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Evan Hafer (2026) - Tapping Soviet Cables and Epstein Files · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  Essential housekeeping out of the way.
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  Absolutely. Now buckle up, because today we
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  are tackling a massive, just sprawling 4 hour beast of a
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  conversation between Joe Rogan and Evan Hafer.
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  Right. And if you're unfamiliar with
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  Evan, I mean, his resume reads like the main character in a Tom
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  Clancy novel. He's the founder of Black Rifle
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  Coffee, sure, but before all that he was a Green Beret and a
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  contractor for the CIA. It's a heavy resume and honestly
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  it would be easy to just look at this and see two buddies
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  catching up, you know, cracking jokes.
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  But that's not what's happening underneath.
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  No, if you really listen to the themes, this isn't a casual
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  chat. It's a master class and
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  obsession that is. The word of the day obsession.
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  They bounce between these completely different worlds,
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  from the the absolute stillness of archery to the chaotic grind
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  of stand up comedy. And then they pivot into the
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  dark silence of covert OPS. And somehow they land on the
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  existential dread of artificial intelligence.
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  It's a wild ride. It sounds completely disjointed,
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  but the through line connecting all of it is the extreme cost of
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  mastery. Whether it's the Zen you need to
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  hit a target 100 yards away or the psychological toll of
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  hunting people in the dark, they're exploring what happens
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  when you dedicate your entire life to one single thing.
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  So let's start where they did with the physical side of that
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  obsession. The bow broken is, you know,
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  famous for bow hunting, but they go way past the hobbyist level
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  here. They get into these granular,
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  tactile details about the gear that just shows how deep this
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  rabbit hole goes. This is where they really start
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  to nerd out and it's fascinating.
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  It's not just I shoot a bow, it's about the interface between
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  the human and the machine. Exactly.
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  Rogan starts talking about these custom handles he uses.
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  They're called rattler grips. And get this, they're made of
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  actual bone. Yeah, he makes this point that
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  plastic grips feel dead in his hand.
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  He says they have no soul, no feedback.
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  But Bone has this tactile quality he needs that feeling,
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  that dexterity to make the shot. It's all about feedback.
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  When you're operating at that kind of elite level, the
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  equipment has to communicate with you.
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  And he's not pulling a lightweight either.
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  He talks about ramping up to a 90 LB draw weight.
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  I mean for context, most recreational Archers are
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  struggling with 50 or 60 lbs. 90 is immense.
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  It's brute force, but it needs finesse.
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  And he's shooting arrows at over 100 yards in his backyard.
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  But the thing that really struck me wasn't the strength or the
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  distance, it was the conversation about the mental
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  state you need to do it. Right.
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  They call it active meditation. And this is a huge take away for
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  anyone listening who deals with high stress or anxiety for sure.
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  The point they're making is that for these high energy, high
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  output people, sitting in a quiet room trying to clear your
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  mind just doesn't work. It just makes the internal noise
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  louder. Rogan had that great line, he
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  said. There is no room for anything
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  else in your head. And that's the whole point.
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  That's the utility of it. If you are holding 90 lbs of
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  tension, aiming at something the size of a great fruit of
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  football field away, you physically cannot think about
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  your mortgage. No chance you can't think about
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  that awkward e-mail you send or your business plan.
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  The second you let those thoughts in, the shot just falls
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  apart. You miss.
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  Exactly. The failure is immediate
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  negative feedback. It forces you into the present.
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  They drew a direct parallel to professional pool players.
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  Actually they mentioned Fedor Gorst who apparently plays like
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  8 hours a day. The physics of pool is a perfect
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  analogy for this. You're dealing with geometry
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  with English, the spin on the cue ball, and the throw on the
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  object ball. It's incredibly complex physics
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  happening in real time. And the real insight here is
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  that humans, or at least these obsessive types, don't just
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  enjoy these difficult tasks. They they need them to regulate
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  their own biochemistry. That's the nugget instead of
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  medication. Sometimes the real answer to
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  anxiety is a task so damn difficult it forces you into the
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  now. It's a mind cleanser.
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  If you don't have that mechanism to just dump your brain's cache,
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  the anxiety eats you alive. Speaking of people who let their
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  obsession consume them, we have to talk about the dirtbag.
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  I love that they reclaim this term.
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  Totally. I think for most people, calling
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  someone a dirtbag is, you know, fighting words.
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  But in the climbing and alpinist world, it's a badge of honor.
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  It means you have stripped away everything that gets in the way
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  of the mission. It's the ultimate form of
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  prioritization. Hayford tells this legendary
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  story about Yvonne Schwern, the founder of Patagonia.
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  Before he was a billionaire, he was just a climber on El Capitan
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  and he'd go to the store, but he wouldn't buy groceries.
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  He bought cans of cat food or dog food.
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  Kibble. Literal kibble.
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  Because it was cheap, it cost pennies, and because it was
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  cheap, he didn't have to work a job, which meant he could stay
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  on the mountain longer. That is the dirtbag ethos in its
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  purest form. You sacrifice comfort, social
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  norms, everything just to pursue the thing you love.
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  They also brought up Fred Becky, the climbing legend who
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  basically lived in the dirt his entire life, just scrounging to
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  bag the next peak. But Hafer points out the dark
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  side of this, too. You know, we look at these
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  people with awe. Like, wow, look at that
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  dedication. There's a tragedy there.
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  They often end up with no family, no stability, no home.
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  They're just window shoppers of a normal life because they
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  traded it all for the peak. It's a binary choice for them,
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  mastery or stability. You rarely get both at that
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  level, and Rogan connects this directly to his early years in
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  comedy. I think people forget the grind
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  because he's so successful now. Oh yeah, he talks about driving
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  90 minutes one way just to do 5 minutes of stage time for 0.
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  Dollars and the bombing, he describes bombing when the
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  audience is just silent as this visceral, physically humiliating
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  act, he said. It feels like physical pain.
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  But he admits the pain is necessary data.
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  You have to strip the ego away to get better.
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  If you can't handle that silence, you can't handle the
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  mastery. And they used Ron White as a
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  perfect example of what happens when you survive that process.
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  He's the old master. That story was hilarious.
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  Rogan talks about hanging out with Ron in the back of the
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  Comedy Store, and Ron starts telling this casual story to the
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  guys about his Navy days in Hawaii.
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  Apparently he unknowingly solicited, let's just say, very
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  convincing male sex workers. He thought they were women.
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  An honest mistake, supposedly. And the whole room of comedians
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  is just dying laughing at him. So Rogan tells him, Ron, you
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  have to put that on stage. And Ron just walks out and
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  performs it instantly. Polished, perfect timing crushes
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  the room. That's what decades of the
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  dirtbag grind buys you. Effortless storytelling, the
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  ability to take a humiliating mistake and monetize it through
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  art. But the conversation shifts.
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  Gear is pretty hard. Here we go from the noise and
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  laughter of the comedy club to the absolute silence of Special
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  Operations. This was a fascinating pivot,
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  hey, for, you know, being a Green Beret and working with the
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  CIA talks about the burden of secrecy, specifically the strain
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  of having a job you can't tell your spouse about.
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  He told that story about meeting his future wife.
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  He looks like a biker, you know, beard tattoos, rough around the
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  edges. And he tells her I work for the
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  State Department. Which is the classic cover, to
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  be fair. It is, but she's looking at him
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  like he's a Hell's Angel. It just doesn't add up.
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  Eventually, he had to admit he was with the agency, but that
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  need for silence that led them to one of the most incredible
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  military stories I've ever heard, the USS Parch.
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  This story blew my mind. It really does highlight the
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  difference between, you know, Internet clout and true
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  professionalism. The USS Parch was a Cold War
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  submarine and it is the most decorated ship in Navy history,
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  but most people have never heard of it.
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  And their mission was just insane.
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  They they modified this sub to literally sit on the ocean floor
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  maybe 300 or 400 feet down inside Soviet waters.
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  They were physically tapping into Soviet communication
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  hardlines that were running underwater.
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  I mean, Can you imagine the precision required?
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  You have divers getting out of a submarine in pitch black
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  freezing water under crushing pressure, handling live cables
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  deep in enemy territory. If they mess up, they die.
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  If they get caught, it's World War 3.
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  But the most impressive part, and this is Hafer's main point,
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  is the silence. Decades later, you don't see the
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  crew of the Parch writing tell all books.
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  You don't see them starting podcasts or trying to get
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  famous. They just did the impossible and
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  they kept their mouths shut. That kind of quiet courage is so
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  rare now. Everyone wants the credit.
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  Hafer mentioned he's making a documentary about Earl Plumley,
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  Medal of Honor recipient. And apparently if you met Earl,
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  you'd never, ever know what he did.
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  He's just incredibly humble. And that's the definition of it.
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  It's about being the man in the arena, just making thousands of
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  small choices to be better without needing the applause.
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  It stands in such stark contrast to the world we live in now,
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  where everything is broadcast. However, not everything hidden
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  in the dark is heroic. We have to move into the dark
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  dive part of this conversation. They went deep into some true
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  crime and conspiracy analysis that was pretty unsettling.
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  Yeah, this got heavy. And I want to be clear, we are
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  just summarizing the points they raised based on the specific
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  sources they were looking at, right?
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  They started local right there in Austin with the Lady Bird
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  Lake mystery. I did not realize the numbers
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  were this high. The statistics are alarming.
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  Rogan brings up the 38 bodies have been found in or around
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  Lady Bird Lake in recent years. Now the official police theory
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  is accidental drownings. Right drunk guys leaving the
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  bars on Rainy Street. They lose their balance, fall
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  in. Which, OK, it's plausible for a
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  few cases. But Rogan and Hafer are looking
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  at the pattern. They bring up the :) killer
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  theory, the idea that this might be a gang or a serial killer
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  using GHB or roofies to incapacitate men and dump them.
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  When you hit 38 bodies in one spot, coincidence starts to look
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  a lot like a pattern. It's terrifying to think about.
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  But then they zoomed out. From local crime to
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  international conspiracy. The unredacted Epstein files.
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  And we need to be precise here because they were analyzing the
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  specific documents. They weren't just speculating.
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  They were looking at the anomalies in the paperwork that
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  got released. Right.
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  First they talked about Les Wexner, the former CEO of
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  Victoria's Secret. The files name him not just as a
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  financier who is duped by Epstein, but as a Co
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  conspirator. That completely shifts the
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  narrative. It moves him from victim of a
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  con man to participant. But the detail that actually
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  made me pause the audio and rewind was the purchase orders.
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  The sulfuric acid. According to the documents they
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  discussed, the day after Epstein's 2018 indictment, there
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  was a rush order delivered to the island concrete mixer and
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  330 gallons of sulfuric acid. 330 gallons.
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  That is an industrial amount of acid.
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  That's not for cleaning the pool.
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  Rogan played devil's advocate, you know, asking if it could be
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  for water desalina tion or some heavy maintenance.
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  But they checked the records. There were no prior invoices of
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  that size. When you combine a concrete
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  mixer and enough acid to dissolve, well, anything right
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  after a federal indictment. The implication for evidence
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  disposal is just horrific. It's gut wrenching.
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  And then there was that e-mail about Tom Pritzker, the
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  billionaire. The birthday wish e-mail.
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  Yeah. The e-mail describes Pritzker
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  being in a remote valley in Afghanistan, and he's asking for
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  a chopper for his birthday wish to play with boys with toys.
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  And this is where the ambiguity is just madding.
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  Boys with toys could mean military contractors with guns.
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  You know, maybe you wanted to go shoot AK-40 sevens in the desert
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  like a tourist. Which is weird, but not illegal.
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  Exactly. But given the context of who
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  he's emailing Epstein, a convicted sex trafficker, Rogan
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  and Hayford have to ask the darker question.
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  Was this human hunting? Was it something involving
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  children? We don't know.
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  But the fact that a billionaire is emailing a predator about
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  borrowing a helicopter in a lawless zone, well, it forces
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  you to question what the elite are actually doing when no one's
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  watching. It really does, and honestly, it
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  makes you want to look away. But the final topic they covered
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  is something we can't look away from because it's coming for
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  everyone. Artificial intelligence.
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  They called it the White Collar Apocalypse.
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  Rogan brings up an article by Matt Schumer about the latest AI
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  iterations, and the scary part isn't just that the AI is smart,
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  it's that it has agency. That is the mechanism of fear
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  here. We aren't just coding AI
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  anymore. AI is creating better versions
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  of itself. It is writing its own code,
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  testing it, finding the bugs and fixing them faster than any
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  human team could ever dream of. It's a self improving loop.
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  Feedback. Loop and it's not perfect yet.
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  They had a good laugh about the jock tax error.
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  Right. Rogan and Jamie found that an AI
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  had hallucinated a fact about Super Bowl players losing money
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  to taxes. It was confidently wrong.
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  But Hafer points out that being wrong now doesn't mean it won't
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  be perfect tomorrow. Exactly.
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  They cite Elon Musk's prediction about the optimist robots, that
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  eventually those robots powered by this self healing AI will be
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  better surgeons than humans. Think about that displacement.
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  If a robot can perform surgery with higher success rates than a
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  human doctor, the economy as we know it just dissolves.
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  And the security risk is the cherry on top.
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  Haver compares this to the Manhattan Project.
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  But with a huge difference. The Manhattan Project was locked
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  down in the desert. It was the deepest secret.
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  AI development is open source. It's porous.
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  So China? Russia.
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  Hafer argues they are racing to develop this, and because our
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  development is somewhat open, espionage is trivial.
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  It's a mad race with existential stakes.
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  If an AI decides humans are the inefficiency in the system,
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  well, we are the problem. So what does this all mean?
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  We've gone from shooting arrows to avoiding serial killers to
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  robots taking your jobs. It feels like a lot to process.
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  If we synthesize this, the through line is clear.
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  Whether it's the physical discipline of drawing that 90 LB
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  bow, the mental endurance of the dirtbag climber sleeping in the
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  dirt, or the terrifying capabilities of this new AI, the
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  world is defined by those who push boundaries.
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  The edge, exactly. Some push the edge for something
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  beautiful, like Mastery, or like the silence of the USS Parch
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  crew protecting their country. And some, like the figures in
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  the Epstein files or maybe the unchecked development of AI,
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  push the edge towards something horrific.
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  It really makes you think about where you direct your own
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  energy, and I want to leave you with a thought derived from that
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  USS parch a story. We live in an age of AI
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  oversharing, constant noise where everyone have a podcast
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  and an opinion. But looking at those sailors who
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  tapped the Soviet lines and never said a word, is true power
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  found in the things we don't say?
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  That is the question. Thanks for listening to this
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  deep dive. Take care.