The following is a conversation with Jaco Willink, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL, co-author of Extreme
Ownership, Diacotomy of Leadership, Discipline Equals Freedom, and many other excellent books.
And he's the host of Jaco Podcast. Jaco spent 20 years in the SEAL teams. He was the commander of
SEAL Team 3's task unit bruiser that became the most highly decorated special operations unit
of the Iraq War. This conversation was intense and to the point. We agreed to talk again probably
many times. And what I find very interesting, aside from the talk of leadership, is the
conversation about military tactics of specific battles in history. Quick mention of our sponsors,
Linode Indeed, Simply Safe, and Ground News. Check them out in the description to support
this podcast. Since it's the 4th of July, a holiday in the United States, let me say a few words
about what this country, my country, the United States of America means to me.
First, by way of background, I was born and raised in the Soviet Union, just long enough to get a bit
of the Russian soul, an appreciation of Soviet history, music, culture, of wrestling and mathematics,
of engineering and philosophy, stoicism and humor, tragedies and triumphs of war and revolutions,
all in ways that are uniquely Russian. I do happen to at times mention that I'm Russian.
This is what I mean, that I got a bit of that Russian soul. But of course who I really am
is an American. This country gave me the opportunity, the freedom to become and to be who I am,
to stand as an individual. This seemingly simple freedom to be a sovereign human being in the face
of all the beauty and cruelty of life is why I love this country. Much of life can be unfair,
unjust, even tragic. But this is the country where if I'm clever enough, work hard enough,
and just get lucky enough, I have a chance to dream big and make my dream a reality.
The United States welcomed me, my family, and millions of immigrants throughout its history
so that we can make something meaningful of ourselves, to love, to dream, to create,
to find joy and meaning. It lets me be the weird kid I am, who wears a suit, talks about love,
and has a fascination with robots. I know some people these days have an aversion to pride and
love for their country. I don't. I love America. I also love humanity. I believe these two,
patriotism and humanism, are not in conflict. Much like loving your family and loving your
country are not in conflict. They are all manifestations of the human spirit, longing
to strive for a better world. I was born a Russian, but I believe I will die an American,
a proud American. Hopefully not too soon, but life is short. I already had one hell of a fun journey,
so I'm ready to go when it's time. This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my
conversation with Jaco Willink. Is it tragic or beautiful to you that some of the closest bonds
that have formed between people are through war often? I think it's both. Both tragic and beautiful,
and for the obvious reasons. What are the obvious reasons? Why is it so obvious?
Well, it's tragic because a lot of people die, and it's beautiful because you form bonds with
people that are very difficult to break once you've been through them.
What is it about the trauma of war that makes bonds difficult to break?
Because what you realize when you're in war is that the people that are next to you,
you rely on them, and they're relying on you to survive,
and without them, you will not survive. And when you realize that you need to work together as a
team to live, that forms a very strong bond. And there's nothing like that team outside of the
realm of war? I don't know because there's a lot of things that I haven't experienced in my life,
but I think the pressure and the consequences of war, there could be similar situations in
survival scenarios, in various atrocities, where people need to work together in order to survive.
And I think you could probably get something that was similar.
There's a very particular nature to the kind of war that World War II was, especially for the
Soviet Union, where it didn't just influence the lives of people who created culture, the music,
the poetry, the literature. It's in the way people think, it's in the way people see the world,
it's in the way they talk, even still to this day. And of course, I was talking about the
directly relationship between two soldiers, but there's something about the depth of human connection
that results from almost like reverberations of war, like generations later, you're still
close to other humans. There's a coldness towards other humans in Russia, but once you open up,
it's depth, you seek depth of connection versus like breadth of career kind of thinking,
how can I make friends with this so I can move into this direction? What can this person benefit me?
Instead, you seek depth of human connection and appreciation that brings a lot. And maybe I'm
romanticizing war here, but it feels like that's inextricably connected to World War II for Russians.
Does that resonate at all?
So if you look at military training, what they do is they take people in the military
from the civilian world, they bring them into the military and they put them through boot camp,
which is the stereotypical thing that you see on TV, you're going to get yelled at,
you're going to get screamed at, you're going to get put in the mud and you're going to be made
to do hard things together. And what does that do with those civilians? Well, it gives them
a common background. It gives them a common suffering that they've been through together.
And they perform some sort of connection, some sort of bond. Now, to make that bond a little bit
stronger, after you get done with boot camp, they send you to advanced infantry school. And
you suffer some more together. And when you suffer more together, now you're in a smaller group too,
because now it's infantry, it's not supply people anymore, or low gestations, it's strictly
people that are going to fight their infantrymen. So they go through a school together, and now they
get a little bit tighter. Get done with that. And maybe you go to an airborne division, so you go
to airborne school. And now you all overcome this fear of jumping out of an airplane together, and
you celebrate surviving that. Then maybe you get done with that. And now you go at an airborne
division, now you're an even tighter group, because you've suffered together. What comes
next is special forces training, or ranger training. And what they do is they put you in
these situations where you're going to suffer together, and you're going to build these bonds,
because as I said earlier, you have to rely on each other to survive. And by the way, not everyone
does, not everyone makes it through this training. So you sort of have these memories of people that
didn't make it, you share that connection as well. And you can keep going down this road until you go
into combat with a military unit, and military units that go through combat, and you can keep
units that go through combat, have an even tighter bond. And the harder the combat that they go
through, the tighter the bond is going to be. So I think when you talk about what the Soviet Union
went through in World War II, there was a shared suffering to survive. And so the entire nation
has that common thread. And that's probably the thing that you sense or feel when you refer back
to the bond that resonates all the way back to World War II. So in your podcast and your writing,
you talk about some of the most fascinating things that I listened to you talk about in terms of
military conflict is tactics and sort of the details of combat. But allow me to stick on World
War II for a second. There's a particular aspect to that war, I don't know if you can speak to it,
where twice the number of civilians died in military personnel. So the Soviet Union especially.
You know, my grandfather was a machine gunner in Ukraine as the Germans were marching towards
Moscow. There's this main, there's this important push in 1941 where they were trying to get before
the winter to Moscow. And what Stalin was doing is he was basically throwing bodies
at, to slow the attack. And what that meant is everybody understood that your job was,
you have this heavy machine guns, it's very, it's almost unreasonable to be able to be
mobile and you kind of wait with them. So you're, you're thrown at the front and you just non-stop
shooting. And you know, 95 plus percent of people are just dead. Other soldiers are just dead.
And then you just go back and back and you're trying to protect as many civilians as you
can throughout this whole process, but you don't. And so you have millions of civilians that die
along the way into this march. Is there something you can say about this complete, perhaps it's
naive of me to say, but a war that lacks tactics, that lacks strategy and is purely about just
no consideration of human life and just throwing bodies and bullets
into a mix together where millions die. And that in particular felt much less like conflict
and much more like torture or suffering. It didn't, it didn't come off as torture,
only that interestingly enough, as you probably know, my grandfather, including everybody else,
volunteered. They were proud to do this. They were proud to march to their death
for country, for love of country. But the question on the civilian side,
when more civilians die than military personnel, what do you make of that?
It's awful. It's awful when a soldier dies. It's awful when a civilian dies. It's awful
when 10 civilians or 10 soldiers, and it's even more awful when millions and millions of soldiers
and civilians die. I think it's safe to say that the Soviet Union was facing an existential threat
to their existence against the Nazis. So to not fight would be to die as well. Maybe die a death
a few years later, maybe die a different way. But the choice was die now, trying, or die later
on your knees. And I think the choice was pretty clear. As far as the tactics go,
I mean, there is, this is attrition warfare. That's what that is. We are going to keep,
you know, you said throwing bodies at the problem. That's attrition warfare.
And the Soviet Union had a lot of bodies, more than the Germans. And when you fight with attrition
warfare, whoever has more men and material will eventually win. It's an awful way. But that's
the, that's what the strategy was. You often talk about leadership.
Let's put the evils of Hitler aside. The boldness of Hitler in making some of the strategic decisions
he did was considered by many military historians quite brilliant, early in the war, or insane
and brilliant. Stalin, on the other hand, I think university is seen as somebody who is
terrible military strategist, especially early in the war. He did not see all the possible
trajectories that the war could take. Is there something you could say about failure of leadership,
Stalin, also the United Kingdom before Churchill, and also FDR on the United States side who
basically was trying to turn a blind eye to everything that was happening over there
with a perspective of we just want to make, we want to keep America's interest
as the primary interest and everything else, let other countries work out their problems.
You know, I think one of the things with Hitler was in the beginning of the war,
he listened to his advisors, he listened to his generals. And therefore, they did pretty
well with that. I think as the war went on, he believed that he was smarter than he was and
made decisions that were bad, that cost him dearly. I mean, case in point, as everyone knows,
going and attacking the Soviet Union while you're still fighting a war on the other front is not
a good move. There's an example of bad leadership, letting your ego get in the way, believing that
you can do things that are beyond your capabilities. But as you mentioned in the beginning with Blitzkrieg,
those were really dynamic and bold moves and they worked. And what does that do? That fuels
your ego and makes you think that you can win. Many people consider that war a just war.
What do you think makes a just war? I think you have the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese
trying to impose their will on other nations and other peoples. And when that happens,
I think on a grand scale, people look at that and believe it's just to step in and do something
about it. Is there some gray area here? There's nothing but gray area.
The United States has been involved in a lot of military conflicts since then.
How do you draw the line through the gray area? What war should we engage in and not?
I know you don't get into politics much, but the decision to go to war.
You have to look at the situation that you're going into and you have to make sure that you have
the will to go to war. And the will to go to war means that you are willing to kill people.
And when I say people, I don't just mean enemy because in war, civilians are going to die.
Women and children are going to die. A lot of people are going to die and you are going to kill
them. It doesn't matter what kind of smart munitions you have. It doesn't matter how disciplined your
soldiers are. When you go into a war, civilians are going to die and you have to understand that.
And the other thing that you have to understand is that your troops are also going to die.
And it seems like sometimes we're a little bit naive about the calculation of what
that's going to look like. And maybe we think, well, not that many civilians and maybe not
that many of our personnel are going to die. And that's where you get into sticky situations.
And another thing when you were talking about the Soviet Union versus the Nazis,
that's total war. That's what that is. And we don't engage in that very often. It's total war.
It's we will do absolutely anything to win. And America doesn't fight like that very often.
In fact, the last time we fought like that was World War II. It was total war. We will do whatever
it takes to up to and including the atomic bomb to destroy the enemy. So those are the kind of
things you need to think about before you go to war. And I don't think we think about that very
often. You know, even the United States, the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons is an interesting one
because there's a lot of, there's a lot of hesitation on that. There's a lot of critics of
that decision as it was happening. So even America, you could imagine other countries
like Germany would not be so hesitant to use nuclear weapons. It's interesting to think about
in deciding military strategy to inject ethics into it, into morality. It's not just about
winning the war, but should we do this and doing the calculation of human life? Usually those
decisions are made by leaders, not by the soldier that's going to be implementing that decision.
Do you put some responsibility? I should even say blame on the leaders and not doing that kind of
doing that kind of calculation here. You could say that you could say that about the Vietnam War,
you could say that about even the war that you were involved with in Iraq. Is there some criticism
here that you could apply to leaders for failing not to consider the broader moral questions?
Yes.
Natural, like all leaders will make these mistakes or should leaders not make these mistakes?
Leaders are going to make mistakes. It's impossible to know what's going to happen in
war just like it's impossible to know what's going to happen in life. You make decisions
based on the information that you have at the time and you will make mistakes. And if you fail to
admit that you made a mistake, that's where I have a more significant problem than someone
that makes a mistake and says, hey, this is the mistake that I made. This is the intelligence
that I thought we were utilizing and it actually is not what I thought it was going to be. And
here's the new direction that we're going in. We don't have enough of that type of ownership
in leadership globally. Just saying I made a mistake
that resulted in a loss at scale of human life, being able to say that.
And when you don't say that, you end up with a more loss of human life.
Can I ask you about the loss of human life?
How does killing a human being change you?
What does it mean to kill a human being? What does it feel like to kill a human being?
Well, I mean, I guess you'd have to look at what circumstances a person's in
when this is taking place. If you've got someone that's in a fit of rage that goes and kills somebody,
you know, they're going to come out of it and think, wow, I've just really messed up.
If you've got someone that is a sociopath, right, they're not going to feel anything. And
that person deserved to die. And that's why they died. If you've got a soldier who feels like
they're trying to protect their friends, they'll move through that. If you've got a soldier that's
doing it because they want some kind of personal glory, they'll probably not feel good about it
later. So I think it depends on the situation. I think it depends on the psychology of the
individual that's going through it. You said move through that. Is there some calculation here that
a soldier, when they kill another soldier, a realization that is just another human being?
I mean, is there some heavy burden to that aspect?
That it's ultimately just human on human?
I think it depends a lot on the scenario. I know that when I was in Iraq fighting,
we talk a lot about the dehumanization of the enemy. And it's something that
the governments will do. I mean, governments will do that to each other. I mean, the Japanese
dehumanized the Americans and the Americans dehumanized the Japanese and the Americans
dehumanized the Nazis and the Nazis dehumanized the Americans so that to remove as much of that
human on human killing aspect that you're talking about. And what I've said is that
in when we were in Iraq, we didn't have to dehumanize the enemy because the enemy dehumanized
themselves through their actions, through their behaviors. When we know that they are
torturing and raping and murdering the local populace, they've been dehumanized.
And so as far as looking at them and thinking, oh, this is a human, another human that's
that's on the level of my uncle or my brother, I didn't think of them that way. I thought of them as
as murdering, raping, evil, subhumans.
Yeah, Iraq is different and America's position is different. You're right that America's not
been involved in a war where it's quite like two humans fighting like teenage boys fighting
against each other. And you've got to remember, I mean, we're seeing these Iraqi kids that are
living under this sadistic terror, the Iraqi women that are being raped and abused by these insurgents.
And so on the one side, we become the Iraqi populace is very humanized to us because we're
talking to them, we've got interpreters, we understand we're seeing them day after day,
the same individuals. And so we form a bond with the local populace. And yet we see what the
insurgents are doing. And so it's, again, not difficult to dehumanize people that behave in
that manner. Yeah, I suppose I worry about the dehumanization at a much larger scale
when it's not the kind of case that you're talking about. Even now,
hopefully I'm not fear mongering, but there's a sense in which there's the drums of war
or slowly starting to build with China. In the best case, it would be a Cold War of there's
a dehumanization aspect that's happening with China currently, which is they're the other
and they're after stealing all of your data. There's a cybersecurity, it starts with cybersecurity,
and it worries me because it creates the other out of a very large population that
may ultimately lead to conflict, in the worst case, hot conflict that would no longer be the
situation you are in in Iraq and more similar to the Soviet Union conflict with Germany,
that it's kids and then they're dehumanized to where you're at scale slaughtering them or at least
hurting their quality of life in a way that's maybe, you know, suffering has many forms. It
doesn't have to be through just a hot war. It could be through starvation, through camps,
all those kinds of things. And I worry, I worry about that. We kind of tend to think that these
wars are behind us. And I'm not always so sure that's the case. And at least in the way that
it ultimately starts with hate. And if, again, hopefully I'm not being too dramatic, but I see
that there's a kind of brewing of, it starts with dehumanization that turns the hate of the other.
You see that with China, you see it a little bit with Russia. And you have an early podcast
between the, where you break down the tactics of the Chechen war versus Russia. It's fascinating.
But that's the kind of conflicts I'm referring to. And I don't know. There's a, I know you're a bit
of a musician. I love, I love that straight song called Brothers in Arms. I don't know if you know
that one. And there's a line in it. I think they play it quite often in military funerals,
which I just recently learned. But it's this powerful song that has a line where fools to make
war on our brothers in arms. Do you think there's some sense in which at the leadership level,
but just assuming beings were perhaps foolish and engaging in military conflict as much as we have?
Or is fool a very inappropriate word here?
Well, I think that using the term brothers in arms means the people that are on my side,
right? So it doesn't make sense to start wars with people that are on your side. So that's,
that might just be the way the lyrics are written so that it fit the song or whatever.
I think broadly what you're asking me is, is war foolish?
Yeah. And I would say the answer is yes. And if you can avoid it, you absolutely should.
But if there is a bear or a wolf that is trying to get into your house,
is it foolish to shoot that bear or shoot that wolf? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
So when you're threatened or your family are threatened or your way of life is threatened,
then you have to do something to try and defend your family, your way of life.
It should be the last resort. It should be the last resort.
You had a conversation with Jordan Peterson
where he asked you a question
in terms of war being last resort, whether you would like your kids to grow up
in peace in a time of no war. You said yes, but and so happens Jordan didn't let you finish.
Can you elaborate what follows the but?
Well, you and I have been talking about the fact that struggle brings people together
and brings out the best and the worst, brings out the worst in people. War brings out the worst
in people. It also brings out the best in people. So would you want your kid to go and
enter in a wrestling tournament where you paid all the other kids off and your kid won?
Or you enter them in a jiu-jitsu tournament where they're a purple belt and you know that
everyone that they're going to fight against is a white belt. And so they get the big W,
they get the win, but they don't really get tested and they don't really struggle.
And if you don't struggle, you don't grow. So that's the but, right?
The absolute best times of my life were in combat and the worst times of my life
were in combat. And so even though I wouldn't want any of my children to suffer through the worst of
times, at the same time, the but is I would want them to have the opportunity to feel that bond
that you're referring to earlier and to see human beings that are willing to sacrifice their lives
for their friends. You mentioned the worst. What are some of the worst aspects of when you
were in Iraq? What are the things that the hardest on you?
Having my guys killed.
Is there absurd cruelty to it? Was it due to mistakes or natural consequences of fighting?
Is there any difference? Is that at the end is just losing those brothers and arms?
There's a million different ways to get killed in the war. And you can go out in an operation and
you can do everything wrong and you can survive. And you can go out in an operation and do everything
perfect and you can get killed. Is there some aspect which makes it worse when there is mistakes
made? Well, yeah, if there's mistakes made, then you're going to sit there and beat yourself up
eternally for mistakes that were made. But to you, the things that hurt is just losing.
Losing people close to you. Yes.
Are you yourself afraid of death? No.
Do you think about it? Does it make sense to you that this thing ends?
The Stoics contemplated death. It gives flavor to life. It makes you appreciate
there's something about the finiteness of life that makes it this
Jaco Discipline Go drink, sour apple that I'm enjoying is delicious. It makes it taste better
because I'm going to die one day. And I think about that a lot. Do you think about it?
Other than I know that it's going to end. I mean, but I don't think about it on a daily basis.
I think about, I think about, I know that I'm lucky to be here. I know that many people sacrificed
to give me this opportunity to be here. So, but I don't dwell on it.
What about when you were in combat? Nothing. There's, there's tactics, there's strategy,
there's the mission and then your mortality is not part of the calculation.
I think you get to a point where you accept the fact that you can die. Like I said,
you can do everything right. You roll out the gate, you hit an IED, a triple stack subsurface IED
and you're done. And there's nothing that's going to stop that. It's going to happen.
And I think if you're scared of that or you're thinking about that, it's going to inhibit your
ability to do your job properly. And I think it's also going to drive you crazy. The thing
that I thought about more was that happening to my guys. And that's the gut-wrenching terror that
you feel when, when operations happen. Can I ask you about Love of Country? It's, it continues to,
just how much I've studied Stalin recently in the past few years. It continues to surprise me,
not surprise me. It's just tragic in some kind of way. I'm not sure exactly if I could put words
to it, but how many people still do, but at the time we're willing, loved Stalin and we're willing
to die for country, for the love of country. And I too, maybe because I was born there,
and now I am a red blooded American. I love, nationalism is a bad word, but I love the love
of country. It gives, it somehow gives a meaning, like a brotherhood, like we're in this together.
I love, that's why I love the Olympics. That's just the, the unity of it. It takes a step
out of the selfish pursuits of any one particular ant and looks at us as a big ant colony. And it's
inspiring. It's, it's exciting. But at the same time, it seems to get us to do horrible things.
If, if manipulated by charismatic leaders, what do you make of this level of country? Is it a,
is it a bad thing? Is it a thing that gets in the way? Or is it a good thing?
Well, I think like anything else, if it's balanced correctly, it's great. And if it goes
to some extreme level, then it becomes a negative. And I think it, I think it's probably sourced in
some sort of animalistic tribalism that we all have to be part of a tribe. And this is a real
big tribe that you get to be a part of. And all you have to do is kind of show up. And so when
someone says, Hey, we're going to play hockey against the Russians. Well, we're going to cheer
for the American boys. So my, my area of work is artificial intelligence.
Because it'd be interesting to ask your thoughts about something, which is autonomous weapon
systems. US has now officially released a report saying that they're open to not open, they're
engaging in, in adding more and more autonomy and artificial intelligence into its weapon
systems because China is doing it. And so there's, these are the first steps in something that AI
folks worry about, which is a race, an AI race in the space of autonomous weapons
that can run away too quickly. Is that something, I don't know if in general, if you have thoughts
about weapon systems that make autonomous decisions at the small scale of just targeting
where to shoot. And at the largest scale of military strategy of just getting, being given a mission of
destroy this particular target, this particular, say, terrorist human being, and then figure out
what is the right bombing campaign on your own to accomplish this task that minimizes civilian
death. And then just loading that in and letting the AI system automatically decide that.
What are your general thoughts about it? Do you, do you worry about it? Because as the positive
effects that in the best version of that world, you kill fewer civilians, you kill her fewer of
your own human beings. But at the negative side of that, you might lose the, the thing we kind
of talked about, which is the basic humanity, even in the individual soldier of what is right
and what is wrong, and not making huge mistakes that hurt thousands or millions of people.
I guess what you're asking me is if they could make a machine that could do more surgical
attacks on enemy individuals, would I be for it? Yes, I would be for it.
The problem is, if you've ever used machines of any kind, their initial design may not be,
there's unintended consequences. There's, there's ways in the machine actually behaves
that you realize there's bugs in this thing. So do we not put protocols in place to prevent
something from going too far outside the boundaries of what we want it to execute?
You do. But the question is, this is the first time in human history, you can create things,
machines, toaster, microwave oven, that's smarter than you in this particular task.
I mean, it's not yet there. You're learning a lot with military strategies. Humans are actually
really damn smart. It's very hard to improve on a human. And so most actual drones that are
unmanned are still piloted by humans. It's very difficult to do every aspect of war.
But it's not out of the realm of possibility that
machines will start doing those things better and certain things,
a certain more precise targeting of the enemy. The question is, so what happens
when you start to rely on the machine to do some of the task is you get lazy. You forget what it
is like to do that task. Or more importantly, you lose the knowledge of the intricacies of
that task. And you forget the ways you can go wrong. So the protocols may not be sufficient to
constrain the power of the ways that things go wrong, especially when things are moving really
quickly, especially when the ethics of the two sides aren't perfectly aligned. When people are
some certain sides, like on the Chinese side, may be more willing to take risks for dangerous
consequences than others. So what happened on the bioweapon side is internationally, maybe you
can speak to this more, but my sense, what I was told, there is a sense globally that bioweapons
are not going to be used. They're unethical. There's a sense like we're not going to engage in this.
And with AI currently, China and US said green light. I'll go ahead. It's totally ethical.
If it can decrease the loss of human life, why not? My worry is that it's much easier to design
design weapons that are effective than design weapons who have the depth of ethics and morals
that humans do, which I think we don't as human beings don't acknowledge enough that even like
the cold calculated killing of others like precise, effective execution of a mission still has ethics
in it at every level. You know what's right and what's wrong. And I don't know if you take that
away. You're not going to make huge mistakes that you regret. Is that something you don't
worry about? I don't really worry about it. But as you design something, like I said,
you put protocols in place. And from what I am hearing you say or trying to hear you say,
there's be a point where our protocols wouldn't be sufficient to stop the machine from doing
something that was unethical. I'm kind of worried that this is something you don't worry about.
Because a lot of people I respect don't worry about it. And I don't know what to do about that.
A lot of generals don't worry about it. A lot of people who know much more about war
like you than me don't worry about it. And that worries me.
Well, that's because you have a vision into the shortfalls of AI. And I don't. I don't have a vision
of the shortfalls of AI. I don't know enough about it. As far as I'm concerned, you put a
on off switch somewhere, you put a kill switch on a system. And if it starts going awry, you hit
the kill switch and that's it. So when you look at me and say, well, there's no possible way to
put a kill switch, that would be 100% effective. And here's you draw those concerns to me.
And we could talk through it and say, okay, well, here's where we should draw the line.
I mean, it's like, again, from the Soviet Union Chernobyl meltdown,
there was always the ability, I believe, to have a kill switch. The problem is
the more power you give to the machine, the more opportunity you give to the
the human supervising that machine to make a mistake and not shut off the switch at the right
time. So yes, the solution, I mean, you're putting the responsibility still in the human hands. And
I think that's the correct place to put it. There should be good protocols, good leadership,
good execution, competency all around. Your protocols should consider the basic failures
of human nature, the human factor of how things go wrong. So there should be multiple people
supervising the system, all those things. But I am just very skeptical of greater and greater
power in the machine that can create war that cannot lead to death.
Yeah. And that's why, like I said, and like you just said, you have protocols in place that
are a kill switch. And if you think about the amount of nuclear weapons that we've had on planet earth
for the past however many years, and there's been, you know, no rogue element that said,
you know what, I'm going to shoot this thing. There's been no protocol that took place where
all of a sudden we said, Oh, no. I mean, there's been there's been escalations,
but the protocols worked have worked so far. Now, that's a scary thing to think about,
that we rely on these protocols to stop some rogue element out there from launching a missile
that could kill millions of people and trigger a global war. So yeah, the protocol should be strict.
Okay. Can I ask a jacqueline, a ridiculous question. If human civilization goes extinct,
what would be the reason you mentioned nuclear war? Do you worry about this?
The reason I bring that up, a lot of people in the AI community worry about artificial
general intelligence. So super intelligent AI systems creating a lot of damage autonomous
weapon systems is one possibility. A lot of folks recently, especially with this pandemic,
if you want to be terrified, listen to somebody I talked to recently, Sam Harris,
he did a four hour podcast on how bioengineering of viruses is likely to destroy human civilization.
I recommend that highly if you were too optimistic about the future of the human species.
So apparently, in the space of bioengineering is becoming easier and easier and easier to
engineer viruses, engineer pathogens. This is the world's most depressing question.
Is there something in particular you worry about? Like that we should be thinking as a human species
about? Yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you again with my lack of worry for all these problems,
but I don't worry too much about it. We've made it through a bunch of wickets so far as a species
and we'll make it through some more or we won't. And if we don't make it through some of these
wickets and someone decides that what they're going to do over the weekend is create some crazy
virus that spreads and kills everybody. Yeah. You know what? I'm usually extremely optimistic
about this stuff. I am now, I'm with you, except we won't. Well, there's always a chance we won't,
but I have a sense that human, first of all, I believe that most people have much more capacity
for good than evil. All of us are capable of evil, I believe, but most people are much more capable
of doing good and want to do good. And I also believe in the resiliency of the human species
that we're an innovative bunch and we can respond to tragedy, especially we respond
more to tragedy as the scale of tragedy grows and our response is much better.
So that's why I'm not worried about it, bro.
So what makes a great man? Let's start at the individual. What makes a great man?
What makes a great woman? What makes a great human being?
Somebody that puts others above themselves.
What makes a great leader of humans?
Same thing.
But that sentence does a lot of work. When you're a leader, there's a lot of egos,
there's a lot of tension, there's the human factor, there's people who are timid, there's people who
assholes, there's people who are incredibly competent, but self-obsessed. I don't know,
there's complexities of human nature. How do you get all those people to be the best version of
themselves and to lift up everyone else around them?
Okay. So now that question is a little bit different now. So now it's getting into a
more specific question, but at the same time, a more broad question of what
elements does it take to make a good leader?
Yes.
So you're right, that different people have different personalities, different tendencies,
different levels of ego. And the way that I try and explain this is
like a video game, and I'm not even a video game player, but I've seen this before,
where video game characters have various skills, various strengths and weaknesses.
So maybe they're strong, but they're dumb, or maybe they're strong and smart, but they're slow.
They just give them these ratings. And so that's where human beings are.
And that's the way leaders are. And you can have different leaders with different characteristics.
And depending on how all those characteristics match up, you can have somebody that is very
introverted, but they're still a very good leader. Because when they do communicate,
they do it in a clear, simple manner that everyone understands. So even though they're a
little bit introverted, people still respect them and listen to them because they communicate in a
clear way. You can have somebody that's extremely charismatic, extremely charismatic, and everyone
looks to them, but they're slow in making decisions. And so now we've got someone that
can't really make decisions when decisions need to get made. So even though they're charismatic,
they're still not a good leader. So depending on the human being that we're talking about,
and you just mentioned earlier that human beings are more complex than anything and
do a better job at just about everything than a robot. So that's the same thing with leadership.
You've got all these different characteristics and you match them or mix them together. And
depending on where the ratings come out, depending on how that thing does in the end.
Can we almost like as a case study, look at a few people in the tech area that I'm
familiar with, I know well. We can. The only caveat being that I may have no familiarization
with them whatsoever. You may have to brief me on them. Yeah. So I'll do my best to reduce human
beings into simple descriptions. And then you can give me insights of why the hell there are
such effective leaders based on my description, not based on your actual deep knowledge of human
beings. So that caveat of my inability to speak both English language and describe humans well.
Let's talk about first Elon Musk. So he's known as being quite harsh in the sense of first of all,
a very high bar of excellence and also willing to what he calls the kind of first principles
thinking of asking the questions that hurt, which is why the hell are we doing it this way?
Why can't it be done a lot better? Not just better, but a lot better.
I don't want to hear his whole character. I'll go one section at a time. So we've got a guy
that's harsh and asking the really hard questions. How can that be good or why is that good? Well,
first of all, it can be horrible. And there's leaders out there that are harsh and they're
hated and no one likes them and no one wants to work for them and they never do anything.
So what is it that Elon Musk does that gives him the ability to be harsh? So I was hearing a
description of me when I would give feedback to young seals that had made mistakes during training
operations. And the description was that same thing, like this harsh blunt force trauma and just
totally direct sledgehammer of truth that I would hit guys with. But it's interesting because I
always talk about building relationships and making sure you're not offending someone.
So how do these things match up? Well, I can tell you how they match up.
When I was being harsh, the guys that I was being harsh with knew without one shred of doubt
that I cared about them more than anything else. And that the reason I was giving them
this feedback is because I wanted them to be able to lead their troops. I wanted them to be able
to go accomplish their mission. And I wanted them to be able to bring their guys home from war.
So I wasn't being harsh because it elevated my ego. I wasn't being harsh because I wanted to
denigrate them. I was being actually being harsh because I wanted them to accomplish the mission.
So if that's where Elon comes from, hey, listen, we got to make this happen. This is for,
this is for the good of the world to do this. And people know that, then it works.
I'll bring this point back up with another guy, Steve Jobs. But let me stay on Elon for a second.
The other thing he does, which is interesting, I see the value of this. It'd be great to hear
you speak about it. It's unlike many of the other CEOs, very rich billionaires,
involved in leading a lot of people. He puts a lot of time into making sure he's on the factory
floor. He famously sleeps on the sort of like in the middle of things. And he puts a lot of effort.
He's also very good at it is being a low level engineer. So like whatever the task is,
he wants to understand the details and he'll talk to the lowest level person in terms of like,
you know, somebody who's like working literally on putting parts together. He wants to understand
what the problem is, what the challenge is. If there's an emergency, he wants to understand
the actual details of the problem, not like delegating it to a manager, but like, because a
lot of CEOs, a lot of managers will talk about sort of the power and the importance of delegation.
Here, he wants to know if there's a big problem, he wants to know the exact detail. He wants to
know the exact problem. He wants to, at the fundamental level, understand how to solve that
problem, what they have to do with materials, what they have to do with the actual manufacturing,
the mechanical engineering aspect, like we're talking about like engineering. This is a guy
who wears a suit, is a CEO, tweets about Dogecoin, but like an actual job, he's low level engineering.
And that to me was always inspiring to see somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing.
That's what it, like he gains the respect of engineers at the lowest level.
I don't know if that's scalable, but that's always been inspiring to me, and I wonder
how many people it's inspiring to. Maybe you could speak to the value of doing that,
of, no matter how high their level of leader is, to be able to do the low level shit.
Yeah. And that's a common trait that good leaders have. And maybe he doesn't necessarily
know how to do everything, a good leader, but they go down there and talk to the front line
troops and say, hey, what is the issue that you're dealing with? Or how can I support you?
How can I give you help? And one key point that you said is he said when there's a problem,
he gets in there. So there's things happening at his companies that they're working. And so
he doesn't have to die. I'm not saying he never does, but he doesn't have to spend as much time
working on or looking at some subsystem that's functioning well. He's got a good leader in
there that's handling it. And he checks in with that leader and the leader says, yeah,
it's working perfectly. He says, great. When there's a problem, that's when he might have
to get down there and dig into some details so that he fully understands it. So that he,
when he digs down in the details, and this is important, he's coming from an altitude where
he has a better bigger perspective, not necessarily better, but a bigger perspective. So if you
sit there and work on a problem, whatever, for eight hours, and you're staring at, you know,
if you were planning a mission, and you were, you were planning it for eight hours, you're
staring at the, the maps and the charts and you're figuring out where all the troops are
going to be located. And I come in after eight hours and I look at your plan from a, from a
distant perspective, there's a good chance I'll be able to see holes in your plan that you can
that you couldn't see because your perspective was too close. So, so that's good for me to be able
to come in from a higher perspective and have a look at it. But also, there's times where I need
to get down there and actually look, you know, if you're looking at a problem, you say, look,
I can't figure out boss, I can't figure out how to get to this target. And I'm looking at it from
a distance and I don't see, I might need to start digging in and looking and saying, oh, here's a
route that we can take that actually makes sense. Let's try that. So I think it's a good example
of someone going up and down in altitude to look at problems, understanding what's happening with
the frontline troops and at the same time being able to go back to the strategic level. And I can,
it's probably this way. The reason that he's successful is because he doesn't get stuck
down there. Because if he felt the need to micromanage each and every part on a Tesla,
it wouldn't be, it would be very unlikely that he would have the capacity to do all that.
Now, he can hand over some broad chip design and say, hey, this is what the function needs
to be. And he gives it to Lex and Lex goes there with your team and you figured out and you make
it happen. If he had to actually do that all himself, most likely not possible. So that's
what leaders should be doing. They should go elevate and then get down in the weeds when they
have to and then go back up. The sad thing, this is the part that makes me not want to do a startup
is basically his whole life is dealing with emergencies. Just like you said,
he's not dealing, this is not shooting the shit about details of engineering. It's dealing with
like in the case of a company, life and death, like something that can just completely damage
the production line. So he's constantly dealing with emergencies, putting out fires. And I don't
know if there's something to be said about that psychology of how, like he's spoken himself,
that he's worried whether his mind can hold up much longer.
So hopefully in the near future, he will start to form more decentralized command where he has
some subordinate leadership that he fully trusts and most important that he has properly trained
so that they can handle these day-to-day fires, at least 80% of them. So only 20% of the time,
does he actually need to go in and solve a problem? If he's not doing that right now,
then that's going to end up being a problem. So I work with companies all the time. And that's
what's interesting about this is I go and work with a CEO or with a C suite of a company.
It takes a little while to figure out what's going on. I'm kind of going off of the things that
you're telling me almost anecdotally, right? But let's say that what you, and also I don't know
how familiar you actually are with the inner workings of his companies. But if we were to
assume that what you're saying is accurate, then my advice would be, hey, listen, you need to start
putting a little bit more time and effort into training up some subordinate leadership that
has the trust, knowledge, and expertise that you will be able to turn over some of these details
to. For two reasons. Number one, so you can let your brain, you know, you can survive a little
longer, as he put it. But also, all the time that you spend as a leader looking down and
into your organization is time that you're not looking up and out. So when you're not looking
up and out, you're not seeing what the competitor is doing. You're not seeing where the market's
going. There's problems that can come from that. So if right now he's spending too much time looking
down and in, and you mentioned, you know, you said, I don't know if I want to do a startup.
When you do a startup, you're going to be looking down and in for a while. It's going to take a
while. You're going to have to do all this work yourself. You're not going to have the finances
to put people manpower behind these things. So that's probably, maybe he's in that mindset a
little bit because he's done so many startups over the years. And so he's habitually in the weeds.
So my advice would be, all right, let's start looking at formulating some subordinate leadership
that has the, like I said, the expertise, the trust that you can, you can start to turn over
some of these more minute details to them so that you can start looking up and out.
Yeah, I think he's done that more successfully in some places than others. The SpaceX, a lot of people
give the credit to Gwen Shotwell for the CEO of SpaceX as a very successful person that runs
shit, but in Tesla, not as much. So I wonder if you can comment on something a lot of people
worry about, and this applies to a lot of tech companies, which is a lot of people worry about
that if Elon disappears, the innovative spirit, the company as we know them today will collapse,
will stagnate, and will basically fail to do what they've been doing for so many years successfully.
Is there some aspect to what makes a good leader that if you disappear, it's still,
the thing still lives on and not just lives on, but thrives?
Yeah, so what we have to do in those situations is we have to establish a strong culture inside
that organization. And if you're, there's reasons why this happens, right? If I have a big ego and
I form a company and I love the fact that everyone looks at me and says, oh, Jocko made this company
and he's the creative force behind this company. And that fuels my ego and it makes me feel good.
And you know, I'm working with you, Lex. And every time you come up with an idea,
I say, Lex, you need to stay in your box. So I'm not creating a culture that rewards
that sort of creativity. And eventually when I die, I won't have educated my team on how to
maintain that creative aspect. So again, hopefully inside that organization, he's encouraging and
growing that culture where creativity is rewarded, where it flourishes even when he's gone.
That's what we have to hope for. He is. But I also seem to notice that there's not many people like
him. People become complacent too easily. I've been disappointed by people a little bit.
It's like success makes people soft. With Elon, it seems like success doesn't have any effect.
It's like the reverse effect. It's always like what's the next bigger thing, right? He's living
that exponential growth, which I think that's the problem that you have to have somebody who's
constantly trying to find the 10x solution, like trying to constantly improve things and
restlessly. That probably has to do with finding the right people, not just creating the culture,
but creating a culture with the right set of people. Speaking of which, Steve Jobs,
there's two things I want to mention there. One, once again, the harshness, but a very different
kind, and the second is team building. On the harshness, he is much harsher than Elon
in the following way. I'm having a sense that you will not like this, but I'd like to defend it,
is he loses his shit quite a bit. He was famously, especially early on, being very emotional.
He's letting passion dominate the discussion. There'll be a lot of firings. There'll be a lot
of mean things said to people. I don't know what you make of that. How much is a leader?
Are you allowed to just lose your shit and your love for the thing you're doing?
And how effective is that? As a leader, you shouldn't be doing that very often.
So, you can look back at me and say, well, Jocko, here's the most profitable company that's ever
existed, and so you're wrong. Well, going back to that multitude of characteristics that human
beings can have, what's the same thing with businesses? It's the same thing with companies.
Steve Jobs was off the charts in some of his traits, his ability to understand design,
his ability to understand human interface with computer systems. So far off the charts,
that despite his bad temper, emotional behavior, the company still thrived.
That can happen. You can have people that are horrible leaders that develop something
that's so universally outstanding that you end up with a company that's successful.
The reason, I mean, I get asked that a bunch. You know, people always ask me because I say,
look, you shouldn't be losing your temper as a leader. Well, what about Steve Jobs? He used
to yell and scream all the time. Great. When people say that to me, I say, oh, okay, are you
as good at design as Steve Jobs was? Are you as good at marketing as Steve Jobs was?
He had a certain amount of skills that were off the charts, and so he was able to be successful
despite the fact that he would lose his temper, treat people horribly. That's not good.
It's not good. And it would have been even more successful if he wouldn't have those
characteristics. Now you might say, well, his anger is what pushed things. Well, let me ask you this.
What leader wins? The leader whose team is afraid, the team who executes the mission
because they're afraid of their leader, or executes the task because they're afraid of their leader,
or the team that loves their leader so much that they don't want to let them down, which team wins?
You're implying a confidence that love is more powerful than fear, but I'm not so sure.
This is the Machiavelli question. You're saying ultimately it's always better to lead by inspiration
and love than by putting the fear into the team. What I'm saying is that I've seen countless times
is me leading through my authority, leading through my rank, leading through punitive measures
is infinitely worse than me and you working together as a team to win.
On the second point is Steve Jobs. He has this idea of philosophy of eight players
where you have a group like the power and the productivity of a group of what he called eight
players is invaluable. You want to get a team of people who are the best at what they do,
but the most important aspect to him was that a single, quote unquote, B player on the team
destroys the entire productivity of the team. Is there something that brings true to that?
So this could be a temper thing, but vicious about firing and removing what he felt was
a toxic B player and a team. So eight players feed off of each other unless there's one B player
present. Depends on the nature of the B player. Is the player a B player because he's a little bit
lazy? Is he a B player because he doesn't have good vision? Is he a B player because he's got
a big ego and always thinks he's right and now creates conflict in the team? So there's a bunch
of different B players. Look, if you're working for me and you're kind of a B player, but guess
what? You're a grinder and you get stuff done. I want you on the team. You might not be the smartest
person I have, but I know that you're committed to the team and I want you on the team. So you're
a B player, but that's okay. Now, if you're Lex with a giant ego, I'd rather have Lex that's
not quite as smart because I got other people that are smart. I got other people that are
smart on the team. Look, you're going to need some smart people on the team, but a team
is made up. It's a team. And so you take these different components of a team. And if you have
complementary components, you'll end up with a superior team, then just basing it on the level
and what's an A player? Sometimes in the SEAL teams, they would get something called the stacked
platoon. And what that would be is someone, you know, some senior person in that platoon
would manipulate and maneuver to get the quote best guys that he could in that platoon. So,
you know, the most experienced guys, the person that had great, great reputations. And sometimes
those platoons would be great. Sometimes they would implode because what you end up with is a
bunch of A players. And now no one wants to follow anyone else. No one wants to agree with anyone
else. Everyone wants to do it my way, not it's my way, not Lex's way. Lex is stupid. No, you're
stupid. We end up with problems. So can one person derail a team? Absolutely. Under good
leadership, one person should not derail a team. This could be a tech thing too. There's some
multiplying effect of just pure excellence, no matter the personalities.
I think for Steve Jobs, the ego doesn't matter. None of that matters. What matters is the quality
of the output, the genius of the result. And that somehow multiplies itself. And the egos actually,
like one of the problems with egos is like, what does ego usually say? It says, I'm much better
than you. When you have people that are really good together, it's very hard for the ego to
flourish because you're constantly being shown that you're not as good. And there's a competition.
So I think his idea was that if you get people that are really good at what they do, it turns as
opposed to you being complacent and not doing much and thinking you're better than everyone else.
And your opinion is better is you almost getting in that competitive race. You know that magic
that happens when you're at the end of a marathon and you're just head to head, you're just going
full steam with a person that is as good as you. There's no place for ego there.
Which is great. Which is great. Let's use that example. You and I are racing. We're at the end
of the marathon. We're both highly competitive. Highly competitive. We have massive egos and we
both want to win. We both want to win so bad that we give everything we've got. That's totally
positive, right? Isn't that totally positive? Now imagine this. Same thing. We're in a race.
We're in a marathon. We're in the last 100 meters. It's you against me. And our egos are huge and
we're pushing to win. And you start to pull ahead of me. And my ego is so big and I hate losing so
much that I somehow accidentally push my knee up against your foot on a backstribe and throw you
onto your face. So that's what ego... Ego is an awesome driver unless you let your ego control you
and you let ego drive your decision-making process, in which case it turns into an incredible
problem. So you might have someone that is excellent. You might have someone that's outstanding.
You might have someone that's tens across the board, but their ego is so big that they can't
work with other people. They can't accept anyone else's ideas. They can't compromise on something
because they think their idea is better all the time. And that is going to be problematic.
And I don't want them on the team. Now, as a good leader, guess what I'll do? I'll put them into a
situation where I can utilize their best aspects but not have their ego destroy the team. So I
might say, hey Lex, you know what? I actually want you to take lead on this part of the project over
here. And since you're so smart and you work so hard, I know you're going to pull ahead of everyone
else. So you grind on that. Once you get that result, give it to me and I'm going to disseminate
it to the team. So I isolate you from wrecking yourself and the rest of the team with your
giant ego. So then looking at a completely opposite person, this is a fascinating person to me,
Sander Prachai, who's the CEO of Alphabet, CEO of Google. I admire the romantic sense,
the madness that is Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. So to me, the opposite of that, Sander Prachai, who's
like, everybody loves him. And he's also a great listener. So he always brings people together.
And so the energy of that person in a room is like, the basic energy, if I were to summarize it,
is like, I want to hear all the voices in the room. That's the energy he brings. And
it's almost like he doesn't want to impose a final decision. He wants to hear all the voices and
somehow always the decision just falls out. I don't know what to say about that style of leadership,
but it's always surprising to me how that love brought a lot of people together. And still,
I mean, some of the greatest things Google has done over the past several years could be attributed
to that continued innovation, bringing out the best out of people. There's of course bureaucracy,
which I could criticize the end of the day, which always happens with big companies. I would argue,
actually, the dictatorial style of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk helped fight the bureaucracy,
which is one criticism I would give of being a listener and being kind is sometimes you can't
cut through the bullshit as effectively. But he he's one of the only people I've ever heard of
who everybody loves. He's an inspirational figure to millions, especially in the like in India. He's
a celebrity in the best kind of way. Is there something you could say about that kind of leadership
where you're never the asshole, you're never the dictator, you're always the listener and the
the compassionate empathetic glue that brings the team together basically would love.
Yeah, that's great leadership.
If you had to choose for Google for large companies,
is there something to be said about what is more effective, the dictator,
the ruling by love or the ruling by fear?
First of all, everything's a dichotomy, right? And so to think that all the time,
you're always going to be able to just bark orders at people and they're always going to listen to
you and you're always going to get the best result, that would not be smart. To think that every
single time you're going to come to a 100% consensus amongst the troops and that decision
is going to reveal itself without you nudging it along, that would also be
shortsighted and naive. So what a good leader does is they stay balanced and as much as they
can, they listen to what the troops have to say, they take that feedback, maybe they
quietly nudge things and I'm sure he does that. I'm sure he does some nudging that maybe no one
even picks up on. I like to say the best forms of leadership is leadership with minimum
force required. So if I can go into a room as a leader and not say one single thing and the
team can come to the right consensus and move in that direction, that's my preferred method.
Maybe I have to give them a little bit of a nudge, a 10% nudge in one direction. Okay,
that's better than me walking in there and giving them 100% dictatorial direction of exactly what
I want to have happen. Now, occasionally, if we have an emergency situation, people are starting
to be frazzled and they're not sure which direction to go, then sometimes as a leader,
you have to walk in and say, All right, everyone, here's where we're going.
And people get on board. Why? Because for many years or months or however long,
you've trusted them to come up with a plan. And when you trust, when you as a leader trust your
team to come up with a plan, the team starts to trust you and you get leadership capital.
And as you build leadership capital, occasionally, you need to cash in some of that
leadership capital, you need to spend some of it. And maybe it is, Hey, listen,
here's the direction we're going right now, we'll debrief it later, but we got to make a move.
And the team who trusts you says, Roger that boss, we got it.
And all of them actually do this interesting thing. I'd love to hear your opinion on it.
And Sander certainly does it to a large degree, which is it's in the process of delegation
trusting a person to do a really difficult thing, like tossing it up,
saying like, I trust you can get this job done for some, even if your resume does not support that.
I'm actually kind of amazed that human beings, when they're given the trust
to get the job done, they step up very often. That's kind of an amazing property of human nature.
People often ask me issues about leadership. And I always say that one of the best tools
for teaching leadership and for teaching a bunch of other lessons is leadership itself.
So when it happens all the time, when you elevate someone into a leadership position,
they do step up and they do make things happen. So that's not surprising to me.
You do have to mitigate risk. So saying, Hey, you know, Lex, I know you're,
haven't been in the military before, I know you have very limited weapons experience,
but I want you to run a target assault on a real mission in whatever country.
That would not be good. That would not be a good move on, on my part. Now, if I said,
all right, Lex, you know what, I want you to get some leadership experience. I've got a training
mission and it's going to be using paintball and I'm going to put you in charge of it. I got no
problem doing that. Some of that is judging human character. It's like, there's potential,
there's something in this person that they are, they have enough demons or whatever the hell it
requires to have that fuel, they'll figure it out. They'll hate themselves if they don't,
and they'll find the right, they'll find the tools, they'll find the path to achieve the
whatever the level of perfection they can. It's been really surprising to me. It's been
making me rethink the whole hiring process because I often, now I'm thinking and looking,
so I'm looking for people both for the startup, but just for my own life,
help. And I almost want to see evidence of excellence, but maybe you want to just based
on just judgment of human character without evidence of excellence. Half people step up.
Like Joe Rogan with Jamie, it's a funny side. I didn't understand how little Joe knew about
Jamie when he hired him and Jamie stepped up and now runs one of the most successful podcasts ever.
And that's an incredible kind of, and he's one of the best producers in the world now,
not to let it get to his head. And by the way, the funny thing about him-
And one of the best Googlers in the world.
The best Googlers. The funny thing about Jamie, this is, okay, you might not like this,
but what I like, I'm constantly exceptionally self-critical to a point of like self-hating
sometimes. I deeply appreciate every single moment I'm alive, but everything I've ever done, I feel
like a shit. And when I talk to Jamie about everything he's done, he's just in every way
he carries himself. He's so self-critical. He's so worried that it's wrong, it's bad.
That anxious energy, I love it. Because that's how you lead to growth and progress.
You might, like a therapist might say, that's probably not good for your well-being.
Fuck it. It's good for the, what's good for your well-being is to create awesome things.
That's ultimately what leads to happiness. It's to create the best thing you can in your life.
And so when I see that in something like Jamie or anybody I talk to, when you're really self-critical,
that's a good sign to me. Is that ridiculous?
That's not ridiculous at all. And it goes back, you were, the way you were phrasing these questions
about what makes a good person and what makes a good leader, the way you phrased them kind of
eliminated the normal answer that I give. The normal answer that I give, if you ask me what
makes a good leader, what makes a good person is being humble. So when you're going to hire
someone for your startup or whatever company you're creating, that is a key characteristic
to look for is someone that has the humility, like young Jamie, to say, yeah, I could have done
this better and here's what I can improve and here's what I need to work on. When you have
somebody that thinks they know everything, out of the gate, you're already got someone
that's going to be hard to deal with. They're going to be hard to coach. They're going to be
hard to mentor. When you have somebody that's truly humble, you barely, again, it's minimum
force required because when you say to Jamie after a show, how do you think that went? He says,
well, you know, I did this wrong and I didn't have this set up in time and you don't, you don't
barely have to do anything because he's got the humility. If you got someone that's a big ego
and you say, hey, how did that show go? He goes, I went awesome on my end. Now, guess what you
have to do? Now you have to start applying force as a leader, which is expending leadership capital,
which we don't want to do because we always try and conserve our leadership capital as much as we
possibly can. And when we have to expend it just to get Jamie to make some improvements, that's bad.
So when you go looking for people, look for people that are humble. Now, does this mean you
look for people that don't have any confidence? No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a balance
to all these things. That's the dichotomy of leadership. But people tend towards, and look,
I work with a lot of military troops in the past. Now I work with companies. The reason I talk about
humility all the time is because for someone to get into a leadership position in the military,
they have to have confidence. So the tendency is that their confidence is going to
outweigh their humility at some point. Same thing with civilian companies. If you get to
a point of leadership inside of a company, you have to have confidence to get there. You don't
get to a position of leadership inside of a company lacking confidence. So the tendency is
for confidence to grow a little bit too much. And we have to put that confidence into check.
We have to put that ego into check. Really good leaders, they're confident, but they're humble.
That's the balance of the dichotomy. Hear that, Jamie, don't get cocky.
On occasion, rarely you talk about discipline. What does a discipline life look like?
Doing what you're supposed to do.
What if I want to lay on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch soap operas? That doesn't feel like
discipline. Do you think you're supposed to do that? Well, you could argue from a sort of
meaning of life perspective that perhaps happiness is the most important. And if it makes me happy,
perhaps that's, if it's fulfilling, of course, eating Cheetos and watching soap operas is
fulfilling for nobody whatsoever. Next question. But there's something about discipline that's
more than that, which is like the rigor of habit. You wake up early in the morning all the time.
What is it? Jordan Peterson talks about make your bed. One place where you probably agree with
Jordan. People ask me if I make my bed, I don't. There you go. There's a disagreement with Jordan.
There we go. When I was younger, before I was married, I didn't make my bed because I had one
sleeping bag on it and I would get out of the sleeping bag. There was nothing to make.
Now I'm married and I can't make my bed because my wife's in my bed. So I don't make my bed.
Okay. So what in your life, maybe we could talk about the one that's most publicly facing,
which is you wake up at four o'clock or around four o'clock in the morning. You post
on social media a picture of your watch and being early just to remind people that
you are man of your word. What's that about? What's the philosophy of the four o'clock?
What role does that play in a disciplined life for you?
Okay. From that perspective, what role it plays is getting a jump on the day.
And when you wake up early and you get a jump on the day and you've got your workout done and
you've got a little bit of work done, by the time normal people are getting up,
that's a win. That's a psychological win. And it's not just a psychological win,
it's an actual win. It's an actual win. So that feels great. It doesn't feel great maybe
when your alarm clock goes off, but by eight o'clock in the morning and you've already accomplished
some of the major tasks that you have, some of the most painful tasks that you have for the day,
you're off to a great start and it's going to feel great.
Let's break this down then. What does then the rest of the day look like? What is the perfect
productive, disciplined day in the life of Jaco Willink look like?
Wake up. Work out. Wake up when?
Four. Four thirty. Work out when?
Five. Five to six or seven. No eating. No. And then what does the workout look like?
Depends on the day. What's the perfect? We're talking about
body weight, lifting, cardio, heavy bag, jiu-jitsu.
Yeah. When I say workout, I mean no jiu-jitsu. So jiu-jitsu comes later in the day.
This is just you alone? This is me alone working out. Yep. And I'm going to be doing
a wide variety of things. This is the thing that has the pictures of the aftermath with some
sweat. So the goal is to do whatever the hell results in some sweat and that takes an hour.
Sometimes it takes 12 minutes. Sometimes it takes three hours depending on what kind of
mood I'm in. You got some demons to work through or is this just work?
So you got the David Goggins who clearly has demons screaming inside of his head that he's
trying to work through. Are you just getting the work done out of the discipline or is this,
I think Joe is a little bit with David Goggins is like, there's some ego, there's some bullshit
that you're trying to get out through some of the exercise. That's a good way to kind of humble
you is just doing that exercise. Well, exercise is certainly humbling.
I mean, but it's physical conditioning, right? It's preparing your body so that you can handle
whatever it is you're going to do. Perfect. What do you do after? Let's talk about food.
Hopefully surf if the waves are good. Surf for... How good are the waves?
Let's say they're good. This is a perfect day. It's a perfect, perfect waves. Why do you surf?
It's fun. Okay. This is fun. Okay. Man in nature. It was just like, what surfing is the ultimate?
Is the power of the, the infinite power of the ocean versus a little silly looking man on a board.
You could say it's the infinite power of the ocean versus a silly looking man on a board,
or you could say it's fun. Because it's Russian and romantic. Okay. This is for fun in the morning.
Beautiful. And this is you're still haven't eaten. No. Okay. So when do you eat? I'll usually start
grazing around 11 o'clock. I'm grazing. What's the, what's the diet that's the, is there a
perfect diet or do you graze? I'll eat some nuts, you know, something like that. I usually start
grazing. Maybe I'll have a little piece of meat or something like that. Does work enter any of this?
I'm sure you have a lot of people that want your attention. Yeah. Yeah. No, work is, work is about
to happen. Cause you know, even if I, if I woke up at four, worked out from five to six, surf from
six to eight, now I'm starting to work writing, recording, reading, talking to clients.
Is there parts of the day where you try to find moments to, to think deeply, to read deeply,
to sort of really focus? Cause this world wants, it's full of distractions, right? Even talking to
like even work stuff, the emails and all those kinds of things they can, they can scatter your
mind. Is there times you seek to have that focus? Well, I read a lot of books. And so usually when
I read, I'll be reading for a chunk of time, maybe an hour at a time, maybe a little bit longer.
And I might do that twice a day. So I don't know if that counts as what you're describing,
but then same thing with writing, when I, when I'm writing something, I mean, I just,
that's what I do. I write usually, usually write for about an hour. I can get about a
thousand words an hour out of me. So that's, that's sort of what I do.
What does the rest of the day look like? Just a lot of work, but one's the jiu-jitsu. I want to
find out about the jiu-jitsu. So round, round four, 30 or five o'clock at night.
You train. Yep. And how hard you still, how are you doing body wise? They still,
is the old man, is the old man still got it or? Are you talking to me?
It'll be good for viewership and ratings if I die before the end of the podcast. So
I still train with the same guys and I'll train, you know, so I've been very lucky
when it comes to getting injured and stuff like that. So haven't, I've had some injuries,
but they're, they're healed. And so yeah, I train.
And food wise, you mentioned grazing of some, of some nuts, a very light kind of things. Is
there a main meal here? Yeah. At night. At night. High in protein or is it anything?
Yeah, I'll have like a steak and salad. I'll usually have, for dessert, I have like a protein
shake. So is there a thing where at the end of the, at the end of the day, you will like,
you have like a summarized sword and you meditate on death and all those kinds of,
is this some weird ritual you partake in? No.
Or do you just go to bed? When I get done with the end of the day,
I might read a little bit more. Read more. Yeah, because read early on and read later.
Reading makes me tired, usually. So I'll read a little bit more.
Is there a key to you that you can speak to that makes for a productive day,
just the way you approach it mentally? Yeah, write down what you're supposed to do,
wake up early and start doing it. And then get it done.
Yeah, that's a miraculous trick. Can I ask you about jujitsu?
By all means. What have you learned from being a practitioner? You're a black belt.
What have you learned from this journey of being a martial artist?
Jujitsu for me was the connective tissue that started to join my mind together with all the
different aspects of my life. And so jujitsu for me was really important and I don't think I would
be doing anything that I'm doing right now if it wasn't for jujitsu. So there's various aspects of
my life that were in existence, but I didn't understand how they were connected until I
started training jujitsu. The primary things are interacting with other human beings and
combat tactics and strategy and jujitsu and all those things are connected.
They all follow the same guiding principles and I wouldn't have recognized those guiding
principles if I didn't do jujitsu. Can you elaborate because you've trained for many,
many years. Is it the humbling nature of just being tapped all over non-stop? I actually don't
know how many times. I've tapped more times than you. Okay. So good. Is it just the hardship of
physical training, the honesty of the mat in the sense that you know what works and what doesn't
work? Which aspects were the most impactful for you? All aspects. So yes, from a humility
perspective, when you realize you think you know what you're doing, when you think you have certain
skills and you realize that there's always somebody better than you and you realize that,
hey, maybe I don't have all the answers all the time. And you bring that to a leadership perspective
and you walk into your platoon and you realize that maybe you don't have all the answers all
the time and maybe you should listen to what other people have to say. You bring that to a combat
situation and you realize that if you sit there and think that you're smarter than the enemy,
you're going to be complacent. You're going to make mistakes. So there's one aspect out of the gate
as far as, you know, if I, if I'm going to try and get your arm, do I attack your arm?
Maybe not directly unless I'm a white belt. Exactly. What do I do? I attack your neck and
when you reach up to defend your neck, that's when I get your arm. Well, if I'm out on the
battlefield and there's an enemy position, should I attack frontal assault into that position?
No. No, I shouldn't. I should put down some covering fire and I should maneuver around
to the flank. It's the same thing. If I'm dealing with you and you're my boss and you've got a giant
ego and you've come up with a plan and I don't like your plan, should I walk up to you and say,
hey Lex, your plan isn't good? No. Or should I say, hey Lex, can I ask you some questions about
how you want us to execute this? Cause I want to make sure I understand your vision.
So all these things are connected. Yes. And I wouldn't have realized that we could sit here
and do this forever. We could, we could, I could tell you these comparisons forever.
But this, all this connective tissue bringing all these things together,
I wouldn't have seen it without, I don't think I would have seen it without Jiu Jitsu.
So Jiu Jitsu to me had a, had a incredible life impact on me, not look the physical part. Yes,
absolutely. Does it, does it keep you humble when you know that there's a 145 pound individual
that can tap you out when you're 220 pound 25 year old guy and there's 135 or 140 pound,
you know, 46 year old guy that can make you tap out, that's humbling. And, and what do you do
with that? Do you run away from it or do you continue to pursue it? Same thing with life,
same thing with anything. So Jiu Jitsu is an incredibly powerful, not just physical aspect,
but it's, it's a way to understand, it's a way of thinking.
You've also competed. Is there something you can speak to the value of competition?
Obviously you've been through combat, actual military combat is many, many, many orders of
magnitude, more high stakes than competition in a, in a silly sport like Jiu Jitsu. Nevertheless,
it still has some of the echoes of the same challenges. Is there something you can speak
to the value of competition for you? Yeah, competition will reveal weaknesses in your game
that you can then go back and train, rectify. So that, that's very useful to sort of,
yeah, as a testing ground. Of course, training can be that testing ground as well or, or
that feedback. Yep. But as you and I both know, if you and I train together all the time,
you'll know my game, I'll know your game. And even if we have five other people, we all kind
of understand each other's games and you're not doing something to me that I don't expect.
So when I go and compete, I'm, you're, you know, this random person has a game that I've never
seen before. I'm, and I may or may not know how to deal with that game. If I know how to deal with
it, great. I get the victory. Maybe I don't learn as much. If I don't know how to deal with their
game, I get the loss and I get the win of learning what some weakness in my game is.
So you mentioned offline that your friends and you work with Dean Lister and
the Dean Lister is one of the people that inspired John Donahue, who I've very much been,
I've gotten a chance to talk to quite a bit recently. I don't know what you think about this.
This is not a therapy session, but
or maybe it is turning into one. It's turning into one. I've, that he's a fascinating person,
John Donahue, in terms of creating almost a science of jiu-jitsu to a level that I haven't
seen before, which is systems thinking about, like you can think about military combat as
tactics in a particular situation, but then you zoom out and you want to create entire systems of
tactics in all situations, right? He's very kind of wants to keep zooming out and creating giant
systems, which I appreciate that even though the task is probably impossible to do completely,
but there is something that's in terms of competition that
he kindled a fire in me that I want to get back out there. He has a particular thing that did it,
which is very different from my personal journey in jiu-jitsu, which was
to a degree that people I worked with cared about competition. It was always about winning
and or doing well, all those kinds of things. For John, it's about winning. Like winning is
not even the thing that's important. What's most important is winning by submission or dominance,
right? And not just the end, it's the entire time competing, such that the only thing that
matters is that kind of victory. And that's a very different level of competition that's
actually liberating in a certain kind of sense. I remember so much of my competition
was about kind of fear of not taking risks. You get up on points or you hold a strong
position, you kind of advance and you get more points. Maybe you chase the submission,
but there's always a fear of risk. And for him, you embrace the risk. You should not
be competing out of fear. Live and die by the sword versus stay in safety. I don't know if
there's something to be said here. Well, I mean, this is not, you said it's novel to you. It's
not novel to me. The entire, my entire journey on Jiu-Jitsu in Jiu-Jitsu was only about submission.
And, you know, as you mentioned, Dean Lister is my coach and my main training partner for 20
something years. And if you ever watch Dean train or fight, that's what he's trying to do is submit
as everyone. That's what he's always done. That's what he always will do. He, you know, he has the
highest, I think he has, in fact, I know he has the highest submission victories in ADCC. That's
what he does. So this is, in fact, as Jiu-Jitsu got more popular and we started seeing people
competing to win by points, that was what was novel to me in the beginning. Now it's the standard.
So it's not novel to me. I love the fact that John Donnerher and all of his troops go out and they
try and submit people. I think it's awesome. And I think that's what Jiu-Jitsu is.
All right. Let's ask for some advice for white belts. There's a lot of white belts to listen to
this. What advice would you give, you've been in Jiu-Jitsu for many years, in terms of a
successful journey through Jiu-Jitsu. What advice would you give them? People just starting out.
Just keep training. Keep your ego in check. Don't freak out. Try and use the techniques that you
learn. And all this stuff sounds like I'm saying it. You know, notice how I'm saying it. Hey,
tap out. Keep your ego in check. But the thing is, everyone says this all the time. And white belts
still start off by going completely nuts for at least three to six months of, I'm not going to let
this guy tap me out. And they're going to, and I'm going to tap this guy out, not by using technique,
but by just using strength. And it's just inhibiting your learning. So as much as you can,
I know you got to get it out of your system. I know you don't want to tap and I know you want to
tap somebody. But as soon as you get that off your chest, then try and relax and try and learn
the techniques. It's perhaps counterintuitive. It never was to me, but it's counterintuitive that
to start on the journey of really sort of mastering jiu-jitsu or whatever or improving
is you have to relax. And that seems to be a very counterintuitive lesson. I learned that early on
with, thanks to the Russian system, I played piano and like music. Basically, actually,
this is true for basically any sport that includes the human body is like relaxing is the way you
start learning stuff. You have to learn, you have to literally, and most people don't seem to
understand this is like, you have to learn what it means for the human body to relax.
Like, I guess you have to have enough knowledge of all the muscles involved to know what it means
to relax those muscles. So for piano, you have to understand what it means to relax your wrists
and your fingers in order to learn how to move them. Like if there's tenseness in the fingers,
you're not going to like, you have to learn how to try hard while relaxed. The, I guess the beginner,
if you don't internalize this lesson, will try hard by tensing up hard and like trying hard,
tensing up more as opposed to relaxing more. And that lesson cannot be conveyed through words,
I guess. I've had the great fortune of having dictatorial teachers as they do in Russia
for piano and so on. We get like hit if you don't learn to relax, which is a
kind of intuitive notion, but it works. Yeah, this brings me to one of my favorite pieces
of coaching advice that I will tell white belts while they're struggling on the mat. I'll tell
them to relax harder. That's beautiful. For somebody who studied war, who participated in war,
what do you think is the best martial arts for, let's call it self defense
for hand to hand combat outside the constraints of sport?
So it's not one answer. The answer to me is jujitsu, boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai,
judo, sombo and on down the list. I definitely start with jujitsu. The reason I start with jujitsu
is because in a self defense situation, if you are a big monster human and you want to fight me
and you square off with me, guess what I'm going to do? Run away. Because I don't want to get
involved. Even if I see skinny little Lex out on the street and you start yelling at me and
saying you want to fight me, I don't want to fight you. It doesn't matter. I don't care if I can beat
you or not. What if you stab me? What if you sue me after I get done throwing you onto the
concrete? There's a million bad things that can happen and almost nothing good. So for self defense,
my first self defense is my feet to get away from you. And if you square off to punch me,
I can run away from you. If you square off to kick me, I can run away from you. If you push me,
I can run away from you. So great. I don't need to know how to box to run away from you.
Where this all changes is when you grab me. And now I don't have the option to run away
anymore. Now I actually have to know how to get away from your grip. And that's where jujitsu
comes into play. So especially if you get me on the ground, if you grab me and get me on the
ground, now I need to know how to get you off of me and get up and get away from you so I can run
away. So that's why I say start with jujitsu. And from there, boxing, wrestling, judo, samba,
Muay Thai. Yeah, there's in the standing position. I mean, I'm a judo person as well. And
the judo is very limited in their understanding of the full grappling spectrum, even though
they do all the things on the ground as well. But it's so focused on the feet. But nevertheless,
it's important to understand the thing that judo has as a sport, that's good to practice,
that jujitsu doesn't is not just the skill of grappling on the feet, but the skill of explosive
aggression. That sometimes jujitsu is more about in terms of tactics is more about patience.
And it depends how you practice it. But because so much is about control and technique, that
sometimes you don't get to practice like aggression, explosive aggression. And judo is so much about
aggression implemented in such a way that the demonstration of power is effortless, right?
That's the beauty of jujitsu. Yeah, and same thing with wrestling. Wrestling also has a high level
of intensity and aggression as well. Yes. Yeah. So that's where that's where I agree, judo
and wrestling, absolutely. Awesome. Get some. And striking, boxing, moitai. Yeah. You should
train all these things. Are there books and movies in your life long ago or recently that had a big
impact on you? Yeah, the main one is about face, which is sitting right here. There you go. This
is written by Colonel David Hackworth. It's the book that really had a massive impact on me
from a leadership perspective. And I ended up, I talked about it enough that it started kind of
coming back and started selling well. And they contacted me and I wrote a forward for it. So
that book had a huge impact on me. And I still, when I read it, I still get lessons out of it
just about every time. This is Vietnam War. And Korea. And Korea. And he got in towards the end
of, right at the end of World War II. So he was kind of raised by the soldiers that fought in
World War II. And then he went to Korea, and then he went to Vietnam. An exceptional warrior,
a soldier-soldier. If you can give a little inkling what made him a soldier-soldier.
So I, he died in 2005. So I never got to meet him. And I had a guy on my podcast
who worked for him in Vietnam, a guy named General James Mukayama. And luckily, his son had reached
out to me and said, I think you're talking about my dad, because I read some passage in there that
that Jim Mukayama was young captain, young captain Jim Mukayama, company commander in Vietnam.
He said, I think you're talking about my dad. Would you want to talk to him? And I said,
absolutely. Well, here's the thing that I didn't really understand. And you read one quote, but
there's all these quotes in that book that talk about how great Hackworth was and what an incredible
leader he was and how he was the best combat leader anyone had ever seen. And all these just
really complimentary things that are said by a bunch of different people. And when you read the book,
you're reading this guy's account of what he went through.
But I never really knew if that was all true, or did he just cherry pick his friends,
quotes about him and cherry pick the stories that he wanted to tell.
And so it was very interesting for me when I met Mukayama, General Mukayama,
he became a general eventually, when I met him, and we were talking about his life.
And I was very curious. And I was a little bit nervous going into this interview,
because I was thinking maybe my hero, my mentor, this guy that I've never met before,
maybe he's just an arrogant jerk that talked, talked himself up in this book.
So I'm sitting down with with General Mukayama. And I finally got to the part where he's meeting
Hackworth for the first time. And I said, did you know, did you know who Hackworth was when
he showed up? So he was Mukay, Muk, Muk, they call him Muk. Muk was the, was the,
like the adjutant to the, to the general that that was going to,
that Hackworth was going to be working for. So when Hackworth comes into the office,
the first person he meets is this guy, this guy, Captain Mukayama.
And so Hackworth walks in and I said, when Hackworth walked in, did you know who he was?
And Mukayama says, everybody knew who he was. Mr. Infantry. And so he ended up explaining that
everything that is written in there about Hackworth, they, they just loved him. They adored him.
Up the chain of command, it turned out a little bit different. And, you know,
the title of the book is about face. And if you're familiar, familiar with military drill about face
when you turn around 180 degrees and at the end of the Vietnam war, towards the end of the Vietnam
war, he was so disgusted with the way that the war was being fought. He was so disgusted with the
decisions that were being made by the leadership that he did an interview. He was the first
colonel, first senior officer to do an interview that spoke out against the war that was happening.
And this is while he's in Vietnam, by the way. So he got drummed out of the army and he
was forced to retire and that was that. So there's an element of rebelliousness to him.
And, you know, when you talk to me about, are there times when the leaders making the leadership,
this absolute senior leadership, the civilian leadership is doing the wrong things? Yes.
And there's times when people speak out against it. And there's an argument for it against that
too, even with Hackworth. You know, did he, when you get, when you quit your job or you do something
that gets you fired, which is what he did, you immediately give up all your influence over
what's happening. So they get another, they get another battalion commander to take his place.
They get another colonel to step in and take his place. That's what they do. And now he can't
help anymore. He can't help his troops. But at that point in the war, he loved his men so much
that he was sickened with the situation on the ground. And he spoke out about it. So that book
had a huge impact on me. And like I said, I still, I still read it all the time. I reread it all the
time. And I always take lessons from it. Let me ask you about love. This is not usually associated
with Jaco, but what role does love, in terms of friendship, in terms of family, play in a successful
life and life in general? Again, this is putting other people above yourself.
Do you see that as love? That's ultimately the implementation of love.
I would say yes. Jaco, I've been a huge fan of yours. You're somebody who inspires me to get up
early, to get shit done, to be disciplined about my life, and to be the best leader I can be.
It's really truly an honor. And thank you for wasting all your too valuable time with me. I
don't know what you were thinking, but thank you for doing it. Well, thanks for having me on. I can
guarantee you I'm not as cool as you just made me sound. I'm just out here, like I said, trying to
help people out. And I think you're helping a lot of people out with your podcast. So thanks
for having me up here to share some of my experiences. And hopefully I'll see you on
the mat one day. For sure. Looking forward to it. Could be sooner than you think.
Sounds like a threat. I love it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jaco Willink,
and thank you to Linode, Indeed, SimplySafe, and GroundNews. Check them out in the description
to support this podcast. And now, let me leave you with some words from Jaco Willink.
There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.