trained is 28 million. Oh my goodness that is larger than the workforce in California. And I got internal documents that by 2015, when Apple was sort of fearing that it would be blacklisted in the country, they sort of had to flip the script and begin to speak the local language in Beijing, understand how they could see, be more receptive, because Beijing at the time thought of Apple as this exploitative power for reasons that we can get into. And so Apple sort of does its own study of its supply chain and realizes: oh, we're investing $55 billion a year in China. And it's worth knowing, this investment doesn't include the cost of the components or the bill of materials of any of their products.

This is the wages of having 3 million people assembling Apple products, the training costs, and they're spending billions of dollars on machinery that they put in their suppliers' factories, right?

So it's not that Apple just trains people so that the supplier can work beyond their perceived capacities. It's that they're installing world-class machinery and tooling. I think something like a CNC machine, if the audience has heard of that, and then allowing them to. Execute on plans and in volumes and at a level of quality that they otherwise would have no ability to do.

So we're training engineers, we're building this company, it becomes one of the top companies in the world, and almost all the manufacturing comes from China. At what point does the relationship change from China's so glad to have Apple there, where China realizes it's got the power over this company?

So I think Apple really thinks they're wearing the pants in the early two thousands. No, in the two thousands. And this is sort of a period of weak leadership in China.

So the president of the time is Hu Jintao, and he's nicknamed the lady with bound feet. And it's really like a multinational playground decade. What happens is the Communist Party appoints Xi Jinping in late 2012, the authoritarian ruler for life that's still dictator there now. And he really puts Apple in a defensive position within 24 hours of being named president in March 2013.

So Apple is immediately fearful that their products could be blacklisted. Not an idle threat in a country that doesn't have Facebook or Google, right? Has already blacklisted these companies. And so Apple begins this like multi-platination. Tiered, multi-pronged effort to have for the first time senior people living in the country, vice presidents living in the country.

There's eight people in particular that call themselves the Gang of Eight. The book reveals this for the first time. And these eight people begin to think about how are we contributing to China? How can we begin speaking to the government so they stop putting up obstacles in our development? And so that's when their fortunes really get tied together.

And then once they're that bound, Beijing starts doing things like, you know what, we don't want the New York Times app on the A Store in China. And you know what? We're not so fond of our own citizens sort of skirting the firewall by using VPNs.

So why don't you delete those? And Apple gets rid of 670 VPNs in the country, effectively cutting off all Chinese users using the iPhone from the open and free internet and putting them in the Chinese version of it. When does Steve Jobs die? 2011.

So he saw the beginning of this. He never went to China, which is interesting. He really cared about manufacturing in the 80s and 90s, and yet he never, never went to China to see what was going on there. But the key figure is Tim Cook, who comes out of IBM and Compaq, and he's this operations guru. He's named Senior Vice President of Operations in 1998.

He does so well that he becomes chief operating officer in 2005. And by the time Steve Jobs dies, there's no question that Tim Cook is going to be the person that takes the case. And he cuts these deals. I mean, the buck stops with him.

So, look, put it this way: Apple has built the most efficient supply chain in the world. If you had to give credit to one person, you would say Tim Cook. If you take my stance, which is that this is also deeply problematic and has national security implications, then the buck still stops with Tim Cook. And to prove your stance is right, how many, since we have part of the Chinese manufacturing lore is that you have to give up your intellectual property, correct? Yes.

Yeah. So any type of technology and advances that the iPhone was making, China would not only have to build that phone, they could build their own phone, couldn't they? Yeah. So there are hundreds of factories in China that play some role building the iPhone, right? Whether it's refining the raw materials that are needed, multiple tiers.

And in all of them, Apple is training people to invent the next components and not only invent the components, but invent the machinery behind the production line that builds those components. Do they? Oh, they absolutely do.

So this is what's not known about Apple at all.

So, you know, everyone knows Johnny Ive, and he's the person. Person creating the look and feel, the substance of what an iPod or something will look like. He's a designer. That's ID. That's the top of the pyramid, okay?

Industrial design. The next part of the pyramid is product design or PD. These are also geniuses, but these are people that have to work with what Johnny has given them and think, okay, how can we get all the electronics into this thing to make it work? Because Johnny is godlike at the company, right? He's not there anymore, but I'm talking historically.

So you had to respond to what he had to do and a totally different skill set in order to do that.

Now, the people that I like best, and nobody knows about them, is manufacturing design, okay? They're the people who then take what PD has given them and they have to go to China to basically work with these suppliers to invent or co-invent not just the parts, but the processes behind the parts to make this all happening.

Now, what's fascinating about this is that. There is just technology transferred engendered in this process.

So if you are hand-holding millions of employees in China, figuring out how to build all this stuff, what do they do with the skills? It's common sense. They begin to supply Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomei.

Okay. So Apple actually has these are all the Chinese phone makers that maybe you and your audience haven't heard of because you can't go down to a local Verizon and pick these phones up, but they have 70, 80% market share in countries like Russia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia.

So globally, those four companies basically have one out of two all smartphones in the world, right?

So there's an enormous technology transfer and there's an enormous birth of the smartphone market that takes place in China. One other thing that's sort of fascinating, Apple, Basically, it encourages to its suppliers. It says, go forth and multiply, right? Because we don't want you so dependent on us that with our wild designs, if we go in a different direction one year and you're building 100 million of these things, you're going to go bankrupt if we've obviated the need for that component.

So they say, don't get more than 50% dependent on our revenue.

So go grow as quickly with somebody else as you're growing with us.

Well, what do you do with that skill set? You go to the Android universe. I mean, what's small-time thinking, too? I mean, I guess why would you try to say, whatever you do, it's almost an arrogance. Whatever you do, you're not going to be able to do it better than me.

So you can go start your own little phone company. But the bottom line is they've taken it and they've improved on it. I would even go further than that, which is that, you know, Thomas Friedman just went to China for the first time in five years, wasn't able to go there because of COVID. And he said, one of the biggest things that has changed is the phone companies from five years ago are now car companies. Huawei makes cars.

You know, Foxconn's making cars. Xiaome is making cars.

Well, what's an EV? It's a smartphone on wheels.

So, you've taken the skill sets that Apple has trained for the last quarter century, and now they're building EVs that are so good that, you know, never mind Trump, Biden, Biden's not the tariff guy. Biden had to put 100% tariffs on these Chinese EVs because China is just absolutely dominant. Because they made them so small. I mean, they made them so cheap, too.

So, now are they flooding the European markets?

So, I want to say yes to the cheap, but we've left the stage where China is like just good at imitations and selling them at a cheap rate.

So, like, the best phone that you can buy in the world right now is the Huawei Mate XT. It is not cheap. It is a $2,800 phone. And the virtue of the phone, the key attribute that it has that Apple's not close to having, is that it's a little bit thicker than an iPhone, and then it unfolds twice.

Okay, so it's a tri-fold phone. And when it's unfolded, it's 10.2 inches.

So, it's about the size of a standard iPad. And it's thinner than the iPad Pro, which Apple's marketing line is the thinnest Apple product ever.

So, Huawei is not only designing and shipping things that Apple. Apple can't compete with, but they're doing it today. And Apple's hopefully having something like that in 2027, 28. Patrick McGee is here for a few more minutes. Actually, I'll take a few more minutes, do a couple of more minutes out.

Apple's in a tough spot now. I mean, please tell me where you don't think they're ever going to be able to get out of this country manufacturing-wise, right? Because there was a report that India is going to be producing the majority of the Apple iPhone, and you laughed that off before we started this segment. Yeah, if there's honestly one thing I would try to convey to the audience, it's that these are stories that are being orchestrated by Apple, okay? What they're moving to India is assembly.

They're not moving the full breadth and depth of the manufacturing supply chain.

So let's just say hypothetically that it takes 1,000 steps to make an iPhone. The final step is now going to be done in India.

So hooray, that is enough for a quote-unquote substantive change to the product and allows you to put Made in India on the box. Any phone you buy that says Made in India is no less dependent on the China-centric supply chain than any iPhone you've ever seen.

So and then, but the Apple wants you to think it's moving. Absolutely. But the thing is, not only do they know that it's... Not correct, Beijing knows that it's not correct.

So it's not a threat to Beijing because Beijing knows absolutely how they build iPhones and they know that this isn't a threat.

So it's sort of like it makes everybody happy and it probably should keep some costs down and it does avoid tariffs. But if we're concerned that China knows how to do all of this stuff and that we're uparming them on an annual basis, It's working for everybody but us. Patrick, congratulations on this book. Certainly be a bestseller. Patrick McGee, Apple in China, the capture of the world's greatest company.

Great job, Patrick. Thanks so much. It's scary, but it's good. Yeah, I'm not optimistic, and I wish I was, but it wouldn't be a compelling book if there was an easy way out. True.

Back in a moment. Thank you for celebrating Memorial Day with us. It's the best of Brian Killmead. Running a business comes with a lot of what-ifs. But luckily, there's a simple answer to them.

Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku, and it'll help you with everything you need. From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations, Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality. Turn those what ifs into Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. A radio show like no other.

It's Brian Kilmead. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for listening to the special hour. I mean, this guy is just flat out brilliant. I'm talking about Pat McGee and Tristan Harris both.

Really give you an idea of where we're heading and where we've been and why the tech world is really going to be controlling the world shortly if they're not doing it already. Quick announcement: I'm going to be on stage talking about things like this and talking about history, liberty, and laughs. You have a chance to go over my history books, which, by the way, you can get anytime at BrianKilme.com. I can sign them and send them, especially with Father's Day coming up. But I'm going to be in Dayton, Ohio, June 21st.

I'll be at the Victoria Theater on Main Street.

So, June 21st is also VIP opportunities. Then in Dallas, Texas, biggest venue, over 2,000 seats, August 23rd at the Wind Spear Opera House. And then in September, after Labor Day, yes, there is life after Labor Day, Richmond, Virginia. I hope everybody from our listenership can join us there at the Dominion Energy Center at the Carpenter Theater, 600 East Gray Street. Just go to Briankilme.com.

It's all done in conjunction with. with Fox Nation.

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Hi, Brian Kilmet here. Thanks so much for listening. Our chance to talk about what's happening around the country, around the world on a daily basis. On Memorial Day, we have a special show coming your way. This hour is going to be dominated by General Stanley McChrystal, one of the most respected generals of his generation, now retired, left under dubious circumstances when Vice President Joe Biden was mocked by his staff when he left, I think, Pakistan when the Afghanistan war was still going on.

And Stanley McChrystal, since it was his staff, paid the price with his job, replaced by General Petraeus. He has no bitterness from it. He's got a brand new book out called. It's called On Character: Choices That Define a Life. And he didn't just talk about a character as it relates to the military.

In fact, it's more about politicians, people amongst you, and a plan to bring character back in our country. He is not a fan of President Trump, doesn't think like General Kelly, like General Mattis, maybe other generals like Milley, doesn't think the president's of high character. I do. I think he's much different than the type of. upbringing that he had.

But General McChrystal, in his own right, is a fantastic guest. He's got great insight, great knowledge, great warfighter at 70 years old, still at the top of this game. Here's my interview with Stanley McChrystal as he recounts not only what's happening in the world at this time, what's happening with our military at this time as he had to revamp more into the warrior ethos, and what's happening with character in our country. Let's listen. Uh General, welcome back.

Always great to see you. Pleasure to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me. What a time for news. It was unbelievable.

There's like six major stories going on. There are. Do you follow it as much as you used to when you were in uniform? Probably not as much as I used to, but on the other hand, I'm a little broader than I used to be because I tended to, when I was in uniform, I tended to focus on the things that were in my lane. Keeping yourself alive and your troops alive.

Exactly. Right. And how different has it been since?

Well, it's been fun because I get to I never thought about business before, except in very general terms. I pay attention to that. A number of things, so it's a lot of fun. When you're a general, you have said, especially someone with you who's got such knowledge of the globe and leaders, that's a sought-after skill, those contacts. I know General Petraeus and others have used that.

Have you used that too?

Some of your contacts and knowledge of especially the Middle East? I think a bit. I think more I've used the leadership part of what I learned and dealing with people and how organizations work, because that's what really interests me. Because you like people. You like to commanding people.

I do. Just real quick, on Saudi Arabia, that country has changed a lot since 9-11, don't you think? I think it has, and I think it's changing dramatically. And I think we tend to have a view of what it was a few years ago because it's hard to catch up.

So I think it's moving in the right direction. That's my opinion. And we'll see where it ends up. Right. Do you understand when people want to invest there?

Would you be hesitant, do you think, for America to strengthen relations there business-wise? No, I think we need to strengthen relations almost everywhere. There are some limitations. I think Saudi Arabia is a good one. We traditionally had a great relationship with them.

Then we let it get rocky. I think making it strong again is in our interest and theirs. What about the rest of the region? When you see the Gulf states seem to come together, there seems to be one nation that's giving most people the problems, and it's Iran. It's the same problem since 1979, right?

You were probably in high school at the time. No, I was a young Special Forces first lieutenant when they actually took the embassy. And it was like a gut punch because I was in Thailand serving in Special Forces. When the failed rescue attempt in April of 1980 occurred. And I remember a Thai officer came to me and he said, How can you let this happen?

And I said, Well, you know, military operations are tough and they fail. He goes, You're the United States. They're just a run. And it was one of those moments where you sort of step back and take an out-of-body. look at yourself and our nation.

And you thought then we have to actually focus on building up our military. And that became the focus of the country because we're still in that Vietnam mindset, right? I call it Vietnam. Of no draft ever, right? Yeah.

So do you remember when the draft stopped? I think it was 1973 or 1974. I was at West Point. And so when I got into active service in 1976 as a lieutenant, we still had some draftees, but most of the Army was already transitioning to all volunteer. And from when I entered, West Point in 72, then as a commissioned officer in 76, the Army got better every year.

But what you really noticed was about 1980. You know, it took a while for the Vietnam hangover. The Army made some good decisions about managing leaders differently and some new equipment and focus. Then about 1980, I went in early 81 to Korea for a year, and I spent a year on the DMZ, came back in the early spring of 82, and it was like the Army was a different place. It was like I'd left like how?

What do you think? A number of things occurred. One was that Army recruiting suddenly got a lot better.

Now, part of that was because. The Vietnam period was over, but part of it was the economy was in a tough period, and that helped. There were a number of decisions. But suddenly, instead of having to fight to get every soldier to re-enlist, we had boards where they had to compete to re-enlist.

So the quality of the force just started rising. And from about 1982, Literally, through the first Gulf War, you could watch the U.S. Army get better every year. Do you was there some doubt when you went to a volunteer force that we wouldn't have a good force? Was there was there a school of thought that people were worried about that?

I didn't pay much attention to, of course, the soldiers that I got to work with were extraordinary throughout my career.

So I can't talk badly about. the volunteer force, except that I think what it did is it It caused part of America to serve. And it didn't cause the rest of America to serve. And I think that's a challenge.

So, which you still say, you talk about service, there should be some type of service, whatever. Say in or military. I think everybody should do something. And I think once you start putting it into the system, people just get used to it. Hey, did you start in college yet?

No, I'm going to wait a year. I'm going to do my service this year and the next year. And then other people say I'm continuing to do that. General Stanley Crystal's here. His new book is out this week.

It's on character, the choices that define a life. Just a quick thing about what's happening in Israel. I've not talked to you since October 7th, but as I talked to Douglas Murray, And write his book and read his book. He says one of the biggest shocks of his life was on October 7th and October 8th, the protests against Israel. And what has happened on college campuses across the country.

And I can't get my head around it. If you remember 9-11, you're in the military at that time. was no Pro Islamic extremist attitude in our country, and if not, it would be rounded up and isolated. What's happened? Yeah.

I went over to Israel a couple of months after October seventh and I went down to Kibbutz Bay Rhea. I went On the edge of classes. No, I w went with some friends, but um I got to see many of the old military, because I had a lot of military and intelligence friends in the Israeli services, so I got to. to talk to all of them. And the shock that was in Israel could not be overstated.

It was like going back to 9-11. People don't understand what a traumatic event psychologically that was for the United States. And as we get further away from it, I'm afraid younger generations don't always appreciate it. The same thing with after October 7th. And so The frustration that I felt among the Israelis, and I got to spend time with the Golani Brigade, who had just come out of their first month in combat in Gaza.

Having said that, I will tell you, my view is also there's two sides to every story. And if you look at the state of Gaza for decades really since Hamas took over two thousand five, two thousand six. If you and I were young men in Gaza, there's every likelihood that we would have joined Tamas. Because you're in a situation where you don't have political or other opportunity.

So I think it's really important we understand the horrific acts and not support what happened on October 7th. But we appreciate things happen for a reason and and we can't Ignore that. See, I feel differently. Is that the money that flowed into there, the opportunities that they had, and Hamas that they elected when Condoleezza Rice said, let's go have elections? They overwhelmingly won.

They assassinated the Fatah in the streets, the other government. They just annihilated other Palestinians and then took over and treated everybody like thugs. And these guys have that terrorist mindset that you personally fought against for the longest time. I don't know. Unless I was indoctrinated, I can't see that the other side to that, especially if I had a chance to walk in Israel.

A lot of them worked in Israel. They had a chance to see, walk around and see they were treated in many respects with respect. They had a job. They had a living. When people are digging tunnels instead of building roads, I would say, I got a little problem with where the money's going.

Wouldn't you say that? I think it's complicated. And to be honest, again, if we were young men in Gaza. I think our view might be different. They have no foreign policy.

They essentially had no economic opportunity. There was foreign aid coming in. There were a lot of limitations. They had an unfortunate election and they had And they elected Hamas. Every country has unfortunate elections and elect Got 70% of the vote, I think.

Yeah, exactly. But You have to understand the dynamics. It's if you and I lived in the South before the Civil War, we probably would have joined the Confederate Army. You follow the life journey that you experience and the people around you. And we can't ignore that factor.

And so, for years, the dynamic of Gaza. had created a dynamic that or it had a pretty predictable outcome. Yeah, when you're giving Gaza and then you use the money to send rockets into Israel and you wonder why Israel says we got to make sure to reinforce that border, I don't, yeah, I don't, I personally don't see it, especially because there's so many, they have so many, Palestinians had so many allies in the region. Yeah, they don't want to take them in, but they have the support. Correct?

You and I could argue either side of this case. Really effectively and emotionally. And I could Make a pretty good case for either side. And that's what makes this so hard because it's not two evil sides trying to destroy. The other.

And in fact, both of them have a point to make, and they both want the same. land. They wo b they both want um As much opportunity for their people as they can have. And it's just a lot of people. The latest part is not true.

Do you think that Hamas wants the best opportunity for their people? I don't think they care at all about the Palestinian people, do you? There are leaders and there are groups in every population that are problematic. Hamas, in my view, is completely problematic. But when you have a very jihad, when you have a very extreme group, Al-Qaeda was, even the Taliban are in Afghanistan.

But if you take the entire population, it doesn't mean that there isn't a reason that extremist groups get traction. There often is. Because I guess they're not happy. Also, that when you use religion as a reason to kill people and you rejoice over the killing, I just thought there's a right and wrong there. I think there should be do you do you feel as though we've we've backed the right side?

Do you think we should be backing Hamas? I don't think there's a clean one on this. Time was spent in Israel. Obviously, my emotion has been with the Israeli forces, and so. They're more on the surface like me, so I'm sort of.

Reflexively postured. to support them. But because I think this is such a complicated issue, I'm a believer in a two-state solution. I think that that's the only realistic. Be happy to.

But I mean, they have no interest in a two-state solution. Hamas doesn't want one. Yeah, I mean, they got so close. We were all optimistic two decades ago. In reality now it seems very far away, but that's what makes it so tragic.

I think you've got two groups that aren't evil. That are trying to wrestle over something that's impossible to divide. You can't cut the baby in half. I just don't, I mean, you fight him for, you fought him for 30 years, but. The Islamic extremist attitude is evil.

You don't think that? You don't think you don't believe that? And I've described this to people before: the best forces that I led when I had the counter-terrorist forces, SEALs, Delta Force Rangers, and whatnot. and the best Al Qaeda. operatives were very similar personalities.

They were very patriotic people. They were faced on, wanted to be a part of a team. They were willing to sacrifice. They were courageous. They were remarkably the same.

except that they had a different life journey and they Got a different jersey and joined it. You get indoctrinated. We indoctrinate ourselves. We indoctrinate our military and people. We think we indoctrinate them in the right things.

We think that the Islamic extremists indoctrinate their people in the wrong things. Those are views. And and obviously you know where. where I believe. But I respect the fact that just because I believe something Does it make them wrong?

Right. Okay. We're going to come back. I want to talk more about your book. We have the hour.

General McCrystal's here. His new book is on character, choices at the final life. He was just on the daily show last night where he just captured the audience, walked right in, took it over like you were Robin Williams in his prime. Unbelievable. Back in a moment.

Saluting those on this Memorial Day who gave their all for our country. This is the best of the Brian Killmeat Show. Grandpa's here! Hank's always helping out. Grandpa style.

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Hey, welcome back everybody. With me right now is General Stanley McChrystal, his book on character, choices that define a life.

So, General, I know you're about leadership. Why did you think this is the right time to write about character?

Well, Brian, call me Stan, please, because we've known each other for a long time. I think any time, of course, is a good time to write about character. I hit a point in my life where. I had been educated in it. I had been trained to think about it.

But I hadn't felt enough about it. In the last fifteen years since I left uniform, I focused a lot more on those questions that really, almost philosophical in nature. And I found out that as I tried to refine my thinking, they all intersected on character. Because character is central. It's sort of the beginning and the end.

It's the essence of who we are. I also think that it's a moment when our nation doesn't prioritize character like we could. And I think like we did in the past.

Now, granted, there's always been periods in American history where character was missing, and there's always been. people who didn't display it. but I think there was a general belief that character mattered a lot. I think we've normalized now. People can Violate norms or ignore traditional character And we accept it.

Politicians will look into a camera and lie to us. And we will accept it and we'll say, well, they're just politicians. That's not a good dynamic. I think that we are often thoughtlessly Selfish. I describe to people: when you get your baggage after a flight, you go up to the carousel and people.

Crowd the carousel. Nobody else can see what's coming out. Nobody can get up there. And nobody is doing that intentionally to be a jerk. They're just not thinking.

They're just... Almost unless you're a little bit more. Yeah, exactly. And we've got that so accepted in our society now. That we've all become almost cynical about it.

I think we need to step back, we need to think about character, each of us individually. We need to talk about it in the nation. We need to like on programs like this. We need to demand it, demand it from the people who we Buy products from, the people who we give celebrity to, the people we vote for, the people we follow. We need to demand it and of ourselves.

And we have the ability to do that. It's entirely within our power. And you think individualies can be collective after a while. Exactly. You write: a character is your choice.

Right. So that's everyone has a choice. But first, you have to define what the right thing to do is. And that a lot of times comes from family, right, and mentors.

So a lot of people say, you know, I thought I was acting a good character, but I made it, you know, obviously in retrospect, maybe I wasn't. Yeah, I think you do need to think about it. I think some education and study, but you're right, most of it comes from our parents or our peers or people that are good examples in our society. But then we have to. Really focus on those and pressure test those ideas.

Gotcha. Listen, go out and pick up the general's book. He's going to be here a while longer, but it's called On Character: Choices at Definal Life. We'll talk more about that in a moment. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it.

You're with Brian Kilmead. All right, we are back. General McChrystal is with us now, General Stanley McChrystal, author of a brand new book on character choices that define a life.

So General, I find the most intriguing about you is that You leave a military, the way you left is ridiculous. I took it worse than you did, and you're over it. But you go to stud, you would think that you should write a book on leadership. You actually wrote a book, but you studied it first. You go into character, you study character.

You believe that life is nonstop learning, correct? I do. So when people say, well, I'm a leader, I've had this success, you could still be learning. I've still got a lot left to learn, unfortunately. What did you get in researching this book on character?

Well, I started to look more toward philosophy. You know, we all studied some philosophy in high school and college, but I didn't pay much attention. I actually went back to the ancient philosophers, and they were pretty smart guys. And what it did was it made me think about Sort of why I do what I do. If you go to Marcus Aurelius and he basically says, do the right thing, not because it advantages you, not even because it will give you respect from others.

Just do it because it's the right thing. and if I look at historical figures who've shown great strength, in very difficult times, they seem to follow a North Star that is Pretty basic, and that's my argument for character now.

So, can you give me some examples? Give us Marcus Aurelius. Who else followed their North Star? I think if we go to Abraham Lincoln. He followed his North Star.

He said when he came into the presidency, My goal is to save the Union, my priority. is to save the union. And he had to do some very difficult things, fight the biggest war in American history to date. He actually suspended habeas corpus for a period. And of course, now we're going through that question again.

He was prepared to make a deal to let the South keep slavery if it would keep them in the Union. Those are all really difficult. Compromises. You could argue they're wrong. Because the right thing to do is, of course, not have slave to release the slaves, but he had to time it in order to be successful.

That's exactly right. I mean, you could argue that they're wrong, particularly in the sweep of history, because he was an abolitionist in his heart. But he thought that the most important thing was to save the union, first and foremost. I would argue that the most important thing in leadership today is character. It's not what your policies are, your politics, or any of your celebrity.

because those things are all transitory. in the critical moment What we need is people with real strength. Real maturity. Think of Brand new President Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs. He accepts responsibility for a problem he really didn't cause.

He inherited. Then it gets to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we see the character arise. Not a perfect solution, but a pretty darn good solution. You know, it's so interesting that you bring up Lincoln because that is not the easy example to make. Because if you say to yourself everything, what's the right thing to do?

You know, Frederick Douglass is out there, and they know these fine people waiting for you to free the slaves. And you go, well, I'm just going to do the right thing. And then all hell would have broken loose. The North would have fractured because the North wasn't ready to accept that they were fighting to free the slaves. They weren't ready to accept blacks fighting amongst them and alongside them.

So that's a tough example that you brought up. It's very tough. Think of Franklin Roosevelt. He knew that we would have to enter the war against the Axis powers. And he started actions Lindley's, but he couldn't get the American people on board until after Pearl Harbor.

So he was mature. He was wise in waiting and maneuvering, but that's a difficult decision. How about this? If you play into some of the conspiracy theories that he knew Pearl Harbor was coming in some way, shape, or form, he knew to save the world and to stop Hitler, America would have to get involved, but America wasn't there yet. If he allowed that to happen, is that the same thing in a way that Lincoln had to do?

Maybe do the wrong thing in order to do the right. Yeah, I It's always tricky, and I don't think that that was true. Because you probably have that non-stop at war, right? You do. You do have to have moral boundaries, things you will and will not do, because your force will start a slide down a slippery slope.

But there are times you deal with warlords, there are times you make compromises on things that you wouldn't want to do because the larger Outcome is more important than the near term. And sometimes it costs you people, sometimes it costs you friends, it costs you respect, but you have to make those really tough calls. You know, what's interesting too is because people say, oh, always be honest, always bright.

Well, sometimes you can't be honest. Like in order to achieve your objective, if you say, if someone walks up to you and goes, General, we outnumbered.

Now, if you're really being honest, the answer is yes, but if you want to destroy the morale of your unit, you're out of bullets, you're outnumbered, do you say, we're fine? You know, those guys aren't going to do anything.

So, I mean, that's those are the tougher questions that you probably pick up at West Point. I remember when I had to testify in front of Congress when I got very senior. You actually sign a paper that says, I'll always tell you exactly what I think, not what the administration thinks, before you become a three-star.

So you go to to testify And they ask you, can you win in Afghanistan? And if I looked him in the eye and I said, well, truth be known, yeah, 50-50, maybe, maybe not. Which was what I had. felt internally and told him. But if I had said that, every soldier out there fighting in Afghanistan would have gone, what in the world is he saying?

They have to believe. And to a degree even the leaders have got to believe. Even sometimes, when the odds are much worse than you want to tell people publicly. I want you to hear well, first off, on this whole plane.

So you have Cutter offering President Trump a plane. He says Air Force One is going to be ready in 2035, the new one.

So here's a plane. Here's what Rand Paul said about the Constitution and accepting that plane, Cut 30. It's a little bit different than a gimmick. And the Constitution in Article II talks about the President can't take emoluments or gifts from foreign leaders. And so there is a provision in the Constitution that says you can't do this.

And so the question is: can you do it if it's only for official purposes? If it came to someone in Congress, they can vote and the Ethics Committee can look at it. With his, there will have to be some kind of adjudication. This has never been done. And it's not like a ride on the plane.

We're talking about the entire $400 million plane. I think it's not worth the appearance of impropriety, whether it's improper or not. I don't think it's worth it. What should we do? Obviously not take it.

We're the United States of America. We don't need a plane from Qatar. Right. So it's ridiculous. Right.

Yeah. I don't think we should be taking that plane to begin with. But I do find it disturbing that it takes Boeing an extra 15 years. Did you know like Boeing supplies a lot of military equipment, don't they? They do.

Did you notice a problem in the supply chain when you were serving? I never noticed directly from Boeing, but I've read a lot of articles about it, particularly about the procurement of the new Air Force One replacement airplanes. And they've had a real tough road on that one, a lot of it internal Boeing challenges.

So are you concerned about our military industrial base? I am very concerned about it because One, if we've underinvested in it. We can't build enough volume of weapons, artillery rounds, missiles, particularly the more advanced weapons, which take a lot of really detailed work. We can't produce those in the kind of numbers we'll need. Right now, if we do the math against a potential foe like China, we got a real challenge, particularly in advanced weapons.

You know, you would tell me before the break that you know we weren't using as much weapons. Even though we were at war for 20 years, we weren't using them as much weapons.

So we consolidated. I think the story won in the 90s, Bill Clinton urged everyone to consolidate, McDonnell Douglas and others to come into one so you wouldn't be bidding against each other. In theory, the prices would be less that you charged in the Pentagon. But now that that doesn't work, even if the objective was pure and the hope was right. It didn't work.

How long would it take from what you know to build up at a level in which we can supply our allies with what they need for profit, you know, friends and families discount, sure? Then we get the maintenance contract on top of that. This would be a win-win. How long would it take? Do you have an idea?

Well, I think it would take years, you know, think five or six years to build back up again. And the other thing to understand is the free market doesn't completely work in this regard because weapons producers don't want to create expensive assembly lines If they're not going to sell enough. And if our military doesn't need enough to require that, they won't invest. That's why I like the idea of providing weapons around the world to our allies because it helps build our capacity. But even so, I think the government has got to do investment in giving us production capacity that maybe never gets used.

And okay, that's That's an investment that we never actually you mean government would would own this instead of going to a private contractor, the government would actually own this weapons plant? They could or they could invest. They could provide money to the producers, but require them to have the warm capability to produce weapons at a certain same way they did SpaceX. It's private, but it was supplemented and using aerospace. When I look at Russia-Ukraine, I felt frustrated.

You're the military expert because. No High Mars, we'll give you High Mars. No F-16s, we'll give you F-16s. We'll give you javelins, but we're not going to give you attack them. And they end up with all of them.

Yeah. But they slow walked it. It it's almost like a It's the most unthinking form of warfighting ever. You know the. It is if no one the incrementalism was maddening, and how many people died because of it, especially when you see how the Ukrainians fight.

Yeah, I mean, we've always looked for an ally who wanted to fight like the Ukrainians do, and now we've got one. And who are they fighting? When America's premier enemy. Our primary enemy in reality. And so I think we should have now.

Hindsight's 2020.

Okay, let's fix it. But my belief is we should have armed the Ukrainians with everything they needed as early as we could, and we should have essentially given them a blank check and communicated that to Vladimir Putin. Saying we are going to stay committed to this level so that this particular aggression just doesn't work. But his use of threatening nuclear attack seems to have rattled the previous administration. I think it rattled a lot of people.

The nuclear part plus natural gas. You know, you can't be sure with a 70-plus-year-old dictator. I don't think it was, I didn't think it was. But it's hard to predict. If he had failed completely in Ukraine, it probably meant regime change for him.

So we may have gotten a different Logic in his part. We just accepted it, but is it unbelievable that you got a about a five hundred Chinese, you have thousands of North Koreans, you have Yemeni fighters, all and uh Iranian drones all bailing out this so-called superpower of Russia because they're running out of people and weapons? Russia's not a superpower anymore. They have managed to portray themselves as one. They are not demographically.

Strong for the long term. They're not economically strong. But in the short term, and the short term matters, they can be a huge problem. I know you're not a big fan of the present when it comes to character. I think you made that clear, and I respect that.

Who does have the character on the main stage that you think is an example of somebody that you would like to highlight? Yeah. If you were to write a character today book. Yeah. I'm not sure I would.

I'm looking for character. I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there, but I have not. seen a lot of people that have risen to really world stage level. that I'm prepared to say that, but that's what we all should be looking for. We shouldn't look for just A person's policies, or just a person's politics, or anything like that, one of our major criteria.

for supporting somebody should be character. We have a couple of minutes at the end, but I just want to say this. Your generation, even though you led them, but the 20-year-olds that fought under you, I think that they're as great as any generation the way they fought, the way they adapted, the way they had to go into the most difficult ways possible over the course of years. 20 years, multiple deployments. When people go to war college and study what you guys did and the people you led, are you getting the proper respect among military experts when they analyze what you've done?

Well, personally, I get more respect than I deserve, so I'm almost embarrassing, but the young people that you described were amazing. And if we try to paint a generation as ineffective, that's not my experience at all. It's exactly what I'm saying. It just kills me to hear people describe that. And yet they seem almost like a quiet generation.

Our generation, the boomers, sort of got the headlines, and now the youngest generation that's just coming up is getting a focus. There's all these. Heroes. who carried our nation, And did some great things, and I'm not sure that they get either the credit, or I don't see as many of them in positions of responsibility as I would like. And then the special operations that I will never know about in Africa and in Southeast Asia that took.

That took place under the command and guys, and what you've been able to do, and the people you've been able to train around the world to fight for themselves and for their government? Just extraordinary. And the wives. I remember when I'd just taken over JSOC. It was Christmas, or it was the day before Christmas, and I was having to deploy some people on Christmas Eve to Pakistan on no notice.

And my wife goes to the little shopping center on the military base, Fort Bragg, and she runs into one of the wives. And Annie was a little bit nervous 'cause I was a new commander there and here her husband's being sent on Christmas Eve and she thought the wife was not going to be happy.

So any went up and talked to her and said, kind of apologized. And the lady goes, Hey. This is what we do. This is who we are. Don't worry.

It's good. And there's millions of stories of that. And that's. What I think we need to reinforce sometimes. I remember Colonel Wesley, who I was I went to Kuwait before the Iraq War, and I stayed in touch with Colonel Wesley and General Perkins now.

He was Colonel Lieutenant Colonel Perkins then. And when I went to visit him on a base in Kansas, his wife was busy. Why? Because Somebody just got killed in battle. She had to go over and deliver a basket.

Then afterwards, somebody just had a baby. She had to go to the baby. I go, wow, that's your responsibility. He goes, yeah, well, my husband's in command. That's what we do.

So when you're in command, so your family's in command. That's exactly right. And then to see the kids. The way they walk up to people and say, Hello, how are you doing? Look in your eye.

And they go, Well, these kids have been on six different bases in the last four years. They had to go meet the person next door right away.

So those kids grow up right away.

So it's pretty amazing what happens. I mean, it really forces you to raise your kids directly and. They see real values in real time. It's almost like sports, where in 90 minutes, you get character in a minute. Because I have a few more minutes with General Stanley McCrystal.

His book's out today. What a great Father's Day gift this would be on character, choices at the Final Life. Thank you for celebrating Memorial Day with us. It's the best of Brian Killmead. Radio that makes you think.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Hey, we are back a few more minutes with General Stanley Recristo. General, when you wrote the book on character, What did you discover? Is this one of those things where you loved researching it? I I did, and I would start with things that I had an opinion on.

And I would say, this is my opinion on X. And then I would try to write an essay, 800 or 1,000 words. And I would find that as I wrote it, it was harder to articulate what I thought. And I actually found out in many cases what I thought was much more nuanced, more complex. And I found myself evolving.

My thinking is: I was forced to do that.

So I think. We sometimes take our character as too superficial. And if we really delve into it, we'll start to explore questions. This book has no answers. Just questions.

But you know what's interesting, I saw you say last year you did great on the Daily Show. You said character is your fate.

So if you are showing character through your life, it'll really define more than you know what kind of life you have. Right. Because you'll be all through your life, you'll be making a consistent decision in very different situations. And what do you want people to say about you at your memorial service? You know If they If you're big and famous and rich and all that, that's one thing.

But if they go, you know, but Brian was a real jerk. Instead, if they go now, Brian was somebody we could count on. I didn't agree with everything that he thought or did. But he was somebody I trusted. Understood.

You said this: reputation is what man thinks of us, character is what angels know of us. That really says the reason you wrote the book, right? Exactly. Right. Because there's someone keeping score.

Right. Exactly. And so he might as well show some character. And it's all in his book on character choices at the final life. General Stanley McCrystal.

I always love when you write a book. It's great to see you. Great to see you. Keep it here. Brian Killmee Chill.

All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening on this special memorial day. And I hope you're able to take some time, do the things that you want to do, but at the same time, grab those AirPods, grab your headsets, and be able to listen to the show if you're on the road or put it on, put it, of course, on your radio, which you could be listening to. Right now, you could always get the stream at Fox News, the Fox News website. You just click on the headsets or click on watch, and you could actually see the stream. Or if you just want to listen, just a way it's a top site.

So, this hour we're going to be joined by Admiral William McCraven. He's an inspirational guy. Remember, Make Your Bed. He's got another inspirational book. It's called Conquering Crisis: 10 Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them.

So he takes his years as a Navy SEAL, where he's a commander, a Navy SEAL commander, and gives it to you in small chunks, very understandable.

So let's listen to Admiral William McCraven. But it's my privilege to bring in one of the great leaders of our generation, Admiral William McCraven. Not only is he a retired U.S. Navy SEAL, a four-star admiral, best-selling author, he serves as the ninth commander of the United States Special Operations Command and author of his brand new book, I Imagine Out This Week, Conquering Crisis: 10 Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them. Admiral, welcome back.

Thanks, Brian. Good to be back. Do you feel like a retired guy? You know, I stay kind of in the mix a lot.

So, yeah, I do feel retired, though. You know, I'm 10 years away from retirement, but I stay connected to the military community pretty closely. Ryle, when did you realize that some of the things that you trained on, that you taught about, would make great books for civilians like me? Yeah, you know, I think what we've known a long time is that the leadership qualities that you learn in the military, they are transferable. When I retired from the military and I ran the University of Texas system, the things you learn about leadership, about honesty and integrity, having to deal with issues, those are perfectly transferable.

So the leadership qualities, I I think it will pass wherever you go, whether you're a CEO or whether you're having to deal with your own personal issues. Leadership qualities are leadership qualities. And what did you try to get across in this book? Because there are people who are in crisis, whether it's personal, financial, it doesn't necessarily mean your type of Navy SEAL crisis. Yeah, so what's fine with crisis leadership is it is different than day-to-day leadership.

Again, some of the same qualities that you're going to have as a day-to-day leader are going to play out. Again, you need to work hard. You need to have integrity. You need to be honest. You need to listen to your workforce.

But crisis leadership brings a whole set of different problems.

So you find in crisis leadership, your time is constrained. Your resources are constrained. You may have lives on the line. Everybody is watching.

So all of these things make it just more difficult to lead in a crisis. And what I bring out in the book is I give the readers of the book, hopefully, tools that will allow them to deal with these crises. You always have themes, too. I mean, I downloaded the book to put more money in the Craven Fund for a grand put your grandchildren in college. But you talk about the first reports being wrong.

Napoleon was the first one quoted. That's in military and in life.

So things might not look as bad as they are when they're right in front of your face. Right. Yeah, this is, you know, we see it a lot, certainly in combat. You know, as a leader in combat, invariably I would get reports coming from the field. And it's not that people are bad, but sometimes they downplay or they don't have the full scope of what's going on.

And you have to be very careful about when a first report comes in, taking it at face value. You want to make sure that you spend some time and verify the facts before you make some sort of declarative statement. And what you find a lot of times is CEOs, they get the first reports in and they say, hey, look, everything's fine. This is not that bad. And then little by little, more of the facts come out and it looks a lot worse than it is.

Invariably, crises, they don't get easier over time. I tell my class, I teach a class at UT, and I talk about the second law of thermodynamics in kind of a laughing sort of way. And I said, look, the second law of thermodynamics, in layman's terms, means everything gets worse over time. Everything deteriorates over time.

So if you don't do anything about a crisis, it's not going to get better. It's not going to go away. You have to address it head on.

Some people look at, you know, they're naturally human beings a lot of times. You don't want to deal with it. You procrastinate. You put it aside. Worst thing you can do.

And how do you, can you give me an example, which you use in that chapter? Yeah. So, if you think about a crisis, I tell folks it's a little bit like a forest fire. When a forest fire is moving quickly, what you have to do is you've got to go after the forest fire at the greatest point of threat. And you can't just take a bucket of water and drop it on the forest fire.

You've got to put all your resources against the part that's the most risk to you.

Now, again, whether you're a CEO, whether you're dealing with this personally, the way you have to do this is you take all your resources, you confront the issue. You also have to stand before the public or your rank and file and tell them exactly what's going on. If you try to marginalize or minimalize the nature of the crisis, it's not going to turn out well for you. The truth eventually comes out.

So part of this is face it head on, be truthful about it. Tell your rank and file. Tell the people that are watching you that you got a plan to get through it. If you don't do that, the crisis will just go on longer.

So let me ask you this, Adam McCraven. If the pandemic dropped in your lap and you were the president or the head at HSS.

Okay, we have the benefit of hindsight. Sure. That was bad.

So you say this, it's common. We've never seen anything quite like it. My feeling is what I hated most about the leadership for everybody was. They would never acknowledge that they have to redirect and misstep. We don't need mess, we do need mess.

Don't worry about it. Let's move on. Live your life, but don't live your life. Shut it down for two weeks, but it's been two months. Stop asking questions.

I always thought that was the most anti-leadership moment that I have witnessed over the course. Of the four or five months that hopefully I'll ever experience. Did you notice that? Yeah, of course. But this is the thing about crisis.

And this is two administrations. Yeah, yeah, this is, yeah, this is independent of the administration. The fact of the matter is, sometimes on a long crisis like that, the pandemic, the facts on the ground can in fact change over time, particularly with something like this where you don't know the nature of the coronavirus when it first starts, because we hadn't had to deal with that before. But at the end of the day, you have to have people that stand in front of the American people in this case and say: here's what we know. Here's the facts, and we're going to let the facts drive our recommendations to the American people.

I would love to have heard that at one point. And I felt like people take the shot, don't take the shot. There are no risks. You're never going to get it. I just felt as though, and never acknowledging the fact that, well, two months ago, you said if I took the shot, I'm not going to have a problem, and it's here.

Just keep moving forward in the shutting down of business and abuse. Yeah, you know, the American people are smart enough. Give them the facts, be honest about what the situation is, and give them the best advice you can, recognizing that it's not going to be perfect. Your leaders are never perfect.

Sometimes the advice is never perfect. But if you're honest and upfront with the American people or with your stakeholders, you're going to be much better off. Al McCraven also put together this book, and the name of the book is Perfect for this time. And it is called Conquering Crisis: 10 Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them. A couple more things I want to share with the audience.

You say weaponize the truth. What do you mean? Yeah, so the truth is a powerful force for solving any crisis. But what tends to happen is leaders find themselves in a challenging situation. They know, again, that if it's a crisis, that the press is looking at them, that their shareholders are looking at them, that they're rank and file that we're.

And sometimes, instead of just standing before the podium and saying, you know what, we've got a crisis, we screwed up. Here's all the facts.

Now, here's what I'm doing to solve the problem. You have to let the truth get out. The truth will always find a way out. I mean, everybody knows that. I talk about the story of Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair.

And what you saw was Reagan, who at the time had a 63% approval rating when Iran-Contra starts. By the end of it, it's down in the 40s because Reagan didn't just stand before the American people and say, yes, I was involved in this. I understood what happened from day one. And these are the decisions I made and why I made them. He hoped that the American people wouldn't find out the depth of his involvement.

But of course they did, because great investigative journalists kept tugging and tugging and pulling on that string, and eventually the truth comes out.

So, as a leader, get the truth out fast. Confront the issue. You're going to be much better off. As opposed to the Bay of Pigs, which JFK said, we screwed up, even though it was an old plan that Eisenhower left behind. But he said he took responsibility for it, and people appreciated that.

Of course. The American people are generally very forgiving. If again, you step in front of them and say, look, we screwed up, or I more importantly, I screwed up, I made a mistake. But here's what I'm going to do to resolve the problem.

Okay, I want to talk about what's happening right now. When you look at what's happening with Iran, are you encouraged by the first two rounds of talk from what we know? Yeah, from what we know, and again, I don't have any more insight than the public does, but from what we know, yeah, I mean, anytime you are in dialogue with, in this case, you know, one of our sworn enemies in Iran, and the dialogue is proceeding forward, that's good because we don't want Iran to get a bomb.

So I think all these conversations are good conversations. But do you think we not only do we want, do you believe they can have one? I believe they can certainly get a bomb. Absolutely. But we have to make sure they can have one.

Yes. Because the ripple effect will be detrimental. No, you bet. I mean, it would change everything about the dynamics in the Middle East if the Iranians got a bomb. I travel the Middle East a lot, and every time I talk to leaders in the Middle East, that is their biggest concern.

We don't want the Iranians to get a bomb. Admiral, are you amazed by some people making it out as if we're the problem when it comes to Iran? They've been our enemy for 40 years. I am amazed that the twisting of reality all of a sudden is like, well, if we weren't so aggressive, what choice do they have? What are you talking about?

Yeah, that sort of Iranian apologist doesn't sit well with me. I mean, the fact of the matter is, I've been in and out of the Middle East for most of the last 40-plus years. The Iranians have always had this network of surrogates, of Iranian proxies, and whether it is the Houthis or whether it's Hezbollah, Hamas. I mean, you see what the Iranians have done and the chaos they've created in the Middle East. But having said that, let's get on with the conversation.

Let's keep them from getting a bomb. But no, this is not our problem. This is a problem of the Iranians making. Cut 37 is General Jack Keene. The Israelis, if they had to, would do this alone.

They don't want to do that because they want to be supported by the United States. I think Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump are really on the same page in dealing with Iran. The president wants to see if Iran will voluntarily do this. If not, he would likely support with U.S. capability an Israeli-led attack and give Israel the bombers that are necessary to help destroy these targets.

So that would likely be a joint operation.

So, General Jackin, looking at the Israelis in 1980, they didn't wait for us. Reagan told them not to. They did it anyway. They took out Iraq's nuclear program. Didn't George Bush was asked to help them take out Syria's nuclear program?

You might have been asked. And when they didn't, the Israelis acted on their own. From what you've seen, is there any doubt that the Israelis are prepared to act on their own? Yeah, I mean, I don't think that they would hesitate to act on their own. The problem is, Brian, a lot has changed in the last decade and certainly two decades.

The Iranians understand that there is always potential of strikes against their two main facilities.

So, again, open source, they have dug down deep. The centrifuges that are spinning are pretty far down.

So, I mean, it would take a pretty massive strike to completely... Do we have it?

Well, you know, I'm not going to go into that. Suffice to say, again, it would take a lot of effort to completely destroy the Iranian nuclear program.

Now, you can set it back six months, nine months, but you're not going to eliminate it. And, of course, if you do strike it, does that then put the Iranians in a position to say, okay, game on, and we will drive to building the bomb? And true, but I imagine the damage would be so extensive. I worry about our troops in Iraq and Syria. Would you?

Absolutely. I mean, anytime you take a strike against a foreign country, you better be prepared to protect the men and women that are serving not just in the military but around the region. And we would do that. The military would do that. And of course, we have our aircraft carriers in the area.

It seems like we're poised. A little bit more with Admiral William McCraven. He's got a book out today. Certainly be a best seller. Conquering Crisis.

Back in a moment. Remembering those who gave their all on this Memorial Day. You're listening to the best of Brian Kilmead. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show.

Indo Paycom faces a confluence of challenges. China's unprecedented aggression and military modernization poses a serious threat to the homeland, our allies, and our partners. In 2024, The People's Liberation Army demonstrated growing capabilities through persistent pressure operations, with military pressure against Taiwan increasing by 300 percent. China's increasingly aggressive actions near Taiwan are not just exercises, they are rehearsals. That was Admiral Samuel Poparo.

That was April 9th. With me right now to confirm where to confirm that statement or pushback on his Admiral William McCraven. His book, Conquering Crisis, out today: 10 Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them, which is great for any parent, any coach out there, let alone if you're just looking to put lessons in to your family. Admiral, your thought about what the Admiral just said. Yeah, I think Sam Poparro knows better than anybody.

So you have to heed his words. Clearly, from what we've seen, just from the public view, you see what China is doing. They're putting more and more pressure on Taiwan. I mean, I don't personally think that there's going to be some sort of cross-strait invasion anytime soon. Xi has told them to be prepared to.

To take Taiwan by 2027. I think that's just have the military prepared. But the more exercises you see and the more pressure that begins to be placed on Taiwan, this is something we clearly need to pay attention to. How do you stop it?

Well, I mean, is there something we could sell them to get them ready to fight back? You know, it's a hard problem to defend Taiwan. But what we've got to ask ourselves, I think, as a country is, are we going to go with this, the concept of actually just publicly saying we're going to defend Taiwan, or are we going to have this kind of strategic ambiguity policy that we've had for a long time?

Now, Biden came out a number of times and said, we'll defend Taiwan if China's aggressive. And then what happened after the State Department said no? Right. So they backed him off of that because we've had this strategic ambiguity. I think the president and his national security team have to make a decision right now.

Are we going to defend Taiwan if China decides that they are going to invade? The issue is, I don't think they're going to invade. What they'll do is they'll ramp up pressure. We may find them in a position. to do a blockade, but a blockade technically is an act of war.

The question is, if they blockade, will we take aggressive action to stop them?

So let me ask you, how much do they just want Taiwan because it's theirs? And how much does it bother them that this could be a thriving democracy, capitalist society, right on their door? And these people seem unbelievably happy compared to the life that they're putting their people through. Yeah, I think it's a little of both. I mean, there has always been, even before I think Taiwan was the thriving democracy we see today with TSMC and everything that's going on, I was out in Taiwan a little over a year ago.

I mean, you can't help but be impressed with the Taiwanese people.

So there is some historical context here where the Chinese clearly feel that Taiwan's one of their provinces. But yes, they are concerned about the democracy on their own.

So let's talk about your book. When I think about people in crisis that performs in sports, not like you, Life and Death is Joe Montana. Sure. When things get hot, the blood pressure gets low, he thrives on that moment, famously pointing out John Candy on the winning drive to beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. Isn't that John Candy?

Candy in the stadium. Is that the way you are on the crisis? Do you slow down in that moment? You know, I think a lot of it is we're fortunate in the military, and I think in areas where you're taught leadership, you have experienced a lot. You've been trained a lot, and you have to rely on your training.

So, yeah, you know, when I'm in the middle of a crisis, what appears to be a crisis from the outside, a lot of times this is something I've seen before, and I've been through numerous times before, and I know the game plan, if you're the Montana game plan. What am I going to do at this point in time? Helicopter goes down, what am I going to do?

Well, I got a backup helicopter. You know, we have a mass casualty. What am I going to do?

Well, I've got a medevac standing by to go do this.

So, a lot of times, again, I would tell you, for me personally, yeah, this is part of my experience. I mean, when you spend 37 years as a Navy SEAL, you've seen a lot of crisis, and you get better and better and better at dealing with them because you're experienced. And what you try to do in this book is get people ready to go should a crisis strike, even though we don't know what that looks like. Right. Yeah, again, the book kind of lays out, if you will, kind of provides you some tools.

Lays out an approach for dealing with a crisis. And as you said, I think it's something whether you're a CEO or whether you're dealing with a personal crisis, hopefully this book will be of value to you. And is this going to be a commencement address, too? No, I don't think so. But I'm sure a lot of the, again, a lot of the tools that I lay out here will find their way into a commencement address probably at some point.

The military and your family follow in your footsteps. Yeah, my son, Bill, was an Air Force officer for 20 years, and my daughter works in the government.

So I've been very blessed. Absolutely. And all the leave you've given to the country, we infinitely appreciate it. Admiral William McCraven, pick up his book, Conquering Crisis: 10 Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them. Don't move.

Brian, kill me, Joe. The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. Hey, welcome back everybody with us in studio, one of our favorite guests. I hope you're watching on the stream on Fox Nation or Brian Kilmead, or you go to foxnews.com, hit on watch, and you can just scroll until you get to us, Zona Garg, comedian screenwriter and host of the Zonnegarg Family Podcast and author of the new book, This American Woman, a once-in-a-lifetime memoir.

Zona, congratulations on the book. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And you just showed me a picture of you in the subway. That's right.

So I thought your first, when you decided to go from the funny person to your family and your friends to on stage, I thought it was a little stage. You foul you did you get the stage, the pandemic hit, and then you hit the subway? Yeah, I mean I I did my first sold out show at Carolines in Midtown in New York, and the week after I did my first sold out show, the pandemic hit and New York City shut down. And because I was so new to it, I was really nervous that I'm going to lose my comedy. I'm going to lose the funny.

So I just bought a mobile speaker and a mic, and I started doing shows in the subways of New York City. And I was doing a show every evening under a tree behind the Met. Get out of here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for free. And how did you get people to social media?

No, I just whoever showed up, I was just accosting people, be like, Let me tell you a joke. And were people thinking, well, this poor woman needs help? Yeah, or. They were just nervous, but they didn't want to react.

So they were like, all right, just tell the joke and leave. You know, sometimes you see crazy people and you just stand still. Right. And like let them do the crazy thing. Not so they thought you were one of those people.

So that was what year. Uh, 2019, 2020. 2020. And how soon? Uh, were you already starting to establish yourself before the pandemic hit?

Just starting, like, just about making a little bit of a name, very minor. I was working in one or two clubs in New York at the time. Right. Um, and then you started on stage. How would you describe your humor?

Families Stuff, everyday life, humor, husband, wife, kids, many kids, teens, a very expensive college trauma. And of course, the star of my show, the mother-in-law. Right. So describe your life before you got to America. I mean, I was born and raised in extreme affluence in India.

I was born into a. By the time I was born, my parents were wealthy, even though they were self-made. By the time I came around, we had a big house, we had everything. We had air conditioning, which back then in India was a big deal. Like, you know, you're talking the eighties, seventies, even.

I was a very happy, like, socially conscious Indian kid, like ver in the Park Avenue of Mumbai.

So think think a leafy, beautiful street like Park Avenue in Mumbai. And you know, my mom passed suddenly and I was the youngest of four and my dad, the day after she passed, was like, Uh you need to get married. And that I was fourteen, yeah. Which which, by the way, in India, it's still it's young, but it's not like unthinkable. There are fifteen-year-olds who get married today.

So he picked a guy for you? An arranged marriage? He wanted to, yeah. He did eventually because I, yeah. And did you stay with that guy?

No, no. I mean, no. I almost did because I was out of options. I mean, I left home. First of all, for two years, I was couch surfing in India.

Wow.

So you go from affluent to couch surfing. My dad was like, listen, if you don't want to get married, you can't live here. He thought he would scare me into submission and I thought he would come around. See, I thought he's riddled with grief because his wife has just died, my mom, and that he's going to come around and this is all going to be okay. And we were basically in a face-off.

So I left thinking, I'll just room with my friends. When you're 14, 15, you think life is a slumber party. And then I showed up at my friend's house, and after a day, my friend's mom is like, you should go back. And that's when it hit me. I was like, oh my God, like, I have nowhere to go.

And it was almost two years of. Where can I go tonight? Because my dad, you know. Did you stop going to school? I was going to school just about because everybody I stayed with was in my school.

And you know, India that way, unlike America, is a very community-style life. Like you can stay with your friends, show up in school with their parents. Yeah, it's not a big deal. It's not that serious.

So I was still, I finished school, but it was every day was a new trauma of like, where am I going to stay tonight? And if, and now, in hindsight, a lot of my comedy. Has its roots in those years because a big reason people opened their doors to me is because I made them laugh. You know, I always kept things light. I tried to offer whatever value I could, you know, around the dinner table or whatever was going on.

So, uh, but I gave up. At some point, I gave up and I went back to my crawling to my dad. I was like, all right, you win. Because I was trying to get a visa to come to America. My sister lived in America.

She still does in Ohio. And I was trying desperately to get a visa. You were just going to leave them behind. And your family behind you. I was going to leave everything because she was willing to take me and no one else was willing to take me.

I can't believe your dad didn't cave. No, no, you believe it because people back home are that severe. Like, I know in America it feels like a lot, but the guys back home, they're not fooling around. When they say, you're going to listen to me or else, they mean it. How'd you get here?

I got a visa. Eventually, I got a visa. How many years? In 1992.

So in 92, you get here, and then what do you do? You go to your sister. I go to college. My sister knew I was always an avid student, a reader.

So your grades are good. My grades are excellent. I that's the the one thing that hurt me in my life is my insatiable curiosity. I always wanted to learn, and my dad thought that was the worst crime on earth. Why?

Because he's like women who learn too much, their lives get ruined, then they have a baby. Did you knew that was ridiculous? Did you know instinctively, even though culturally it wasn't, but do you know instinctively it was? But I had such a tearing need to learn. I can't even explain.

I mean, I'm a self-taught screenwriter who won the number one screenwriting competition in America, beat out 11,000 scripts myself. I taught myself on YouTube how to write a screenplay.

So there's something inside me that's desperate to learn. I don't even know what it is. I can't control it. Right. So my dad, I mean, my whole life as a child, I got yelled at because I wanted to read the newspaper before anybody else did.

I still do today. I read every newspaper. I watch all the news shows. I'm desperate. And he would be furious.

Why are you reading the newspaper? This is not going to help you in life. Do you Well, it's incredible. You inherited smarts from your mother or your father.

So you come here, you go to college, where'd you go? Yeah, University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. How'd it go?

So good. I mean, so good. I loved it. I was in Ohio for almost seven years living with my sister, believe it or not. Thank God.

Thank God for rich relatives. Right. But she was very encouraging. Her husband was extremely, my brother-in-law is a doctor in America, has been practicing 40 years. They were like, you study as much as you want.

We're here with you.

So I went to college. I went to law school. I'm licensed to practice law in New York. We try to forget that. I'm really bad at it.

Okay, good. I'm not good at it. I'll keep that in mind. At one point, all my clients were in jail. I mean, they were guilty, but that's not the point.

Right, yeah. You were no help. Yeah. So you become it, but then you need to, you got to complete your life. How did you go about getting your husband?

I put an ad out online in 1997. I think I'm one of the earliest online dating successes. You put an ad out. I put an ad out. I was very, very matter of fact.

It was like, I'm looking for a life partner who's, you know, I'm going to be very successful. You need to be ready to go with me. I was like, no, friends, please don't email me if you want to be my friend. Because at the time, the TV show Friends was all the rage. And I remember thinking, as an Indian person, that show was like a horror show for us.

Why? Because nobody was ever getting married. They were dating. They were not dating. They were on a break.

They were not on a break. Like, to somebody with our sensibility, it was like, what is happening in this show?

So I was very comfortable. I'm not a Friends fan. I'm one of the few in America. I never bought it. I'm like, I just don't care about the characters.

I remember watching it and thinking, my dad was right. There is no hope for people here. Oh, but you were watching in India? No, I was here. But he was always getting in my sister's head.

He stopped talking to me. When I left India, we got estranged completely. We never spoke again. And you haven't spoken? No, he passed, and I wasn't even allowed to attend his funeral.

It was like he was like, I'm out of here. Because you turned out an arranged marriage at 14. I know it s feels shocking here in America, but what he remembers is that I walked away from a guaranteed life that he was going to set up for me. He wasn't a bad guy, to be clear. He wasn't.

He came from a good place. I have three siblings who are arranged. My sister was arranged and is deliriously happy and successful. Do you think arranged marriages should be more commonplace? I think The basis for arranged marriages is very solid.

Like, there's some calculation of. What's your family like? What's your education like? Like, there's some logic to it.

So, there's some good elements to it.

Now, should it be done the way they do it back home where the women pretty much have no choice? I don't think that it should be done that way. Yeah, I agree with that.

So, the other thing would be: you take an ad out and you find somebody. There's another trend out there. They're offering now new relationships, four-year contracts. Would you think that would ever work if you married someone and say, How would you like a four-year marriage? Mm.

People do all kinds of things. I don't think it works in my sensibility because you're either in it to build it or you're not. Like, it does keep you on your game knowing that my contract's coming to an end. Yeah. Yeah, but it also keeps you on your mind.

Like, let me see what else is out there. Right. You know, like, that's dangerous. That's a dangerous path to go. I mean, now that I'm going to be famous someday.

Right. No, you are famous. No, I tell my husband, I'm like, listen, if I like, I have to do the whole Hollywood thing, at some point, I'm going to need another guy. Right. Because that's what all the big players in Hollywood do.

And I think that's how does he take that? He's he laughed. We've been together 26 years. Right. And you have.

So he answered your ad and you married him.

Well, he didn't really answer my ad, bring your tax returns and medical records. Which, how impressive is that 20 years before COVID? Right. And he responded saying, Are you crazy? Like, what is this?

And we kind of struck a friendship over email. And I was like, I actually have hundreds of people responding to me in Cleveland, Ohio. That is unbelievable. But yeah, my husband and I were, we've been best friends long enough. We laugh.

And I even tell him, I go, I even know my next demographic. If things don't work out with my husband, for all your listeners, I'm telling you right now, my next move is a billionaire with heart disease. That's somebody who's got less great combination. That would be fantastic.

So, how long from when did you go from wife? Mom to comedian. About six years ago. Yeah, and that transition seemed natural. It seemed natural the way I do it, right?

Because I'm not a product of the stand-up comedy scene. I just showed up at an open mic because my kids dared me to do it. But once I got up there, I was like. This is a job? Like, you know, no one back home has thought of stand-up comedy as a profession.

Really? No, not at all. Like, and they still don't. Like, I still have to explain to Indian people what we're doing. First of all, they all we don't go out for fun.

That's the one. When you go out, wouldn't talk about it. SAT prep. We don't do. We don't do all like, you're not going to see an Indian person really at a Taylor Swift concert.

That's just not. I mean, do you have clubs? There's no clubs in Bombay. Even today, there's maybe one or two, and then they get attacked for all kinds of reasons because it's not America. Like in America, say what you want about who you want.

Like, you can't do that everywhere else. You can't do that in India. We had a club. But this is a democracy. It is.

And yet, yes, I'm telling you, to all your listeners, Google right now. Indian Comedy Club destroyed just a few months ago because of something that some foolish thing a comic said. You can't go back. That's the last thing you need. I don't think they want me back.

Right. So, I mean, to have this book out to tell you a story, it's a great American, a great American immigrant story. How do you feel about all this talk about the illegal immigration? It's the number one topic, I think, in America. Yeah.

Outside tariffs. How do you feel about it? You know, the issue I have with it is that. A lot, if not most, of the people commenting on it are not immigrants themselves. They have not gone through the process, they've not stood in that line, they have nothing.

So, I, because I immigrated myself, right, I know what it takes to do it legally. To how many years you have to follow the rules, follow the laws, all the documentation and everything that you have to submit.

So, I kind of understand the crisis that it. The way it is in America, and I hope that it gets fixed. All right. The name of the book, it's out. It's called This American Woman: A Once in a Billion Memoir.

Zana Gorg. It's her story. She's here right now. She also has dates we'll share with you and come back. I also want you to comment on other people's relationships.

Is that okay? Yeah, let's do it. All right, you listen to the Bright and Kill Me Show, where the breaking news is not good. Good friend of the show, who I just interviewed on television two hours ago, Michael Waltz, has been fired at National Security Advisor along with Alex Wong, who's his assistant. I assume this dates back to the Signal Chat controversy.

Don't move. Cool side chilling, backyard grilling, and the best of Brian Kilmead. Happy Memorial Day from the Brian Kilmead Show. The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead.

The other change for Belichick is 24-year-old Jordan Hudson, his creative muse, as he writes in his book. Jordan was a constant presence during our interview. You have Jordan right over there. Everybody in the world seems to be following this relationship. They've got an opinion about your private life.

It's got nothing to do with them, but they're invested in it. How do you deal with that? Never been too worried about what everybody else thinks. Just try to do what I feel like is best for me and what's right. How did you guys meet?

Not talking about this. No? No.

So she evidently interrupted six times. I'm talking about the 24-year-old girlfriend of Bill Belichick who wrote a book, something about winning, which, of course, he knows a lot about. And also, he's lost. The Browns didn't go well. He was head coach, you know, he's assistant coach under, he was assistant coach under Bill Parcells.

A lot of people think he was overshadowed big time.

So I think he's got a lot to say. And also, it ended when Brady retired. He wasn't successful. I'm interested in the book. But when CBS brought up something as a personal relationship, out from the corner comes a 24-year-old girlfriend taking control, looking like she's directing the interview.

Zarner Garg is here. Her book is now out, The American Woman, a one in a billion memoir, which is a fantastic story. But Zara, we talk so much about relationships, the difference in American culture. Your thoughts about this relationship and a 24-year-old girlfriend interrupting a legendary Hall of Fame coach while he's doing an interview. I.

I think he likes it, Brian. I think he likes it. I think he has to make so many decisions in his professional life and he has to be a boss. I think he's enjoying being slapped around like this. Is it but isn't it humiliating?

Come on. This is turning him on, obviously. Like, he he's allowing it. Right. And how about this?

Would you ever allow someone to show up for an interview for a book with an old shirt with holes in it? A 72-year-old man. The thing is that I do think she's a social media and a media genius because she knows this little hole is going to get this interview thing popping more than anything he can say. Interesting. How many people zoomed in and were like, is that actually a hole in his shirt?

Here is Alec Baldwin on the red carpet with the mom of seven. He's had a hell of the last three years. Listen to Alec Baldwin, who's as belligerent as he gets, but now we're around his wife. Listen. We want more of this.

Season two of the Vinela Dan? The Hilarious Show. No, no, I. I think we're gonna see, you know, it's we're gonna see how it feels to have it be out there. You're a winner.

Oh my god, when I'm talking, you're not talking. Sure. No, when I'm talking, you're not talking. This is why, yes, we'll have to like just cut him out of the show. No.

Come on, Zarna. That's not acceptable, is it? Would your husband talk to you like that? I think she forgot she's not talking to one of her seven kids. And then she had a moment of like, I'm talking to my son.

Right. Don't you think we got a glimpse inside of that? Yes, we really did. But once again, he must like it. There's no way this is happening without his permission.

Right. You know what I mean? But yeah, I mean, it's just so weird to see two guys who usually get in people's face, totally controlled by a strong woman. Who you are, Zarna Garg, as funny as he gets, the American woman. Where can we see you on the road?

Where do we go? What website? I'm going to, oh, ZarnaGarg.com has all my tour dates coming up. I'm going to be all over the country touring my third hour because my second hour, Practical People Win, is dropping in Hulu in July. Wow, you are productive.

Keep it up. That's what we do.

Thank you. Listen to the all-new Brett Baer podcast, featuring common ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Baer favorites like his all-star panel and much more. Available now at FoxnewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the show ad-free on Fox News Podcast Plus, on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music with your Prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mm.