Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Eight Stages of Revolution - Intel Vet Rick Hoppe Maps the Path from Grievance to Rupture S3-EP8

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Eight Stages of Revolution - Intel Vet Rick Hoppe Maps the Path from Grievance to Rupture S3-EP8 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  I feel like I should play the Jeopardy song or something.
• 0:06
  Now you're going to stick that in my head, aren't you?
• 0:09
  No.
• 0:10
  Earworms are the best.
• 0:30
  All right, everybody.
• 0:32
  Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
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  I'm one of your hosts, Havoc.
• 0:38
  I'm the other guy, LX.
• 0:40
  Hello.
• 0:40
  Welcome back.
• 0:41
  All those things.
• 0:42
  Hi, Rick.
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  How are y'all doing?
• 0:45
  Great.
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  Today we have with us a special guest, Rick Hoppe, a retired intelligence officer, military
• 0:52
  analyst, and author of Eight Stages, a Primer on Modern Revolution.
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  Welcome to the show, Rick.
• 1:00
  I am really glad to be here. I'm looking forward to this.
• 1:03
  Awesome. Awesome.
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  So what brought you to write a book like this,
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  Eight Stages of Primer on Modern Revolution?
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  That seems like a pretty heavy topic as well.
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  Kind of a long, kind of a weird story.
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  I've spent, I was in the intelligence community
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  for just a little bit over 32 years,
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  and most of the time in working the terrorism prevention angle,
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  some counter-espionage stuff,
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  and then found myself at one point in 2007 in Iraq,
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  working on senior staff during the surge.
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  And we would hang out until 2 o'clock in the morning
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  because General Petraeus would have his commander's call at midnight.
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  and quite often they come up and give us these last minute taskings.
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  We call them drive-bys.
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  And rather than walk in the next morning and have one laying on the desk,
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  we figured we'd get it right as it cropped up.
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  So we were hanging out and the counterintelligence
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  and human intelligence officers stopped by.
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  And I was tired.
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  I was working 80 to 85 hours a week as it was and getting older.
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  And I made a comment that this insurgency that was going on, it really smelled a lot like Mao's insurgency, three phases of an insurgency.
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  And he said, write it up.
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  And I did.
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  But we were getting fired on.
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  We were getting a lot of indirect fire missile and rocket fire every day, a lot of it.
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  And that kind of went by the by, but it never quite left my head.
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  And I'm a process guy.
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  and it just felt like there was a process that was being followed,
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  but not a checklist.
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  It just felt that way.
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  And so for years I kind of thought about it,
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  and then about three years ago I fully retired
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  and was messing around on my computer and found that paper.
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  And so I did a little research, ran across a guy by the name of Jack Goldstone
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  who wrote a wonderful book about revolutions.
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  and that sparked it.
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  And I spent probably 10 hours a day for the next two weeks
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  diagramming and stress testing.
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  And then one day I sat back and went,
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  every revolution in the modern era since the mid 1700s
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  has followed this path.
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  Every doggone one of them,
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  even the ones that didn't succeed in complete revolution,
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  but there was an attempt,
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  followed the path up to the point where it failed out.
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  so i figured i'd write it up i sent it off to my publisher and he came back and goes rick let's do
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  it and here we are did you what actually qualifies as a revolution is it just an insurgency like they
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  want to overthrow a regime or i mean could a bunch of people looting and pillaging the downtown of a
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  metro area qualify as a revolution or what is the definition on that actually that was one of the
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  thorniest problems is because one of the things I learned long ago is you have to standardize and
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  define the language. So if I say revolution, what are you thinking? You're probably thinking
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  something slightly different. And then the next, and this is among analysts who are
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  skilled and experienced, they'll all be thinking something slightly different. So I had to come up
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  with a definition and a definition is when one group within any governance, all right, that could
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  be a country, a region, but most likely, most usually a country, seeks to completely overthrow
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  the current societal system and replace it with their own.
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  It could be violent.
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  It could be nonviolent.
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  Usually it's violent.
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  Usually there's blood.
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  Usually there's barricades.
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  But that would be it now Then you get into things like the BLM riots in 2021 People were going it was a revolution It wasn It was an uprising but it wasn a revolution
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  So I had to spend a lot of time bouncing those definitions off of people that I trusted and people who thought deeply about it.
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  Okay.
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  How do you, what do you, so, okay, we have the definition of a revolution.
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  I guess how does that
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  where is the intersection when we start thinking about things like a coup
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  or you know when you start thinking about things
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  like okay you know well let's just go with that right a coup
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  versus a revolution what would be the major difference there
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  a coup is replacing the head of government
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  90% of the time a lot of the people below him
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  are going to stay, or if they do replace the entire government,
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  they're going to fall in on the same basic governmental ethos,
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  protocols, a lot of the laws and customs.
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  Revolution seeks to get rid of it all and replace it with their version.
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  And that seems counterintuitive because when you get rid of it all,
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  what is left and my personal feeling and i can't prove it because i'm not a sociologist
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  is that the people pushing the revolution don't care if it all tears down as long as
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  they can rule over the rubble so how do you i'm not sure if you're uh familiar with the
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  the works of, uh, I think it was Gene Sharp, um, from dictatorship to democracy. And part of that,
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  you know, follows on with like the concept of a color revolution, right. Where, uh, you know,
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  I think there, there is some idea of a plan of what needs to be shifted. Uh, and it, you know,
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  I think quite often tries, at least tries, to be a peaceful revolution.
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  Was that influential in your work at all, or are you familiar with it?
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  Yeah, actually, I got the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time in Kiev.
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  At the time it was Kiev, now it's Kiev, what's left of it.
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  And this was 2014.
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  and I went down to Freedom Square,
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  which was just down the hill from our hotel.
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  And it just loaded.
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  And I'm also a Russian linguist, so most of it was in Russian
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  or Ukrainian, which has the same root.
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  I could kind of understand most of it.
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  But huge displays about what happened down there,
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  the color revolution.
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  And it did affect my feelings.
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  I have a great deal of empathy and respect for people who are willing to go to the mat for freedom.
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  But color revolutions usually aren't.
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  They're uprisings.
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  The word revolution is just easily thrown around.
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  There are requirements for a revolution to take place.
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  And if you don't meet those requirements, it's not going to happen. Witness Iran right now, for example.
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  So the color revolutions.
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  Right. It's a tough one because of the fact that it's so I think to be very honest, I think we lack an understanding culturally.
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  and we apply the same principles we apply to a lot of western you know countries etc and what we
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  don't understand is this is a religious group of leadership so unless you take out their god
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  it's just going to be another you know imam in place and the clerics they'll all vote on who's
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  next and you know it's like taking out the pope you you it doesn't stop catholicism right um so
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  um i can tell how brilliant you are you know i can tell how brilliant somebody is by how much
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  they agree with you uh and my next book is on exactly that we don't analysts are not trained on
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  how to analyze a revolutionary effort,
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  to be able to determine whether it crosses from an attempt into revolution
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  and at what stage they are, which also determines how you have to react to them.
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  It's continual and it's affecting the way that we're
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  prosecuting this conflict with Iran right now.
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  Now the essential misunderstanding is the what you might call the center of gravity is not missiles it not tanks it not boats
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  The center of gravity here to achieve what he's wanting to achieve is all of what's being done,
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  but the people have not met the requirements that will enable them to follow through with a revolution.
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  love them or not the cia used to do it very well because they would build the scaffolding
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  on which revolution was built um don't get me started on cia and there's things i can still
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  can't talk about actually fomented it and created the situation but the outcome uh i would just
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  label it as an abject failure every single okay well watch my face oh no they never did that
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  All right.
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  Well, there were occasions where it worked.
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  Whether it was desirable or not was eminently debatable, maybe.
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  But so we don't have these requirements having been met.
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  We haven't made the effort to build in the requirements or assist them.
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  They have to develop the requirements themselves.
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  and so as a result i i actually put something up on substack and the title of it was
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  you can't bomb your way into a revolution and you can't no we can bomb them down to class
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  you kind of tend to piss the people off that you're trying to get to actually revolt well
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  they are getting upset because they were promised assistance they're getting assistance but it's
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  kind of like having a three-year-old help you work on the car. It's not, it's assistance.
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  It's not effective assistance. And if I sound very judgmental, I'm very frustrated about it.
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  When I was trying to get this off the ground, I found that there is a lot of resistance
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  to redefining how revolutions progress.
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  And I don't know why.
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  I'm not a political guy.
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  I never have been.
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  I have tried playing politics at office politics before.
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  I was an abject failure.
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  So I don't know why.
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  All I know is now I've got a,
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  there's a couple of people who have reviewed the book,
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  or very high-end people who are eminently respectable
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  that have said yes, absolutely.
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  So I'm hoping that somehow that we no longer do these striving in vain things.
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  If you want to fire off of, if you want to launch a jet from an aircraft carrier,
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  there are things you have to do.
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  It's a process.
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  if you want a people to revolt in search of freedom there are steps that have there are
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  things that have to happen and it's a process and it sounds counterintuitive uh for example did you
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  know did you know that the where after 9-11 where was the largest pro-american demonstration in the
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  world held Tehran yeah I was gonna say I think it was in the Middle East yeah
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  Tehran and over a million people in sympathy for the US good people probably
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  I think the region is is largely you know it's one of those things right I
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  think in large part the people are probably very good people right that I
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  I guess the question that I have is you say towards freedom, your idea of freedom, my idea of freedom and Alexa's idea of freedom all in the same country are probably moderately to vastly different.
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  Right. So now you're talking about a country that's built upon a religion that's been around for thousands of years before us.
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  and, you know, in some cases, thousands of years before Western culture in general.
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  And the religion is part of their life, right?
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  And in a large majority, not everyone.
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  And so now you've got factions inside of that religion
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  and you're asking them to decide upon what freedom looks like.
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  But for the, you know, fundamentalist in the religion,
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  and I don't mean that in like a, you know, jihadi kind of, you know, terrorist.
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  I just mean fundamental. You've got fundamental Baptists. You've got fundamental Christians.
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  You've got fundamental all of those things. What's going to look like freedom to them is going to
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  look completely different to someone who may be Christian in that nation or someone who may be
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  Jewish in that nation or someone who just purely atheistic So you know that the part I think we we often miss right is we want to tell people what freedom is But they may disagree with us
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  Well, and that's that's another thing that we don't do.
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  We have an idea of what freedom is.
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  Your idea and mine will correlate to a pretty large degree with some substantive differences.
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  um my experience has been i worked uh i had uh i worked around the world and uh worked the
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  terrorism and insurgency thing and especially in iraq what i found was first off 99 of the people
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  out there just want the crap to end they want to raise their goats to raise their crops raise their
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  kids you know cuddle with their wives and uh drive their bongo trucks around selling produce
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  I mean, they just want it to end.
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  But, you know, when somebody's threatened to kill you, it's you have no choice.
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  We had a deal.
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  I was working at Martyrs Monument out in Baghdad in 2003.
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  And there was a every night, not every night, probably four nights a week.
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  Somebody from somebody in Baghdad would fire mortars and their old Soviet motors,
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  border so you can see the sparks as they go overhead and they go overhead and they land in
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  the lake every night two maybe three rounds so finally they tracked the guy down and brought him
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  in and when they when the guys i was working with interrogated him he was he turned out he was an
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  iraqi mortar sergeant and they were like what dude why why are you you can't hit us he goes
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  ah they pay me 20 around to fire them at you they never paid me 20 around to hit you
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  uh we found that a lot we they we uh one of teams i was working with went in to pick up a
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  rocky colonel who'd gone on the run after the whole thing came apart and they asked the questions
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  and found out he's working as a clerk in his family shop in downtown in the market district
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  so when they pulled up out there they're thinking we're gonna have to go in and get him he took off
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  his apron handed the uh apron to his wife kissed his wife on the forehead walked out and said shall
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  we go. They just want it over with. What the problem is, is the Iranians can't just let it
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  get over with. Sun Tzu said that you have to build every enemy a golden bridge across which to
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  retreat. You have to give them an out. But the IRGC, the Basij, the secret police, the military,
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  they don't have it out.
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  If they drop their guard and drop their use of force to keep the population
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  subjugated, they're going to end up like Mussolini was,
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  torn apart by the women and hanging in pieces from a balcony.
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  They got, there's no, it is either death or victory,
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  and there's no gray for them.
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  So we haven't, now is it up to us to create that?
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  No, but I really wish that we'd have managed to figure that one out
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  before we started firing million-dollar cruise missiles.
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  I mean, yeah.
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  Yeah, they've got nowhere else to go.
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  And word's starting to come out, and I no longer have the clearance
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  or the access to be able to tell you that, yes, this is all.
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  I've seen it with my own eyes, but I have heard it enough from people
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  who I trust that Basij and IRGC members are trying to figure a way out
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  and they just can't find one because the Iranian people will.
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  Go ahead.
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  Well, I was going to say, I think in the current state of affairs,
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  I think you could arguably say we're in the same position.
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  We don't really have, I mean, what else are we going to do?
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  keep bombing sand or bomb more of their civilian infrastructure and just tear down the buildings.
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  And then the population, you know, as we've seen, has rallied behind these people, right? They
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  wanted this. I've seen plenty of interviews with people saying, yes, I wanted this revolution. We
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  want change. But now that you're bombing our stuff and putting me in danger and my killing my family
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  and my friends, I've got no choice.
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  It's an existential threat for them, right?
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  So, you know, and for us, the decision becomes
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  either, you know, light the entire region on fire,
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  suffer massive cataclysmic, possibly economic consequences
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  in doing so, or figure out a way to give them a win
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  without it being a win, right?
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  and it just seems like we're all really stuck
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  between a rock and a hard place in this particular event.
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  Well, I've given this a lot of thought,
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  talked a lot with,
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  You know, old intelligence agents. Here's a conversation between old intelligence officers.
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  So I never mind. That's because you realize what you can't talk about, but you can talk about what you hear and what you see in open source.
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  The Iranian people are. They're behind the effort.
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  They're a little puzzled, read that to be a lot puzzled, as to its lack of efficacy.
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  And they're starting to get down to the point where you don't have any choice, but you start
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  bombing the things that you've been trying to stay away from.
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  And already it's been bad enough.
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  So what are you going to do next?
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  So hence the administration's push for diplomacy, but they don't realize, or they do.
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  I'm sure Marco Rubio was a smart man.
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  I am absolutely certain of it.
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  He realizes that he's not negotiating with one entity,
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  that he's negotiating with the government.
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  He's negotiating with the imams and the,
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  what I call the domain of force,
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  which would be the Basij and the IRG's meaning.
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  The imams are answerable to other imams.
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  So the grand, I think he's called the Grand Mufti,
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  in Saudi Arabia, the nominal head of, or the senior guy,
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  not the head of, but the senior guy in Islam,
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  I'm sure is talking to the Shia brothers in Iran and saying,
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  hey guys, really?
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  Do you really think you're going to come out of this all right?
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  And I'm sure that the government people from Dubai, UAE, Saudi, Kuwait,
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  are all doing the same thing.
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  but nobody tells the IRGC what to do except for the IRGC.
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  And the problem is, is that if you don't let them do what they want,
• 22:54
  they have the world's best motivation for you to leave them alone.
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  And that is they will, they will kill you and your family and your dog.
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  So it is a thorny situation that got themselves into.
• 23:07
  I know why they did what they did.
• 23:09
  I believe that what we need to do is we need to move toward the ability to analyze and assess the world as it is, not as it was 20 years ago.
• 23:28
  the next book I'm working on right now is a an analyst handbook meant to be a sit it down in
• 23:37
  front of you and go through the steps to do governance and stability assessments on governments
• 23:43
  because a battle analyst counts tanks and howitzers and numbers of soldiers
• 23:53
  A logistics analyst counts number of trucks and bridges and condition of roads and aircraft.
• 24:01
  A shipping analyst calculates ports, tons of shipping, number of cargo containers.
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  What does a revolutionary analyst analyze?
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  I'm sure that there's somebody out there that's coming up with this stuff.
• 24:18
  it needs to be defined and
• 24:22
  I'd say a good place to start is every one of them should probably read
• 24:29
  Edward Benet's book, you know, Psychology of the Crowd
• 24:33
  Well, you've got a thing there that I hadn't
• 24:40
  delved into real far, but the whole preference cascade
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  you get enough people believing one way and there's a lot of people are going to jump on
• 24:50
  that bandwagon just to go along but you've got to reach that tipping point whether it's
• 24:56
  a level of influence or number of people I'm not sure again I'm not a sociologist so
• 25:04
  there are too many things and again the second book that I'm working on is
• 25:10
  it's kicking my butt because it is a lot deeper than what I thought it was going to be.
• 25:17
  But I've reached here last week, the point where I am pretty comfortable with the way it's going.
• 25:23
  And it's, you have to think differently because you're looking at different things for a different
• 25:29
  outcome. It's not military analysis. It's not economic analysis. It's all of it and how they
• 25:39
  interact so it's uh i'm just kind of wondering how little ricky hoppy from biller ridge missouri
• 25:47
  managed to get in this position i haven't figured that one out yet you seen a mirror lately
• 25:57
  i try to avoid them so when you talking about tipping the scales like to get people to go one way or the other on something like that were you involved with any of that
• 26:09
  Like what we would call propaganda or, you know, kind of swaying people to go one way or the other on anything like that?
• 26:17
  Oh, you're talking about psychological operations, psyops?
• 26:19
  Yeah, right.
• 26:21
  No.
• 26:23
  No.
• 26:23
  No.
• 26:24
  I know of it.
• 26:26
  I have heard of it.
• 26:27
  i literally have never met anybody who was involved in it which is a little weird uh because i met
• 26:37
  people that did all kinds of cool crazy and technologically advanced things but i've never
• 26:45
  met any of those but i am certain i'll put my little foil hat on like i feel like i'm the target
• 26:50
  of it every day when like social media and stuff to a certain extent you are and that's the other
• 26:56
  book I'm doing is called Citizenship
• 26:58
  in the Algorithmic Age.
• 27:00
  It's
• 27:01
  hard to find data
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  on it because
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  the same people who want
• 27:10
  to publish have to use algorithms
• 27:12
  to be able to market what they're publishing.
• 27:14
  A little difficult.
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  That's another one that I'm
• 27:18
  with any luck
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  and the crick don't rise. I'll have
• 27:22
  that one done by next year and have it out
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  and then endure the slings
• 27:26
  and arrows that are going to come my way, but you're exactly correct.
• 27:29
  You are living inside of a worldwide information operation.
• 27:36
  And that's the other thing.
• 27:37
  It's so I'm not crazy.
• 27:39
  No, you're not.
• 27:41
  No, you're not.
• 27:42
  You are being algorithmically curated.
• 27:44
  Excuse me.
• 27:46
  Who knew that you could be allergic to an elm tree?
• 27:49
  I know.
• 27:49
  I know now.
• 27:51
  Yeah.
• 27:51
  the uh you're living inside of an algorithmic uh cage that is built around you and uh we have
• 28:02
  two choices we can either become uh better educated and uh shape it or crawl inside any
• 28:17
  either of you have dogs where you have a crate that they go into well you can either be outside
• 28:23
  the crate or you can be inside and uh too many people are comfortable inside because
• 28:31
  how else are you going to get recommendations for cute kitty videos
• 28:35
  yeah it's exactly you're not crazy you can you can watch this stuff in real time right you go to
• 28:42
  any, you know, of the large social media platforms and whatever your feed is currently do a search
• 28:49
  for something completely off topic on that.
• 28:52
  Hover over that, interact with it real quick.
• 28:54
  Now go back to your feed and start scrolling and about half of it's going to be filled
• 28:57
  with that new stuff.
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  Spend a little more time on that new stuff.
• 29:00
  Don't even interact with it.
• 29:02
  Just leave it on the screen for just a little bit more time.
• 29:05
  Next thing you know, feed reset, you're on, you know, kitty videos or whatever.
• 29:10
  kitty cat kitty cat videos okay here was an experiment an experiment that i did
• 29:16
  was i was on a podcast about two weeks ago and talking and it was run by an old friend of mine
• 29:24
  i've known this guy for 20 years and i said let's do a little experiment here while we were in iraq
• 29:32
  uh the aussies drove land land rovers and not the fancy grocery getters we're talking
• 29:38
  the real serious ones that don't have any frills,
• 29:41
  but you can drive them through a volcano
• 29:47
  and come out the other side, change the tires, and keep moving.
• 29:51
  And we talked about that.
• 29:52
  We talked about that the Aussie Sergeant Major,
• 29:55
  the guys got in and changed the lettering on the front,
• 29:58
  and it went from Land Rover to Lard Lover,
• 30:00
  which I thought was funny,
• 30:03
  but I wouldn't want to have been on the receiving end of an Aussie Sergeant Major.
• 30:06
  So we talked about that.
• 30:08
  And he said, why are you doing that?
• 30:09
  And I said, just an experiment.
• 30:11
  I got so many ads for Land Rovers, and I didn't type a word.
• 30:16
  I just talked about it on a podcast.
• 30:19
  So then I went in and said, how do they do that?
• 30:22
  So I took a recording that I had done.
• 30:26
  My cousin and I are working on a movie, and I did some narration.
• 30:31
  I said, can I drop just that sound file into AI and give me an accurate transcript?
• 30:37
  And the answer to that is yes.
• 30:39
  So I went ahead and dropped the transcript from my friends who got the transcript from the podcast into AI.
• 30:48
  And I said, analyze that.
• 30:50
  And it came in and it pulled out the product recommendations.
• 30:56
  So is it happening?
• 30:58
  Oh, yeah, it is.
• 31:00
  Is it happening every day, all day?
• 31:01
  Yes.
• 31:02
  And most of us climb into the crate and close the door behind us willingly.
• 31:07
  Yep.
• 31:08
  Most of us, not all of us.
• 31:10
  I think most Americans probably think of things like revolutions as something that happens somewhere else Like there no possibility that it could ever happen here
• 31:20
  How do we know that there's not other forces in play that are trying to do the very same things that the United States is doing to other countries to get an outcome?
• 31:31
  Well, first off, it is happening and it happens everywhere and it happens all the time.
• 31:35
  Here is something that is very controversial.
• 31:38
  most countries in the world are in one stage or another of revolution at all times.
• 31:47
  So take that as a given.
• 31:50
  Most countries, if not all, I think probably all, but there may be some that aren't.
• 31:55
  And then you got to go ahead and compare it to.
• 32:02
  You just do an analysis.
• 32:04
  I do a newsletter called Faultline that talks about this.
• 32:08
  The number one area that is in danger of revolution,
• 32:13
  a danger that is imminently in a revolution, is around.
• 32:18
  Just guess what continent number two is in.
• 32:22
  Ours?
• 32:24
  Yep, Canada.
• 32:28
  Freaking Canada.
• 32:30
  So let's put some of that down if you don't mind.
• 32:33
  So your book, Eight Stages, I have to imagine there are eight stages.
• 32:38
  Can you, I'm trying to tie together the eight stages that you've come up with, with kind of, let's take a look at, you know, North America, Canada, let's take a look at the U.S. Where do we fit on that, right?
• 32:53
  Because there's a feeling in the air, you know, and there's a good, healthy portion of the population that's, you know, kind of in that, you know, mindset, if you will.
• 33:04
  And if I recall correctly, it takes an insignificant percentage of the population to kick something like that off.
• 33:11
  Three percent, I believe.
• 33:14
  I think three percent is possibly overstating it.
• 33:16
  There are tent poles.
• 33:19
  so I'm just going to run through the eight stages real quick
• 33:24
  and we'll tweak on them
• 33:26
  stage one is incubation
• 33:28
  and that's where grievances get from general griping
• 33:31
  I don't like this, I got a ticket from the cop
• 33:34
  to overall dissatisfaction and grievances
• 33:40
  it hasn't gone any farther than that
• 33:43
  and that's incubation
• 33:44
  and it can last decades
• 33:46
  the U.S. is continually
• 33:49
  at a stage one
• 33:50
  when it's not escalated
• 33:53
  any farther
• 33:53
  just because of their nature of government
• 33:56
  and we take our right to address
• 33:58
  our grievances seriously
• 34:00
  stage two is
• 34:02
  organization and that's where affinity groups
• 34:04
  start forming
• 34:05
  so you get Republicans against Trump
• 34:08
  you get this thing and that thing
• 34:10
  and they organize
• 34:12
  and gather more people
• 34:14
  because there is power in numbers
• 34:15
  If I can put 10 people on the ground for a demonstration or a protest, that's not bad.
• 34:25
  That's okay.
• 34:26
  If I can organize and put 50 people on the ground, then people start listening and sitting up and paying attention.
• 34:38
  So you feel like you're doing something.
• 34:41
  So that's stage two.
• 34:43
  Stage three is activation.
• 34:44
  That is a stage three is where you go from.
• 34:50
  We all get together and do what?
• 34:52
  Well, in the military, we call it admiring the problem.
• 34:55
  We all get together and go, that's a problem and it's big and wow.
• 34:59
  All right.
• 35:00
  See you next week.
• 35:01
  Okay.
• 35:01
  Next week.
• 35:02
  That problem is still there.
• 35:04
  That's kind of stage two.
• 35:06
  Stage three is where they go from admiring the problem to addressing it, defining it.
• 35:13
  and coordinating action of some type, usually political,
• 35:18
  to try to address the problem,
• 35:21
  where suddenly you go from Democrats or Republicans against Trump
• 35:25
  to a political action committee
• 35:28
  that's actively raising money against the administration.
• 35:33
  And I want to get something straighter.
• 35:35
  I am inherently kind of conservative financially, fiscally.
• 35:40
  I am a social moderate to the dismay of some people.
• 35:47
  But this system, this book and this process are completely apolitical.
• 35:53
  They apply to right-wing revolutions, left-wing revolutions,
• 35:57
  and popular revolutions, which are very few, but they do occur.
• 36:01
  So when they start activating, that's where people start getting together
• 36:05
  and actually taking action.
• 36:06
  that's where you start seeing not violence,
• 36:11
  but coordinated violence start to appear very little,
• 36:15
  a little bit at a time.
• 36:16
  Like flock cameras being sawed off at the during.
• 36:18
  Dude, I was thinking about the flock camera thing the whole time.
• 36:22
  Yeah and what you got to do is if you are intending to try to take this to its culmination to a termination stage eight
• 36:33
  then you have to early on identify your combat troops because when you reach stage four,
• 36:39
  now stage three is where the U.S. is right now.
• 36:43
  It's a very stable stage three.
• 36:45
  There is not anywhere near enough popular dissatisfaction.
• 36:51
  in Rick's not so humble opinion because I'm not a humble guy,
• 36:56
  for them to go any farther.
• 37:01
  They're flirting with stage four.
• 37:03
  It could get there.
• 37:05
  I'd be very surprised.
• 37:07
  I've got a bed with a friend.
• 37:09
  You wouldn't say that the act of destruction of the problem
• 37:13
  that has been identified and discussed is part of stage four?
• 37:19
  No, stage four is bad.
• 37:21
  stage four where you go from we are upset we don't like it we're gonna uh we're gonna demonstrate
• 37:29
  and get out in front of the ice facility and we're going to uh urinate on your tires and slash
• 37:34
  our and that's stage three it's advanced stage three and keep in mind these are all in a in a
• 37:40
  they're not break point stages where you go oh no this tumbled over into stage four it's a it's a
• 37:47
  spectrum it's a continuum okay so they're we're in stage three just we get for clarification on
• 37:54
  that do do they do they overlap and and or merge at any point or can they or is this pretty hard
• 38:02
  and defined once it hits this point it's it's no longer at the previous point um there are usually
• 38:11
  i don't know i've i've i've been a painter and so one of the things i found was the hard thing about
• 38:19
  shading one color of paint into another so there's no demarcation line
• 38:25
  uh i'm not a very good painter i'm just i'm a painter but this is very similar it's there is no
• 38:34
  solid demarcation line inherent in any of the stages and they usually will flow
• 38:42
  seamlessly from one to the other and the other thing is is they're not linear you can go from
• 38:48
  one to two to three jump clean over four go to five fail go back to two and start over again and
• 38:56
  it's still the same revolution it recurses okay and can and does and sorry for the interruption
• 39:03
  No, no, no, please.
• 39:05
  I break out the podium.
• 39:08
  I put on my teacher's wig and start propounding.
• 39:13
  And so I'm going to apologize.
• 39:15
  I just, I find it incredibly fascinating.
• 39:19
  So stage four is where everything changes.
• 39:23
  Once you hit stage four, solid stage four, nothing will ever be the same.
• 39:28
  It may solidify.
• 39:30
  You may not end up changing the government,
• 39:31
  but you can't ever go back and stage four is rupture and rupture is when there is a complete
• 39:37
  break in uh okay there's a term that i use called legitimacy and legitimacy is the ability of a
• 39:48
  government to govern whether they're right they're wrong they're benevolent they're dictatorial
• 39:53
  they're tyrannical it doesn't matter if they're legitimate it means that they are still able to
• 39:58
  govern. Stage four is when all of these affinity groups and all of this political action and all
• 40:05
  of this physical action starts to roll up together and you get that cascade. And once you have that
• 40:13
  cascade happen, rupture happens, and there is a complete break from the past. Whether you go back
• 40:21
  and you defeat the revolutionary forces, nothing will ever be the same. So that's the one to watch.
• 40:28
  And we aren't in a rupture. We kind of flirt with it a little bit. The current electoral politics are worth watching, but yet they are following politics. It's not extra legal. They're using the system the way that it was designed.
• 40:47
  um i guess uh and again right i'm i'm kind of thinking of of just a lot of different areas
• 40:58
  right now but one of them is that there is you know a growing community of people actually
• 41:03
  doing this right they're like you know we we no longer recognize this as legitimate uh we you know
• 41:11
  as our own documents state, right?
• 41:15
  The power is derived from the consent of the governed.
• 41:20
  And they're saying, I'm done.
• 41:22
  I no longer consent to this and building kind of their own little,
• 41:27
  you know, as much as they can, you know, the whole concept is exit and build.
• 41:32
  Right.
• 41:33
  So I guess my question is what I know about these people and these groups is they're
• 41:39
  non-violent. They want nothing to do with violence outside of pure self-defense.
• 41:47
  Yep. Has that ever, has that ever worked? And, and I think it has in a couple of areas,
• 41:53
  right? There's a town in Mexico and for the life of me, I can't remember, but they kicked all their
• 41:57
  politicians and the mayor and the governor and all the police force and everyone out and just said,
• 42:02
  nope, we're, we're governing ourselves now. But I guess the question is, does it necessarily
• 42:08
  become violent or at that point um and you know part of my my you know spidey sense tangling goes
• 42:15
  yes it does but not by the people trying to just exit and build by the people coming and saying oh
• 42:21
  no you owe us your allegiance no matter what or we'll you know kill you or cage you or make you
• 42:28
  know whatever yeah and that's i i was sitting here freaking out while you're talking because
• 42:36
  literally this morning after having my coffee, I was sitting down and doing some work on the new
• 42:41
  book and I came up with my perfect, what I consider my definition of legitimacy. And I wrote it down,
• 42:47
  so I had to find it. Legitimacy is the permission to govern granted by the governed, governed by
• 42:56
  positive action or purposeful inaction. All right. And so it's more important than force. It's built
• 43:05
  on trust, not trust that you're going to do what's right for me. But I know that if I don't pay my
• 43:11
  bribe to the block captain, I'm not going to be able to park on that specific area. So I know that
• 43:17
  when I pay that bribe, I'm going to have my parking space. That's the trust I'm talking about.
• 43:23
  And then you lose that legitimacy very slowly until you hit four, late stage four, and it just
• 43:34
  goes away so if you your your observations are right on the money and that we can we can dance
• 43:43
  around three we can dance around in four uh at some point legitimacy either erodes or gets
• 43:52
  solidified it can't stay at four it just never can and it always happens that way that makes sense
• 43:59
  So, stage five is, I wrote something down this morning too, and I want to make sure I've got the latest thinking on this.
• 44:09
  Yeah, I'm redoing the definition on that one.
• 44:15
  It's collapse.
• 44:17
  Now, I had initially said and thought that that meant that the government collapsed.
• 44:22
  but the government uh and this was an example in the french revolution the government struggled
• 44:28
  to stay intact but they were no longer able to effectively govern at that point their legitimacy
• 44:34
  had totally collapsed and uh as we say in texas there weren't nobody listening so they could stand
• 44:42
  on the street corner and scream you have to listen to me what was that lieutenant in uh animal house
• 44:48
  at the end. I can't remember. Kevin Bacon played him.
• 44:52
  But people just flat are going to go about their own way.
• 44:57
  You also talked about violence. I have yet to find
• 45:00
  one revolution that did not turn bloody to some level.
• 45:06
  Whether it was all of them.
• 45:11
  And that indicates to me
• 45:13
  that there is one of the factors when you're doing
• 45:16
  analysis of revolutionary activity or possible activity
• 45:20
  is you have to do a full assessment of the governing body's ability
• 45:25
  to project force and their willingness to project force.
• 45:32
  Mao said that political power comes out the end of a gun.
• 45:42
  Either the bullet or just the threat.
• 45:46
  Both have to be real.
• 45:48
  And it's that coercive power that government has.
• 45:54
  You don't want to pay your taxes.
• 45:56
  Well, they're not going to come shoot you.
• 45:58
  They're just going to ruin your life and take away all your stuff.
• 46:03
  So there's that coercive power.
• 46:04
  Why do we stop for stop signs or red lights?
• 46:06
  There's a consequence behind it.
• 46:09
  Yep, exactly.
• 46:10
  I would argue that the reason I do it is so I don't get smashed by someone else doing the same on the other way.
• 46:16
  you know well say say it's the middle of the night and you're sitting there and the
• 46:21
  no red light's not changing i mean like i mean you're gonna look and say make sure there's a cop
• 46:26
  not there first before you know because well sure i used i used to ride a motorcycle and it was just
• 46:32
  hell pulling up to a stop and it's got one of those buried induction loops to trigger motorcycle
• 46:38
  ain't big enough and to have enough iron in it to trigger it and you can sit there and you'll never
• 46:43
  and get that green arrow.
• 46:45
  And I sat there and sat there.
• 46:46
  There was a cop sitting in the Dairy Queen not 100 feet away He looked at me and I looked at him and I just smiled and waved and ran the red light and he stayed right where he was He could see what was happening Yeah I heard that happening when I was younger pulled up
• 47:00
  It was actually a scooter, so it was even worse.
• 47:03
  Pulled up to the red light after dropping my girlfriend off at her donut job.
• 47:08
  I was very young.
• 47:09
  I think I was 17 at the time, and I'm sitting there,
• 47:11
  and there's a cop in the parking lot,
• 47:14
  And, you know, it's not changing for me.
• 47:18
  Finally, I see him come out and he pulls up right behind me and goes, just go through the light.
• 47:25
  Okay.
• 47:29
  Yeah.
• 47:32
  Excuse me.
• 47:32
  it is those
• 47:37
  if you can trust that there's going to be consequences
• 47:40
  then you therefore are admitting that the government is legitimate
• 47:45
  there is a book by Robert Heinlein called
• 47:49
  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• 47:50
  and it's a long political
• 47:53
  thought experiment
• 47:57
  when you actually kind of analyze a little bit
• 47:59
  and one of the things is they've introduced the concept of what's called
• 48:02
  a rational anarchist.
• 48:05
  And a rational anarchist
• 48:06
  will obey any laws
• 48:08
  that they consider to be just,
• 48:10
  break any laws that they consider to be unjust,
• 48:13
  and if they get caught and imprisoned,
• 48:15
  they readily admit
• 48:17
  that they broke the law
• 48:18
  and take their lumps
• 48:20
  rather than trying to weasel out of it.
• 48:23
  That's a little bit
• 48:25
  too on the nose for me,
• 48:26
  but on the other hand,
• 48:28
  how many times
• 48:30
  have you pulled up to a
• 48:32
  oh, here in Texas, we lose power sometimes.
• 48:36
  And every light in town, during the big freeze in 2021,
• 48:40
  every light in town was out.
• 48:42
  There was nobody else out and around because nobody else stupid enough
• 48:45
  to get out on nothing but solid ice.
• 48:48
  So I just went ahead and rolled right on through because I could see all ways.
• 48:53
  And I'm sure that if there had been a cop there, they would have just gone.
• 48:56
  Yeah, I understand it.
• 48:57
  but on the other hand, the other day I misjudged the light.
• 49:02
  It was turning yellow and it was solid red by the time I went through it.
• 49:06
  And I was just, I just told my wife, I said, if they,
• 49:08
  if the cop pulls out from somewhere, I didn't see him.
• 49:10
  I'm just going to roll down the window and go airs license registration.
• 49:15
  Yeah, no sweat. Write me the ticket. I did it.
• 49:21
  So we are bathed here in this country in legitimacy.
• 49:25
  We are absolutely bathed in it.
• 49:28
  Yes, there is corruption.
• 49:29
  You better believe there is.
• 49:31
  Hideous corruption in some instances, minor petty BS corruption in others.
• 49:39
  But when you go down and you sign up at the DMV and pay your tab every year for your plates,
• 49:47
  you can pretty well trust you're not going to get pulled over for bad plates.
• 49:51
  if you get people together
• 49:55
  they're at least going to have some level of serviceable roads
• 49:59
  whether they keep up with the potholes or not
• 50:02
  at some level they're going to be there
• 50:04
  I talked with an Iraqi colonel who came to the US
• 50:08
  and he was absolutely amazed that all the telephone poles are lined up
• 50:12
  and standing up straight
• 50:13
  because we can pretty well trust that that's going to happen
• 50:17
  Okay.
• 50:18
  So, yeah, my little bell went off there.
• 50:27
  So, I mean, honestly though, the roads have nothing to do with government, right?
• 50:31
  Government does some planning, they do some funding and then they hire a private contractor
• 50:36
  to go and do a road, right?
• 50:37
  Usually that their buddy owns.
• 50:39
  Yeah.
• 50:40
  The same is true for road maintenance.
• 50:42
  The same is true for power poles.
• 50:44
  The same is true for power infrastructure.
• 50:46
  The same is true for bridges.
• 50:48
  The same is true for railways.
• 50:50
  There's no government office that has like, oh, here's our pool of railway workers or here's our pool of utility workers, right?
• 51:01
  So I see what you're saying, but you're lending legitimacy based on the fact that a private entity did something and the government used money from the public to fund that thing.
• 51:14
  okay um if if you look at it slightly if you look at it though if your city is full of potholes
• 51:23
  are you going to have screaming people with pitchforks outside the
• 51:27
  company that poured the road or you're going to have them standing outside the city hall
• 51:32
  well where the money came from is from us and it went to an entity who is arguably not very good at
• 51:41
  their job and wasteful. Uh, and then you have potholes. So yeah,
• 51:45
  the pitchforks go to the people that took the money in the first place to get
• 51:49
  the job done, not the actual subcontractor that the builder you hired.
• 51:54
  Uh, you know, okay. And you, you understand what flows downhill.
• 51:59
  Oh absolutely Of course you been around long enough So uh I hear what you saying But what I talking about I talking in macro sense Revolutions aren going to start because of potholes They not going to start because of potholes and run down city facilities or government facilities
• 52:18
  they're going to run down when the level of dissatisfaction and grievance has reached a pitch,
• 52:25
  has seen no relief, no redressment, retrenchment on those grievances.
• 52:34
  And it has reached such a pitch that the people have gotten together and have jointly,
• 52:41
  whether they say it or not, decided that government no longer has legitimacy to govern.
• 52:48
  it expresses itself in lots of ways.
• 52:52
  If you look at the American revolution,
• 52:55
  then you look at the French revolution,
• 52:58
  people kind of conflate the two until you dig into the details.
• 53:04
  Really, really vastly different.
• 53:06
  They just happen to be in rough in,
• 53:09
  in about the same time of year is about as close as they got.
• 53:12
  So it,
• 53:14
  but when you're looking at a macro level at a large strokes,
• 53:18
  It follows because it's not who is actually responsible.
• 53:23
  It's who gets blamed for being responsible.
• 53:27
  Okay.
• 53:28
  Perception, I think, has a lot to do with it.
• 53:31
  And that's very perceptive of you.
• 53:34
  But, yeah, you're exactly – yeah, it is.
• 53:38
  Your firm perception is your reality, whether it is objective reality or not.
• 53:44
  Okay.
• 53:45
  So, yeah, but you've got a good point, Havoc, is that is what there are.
• 53:53
  One chapter of the book is about how to avoid a revolution.
• 53:59
  Those things you have to do to avoid it.
• 54:03
  One of which is empower the middle.
• 54:06
  The middle class is busy raising families, going to work, trying to find the ultimate cheeseburger.
• 54:13
  and trying the latest craft brew, but going,
• 54:17
  no, I'll go back to my same old standard.
• 54:21
  They make the wheels turn,
• 54:23
  and they don't make that big of a deal about it.
• 54:27
  But if they're not empowered,
• 54:30
  then they don't have, they're not able to be a steadying influence
• 54:34
  on the ebb and flow of the way that politics runs.
• 54:40
  But on the other hand, people have to be,
• 54:43
  citizens and good citizens.
• 54:46
  If a government is doing what you don't like, vote.
• 54:52
  Don't sit on your butt, admire the problem.
• 54:55
  Go vote.
• 54:57
  So if the government has contracted a,
• 55:03
  and this actually happened here in the town I used to live in,
• 55:06
  a water treatment plant, which had these cement tanks
• 55:10
  where they did various water treatment things to it.
• 55:12
  I don't know what all was involved in.
• 55:15
  And eight years after they built them, the tanks started separating and cracking
• 55:19
  and the walls started falling out.
• 55:23
  And the government of the city went in and said, well, we've got to get new tanks.
• 55:29
  And I worked concrete.
• 55:33
  6,000 PSI concrete just doesn't crack.
• 55:38
  A foot thick, 6,000 PSI concrete.
• 55:40
  so my feeling wasn't for all my sins I was a city councilman at the time I'll never do that again
• 55:48
  and my feeling was that no we go find this company and we hold their nose to the fire we make them
• 55:56
  come back out here and do it right because they didn't do it right we've never had that problem
• 56:01
  before or since so that was done wrong and it needs to be taken care of um but
• 56:09
  But by extension, there are many arms to this octopus of legitimacy.
• 56:18
  But ultimately responsible are the people who have the ability to use force to coerce behavior.
• 56:32
  Now, that's as far as I can get into sociology because I'm also not a psychologist,
• 56:37
  though I have been through group therapy for PTSD
• 56:41
  but I'm not a psychologist
• 56:44
  but that seems to me to be the way of it
• 56:48
  is that the government in the end
• 56:51
  is actually ultimately responsible
• 56:53
  for ensuring that it's done correctly
• 56:55
  and maybe they have not
• 56:57
  or ensuring that proper budgeting is done
• 57:01
  so that the money is there to repair the road
• 57:04
  for example
• 57:04
  but that also Rick opinion yeah no and I think you know that I think there a lot of dissatisfaction you you know you brought up a point that I think a lot of people share I also think there a very large growing number of people that don share that any longer
• 57:28
  You know, and I, you know, looking back at my history, I can remember Jimmy Carter and I can remember every administration since then.
• 57:40
  And the one thing that I, you know, I would, I would say is, you know, there is definitely a growing dissatisfaction with people who feel like there is no representation any longer.
• 57:51
  that voting is literally just, you know, a feel good, you know, give them bread and circus type of event.
• 57:59
  Because you vote ostensibly on someone who's going to run on the platform that they said they would run on,
• 58:06
  then they get in and very little, if anything, that they ran on ever occurs.
• 58:12
  And then you see the popular, you know, opinions on things out there and they constantly vote against them,
• 58:19
  even though their own, you know, their own people that they're supposed to be representing are saying, you know, hey, 72% of us want this.
• 58:29
  And they're like, yeah, no, I don't think I'll do that.
• 58:33
  And so there's a growing dissatisfaction there.
• 58:36
  And I think that's pretty evident, no matter where you go, that people are feeling like this doesn't matter.
• 58:43
  It really, you can put a cat in there and it's all going to go the exact same way it's been going.
• 58:48
  And we could just have cats running around on the floor of Congress.
• 58:53
  That's a good idea.
• 58:55
  And then it would probably actually be better because what's Congress's approval rating at this point?
• 59:00
  13%.
• 59:01
  Like 17% or something that's down to the point where it's almost immeasurable.
• 59:07
  Yeah.
• 59:07
  And so, you know, again, right, you look at this whole idea of the consent of the governed.
• 59:12
  And what starts coming about is more of a, in my opinion, is more of a everything is enforced at the point of a gun, right?
• 59:23
  Traffic ticket.
• 59:25
  If you don't agree and respond appropriately, they'll issue a warrant.
• 59:31
  And if they issue a warrant and you go, yeah, I'm not going to allow you to take me into a cage, then they'll come with guns.
• 59:37
  And if you resist the guns, then there's going to be a shootout, right?
• 59:41
  And so every single thing comes down to the threat of death.
• 59:46
  Right.
• 59:47
  And that doesn't seem like a legitimacy that you can hold on to unless you're willing to go to the level of, say, a mouth or a linen.
• 59:58
  I'd be careful talking like that.
• 59:59
  You're going to end up on another list.
• 1:00:03
  What was that?
• 1:00:04
  Knock at your door?
• 1:00:05
  I'm not going to wait for you to get it because you're not coming back.
• 1:00:08
  So I'm just.
• 1:00:09
  I already had my concerns letting an ex-intelligence guy on here.
• 1:00:14
  I'm like, I don't know, man.
• 1:00:15
  I think you just must be setting us up.
• 1:00:17
  The word is ex, man.
• 1:00:19
  It's ex.
• 1:00:21
  And then I wasn't in that side of it.
• 1:00:24
  Ex-intelligence guys.
• 1:00:25
  You don't see too many of them pop up on YouTube and doing podcasts.
• 1:00:29
  What makes you different than these other guys that are?
• 1:00:32
  I mean, are they just sitting in their swivel chair, like masterminding other operations?
• 1:00:37
  if you're if you're in the business long enough and you are experienced enough
• 1:00:44
  and uh people know of your level of experience you may actually retire but there are a lot of
• 1:00:55
  functions out there that really need periodically somebody to come in and do them so to be able to
• 1:01:02
  do that, you got to maintain the clearance. When I fully retired, I was doing a fair amount of
• 1:01:12
  travel and doing some stuff, just support things. Once you retire, you're pretty well in just
• 1:01:18
  support roles. But you've got the ability to go in and pass on decades of knowledge to younger
• 1:01:23
  folks about don't do this, don't try that, this works, this doesn't. And a health issue means that
• 1:01:32
  I can't travel like I used to. And then I realized that after 32 years,
• 1:01:41
  worked in 87 countries, filled three passports, had just one hell of a career and an extraordinary
• 1:01:52
  life. When my wife passed, I went, you know, I'm done. I'm just done. It's time to,
• 1:01:59
  But Rick 2.0 needs to figure it out.
• 1:02:03
  And so I have the ability to talk about it because in the end they can't cancel me.
• 1:02:08
  I'm not saying anything classified.
• 1:02:10
  But on the other hand, you got to keep in mind, we sign nondisclosure agreements that are in perpetuity.
• 1:02:18
  And if you violate that nondisclosure agreement, the penalties are severe with the force of federal law.
• 1:02:26
  So there are things you'll never get me to say.
• 1:02:28
  I'm not going to talk about it.
• 1:02:29
  about it. I'm not going to say yes or no, or you're right. I'm just going to just give you a
• 1:02:35
  blank stare and wait to move on to the next subject. But within the arc of what I can't
• 1:02:40
  talk about, there's a lot of stuff. So thinking on that, right? I imagine,
• 1:02:45
  excuse me, you know, talking about writing your book and getting your book all put together,
• 1:02:53
  I imagine you probably had to send that up to the DOD for approval, clearance.
• 1:02:59
  Did that come back with a lot of markups, or did you even have to do that, or was that all okay?
• 1:03:07
  Yeah, my first book was a memoir.
• 1:03:10
  And the first half of it, I had to do some rewriting.
• 1:03:15
  The second half was just dripped black ink.
• 1:03:19
  so I had to
• 1:03:21
  I just I went ahead and
• 1:03:23
  we went to publication anyway
• 1:03:25
  you know and I think it sold
• 1:03:27
  88 copies
• 1:03:28
  but
• 1:03:31
  hard to read the black boxes
• 1:03:33
  yeah well
• 1:03:35
  and the
• 1:03:36
  security
• 1:03:39
  clearance not security clearance
• 1:03:41
  I forget what they call it
• 1:03:43
  anyway that office where we send it
• 1:03:45
  first off it takes months
• 1:03:47
  because it's a government office and it takes months.
• 1:03:51
  But secondly, with this current book, I took nothing from my military time,
• 1:03:58
  nothing from my intel time, nothing from the time I was cleared.
• 1:04:02
  And not only that, but I have a detailed list of where I got every bit of information.
• 1:04:06
  So if they want to come back and say, you've been a bad boy,
• 1:04:09
  I'm going to tell them I have not and you can get out of my house.
• 1:04:13
  uh okay it sounds unnecessarily confrontational this is one where i didn't have to get clearance
• 1:04:19
  on it okay so how was the process of writing the book did this flow naturally was it difficult
• 1:04:25
  um
• 1:04:28
  i trained a long time to
• 1:04:33
  to do the job the counterintelligence job and the human intelligence job
• 1:04:41
  and then I got into senior staff and found out that I like doing processes,
• 1:04:49
  that good processes,
• 1:04:51
  they make things easier and they save lives in the,
• 1:04:57
  in the long run. And so I approached this from a process standpoint.
• 1:05:03
  And one of my biggest problems was I finally had to download dictation
• 1:05:08
  software that turned my dictation into notes because it would just start rolling and I
• 1:05:13
  couldn't keep up with it, typing it.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah, it just kind of rolled.
• 1:05:20
  It did.
• 1:05:21
  It was a little weird.
• 1:05:24
  I've been struggling to learn how to write.
• 1:05:28
  That doesn't sound like an intelligence report.
• 1:05:31
  and when I finally hit that stride,
• 1:05:36
  all that had been waiting just to be expressed.
• 1:05:40
  So now I know how to write and I can't stop.
• 1:05:43
  I probably have five books in the works,
• 1:05:45
  three of which are probably going to make it.
• 1:05:47
  Two of them are fiction, and we just see how it goes.
• 1:05:52
  I'm old. I've got hobbies.
• 1:05:54
  Hey, you got to have them, right?
• 1:05:56
  I mean, you stop having them.
• 1:05:57
  Speaking of fiction,
• 1:05:58
  What do you think of stuff like Tom Clancy?
• 1:06:01
  I mean, we've all seen like Jack Ryan and stuff.
• 1:06:03
  I mean, is any of that even close to what the reality is,
• 1:06:07
  or is it all just Hollywood nonsense?
• 1:06:09
  Have you seen the first episode of the first Jack Ryan thing with John Krasinski?
• 1:06:15
  Yeah.
• 1:06:15
  The first episode where he's, no, O Dark Thirty.
• 1:06:20
  That O Dark Thirty.
• 1:06:22
  I got chills.
• 1:06:26
  Okay.
• 1:06:27
  Pretty close.
• 1:06:28
  the whole thing about waterboarding and torturing the guy that doesn't happen
• 1:06:34
  it doesn't happen maybe it happens at a pakistani prison or a an afghan prison but when you're in
• 1:06:41
  u.s custody it uh it just doesn't happen it just a little bit of smacking around uh electrodes on
• 1:06:48
  the nipples with the and uh grave well here's the thing we don't talk about that that didn't happen
• 1:06:54
  Yeah, I went through the Israeli interrogation course.
• 1:06:59
  And the Israelis, everybody's going, well, they're probably torturing.
• 1:07:02
  No, not at all.
• 1:07:05
  Everybody naturally wants to tell you everything that they know.
• 1:07:08
  They naturally want to.
• 1:07:09
  People are garrulous, gregarious.
• 1:07:14
  They're societal.
• 1:07:17
  They like having groups of people they can talk to.
• 1:07:20
  But, for example, it's a little bit politically incorrect.
• 1:07:24
  when you go up to the bar for them somebody you say hey bud how you doing is they ah let's see
• 1:07:28
  well i got the car fixed today and i killed my wife and kids it's just politically incorrect
• 1:07:34
  so but they want to but they want to and uh once we finished the course i found that it actually worked my back the biggest problem was is not using that when I trying to get one of my kids to fess up about who broke mama base
• 1:07:49
  Right. Yeah. So, yeah, it they everybody likes to make them all out to be the bad guys.
• 1:07:57
  And I'm not saying they wouldn't if they could. It just really is not very effective.
• 1:08:03
  And it's kind of like lie detectors, polygraph machines.
• 1:08:07
  they're a good tool,
• 1:08:10
  but they're no better than the investigator who's using the tool.
• 1:08:16
  So it, yeah, it,
• 1:08:18
  there are a lot of misconceptions out there about, about the field.
• 1:08:21
  And the closest I ever got to James Bond was bond paper.
• 1:08:26
  My office car that I use for operations in Europe was a 1967 Volkswagen
• 1:08:33
  Beetle. It was green.
• 1:08:34
  and every once in a while the brake linkages would come off and dangle on the road behind me
• 1:08:40
  and then about once a year it would blow one of the cylinders and i'd have to have it towed in
• 1:08:47
  and they would just literally yank out the engine and put a new one in and off i'd go
• 1:08:50
  so uh and then the fast woman was my wife who i was married to for 42 years uh so yeah
• 1:08:57
  it's it's it's satisfying work it's hard and it's uh at times it's a little bit scary but
• 1:09:10
  if they actually showed what we did you wouldn't the show wouldn't last two two episodes
• 1:09:19
  yeah yeah i i play this in front of my daughter so she'll go to sleep at night you know that kind
• 1:09:26
  of a thing yeah nice awesome so if you could go back 32 years and tell yourself something would
• 1:09:34
  you tell yourself to change anything or do anything differently you think
• 1:09:37
  i would have made sure that my young self knew that if you want to piss off an organization go
• 1:09:47
  in and solve their problems.
• 1:09:50
  And
• 1:09:51
  number two,
• 1:09:54
  if you can get something done that nobody
• 1:09:57
  else has managed to get done,
• 1:09:59
  the people who couldn't succeed are going
• 1:10:01
  to remember that
• 1:10:03
  forever.
• 1:10:06
  They have long
• 1:10:07
  memories.
• 1:10:10
  And three,
• 1:10:11
  if you allow that to stop you,
• 1:10:14
  you're a coward.
• 1:10:17
  I came out of Iraq after some startling successes and couldn't find a job.
• 1:10:25
  Wow.
• 1:10:26
  Because I, well, I have a tendency to get linear and run over people.
• 1:10:30
  I understand it.
• 1:10:33
  You don't like hiring a disruptor.
• 1:10:38
  But that's okay.
• 1:10:39
  That's just absolutely fine.
• 1:10:42
  Everything happens for a reason.
• 1:10:44
  and all that left me where i am right now and i couldn't be happier couldn't be happier
• 1:10:53
  well if we ever decide to start a revolution i'm gonna call you
• 1:10:57
  if you decide to start a revolution don't call because i'm just saying i'm just i'm not saying
• 1:11:08
  anything in particular i'm just saying uh if you're going to play at uh cosplay and revolution
• 1:11:14
  go ahead and call no problem they can understand that uh but it yeah
• 1:11:21
  uh and also on top of it keep in mind that maybe your phone isn't monitored
• 1:11:28
  mine probably isn't monitored but have people out there that that would contract that stuff
• 1:11:36
  and figure it out.
• 1:11:39
  And I'm not talking about U.S. people.
• 1:11:42
  Every signal that we got right now is probably popping through a server
• 1:11:45
  somewhere in Mexico, Canada, Germany, Italy.
• 1:11:51
  It'd be interesting to go ahead and do the route trace on it
• 1:11:54
  to see where all this goes.
• 1:11:55
  So just as an example, I went into Tbilisi,
• 1:12:01
  the Republic of Georgia, to do some stuff.
• 1:12:04
  and it was really kind of innocuous open stuff.
• 1:12:06
  It was no big deal.
• 1:12:07
  And I went in with a work phone,
• 1:12:09
  got in at like 2 o'clock in the morning
• 1:12:11
  because there are no flights to get into Tbilisi
• 1:12:13
  coming out of the States that would get there
• 1:12:15
  at anything other than 2 o'clock in the morning.
• 1:12:17
  So I get into the hotel
• 1:12:19
  and my partner's coming in from another country
• 1:12:22
  and I'm going to, I wanted to be up to be able to meet him.
• 1:12:25
  And so I went down to the hotel
• 1:12:27
  and they had what the guy called Tbilisi lemonade,
• 1:12:29
  which was lemonade with muddled mint in it,
• 1:12:33
  which was just freaking awesome for somebody who was dehydrated.
• 1:12:37
  And I'm sitting there and I got the phone sitting on the table.
• 1:12:40
  And I'm like, well, where's, where's our partner at?
• 1:12:44
  So I pick up the phone to see if he called.
• 1:12:46
  There were four missed phone calls and it never rang.
• 1:12:51
  I like well that doesn make any sense And it would have a missed phone call that wouldn ring about every hour hour and a half throughout the day
• 1:13:02
  So the following day, my partner's in and we got it Sunday
• 1:13:07
  and we can't get anything done on Sunday.
• 1:13:08
  So we're going to go and walk around Tbilisi.
• 1:13:11
  And we get about two blocks down the street.
• 1:13:13
  And I noticed these two guys, very nice haircuts, windbreakers.
• 1:13:19
  Casual pants, shine shoes.
• 1:13:23
  And I'm like, their buddies are out.
• 1:13:26
  You know, it's fine.
• 1:13:27
  We get down, down to the wine museum and here's these guys.
• 1:13:32
  We go ahead and get onto the cable car that goes to the wine museum up on top,
• 1:13:36
  up to the monument on top of the hill.
• 1:13:39
  And we're walking out and I stop at this little kiosk,
• 1:13:43
  go ahead and grab something to drink.
• 1:13:45
  And I turn the next cable car comes up and here's these guys.
• 1:13:48
  so i'm like okay they're keeping track they're keeping tabs on us we're not doing anything that
• 1:13:55
  we care about you know so i kind of got to the point where i'm like yeah i just checked to make
• 1:13:59
  sure they're still with us you know they're probably getting graded on this or something
• 1:14:02
  uh we got back into the states and turned in the phone at work it was so badly infected with spyware
• 1:14:10
  that they had to destroy the phone.
• 1:14:12
  They could not physically clean it.
• 1:14:16
  So all of that occurs.
• 1:14:20
  If your phone pings into an MTZ network anywhere in the world,
• 1:14:25
  you're pinging into Russian FSB.
• 1:14:29
  If it's Huawei, everything you do and say goes through Chinese servers.
• 1:14:36
  Where is it?
• 1:14:37
  Shanghai, outside of Shanghai, I think I've heard.
• 1:14:46
  It's just a fact of life.
• 1:14:48
  It's just the way it is in our connectivity.
• 1:14:52
  The only thing we have to be thankful for is we are swimming in data.
• 1:14:58
  Analysts swim in it.
• 1:14:59
  They are keeping their nose above water, barely.
• 1:15:04
  There aren't enough people to be able to analyze it.
• 1:15:07
  It's not.
• 1:15:09
  The problem is they're creating capability.
• 1:15:12
  That's why we need AI.
• 1:15:14
  I was just going to say with the AI right now, that's no longer an issue.
• 1:15:18
  You know, those large language models take pools of data that.
• 1:15:22
  AI has got a couple of problems.
• 1:15:24
  One is sometimes they are not only wrong, they are incredibly hilariously wrong.
• 1:15:33
  And you can't tell what.
• 1:15:34
  but that is engineering that's all it is yeah so that's part of that again that book
• 1:15:42
  yeah well yeah and then the that's why the book that i'm working on citizenship in the algorithmic
• 1:15:50
  age it uh what are we going to look like what are we how are we going to live because it's coming
• 1:15:55
  where everything will be subject to the algorithm where your lives will be curated
• 1:16:00
  and there will be benefits to letting it happen
• 1:16:05
  as well as consequences to trying to resist it.
• 1:16:09
  So what are you going to do?
• 1:16:12
  I don't know how long it's going to take me to write it
• 1:16:14
  because the pace of change is outstripping my ability
• 1:16:19
  to keep up with the writing.
• 1:16:24
  Me?
• 1:16:25
  Just to relate 1984 and that's the end state.
• 1:16:30
  So start.
• 1:16:32
  I would disagree with you.
• 1:16:34
  Maybe it will start a revolution.
• 1:16:35
  We can ditch our cell phones and start writing letters and postcards.
• 1:16:38
  I would disagree with you about that.
• 1:16:39
  I don't think it will start.
• 1:16:40
  I don't think that's the end state.
• 1:16:41
  I think that is the current state to a large degree.
• 1:16:46
  Fully agree.
• 1:16:48
  Fully agree.
• 1:16:50
  There are sayings out there like you can vote your way into socialism and communism.
• 1:16:55
  You have to shoot your way out.
• 1:16:57
  I think there's a certain truth to that.
• 1:17:00
  But also, if you believe that we are not all animals are equal, some are more equal than others, I think is a truism.
• 1:17:15
  I'm a former warrant officer.
• 1:17:16
  I have a tendency to be cynical.
• 1:17:18
  but when you have a an elite class who
• 1:17:24
  seems somehow on 175 000 a year salary come out after four years in congress and be multi-millionaires
• 1:17:34
  that i just don't know how that can happen it's a coincidence it's a coincidence right exactly
• 1:17:41
  be right and here's here's the thing that irritates me is people don't like what ice is doing
• 1:17:50
  they're only enforcing the law change the law
• 1:17:54
  it changed a lot and we once again we go back to the representatives not representing them
• 1:18:01
  so the law doesn change because there no tolerance for it somewhere um but you know it is Somebody dying in custody is a tragedy
• 1:18:12
  35,000 known children are being sexually trafficked around the world
• 1:18:17
  and over 10,000 in this country alone is infuriating.
• 1:18:24
  Well, it is.
• 1:18:25
  Absolutely infuriating.
• 1:18:26
  But where is the attention to that?
• 1:18:29
  that's yeah i you know i yeah it's all it's all yeah i i don't know right i don't know why that
• 1:18:41
  there isn't you know there's yeah i i i there's a lot going on there so let's let's shift this a
• 1:18:50
  little bit what do you see what do you see as as the most positive things going on today what do
• 1:18:57
  what do you see as being some of the things that give you like a positive outlook and view towards
• 1:19:03
  the future? That's a really good question. And I've never gotten that one before. Um,
• 1:19:10
  you know, a lot of the resistance to data centers is reflexive and, uh, ideologically driven,
• 1:19:22
  but the fact that people are getting together organizing resistance
• 1:19:28
  shows that we still have that spirit of 1776.
• 1:19:33
  Whether we need to drink tea or we need to drink coffee,
• 1:19:37
  at least somebody made a stand organized and did something about it
• 1:19:41
  that didn't involve shooting people or blowing something up.
• 1:19:46
  Now, later on the shooting came, but that's just the way that was.
• 1:19:48
  So that is very heartening to me.
• 1:19:52
  The whole flock camera thing.
• 1:19:56
  I'm here to tell you that's actually kind of old technology.
• 1:19:59
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:20:00
  No, that technology is old.
• 1:20:02
  The flock cameras are not.
• 1:20:04
  The ability to manage the data is the new part.
• 1:20:09
  But if people don't like it, get together,
• 1:20:16
  figurative pitchforks, figurative torches,
• 1:20:19
  and flood your city hall.
• 1:20:20
  believe me they're going to look at it and go
• 1:20:23
  I might not get elected next time
• 1:20:26
  if I don't go along with them
• 1:20:27
  and next thing you know they're going to swear they were with you the whole time
• 1:20:30
  that is very heartening to me
• 1:20:33
  people are realizing that the inherent power
• 1:20:35
  is in the vote
• 1:20:37
  and we have to protect the ability to get out there and vote
• 1:20:40
  that and
• 1:20:44
  I like the fact that a Trump arises
• 1:20:47
  so nobody gets comfortable
• 1:20:50
  I like that fact. We need to throw a disruptor in there. My personal opinion don't really matter. I wish that we were not a one party government right now with both houses of Congress and the White House all being controlled by one party.
• 1:21:09
  because I like the dynamic of having both parties having to work,
• 1:21:15
  being forced to work together to get anything done.
• 1:21:20
  But, yeah, there's some – a lot of the people, the middle is the key.
• 1:21:28
  You're going to have people on the right and the left
• 1:21:30
  that are going to be out there and going to be screaming
• 1:21:31
  that this thing should not happen and this thing is against God's will
• 1:21:34
  and yada, yada, yada.
• 1:21:35
  the middle
• 1:21:37
  when you finally
• 1:21:40
  upset them enough that they raise their head up
• 1:21:43
  from the grindstone
• 1:21:44
  and go, yeah, I don't think so.
• 1:21:47
  That's when you can get stuff done.
• 1:21:50
  And I'm seeing
• 1:21:51
  some of that, whether it continues or not,
• 1:21:53
  I don't know.
• 1:21:55
  There's a lot of vested interest in here
• 1:21:57
  in this country
• 1:21:58
  for them not to be
• 1:22:01
  able to, for the people
• 1:22:03
  not to be able to
• 1:22:04
  address or to stop some of the things that some of these groups are doing.
• 1:22:12
  I have a friend of mine who is a gay activist, and I told him, I said,
• 1:22:16
  this organization you belong to, their IRS filings are public record.
• 1:22:23
  Just take a look and see how much money they're making,
• 1:22:25
  how much money is paid to the staff.
• 1:22:30
  With his, it was not a lot.
• 1:22:32
  with some of them it's millions of dollars
• 1:22:35
  they have a vested interest in keeping you outraged
• 1:22:37
  so there's NGOs out there
• 1:22:39
  there's civic organizations that
• 1:22:41
  aren't enriching
• 1:22:43
  themselves and doing it because it needs to be done
• 1:22:45
  then there are others
• 1:22:49
  out there whose vote is strictly
• 1:22:51
  for sale and
• 1:22:52
  it's all about the Benjamins
• 1:22:55
  but I'm seeing
• 1:22:57
  an awakening and I'm hoping that
• 1:22:59
  that is going to continue
• 1:23:01
  democracy is noisy and it's loud and it's the best option that we've got right now
• 1:23:11
  sounds good so one question we like to ask all our guests
• 1:23:15
  as we come to a close is you know throughout our lives there's a
• 1:23:19
  an individual that made a profound impact, right?
• 1:23:24
  It could be a sixth grade science teacher,
• 1:23:26
  could be an author, historical figure, mom, whoever.
• 1:23:30
  And we like to give our guests an opportunity
• 1:23:32
  to shout out that person.
• 1:23:38
  There were actually, there was one and a half.
• 1:23:41
  There was, believe it or not.
• 1:23:43
  The first one was my dad.
• 1:23:44
  Uh, Bronstar veteran, uh, still struggle with PTSD to the day that he died.
• 1:23:55
  Uh, but, uh, he did things sometimes that did not benefit him just cause they had to
• 1:24:03
  be done or it was the right thing to do.
• 1:24:06
  Uh, and he was always available, uh, not very emotionally reachable sometimes, but always
• 1:24:12
  available, always teaching, and much of what I am is due to him.
• 1:24:19
  And the other one is my old wrestling coach who came in and gave another aspect on how
• 1:24:25
  a man acts which just broadened my definition a little bit My coach Richard Sandoval who by the way coach if you watching this from Union Missouri
• 1:24:41
  I'm still here, and he is pushing his 80s now
• 1:24:46
  and still as ornery as ever.
• 1:24:49
  So those would be the two, Richard Sandoval and my dad,
• 1:24:52
  Melvin Lloyd Hoppe.
• 1:24:54
  Wonderful, wonderful.
• 1:24:56
  Nice.
• 1:24:56
  All right, well,
• 1:24:57
  thank you so much for giving us some of your time.
• 1:25:02
  We really appreciate it.
• 1:25:03
  It's been a wonderful conversation.
• 1:25:05
  I would be happy to have you back on.
• 1:25:08
  And thank you for giving us some of your time.
• 1:25:11
  You know where to find us.
• 1:25:12
  We're everywhere.
• 1:25:14
  Before we wrap up, where can people find you?
• 1:25:17
  What do you got working on next?
• 1:25:19
  And is there a better place to purchase your book from,
• 1:25:23
  or is it just kind of open?
• 1:25:25
  I've got a website
• 1:25:28
  wordsbyrick.com
• 1:25:30
  and it has
• 1:25:32
  what I'm working on and
• 1:25:34
  once the book is actually
• 1:25:36
  released I'll have signed copies available
• 1:25:38
  that you can purchase from the website
• 1:25:40
  but again I'm keeping
• 1:25:42
  in mind I'm Ricky Hoppe from Billeridge, Missouri
• 1:25:44
  so you may not need a signature but you can find the book on any of the major book platforms and Amazon Barnes and Noble Books a Million you name it They all out there Currently I working on a historical novel based in the late 17th century
• 1:26:03
  That's got a spiritual, philosophical, religious aspect to it.
• 1:26:10
  And I'm working on a novel about what a civilian learns from a veteran when they work together over the years.
• 1:26:23
  And then my cousin and I are working on a novel, a novella that I wrote, and trying to turn it into a movie.
• 1:26:32
  without a budget, it's going to be all AI, but I, the story is a, I love the story.
• 1:26:42
  So that's, I do a, I have a sub stack, which is Buster Says, or just search for my name
• 1:26:52
  for a copy where I write essays and everything from the state of religion in the United States
• 1:26:57
  to what going on in Iran to we just aren going to learn It runs the gamut I a man full of many things like I said before and some of them are opinions
• 1:27:12
  And yeah, so hit my website.
• 1:27:15
  There's a contact form on there.
• 1:27:17
  I like hearing from people.
• 1:27:19
  I like discussion.
• 1:27:20
  I like being challenged.
• 1:27:22
  There's nothing worse than assuming I'm right
• 1:27:25
  and then walking smack head on when it's important
• 1:27:28
  to finding out that, nope, I was wrong.
• 1:27:32
  So I like being challenged.
• 1:27:34
  And gentlemen, I have had a wonderful time.
• 1:27:36
  This has been a blast.
• 1:27:38
  Awesome, awesome.
• 1:27:40
  All right, everybody, you know where you can find us.
• 1:27:42
  Leave a like if you liked us.
• 1:27:44
  If you didn't, leave thumbs down, drop a comment, tell us we suck.
• 1:27:47
  We'll respond.
• 1:27:48
  And remember, wherever you are, whenever you're watching this,
• 1:27:54
  have an amazing day.
• 1:27:57
  Thanks for stopping by, Rick.
• 1:27:58
  See you, everybody.