Jocko Podcast 286: The Indirect Approach is The Best “Strategy” in All Cases.

this is jocko podcast number 286 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening and also joining us again dave burke good evening dave good evening so if you haven’t listened to 285 just go back and listen to 285 right now we are exploring some of the works of bh liddell hart i explain who he is on 285 he’s a british soldier world war one military theorist military historian wrote influenced he’s a he’s an influencer he’s kind of an og influencer really a pioneer and he legit was he had a lot of influence inside the british military he had influence in all kinds of different military organizations including some enemy military organizations that actually listened to what he had to say so if you haven’t listened to 285 yet go back listen to 285 and we’re going to jump right back in to his book which is called strategy it’s a we the last one we covered was the strategy of the indirect approach this look everything he does is tied into the strategy of indirect approach and and we’re going to jump back into this his other book well he’s got many books one of his other books called simply strategy bh liddell heart here we go dave anything before i just jump right into this thing no let’s do it okay so we’re going to get into a section here called basis of strategy and i think it’s very interesting how this one kicks off a deeper truth to which fock and other disciples of klaus fritz did not penetrate fully is that in war every problem and every principle is a duality like a coin it has two faces so this may remind you of another book you might have heard of called the dichotomy of leadership there you go again i think i owe this guy some royalties i did no i mean i could have called the book the duality of leadership but i didn’t right we called the dichotomy of leadership like a coin it has two faces hence the need for well a well-calculated compromise as a means to reconciliation what does that mean be balanced big shocker this is the inevitable consequence of the fact that war is a two-party affair so imposing the need that while hitting one must guard this just that you got to balance the dichotomies of leadership you can’t just be on a total offense you got to have your guard up you can’t just have your guard up you got to go on offense you got to be balanced it’s a corollary that in order to hit with effect the enemy must be taken off his guard effective concentration can only be obtained when the opposing forces are dispersed and usually in order to ensure this one’s own forces must be widely distributed thus by an outward paradox true concentration is the product of dispersion so isn’t this interesting we have to concentrate our forces but we have to disperse our forces in order to dis dislocate and put the enemy off balance so there’s a dichotomy we have to be together so we can act effectively but we have to be spread out so we can put the enemy off balance what happens if we get too far spread out well now we’re now we’re weak what happens if we’re too concentrated well now we can’t disperse the we can’t dislocate the enemy a further consequence of the two-party condition is that to ensure reaching an objective one should have an alternative objective or alternative objectives plural herein lies a vital contrast to the single minded 19th century doctrine of fock and his fellows a contrast of the practical to the theoretical for if the enemy is certain as to your point of aim he has the best possible chance of guarding himself and blunting your weapon this is why in jiu-jitsu you have to do more than one move you can’t just grab the arm and think you’re gonna get the arm lock it’s not gonna work if on the other hand you take a line that threatens alternative objectives you distract his mind and his forces this moreover is the most economic method of distraction for it allows you to keep the largest proportion of your force available on your real line of operation thus reconciling the greatest possible concentration with the nes the necessity of dispersion so you have to have some different objectives if you just grab the arm that’s not gonna if you just flank if you’re like okay hey we’re gonna flank the enemy okay the enemy goes oh wait looks like they’re moving over there cool now we adjust our forces and now that flank becomes the front so you have to have multiple objectives now what if you go to flank and they think oh that’s not just a that’s just a fake move so now they don’t put their forces world then you attack it but if you only have one objective and the enemy recognizes what that is they’re going to defend it heavily and you’re not going to be able to achieve victory the absence of an alternative is contrary to the very nature of war it sins against the light which borset shed in the 18th century by his most penetrating dictum that quote every plan of campaign ought to have several branches and to have been so well thought out that one or the other of the said branches cannot fail of success so you got to have multiple branches and they should be well enough thought out that one of them is going to work one of one of those branches one of those lines of operation is going to work this was the light that his military heir the young napoleon bonaparte followed in seeking always as he said you guys want me to go french uh yeah kind of uh fair son fame endure fascions there you go yeah what does that mean it means make your theme in two ways you you’ve got to have two different approaches and it’s just he calls it it’s a sin against the the old dictums right which was a god you gotta have a focus you gotta aim for that concentrate your forces in one spot it’s like cool what if the enemy defends that one spot you’re screwed in technical terms seventy years later sherman was to relearn the lesson from experience by reflection and coin his infamous maxim about quote putting the enemy on the horns of a dilemma end quote in any problem where an opposing force exists and cannot be regulated one must foresee and provide for alternative courses adaptability is the law which governs survival and war as in life war being a concentrated war being but a concentrated form of the human struggle against the environment thank you amplified intensified but nonetheless a concentrated form of the human struggle to be practical any plan must take account of the enemy’s power to frustrate it the best chance of overcoming such an obstruction is to have a plan that can be easily varied to fit the circumstances met i mean i just was saying this today on ef online like you got to have a flexible plan you got to have a flexible plan and you’d think that seems super obvious but you know what you know what people want to control and they want to eliminate the unknown and how do you eliminate the unknown you come up with a plan well guess what they’re still unknown even when you have a plan and the more rigid you make a plan the less adaptable and flexible it becomes which is bad to keep such adaptability while keeping the initiative the best way is to operate along a line which offers alternative objectives for thereby you put your opponent on the horns of a dilemma which goes far to assure the gaining of at least one objective whichever is the least guarded and may enable you to gain the other one afterwards boom in the tactical field where the enemy’s dispositions are likely to be based on the nature of the ground it may be more difficult to find a choice of dilemma-producing objectives than it is in the strategical field where the enemy will have obvious industrial and railway centers to cover but you can gain a similar advantage by adapting your line of effort to the degree of resistance that is met and exploiting any weaknesses is found a plan like a tree must have branches if it is to bear fruit a plan with a single aim is apt to prove a barren pole i’m just thinking of this idea of of having multiple objectives and then the dilemma that causes and even just in in like aviation terms like we go out on a mission and our objective is to destroy enemy air defenses sam sites or mobile sams whatever those might be but it’s actually reliant on them to have those systems active and operating because how you find them if they’re shut down in the dormant you actually can’t find them they’re not radiating they’re not uncovered you can fly around and not have them there but if they don’t have their sam systems or air defense systems active then the things that they’re defending are vulnerable so the secondary mission we’d have these things called a tpl a target priority list if these things aren’t there cool go to this those things aren’t there cool go to this and sooner or later one will be exposed and as you start to attack those defended positions like bridges or roads or things that matter better turn on those radars turn on the radar that’s exactly right and that idea that we would have multiple target priorities which all eventually are designed to lead us back to the number one priority which might not get on that mission but we get in the next wave or the next wave and sooner or later they’re stuck in a place like well if we don’t turn these things on we’re going to lose all of our critical infrastructure and there’s nothing to defend and creating that dilemma by having multiple objectives on each flight yeah and in the business world this this whole concept is we hear um we hear debates or arguments against this right you got to have a clear objective and that makes sense i tell people that we got to make sure we understand what the objective is that being said we also don’t want to have a single point of failure where hey you know what we’re going to put we’re going to make one product yeah we’re going to make one product and if this product does this product is the one we’re going to put all of our money all of our birds in this basket eggs all our eggs are going to go in this basket don’t do that don’t do that don’t put all your eggs in one basket that’s that’s there you go never mind bh liddell hart whichever farmer thought of that one after his kid dropped the the the basket full of eggs right he’s like hey kid don’t put all your eggs in one basket put them in two baskets same thing it’s the exact same thing yes sir and yet we can get focused on one objective and as soon as you meet resistance if you’re not ready to switch to another one like dave burke flying you know up there and going home there’s nothing really to shoot at cool what’s the next objective bridges let’s go rock and roll okay so now we’re gonna roll a new section called cutting communications in planning any stroke at the enemy’s communications either by maneuver around his flank or by rapid penetration of a breach in his front the question will arise as to the most effective point of aim whether it should be directly against the immediate rear or the opposing of the opposing force or further back when studying the question so again and i talked about this before uh on the last podcast is every time it talks about communications it’s an it’s it’s telling you hey you better you better keep your communication open when we talk about attacking the enemies communications and that’s how we cause unbalance and that’s how we kind of crush them great we’re glad to know that that’s also a reminder to us as leaders that communication is so paramount to getting our job done when he’s got a whole section called cutting communication guess what that should mean to us from a red cell perspective don’t let your communication get cut and yet we work with companies all the time where the communication isn’t open and it’s not flowing and people on the front lines don’t know what’s happening and the people in the head shed don’t get the feedback that they should be getting from the front lines there’s not communication happening and yet there’s a whole section here about cutting communication and you’re allowing your communications to be cut when there’s not even an enemy it’s not like your competitor got into your email system or got into your phone system and didn’t let you call your front line leadership that didn’t happen you failed to do it so where do we cut the communication when studying this question at the time that experimental mechanized forces were first created this and their strategic use was under consideration i saw guidance on it by anal by analysis of cavalry raids carried out in the past especially in the more recent wars since railways came into use while such cavalry raids had more limited potentials than a deep strategic penetration of mechanized forces seemed to me to promise that this difference emphasized rather than detracted from making the significant evidence which they provided making the necessary adjustment the following deductions could be drawn and i’m going to kind of burn through this section the overall concept is that the nearer to the force that the cut is made the more immediate the effect and the nearer to the base the greater the effect it’s common sense right if you kill the the node at the headquarters they can’t communicate to anybody but it’s going to take a while for that impact to hit the front lines for them to actually not know what’s going on whereas if you cut the front line node that immediate node is kind of messed up so that’s the that’s the general consensus that he gets into there um he goes on to say these deductions were confirmed by the experience of the second war above all the catastrophic the catastrophically paralyzing effect physically and psychologically that was produced when great gordian’s panzer forces racing far ahead of the main german armies severed the allied army’s communications where these crossed the far back line of the psalm and this is where you run into problems so catastrophically paralyzing when we start to cut off communications so look are you going to go into your competitors you know headquarters and destroy their their their internet and their email no you’re not going to do that but are you allowing that to happen just by just by human nature and laziness and no lack of prioritizing execute are you going to allow your communications to fall apart there’s a decent chance you are we work with companies all the time that aren’t communicating they might as well have had uh panzer forces go and cut off their email between their front lines and them because there’s no email happening there’s no conference calls happening there’s no text happening we don’t know what’s going on we’ve lost communications not through enemy action but through our own fault yeah and and one of the ways one of the places we see that with business is that the communication is a one-way communication where i am i am dictating or directing or communicating to you i’m transmitting and there’s no response to that transmission there’s no the communication really isn’t designed for me to hear what you have to say it’s for me to tell you what to do and how to do it and when to do it and where to do these things and i get that compliance but i don’t get that communication which is a a a almost guarantee that sooner or later when then when there is friction with that without that communication that plan is going to fail um even when i was just talking about communication i said you’re not getting the you’re not getting the information the front lines and you’re not getting the feedback you need yeah which is what you just said it’s like hey communication is supposed to go in two ways that’s what’s supposed to be happening if we don’t let it happen we’re going to have problems we’re going to have problems and in the in making this relevant to to the civilian world of the private sector the the needle the bias needle of the communication would be to transmit as little as possible and and receive as much as possible when i have when when i have my team communicating to me more than i’m committing to communicating to them here’s what we’re seeing here’s what we’re doing here’s the problems we’re having here’s how we’re saying that’s what you would want that’s how would you you would set up the bias yes the biases if i see that i’m the as the leader doing 90 of the communication the needle is in the wrong direction and so the ability for my people to communicate to me for me to hear from them what they’re doing what they’re seeing where they are and i’m doing less communicating to them than they are communicating up to me that’s where i want that needle that falls into something i was talking about the other day on on our online platform i used this term and both it struck i think both you and leif because you’ve never heard me say it before i started using the term traditional leadership yeah and then like an archetypical leadership what does that mean well when we think of a leader what do we think of like if you just say oh what does a leader do well a leader gives orders a leader talks a leader tells everyone what’s going on they tell people what to do that’s traditional leadership and actually in my mind if i’m doing that sort of traditional leadership i’ve made 47 mistakes to get to a point where i have to tell you what’s going on i have to give orders i have to uh give you direction about where to go and what to do i’ve made so many mistakes if i’m doing that traditional leadership role of like all right here’s what we’re doing does that happen sometimes and that was what i was talking about right the case does sometimes happen where we got a leadership vacuum no one knows what to do there’s some confusion and sometimes we do have to take a role as a traditional leader step in tell everyone what to do this is what we’re doing this direction we’re having heading and in a traditional leadership role i’m in charge i’m the one that’s putting out the word we want to flip the script on that to what to your point traditional leadership is not what my ideal is ideal leadership is dave’s actually giving me information and telling me what’s going on and i have to give very little communication back because he already understands the commander’s intent and what his roles were and he by the way knows more about what’s happening on his front than i do totally and he’s trying to inform me but still he’s there so that that traditional leadership versus ideal leadership is is something to pay attention to and if you had whatever version of a catastrophic communication failure exists where you know it doesn’t have to be the phone lines in combat but some something that prevents you from communicating if your people can’t operate based on your intent with zero communication and just go out there and execute until somehow that communication line is reopened for whatever reason that again that is a that is your failure as a leader that they don’t know what to do if you’re not there to tell them what to do so i don’t you know in whatever world you’re in your version of a communication cutoff your people should still be able to execute 100 next little section called the method of advanced until the end of the 18th century a physically concentrated advance both strategic to the battlefield and tactical on the battlefield was the rule then napoleon exploiting borsei’s ideas and new divisional system introduced a distributed strategic advance the army moving in independent but fractions tactical advance was still in general a concentrated one this is you know we start getting into decentralized command and you know i mentioned borse already b-o-u-r-c-e-t he’s another french general um 1700s i think he yeah born in 1700 died in 1780 but this is another guy that that had a little bit of vision right had a vision about decentralized command and that’s kind of one of them this divisional system where you can start to get people to move on their own and that is a better way to advance back to the book toward the end of oh and by the way to dave’s point we know where we’re going and if you lose if if you got your division and echo’s got his division and carrie’s got his division and you lose columns with me it doesn’t matter three days later you’re where you’re supposed to be because you knew where you were going yeah back to the book towards the end of the 19th century with the development of fire weapons the tactical advance became dispersed i e and particles to diminish the effective fires this is when we really start to get to dispersion but the strategic advance had become concentrated this would do partly to the influence of railways and growth of the masses partly to the misunderstanding of the napoleonic methods so when when we started to use machine guns well then people started dispersing tactically but because of trains we were moving these mass groups together a revival of the distributed advance was required in order to revive the art and effective strategy moreover new conditions air power and motor power point to its further development into a dispersed strategic advance the danger of air attack the aim of mystification and the need of drawing full value from mechanized mobility suggests that advancing forces should not only be distributed as widely as as is compatible with combined action but be dispersed as much is compatible with cohesion so what they’re saying there’s a balance that you have to have we got to be as far apart as we possibly can but as long as we’re still a cohesive unit that’s the dichotomy that you have to balance this becomes essential in the face of atomic weapons obviously we can’t be all together because we’re going to get nuked sure and it’s crazy that we sit here and chuckle at that because for us it’s almost like hey that couldn’t happen but hey and we’ve covered we’ve covered uh some significant military manuals where they talk about the actual they’re planning on how they’re gonna maneuver when the enemy is using tactical nukes which is crazy to think about uh the development of radio has a timely aid towards reconciling dispersion with control instead of the simple idea of concentrated stroke by a concentrated force we should choose according to circumstance between these variants it gives some some op some some options here dispersed advance with concentrated single aim i e against wanted objective dispersed advance with concentrated serial aim which which means when we get there we’re going to go off their multiple successive objectives dispersed advance with distributed aim i e against a number of objectives simultaneously the effectiveness of armies depends on the development of such new methods methods which aim at permeating and dominating areas rather than capturing lines at the practicable object of paralyzing the enemy’s action rather than the theoretical object of crushing his forces fluidity of forces may succeed where concentration of force merely entails rigidity a perilous rigidity so at times bruce lee sure we want to be like water fluidity of force is sometimes better than just concentration of force if you can move jeff glover on the jiu jitsu mats you you grab something on him and he’s somewhere else you grab something on dean he’s countering right you grab something on jeffy glover he’s maneuvering like he’s gone it’s like a a piece of sir yeah you squeeze one part he pops out another part yes right with dean you can’t squeeze like it doesn’t go anywhere he does the squeezing yeah you’re getting squeezed that’s the way it worked all right just the word fluid and i mentioned it before i talk about fluid mutual support just the idea of of being fluid is its flexibility it’s the ability to be reactive to the situation in a way that puts you in a place to be available to support as you need it but far enough away to maneuver as you need to and i just i think the idea of of in this era them talking about fluid when the backdrop of world war one and i know we’ve hit this a thousand times the backdrop of world war one was was whatever the opposite of fluid is which is this inca the inability the inability to to to adjust to maneuver to do something you that that analogy you just did with like that slime thing of i squeeze here and something pops it over there that the being the ability to be fluid and the the inherent the the way you’d want to describe your organization or your your reaction to things going on in your organization being fluid and how quickly people get to being rigid with their thought processes their ideas their objectives what they want to accomplish and how quickly it becomes rigid so so check this out we’re in world war one okay we actually have a culture that views fluidity as weakness the victorian culture if you want to run away from danger you’re a coward you’re weak now take that and bring a thread to the board room bring a thread to the conference room and accompany and if dave presents an idea to me and i back down because i agree with his idea or i back down because i oh i see some holes in my idea i might be viewed as weak so i’m not going to be fluid instead i’m going to be rigid i’m going to stand up to dave we’re going to fight about it and by the way if i out rank you i’m gonna win it’s freaking ridiculous crazy but we have this culture and and that culture you know look the culture the reason that culture exists especially the culture of rigidity is directly tied to our human nature our ego right because we feel like oh i don’t wanna i’m not gonna back down to dave i’m not gonna let that happen it’s like actually you know what good call dave i like your idea better the the odd thing about this is that it makes me look stronger it makes me look open-minded and flexible and confident to be like you know what dave like your idea let’s roll with that the whole room the whole freaking conference room goes damn taco’s got some confidence he’s good with whatever plan he just wants us to win as opposed to actually dave you know what i’ve heard enough from you we’re going with my plan everyone in the room goes oh he’s weak i think i’m strong i’m being weak and everybody perceives me as weak everybody pers this is the car one of the hardest lessons to learn it’s one of the hardest lessons to learn is that flexibility is viewed as a strength fluidity is viewed as a strength putting your ego and being humble is viewed as strength and when you do the opposite when you’re rigid it’s viewed as weakness when you let your ego flare up it’s viewed as weakness it’s viewed as insecurity and we see this all day long we see this all day long check next chapter the concentrated essence of strategy and tactics do i own royalties for my book do i i think i kind of first i was like nah but then now i think maybe to the to the um to the children and descendants of bhl dill heart unfortunately for you this book was published over 50 years ago so we are cleared and i apologize but that’s where we’re at hopefully people will buy this book and you’ll get some support it’s uh fantastic this brief chapter is an attempt to epitomize from the history of war and as soon as you hear this dave you’re going to kind of be like oh here we go this brief chapter is an attempt to epitomize from the history of war a few truths of experience which seems so universal and so fundamental as to be termed axioms they are practical guides not abstract principles napoleon realized that only the practical is useful when he gave us his maxims but the modern tendency which we we’ll put i’m not gonna ask you we covered the napoleon’s maxims on this podcast you can google it since echo does not know nor do i check the modern tendency has been to search for principles which can be expressed in a single word and then need several thousands words to explain them even so these principles are so abstract that they may mean different things to different men and for any value depend on the individual’s own understanding of war the longer one continues to search for such omnipotent abstra abstractions the more do they appear a mirage neither attainable nor useful except as an intellectual exercise these principles of war not merely one principle can be condensed into a single word concentration so he’s saying this word concentration which we all learn concentration of forces he’s saying you could say all these principles and put them in the word concentration okay let’s start there but for the but for truth this needs to be amplified as the concentration of strength against weakness and for any real value it needs to be explained that the concentration of strength against weakness depends on the dispersion of your opponent’s strength which in turn is produced by a distribution of your own that gives the appearance and partial effect of dispersion your dispersion his dispersion your concentration such as the sequence and equal and each is a sequel true concentration is a force of calculated dispersion so he’s saying even though it’s really easy to say concentration it’s like oh there’s a lot more going on than that yeah here we have a fundamental principle whose understanding may prevent a fundamental error and the most common that of giving your opponent freedom and time to concentrate to meet your concentration this is why when you cover and move you put down covering fire and then the other element moves why it’s that covering fire that doesn’t allow the enemy to maneuver to meet your concentration but to state that the prince but to state the principle is not much practical aid for execution the above mentioned axioms here expressed as maxims cannot be condensed into a single word but they can be put into the fewest words necessary to be practical eight in all so far six are positive eight and all so far it’s interesting he’s saying like hey this is probably gonna change but this is where we’re at so far six are positive and two are negative they apply to tactics as well as strat strategy unless otherwise indicated number one and these are the positive ones number one adjust your end to your means adjust your end to your means this is another thing that’s you got to know your objective you got to stick to your objective he’s actually saying look man you gotta make some adjustments your your end may change based upon your means and here’s what he says in determining your object clear sight and cool calculation should prevail wouldn’t that be nice it is folly to quote bite off more than you can chew end quote and the beginning of military wisdom is a sense of what is possible that’s the beginning of military wisdom what’s actually possible and this is where you you know you can get into some um you know theoretical ideas about but if you believe it it’s like no and it’s actually interesting i remember the early musters i got asked about this and i explained belief as seeing an actual pathway to victory you you’ve got a belief means you can actually see a an actual pathway a viable pathway to achieve what you’re talking about because to think you know what i want to be an astronaut like right now i’m 49 years old i guess i could figure out no not really i probably have a better chance of becoming an astronaut than uh an nba player right same so is there okay same thanks for the support bro is there a viable pathway for me to become an nba player not really not really so therefore i need to adjust the end a little bit find something a little more feasible he goes on to say so learn so learn to face facts while still pervert preserving faith there will be ample need for faith the faith that can achieve the apparent impossible when action begins so look we gotta have a positive attitude confidence is like the current in a battery avoid exhausting it in vain effort and remember that your own continued confidence will be of no avail if the cells of your battery the men upon whom you depend have been run down so this is a again there’s very few people that would think that the military mind should focus on hey i might have to adjust what i’m trying to get to because it seems like the military is you know like we’re gonna get this done like no this is the number one the number one axiom he’s talking about adjust your end to your means number two keep your object always in mind now this is a dichotomy right keep your app your object always in mind while adapting your plan to circumstances realize that there are more we realize that there are more ways than one of gaining an object an object but take heed that every objective should bear on the object and in considering this just just real quick if you as a leader can understand the fact that there’s more ways than one of gaining an object your life just got a thousand times more easy just got a thousand times easier i’ve seen countless leaders think that they know the way and want to do something a certain way and waste time and effort and resources and most important waste leadership capital to get something done a certain way when my attitude is like i don’t care i don’t care how you want to get this done i don’t care this is what we want to get done how do you want to do it cool sounds good it’s a viable plan it’s a minimally viable plan dave’s plan you know what i might do it differently dave’s plan looks like it could work too cool and by the way do we know your plan is going to work perfectly no we don’t do i know my plan is going to work perfectly no we don’t so why am i going to invest a bunch of resources and time and effort and arguing and leadership capital trying to convince you to use my plan instead of your plan when they’re both a freaking gamble don’t waste your time connecting connecting those two those two i guess axioms together or those those those fundamental things from a leadership standpoint of and we even talked about this you know from as a leader showing people a path to the to the end state that might not happen today might happen tomorrow but it’s it’s possible if you’re gonna say hey let’s bring in the three of us we’re gonna we’re gonna be a 100 million dollar company and i’ve got no way to show you how that’s going to happen other than uh either just belief or faith or or hope for a miracle um or hey this one product this is gonna be we’re gonna have this magical product and this is gonna work and i could also say hey listen our goal we want to be a 100 million dollar company but let me tell you what what’s gonna what we’re gonna have to do right now we’re not but we’re gonna do this and this and that’s gonna allow us to bring in this other group maybe getting an acquisition here and you can start to lay out this path and people and i’ve seen it in those rooms where you see the leaders lay out the path to getting there not the exact steps we’re going to take but what we and all of a sudden people go oh oh yeah we can we can do that and that’s going to lead to this and then we bring in more people and we bring in more resources we bring in another company that does this just laying out the steps so people in their minds understand and i and i’m just saying this because of the word viable the the the the value of people saying oh that’s actually not crazy what you’re saying is not this magic crazy pipe dream i can actually see how if we do this and then if i on that second step as a subordinate leader understand what you’re trying to accomplish and you’re not here saying turn left to your return right here do this and not telling me what to do or how to do it you’re just telling me the end state that we want then i actually get to be the one that drives us to that goal that is actually so much more believable now because it’s viable because you laid that out and then let me let me move towards that objective here’s a detail that i just picked up on taking what you said when you said uh what i said back to me and i was like oh there’s an there’s an error in what i said when i when i say a belief is seeing a path to victory what it should actually be is seeing paths plural to victory and the reason i thought of this is because as you’re sitting here talking about well if i say okay dave we’re gonna make a hundred million dollar company and you go oh that sounds awesome i’m in yeah uh but how are we gonna do that and i lay out one single path to get us there yeah you know that that’s cool and everything but your your faith in that is gonna go down a little bit but if i say hey listen here’s our five different lines of operations and here’s what each one of these things are gonna produce and you know what chances are dave one or two of these might fail completely they’re good ideas i like them but we don’t haven’t gone far enough down them to really understand but we know that of these ideas we have made some progress in all of them and we see potential so if two or three of these paths go the way we want them to we’re going to be right where we want to be we’re going to get that 100 million so even you know going back to the last podcast having multiple avenues of approach is highly beneficial to your belief system being distributed and how you go to an objective right yeah right having more than one objective having more than one pathway to that objective yeah and by the way also saying look we might we might not make this one objective over here but we’re still going to get where we want to be same maxim here continue on and in considering possible objectives weigh their possibility of attainment with their service to the object if attained to wander down a side track is bad but to reach a dead end is worse so especially if the dead end is the only pathway that you’ve got yeah that’s why having a couple different pathways is smart number three choose the line or course of least expectation try to put yourself in the enemy’s shoes and think what course is least probable he will foresee or forestall number four exploit the line of least resistance so long as it can lead you to any objective which would contribute to your underlying object right oh yeah it’s cool path least resistance but it’s got to be going in the right direction in tactics this maximum applies to the use of your reserves and in strategy the exploitation of tactical success number five take a line of operation which offers alternative objectives okay sorry we went a little ahead on that one for you will thus put your opponent on the horns of dilemma which comes from the last podcast which goes far to assure the chance of gaining one objective at least whichever he guards least and may enable you to gain one after the other because once you get one like we make it in one line of operation and now we made a bunch of money cool guess what we can invest in that other thing that was a little bit harder out of the gate but now we have the money to spend on it and we can make it happen yeah alternative objectives allow you to keep the opportunity of gaining an objective whereas a single objective unless the enemy is helplessly inferior means the certainty that you will not gain it once the enemy is no longer uncertain as to your aim as soon as the enemy knows what you’re doing your chances of success go down dramatically unless they’re helplessly inferior there is no more common mistake than to confuse a single line of operation which is usually wise with a single objective which is usually futile number six and the last of the positive maxims ensure that both plans and dispositions are flexible adaptable to circumstances and by dispositions that’s like where you’re putting people your plans should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure or a partial success which is the most common case in war your dispositions or formation should be such as to allow this exploitation or adaptation in the shortest possible time you know people people will argue and fight and struggle with trying to figure out how they’re going to task organize organize a group of people like well no actually dave i think this person should report to dave and this person should report to leif and this person should report to me we can argue about that stuff i’ll wait all day long and by the way you’re pissed i’m pissed and guess what it’s our company and i go you know what dave you go ahead that person can report you cool that sounds good and you look up at me in two weeks and you’re like hey this doesn’t really make much sense okay cool they can report you know like you don’t it’s not set in stone you don’t get a tattoo on your forehead of your task organization and by the way it doesn’t look quote look bad to say hey you know what fred you’re gonna be working for dave and then a month later say hey fred seems like your expertise is really gonna be a little bit more beneficial to leif and what he’s got going on we’re gonna shift you over there no do you want to do this every two weeks no obviously not but to put someone in a position or or task organize organize in a certain way and and have it flexible flexible dispositions that’s exactly what it is is the smart way to do things and obviously it’s with a flexible plan as well the negatives do not throw your weight into a stroke whilst your opponent is on guard whilst he is well placed to parry or evade it the experience of history shows that save against a much inferior opponent no effective stroke is possible until his power of resistance or evasion is paralyzed hence no commander should launch a real attack upon an enemy in position until satisfied that such a paralysis has developed it is produced by disorganization and its moral equivalent demoralization of the enemy so cool set it up set up the move eight and the last one do not renew an attack along the same line or in the same form after it has once failed a mere reinforcement of weight is not a sufficient change for it is probable that the enemy also will have strengthened itself in the interval it is even more probable that his success in repulsing you will have strengthened immorally um it’s one of my favorite coaching moves in jiu jitsu is uh you know do it harder i was i was saying that to carry the other day like he’s like grabbing your wrist i could grab that thing harder it hasn’t helped him for six minutes grabbing the wrist while he’s in your guard but if he does it harder you know that might work that’s what this is like it didn’t work it’s not gonna work don’t do it harder just because you add hey you know we spent a bunch of money on advertising uh we haven’t seen any bump in our in our uh uh sales yeah spend more let’s spend more i guess the only thing that surprised me is from the guy who was in world war one that that wasn’t number one yeah like the first thing he says is hey don’t do what we did for three straight years yeah maybe that’s why it’s his last point yeah like hey by the way you freaking idiot idiots all this other stuff cool listen you freaking idiots if it doesn’t work don’t keep doing it if it didn’t work with ten thousand men it’s not gonna work with twenty thousand that’s crazy you can see how you get sucked into that don’t you yeah you’re like you know what the way you get sucked into it is when you commit yourself to the outcome of your plan this plan is going to achieve this outcome and if i if i allocate resource i work for you hey this is the plan is we’re going to do i allocate resources and doesn’t work well i can either abandon that plan make me look weak like oh or i can go hey we’re going to allocate more resources and more resources and more resources more resources because i’m inflexible to say well actually maybe i didn’t connect my ends to my means to the end and i didn’t do just something might need to do something different or regroup or reassess or come in from a different direction as opposed to saying hey you know what that hey boss that plan didn’t work let me take a step back we need to kind of see what we what we did here with this marketing scheme it didn’t have the effect that we want and before we start putting in more resources let me get a better assessment of what’s going on and kind of give that to you and it may be that we do the same thing but we’re probably going to need to make some changes yeah at least quantify your efforts right it’s really disturbing because it really is one of these things where it is so tempting when you get close you get you know you feel like the pressure like you try an arm lock and you almost got it you try it again it’s like the person defended it once the person is going to defend it again you spend that money in marketing you spend that money and you you know you saw a little bit of an uptick but it’s not quite what you wanted but still maybe we just put more money into it and i’m listening i’m listening to you talk about some of those things and i’m almost trying to think of of what is the human nature to do that and i think some of it is is we kind of glorify this single-minded this yeah i think it’s similar things we there’s like this glorification of i refuse to give in i refuse to to to give up i refuse to tap i refuse to accept defeat and so my answer is i’m just going to send more i’m going to send more and more and i think the times that that perseverance pays off there’s some sort of like glorification of that single-mindedness when when in in reality how much weaker does it make us look by being unwilling to say hang on i think there’s a flaw in my plan here let me let me just i need i need to take a step back and rethink this i’m i’m missing something i’m missing something and the weakness that that shows and you were talking about before is you know that makes you look weak when the exact opposite is true yeah well i have a section in leadership strategy and tactics called when to quit never quit actually totally wrong totally wrong when do you quit oh this plan that we have is not working we lost a guy two guys three guys this is stupid let’s go a different direction now just imagine doing that for battalions and brigades and divisions of soldiers man it’s free for you crazy it is crazy just give us a look we just had if we just would have had another 10 000 soldiers at that moment god it’s so tempting is it like do you feel like it’s maybe like because it’s like you say glorify um you know never quite that yeah that never quit and then they over over simplify it because you say persistence right persistence always you know like that’s the way this guy was successful he’s just persistent you know fail fail and by the way dichotomy right yeah it’s a dichotomy like you can say oh you know what it didn’t work the way we wanted to okay screw it we’re gonna go do something else like so there’s a dichotomy in this right you know even when i was talking about like you go for the arm lock you don’t get it you go for the arm lock you don’t get it there’s plenty of fights where the person went for the arm lock three four times finally they get it yeah that’s what i’m saying where they oversimplify it where they have all these cool sayings like you know if if at first you don’t succeed you know try again or you know all these things but there’s more to it than that something else yeah some of the pacific island campaign hey we should be done with this operation in three days cool 19 days later we’re not even a quarter wave where we’re supposed to be like guess what we’re going to send some more resources there we’re going to get it done oh man that’s why this is even this is a dichotomy totally yes so the persistence and the you know if at first you don’t succeed try and try again or whatever the it’s persistent not in the same exact methodology it’s like persistence but you kind of got to make these little changes within that but you can’t really fit that in the little slogan you know a lot of the time i was just gonna say i mean in very simplistic terms you know i think that’s one of the differences between the tactics and the strategy is i will abandon a tactic and i will give up on a tactic very quickly if it if it’s the wrong tactic to get to the now giving up on a strategy is a very different thing but giving up on the tactic or or maybe it’s not even the right word but adjusting my tactics and adjusting the plan and getting feedback from the ones implementing the plan while sticking to the strategy or the or the long-term objective again very simplistically but the commitment to the tactic when you see people committing to the same thing over and over and over again as opposed to going hey this tactic isn’t working is there a better way to do this to accomplish that same end goal of what we want to become as a company or as a team um that difference for me is how often we see people unwilling to change their tactic yeah when it’s so obvious that they need to and that’s the exact that’s exactly in that section in leadership strategy and tactics once i explain like hey you need to quit what you’re doing that’s failing this doesn’t mean you abandon your overall strategy that’s the actual words that i use i open it up but that’s because that’s that’s 100 right just because i go oh you know what this doesn’t seem to be working right look when when in world war one it wasn’t hey this isn’t working let’s surrender no it’s you know what this isn’t working let’s figure out a different way to do this let’s figure out a different way to attack i think it’s also just a freaking sanity check that you need to do it’s neat it’s one of these things where look you beat your i i used to say this on the podcast uh my limit for beating my head against the wall is 47 times like once i’ve beat my head against the wall 47 times like okay number 44 45 46 okay 47 this isn’t going to work i got to try something else like you got to check yourself what is that number how much you how much money are you willing to throw into marketing how big how many more people are you willing to give to that leader that’s failed yeah uh how many more projects are you you know like there’s things where you’ve got to check yourself is it have you beat your head against the wall 47 times any of your head have don’t go the 48th time time to re-evaluate your your tactic doesn’t mean you need to abandon what you’re trying to do means you need to freaking check yourself um back to the book the essential truth underlying these maxims is that for success two major problems must be solved dislocation and exploitation one precedes and one follows the actual blow which in comparison is a simple act so it’s pretty easy to hit him but you got to set up the hit and you got to exploit the hint once you’ve done you cannot hit the enemy with effect until you have first created the opportunity you cannot make that effect decisive unless you exploit the second opportunity that comes before he can recover the pos the importance of these two problems has never been adequately recognized a fact which goes far to explain the common indecisiveness of warfare so we don’t make decisions because we don’t understand how important it is that when echoes off balance i better freaking attack or before i get them off balance i need to set them up so i can get them off balance the training of armies this is freaking epic the training of armies is primarily devoted to developing efficiency in the detailed execution of the attack the concentration on tactical technique tends to obscure the psychological element it fosters a cult of soundness rather than surprise it bleeds it breeds commanders who are so intent not to do anything wrong according to the book that they forget the necessity of making the enemy do something wrong the result is that their plans have no result [Music] for in war it is by compelling mistakes that the scales are most often turned gotta make the person make mistakes here and there a commander has eschewed the obvious and is found in unexpected in the unexpected the key to a decision unless fortune has proved foul for luck can never be divorced from war since it’s part of life hence the unexpected cannot guarantee success but it guarantees the best chance of success that’s why we got to surprise people next section the national object and military aim and look we talk about alignment a lot and this is where inside of an organization this is this is really talking about alignment and so as you you as you hear us discuss this thinking about alignment through your organization this is what we have to be cognizant of as leaders in discussing the subject of the objective in war it is essential to be clear about and keep clear in our minds the distinction between the political and military objective the two are different but not separate for nations that for nations do not wage war for war’s sake but in pursuance of policy the military objective is only the means to a political end hence the military objective should be governed by the political objectives subject to the basic condition that policy does not demand what is militarily that is practically impossible so what are we trying to do in our company what are we actually trying to do inside of our company and if we’re trying to do something inside of our company does everybody on the team understand what we’re trying to do and are there maneuvers out there in support of what it is we’re trying to do thus any study of the problem ought to begin and end with a question of policy the term objective although common usage is not really a good one it has a physical and geographical sense and thus tends to confuse thought it would be better to speak of the object when dealing with the purpose of policy and of the military aim when dealing with the way that forces are directed in the service of policy so i mentioned on the first podcast we did that he kind of goes into this objective versus object and he uses the term object i think it’s not it’s a little bit of an archaic way of using it i know it’s only 19 whatever 30 but for us we use objective all the time and we definitely use it in a military sense but to his point objective we think of like airfield right we think of beachhead so maybe it’s a good idea we’ll go with it the object in war is a better state of peace even if only from your own point of view this is a you know i always talk about climbing the ladder of alignment this is the highest you can get in the ladder of alignment for war the reason we’re in war is because we want a better piece that’s what we’re trying to do hence it is essential to conduct war with constant regard for your for the peace you desire this is the long long long term thinking that applies to both both to aggressor nations who seek expansion and to peaceful nations who only fight for self-preservation although their views of what is meant by a better state of peace are very different history shows that gaining military victory is not in itself equivalent to gaining the object of policy but as most of the thinking about war has been done by men of the military profession there has been a very natural tendency to lose the site of basic national object and identify it with the military aim so how does this happen inside of a business we start the business the people that are out there in the field trying to make things happen they might lose sight of what it is we’re trying to do and consequence whenever war is broken out policy is too often been governed by the military aim and this has been regarded as an end in itself instead of as a merely a means to an end fast forward a little bit for more than a century of the prime cannon of military doctrine has been that has been that quote the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield constituted the only true aim in war that’s what war is for just destroy the enemy destroy the enemy forces on the battlefield actually that was universally accepted engraved in all military manuals and taught at all staff colleges if any statesman ventured to doubt whether it fitted the national object in all circumstances he was regarded it was regarded as blasphemy and violating holy writ as can be seen in studying the official records and memoirs of the military heads of the warring nations particularly in and after world war one so absolute a rule would have astonished the great commanders and teachers of war theory and ages prior to the 19th century for they had recognized the practical necessity of wisdom of adapting aims to limitations of strength and policy like how long are we gonna try and fight this thing before i say you know what this is freaking not good we’re expending all of our national treasure and we’re not getting anywhere this is a bad call and now we’re going to start hammering on crossfits again klaus fitz’s influence the rule acquired its dogmatic rigidity largely through the posthumous influence of klaus wits and his books upon the minds of prussian soldiers particularly mulkey and thence more widely through the impact of their victories in 1866 and 1870 made upon the armies of the world which copied so many features of the prussian system thus it is a vital importance to examine his theories as so often happens klaus wits his disciples carried his teachings to an extreme which their master had not intended misinterpretation has been the common fate of most prophets and thinkers in every sphere devout but uncompromising oh sorry devout but uncomprehending disciples have been more damaging to the original conception than even its prejudiced and per-blind opponents so what what happens we get people that take things to the extreme and they do more damage than the people that are against the idea it must be admitted however that klaus wits invited misinterpretation more than most sorry klaus fitz a student of kant at second hand he acquired a philosophical mode of expression without developing a truly philosophical mind ouch sorry dude he’s hammering close what’s there consonants is taking heavies how are you how did you guys talk about crossfits in a positive way in policy school or mostly i mean the the the pull from klaus was to the takeaway from that was there were components inside there that the things that he said make sense and and he talks about ends and meads he talks about tactics and strategy and is really a good tool for people to understand and the way the context that we’re using is actually i think very important and very similar to what he’s saying is that the military which has this sort of outsized recognition this outsize um uh status of the the the instead of being a tool to accomplish the political means of what the state wants it it’s almost uh it means in and of itself as if the military exists for the military as opposed to this is a tool one of many tools that actually accomplishes the political means which and to just kind of bring that back a little bit when he talked about the object being a greater piece or a better piece or or whatever the term that you use and it’s funny because i think i’ve evolved in my thinking when i hear objective i don’t think bridge anymore i don’t think airfield anymore i think goals i think outcomes so but i understand his point and i certainly remember in the beginning of my military career what’s the objective oh to secure that bridge or or to to do whatever that particular thing is if we’ve got a company and our company’s object or our vision our goal is to be you know the premier hardware producer for a product that every company in the world needs for them to be successful and then i’ve got a sales team inside there and everything well sales is like the most important thing we have we got to sell this thing it’s the military version for this company and you’re out there running the sales team and your objective is sell as many of these things as you can because that’s obviously how we become the indispensable producer of this product that everybody’s going to need and be the most reputable and reliable company in the world but if you’re out there selling this product and it hasn’t been made yet because our operations team hasn’t stood up or you’re selling this and we don’t have the support for the clients that are going to buy it to actually give them the tools they need or you’re selling this and we don’t have the software to update it and back it up you can actually accomplish your objective by selling this product that doesn’t help us achieve the object that doesn’t actually help us be successful and i’m not defending kosovo’s but there is the military has something somebody’s got yeah it’s all good the the military in some ways has become this tool this means that sort of in and of itself is its own thing like the military exists to defeat you know to win wars and defeat the enemy and destroy battlefields once actually no it’s one of several different ways and when you made that comment about the military’s existence like the ideal thing you would think for the military is i want this military to exist to deter any potential opponent from ever going to war with us in terms of like what would i want from a military i don’t want i would love to never set foot on the battlefield i’d love to never get now whether or not that’s realistic but i would love a military force of people our opponents look look at and go you know what i’m good with your plan i like your plan i’m here to support that plan you want to use our our bridges and roads to for commerce and maybe occupy some of my towns yeah i let’s find a compromise to make that work as opposed to no this isn’t going to happen and your military shows up to compel me to do it in a way that i don’t necessarily want but the object objective thing and i’m just trying to make the connection to to the business world of if you think you’re out there just to do this one thing and it doesn’t support the object of the company or the long-term goal you’re actually not successful you’re not winning i sold the most product cool can we support it no can we build it no can we back it up no can can the clients get what they want no then then we actually aren’t successful what happens to our reputation what happens to our backlog we get crushed and and you’re gonna see he he he goes he goes relatively hard on crosswords he also explains some of the things that people missed which he he kind of also blames on klaus wits but there’s a lot of things that klaus with says in the uh that just aren’t as memorable that aren’t as memorable as some of his really kick-ass statements and people remember what sounded cool yeah and if they got mistaken like i think however many chapters are in on war i think he wrote like the first three by himself and they’re really well written and super complete and then several chapters were written by his wife after he died and they’re like half done and like and they’ve been you know hearts probably wrote this in english and colossus was written in some sort of prussian version that’s been translated a thousand times so again yeah in his defense yeah and when you do that translation if you kind of think that maybe uh you know concentration and mass is how to win you definitely are going to emphasize that i think this is what he meant and yeah back to the book his theory of war was expounded in a way too abstract and involved for ordinary soldier minds essentially concrete he’s saying the soldier mines are concrete to follow the course of his argument which often turned back from the direction in which it was apparently leading impressed yet before they grasped at his vivid leading phrases seeing only their surface meaning and missing the deeper current of his thought klauswick’s greatest contribution to the theory of war was in emphasizing the psychological factors raising his voice against the geometrical school strategy then festival he showed that the human spirit was infinitely more important than operational lines and angles he discussed the effect of danger and fatigue the value of boldness and determination with deep understanding it was his errors however which had the greatest effect on subsequent course of history he was too continental in his outlook to understand the meaning of sea power and his vision was short on the very threshold of the mechanical era he did he declared his conviction that superiority in numbers becomes every day more decisive yeah so he kind of was a little bit late they didn’t freaking tank yet one of the classic discussions was the the um what’s the word i’m looking for the relevance of costs was in the 21st century you know start talking about you know like nuclear power your nuclear weapons stealth airplanes and things like hey do these maxims of these do these do they hold up to the scrutiny of the 21st century of warfare the modern warfare and a bunch of discussions on that i kind of chuckled at the idea of like his disciples the klaus was disciples who kind of aren’t that smart but really like what he had to say you know that’d be like me reading leadership strategy tactics and there’s a chapter that says don’t care and me be like hey everybody don’t care yeah but getting that wrong but misunderstanding like i don’t care as opposed to i don’t care how we do it you want to do area i don’t care we’ll do it your way which is a little bit different than don’t care next thing you know dave burke jocko’s disciple is running around telling all the rest of his people we don’t care yeah and i don’t care yeah i don’t care and we’re now a bunch of people who don’t care and how easy you could see a disciple who’s and i i’ll never remember the quote but the the most damage was done by um the concrete brain well you said the disciples that the misunderstanding of his disciples did way more damage than the opponents right right because i’m running around espousing jocko’s you know edicts but actually don’t really know what he meant by don’t care yeah and i’m just using that one example of kind of pulling from this book of like a great way of like i don’t care like dude that that is not what he meant i know that’s what it says on paper but that’s not what he was saying yeah or like knowing to quit hey man you know what you gotta throw in the towel whatever we quickly give up shut it down yeah uh uh so he’s talking about how important oh well i know what i was gonna say i i was taking a note when you were writing i only got down the two letters m a and then i was looking i was like what the hell was i going to write i was going to write machine gun because for me where the tactics sort of solidified where you can say yep these things hold up it’s you got to have the machine gun that’s where we start to get the modern machine gun where we can start to kill a lot of people and how concentration is like the war is the worst thing and just cover and move becomes totally important it’s it’s important in all eras but it really starts to solidify around there well you use the example of like on steroids of nuclear weapons you know you talk about dispersion you know versus concentration with with nuclear weapons um i thought of another one just as i was thinking of it as hold the line jaco says hold the line cool got it yeah we’re gonna hold the line and look what we’re talking about is the story behind the book the dichotomy of leadership the dichotomy of leadership is chapter 12 in extreme ownership so cool we covered it why do we have to write a whole new book because people still like extreme ownership we gotta hold the line it’s disciplined and all kinds like they took everything to the extreme and that’s why the story of the patches at muster is so powerful because people are like oh this is gonna be awesome jaco is going to hammer that platoon and destroy them for violating his direct order to never wear patches that aren’t professional he’s like not in care no factor like wait what it says right there hold the line yeah it’s like yeah but actually living in the extremes isn’t actually doesn’t work yes it usually doesn’t work but the title of the book is extreme ownership yeah so well there you go there’s perfect examples that’s what happened to klaus fitz and he didn’t even get to finish his book he wrote freaking three chapters and his old lady finished it up uh such a commandment gave reinforcement to the instinctive conservatism of soldiers in resisting the possibilities of a new form of superiority which mechanical invention increasingly offered it also gave powerful impulse to the universal extension and permanently permanent establishment of the method of constrict conscription as a simple way of providing the greatest possible numbers so if you want a big army if i want to be in charge of a bunch of people you know what i have to say look we need more people if we’re going to win cool start drafting people i want to be in charge of more people cool draft more people this by its disregard for psychological suitability meant that armies became much more liable to panic and sudden collapse the earlier method however unsystematic had at least tended to ensure that the forces were composed of good fighting animals [Music] this is an interesting shot at klaus switz klaus wits contributed no new or strikingly progressive ideas to tactics or strategies he was a codifying thinker rather than a creative or dynamic one he had no such revolutionary effect on warfare as the theory of the divisional system produced in the 18th century or the theory of armored mobility in the 20th which by the way that’s what kind of ledell heart like is about right so he said look cosmos didn’t do anything compared to the theory of armored mobility whoever came up with that yeah well i feel bad i actually feel bad talking about these guys talking is that weird i didn’t know how much of a of a hammer he was going to be on klaus the cool thing is i’m hearing all this but but i mean there is a lot of i understand what he’s saying i mean yeah and again why didn’t i we’re 286 episodes deep in this and i haven’t covered one of the most respected and well-known canons of military strategy yeah klaus switz is on war why is that this is kind of why yeah oh boy i’m gonna catch some grief for this one yup going out just getting crazy well what’s interesting is that i think if you were kind of just pulse a bunch of it doesn’t have to be historians that are civilians but if you look at what the military and sort of key policy makers study klaus woods is higher on that list than heart oh you know what i mean so for sure not even the same ballpark you may get some heat because if there’s someone that’s been studied and sort of kind of lionized klaus woods is the guy you know what i mean so yeah there’s some people out there going hey well you know i’ve taken some heat over the years i had a little guy named colonel david hackworth who was a complete black sheep of the army and hated by the navy totally and i was in the navy talking about that guy um back to the book but in seeking to formulate the experience of the napoleonic wars the emphasis he put on certain retrograde retrograde features helped to cause what might be termed a revolution in reverse back towards tribal warfare klaus was theory of the military aim in defining the military aim klaus which was carried away by his passion for pure logic quote the and this this makes it really uh this starts to make it really obvious why this stuff doesn’t mend with my normal way of thinking quote the aim of all action in war is to disarm the enemy and we shall now show that this in theory at least is indispensable if our opponent is to be made to comply with our will we must place him in a situation where which is more oppressive to him than the sacrifice we demand but the disadvantages of this position must naturally not be of a transitory nature at least in appearance otherwise the enemy instead of yielding will hold out in the hope of a change for the better every change in this position which is produced by a continuation of war must therefore be a change for the worse worse the worst condition in which a belligerent can be placed is that of being completely disarmed if therefore the enemy is to be reduced to into submission he must either be positively disarmed or placed in such a position that he is threatened with it from this follows that the complete disarming or overthrow of the enemy must always be the aim of warfare end quote this reminds me of uh the bath party in iraq being completely disarmed how much did that help freaking hurt right um maybe some klaus whitsey and people were saying yep gotta disarm him yeah completely completely good job the influence of of kant kant where’s where’s daryl cooper daryl cooper is making jokes about like he’s just bringing in deep echo and i are looking at him like bro wrong crowd the influence of kant can be perceived in klaus wit’s dualism of thought he believed in a perfect military world of ideals while recognizing a temporal world in which these could only be imperfectly fulfilled so he’s giving credit here’s a little credit going back to klaus where it’s like hey man he got it that you got these ideals but it’s the real world and it’s not going to quite go that well for he was capable of distinguishing between what was what was militarily ideal and what he described as a modification in the reality thus he wrote reasoning in the abstract the mind cannot stop short of an extreme but everything takes a different shape when we pass from abstractions to reality this object of war in the abstract the disarming of the enemy is rarely attained in practice and is not a condition necessary to peace so he wasn’t even saying what he was saying he goes back and kind of backs off it a little bit koswitz’s tendency to the extreme is shown again in his discussion of battle as a means to an to the end of war he opened with the startling assertion there is only one single means it is the fight he justified this by a long argument to show that in every form of military activity quote the idea of fighting must necessarily be at the foundation end quote having elaborately proved what most people would be ready to accept without argument klaus which said the object of a combat is not always the destruction of enemy forces its object can often be attained as well without the combat taking place at all so there you go he’s saying some of the stuff that that i do agree with moreover klaus wits recognized that quote the waste of our own military forces must ceteris paribus which means all things being equal always be greater the more our aim is directed upon the destruction of the enemy’s power the danger lies in this that the greater efficacy which we which we seek recoils on ourselves and therefore has worse consequences in case we fail of success so he’s got some he’s got some quantifying statements about his about his thoughts and theories out of his own mouth klaus wits here gave a prophetic verdict upon the consequences of of following his own gospel in world war one and two for it was the ideal and not the practical aspect of his teachings on battle which survived he contributed to this distortion by arguing it was only to avoid the risks of battle that quote any other means are taken so it’s like we’re trying to avoid battle that’s the only reason that we’re going to do anything else because we’re trying to avoid battle and he fixed the distortion in the minds of his pupils by hammering on the abstract ideal and this is here’s our i guess i guess uh liddell heart’s just gonna go hot on everybody he says not one reader and a hundred was likely to follow the subtlety of his logic or to preserve a true balance amid such philosophical jugglery but everyone could catch such ringing phrases as and here’s where he gets a the branded the the klaus wits branded statements that that are uh click bait here we go and they’re freaking good to go like you hear me like yeah we have only one means in war the battle the bloody solution of the crisis the effort for the destruction of the enemy’s forces is the firstborn son of war i mean come on dude if you’re in the military you’re eating these things up like like a giant nice cool mulk only great and general battles can produce great results let us hear not of generals who conquer without bloodshed right that’s a that’s a quote from a guy that earlier was saying like hey listen you don’t always want to go to war yeah but but who remembers hey sometimes you can use other means to achieve victory i don’t want to hear that they want to hear let us not hear of great generals who conquer without bloodshed so he branded himself but man by the reiteration of such phrases klaus wits blurred into the outlines of his philosophy already indistinct and made it into mere marching refrain um which in inflamed the blood and intoxicated the mind in transfusion it became a doctrine fit to form corporals not generals for by making battle appear quote the only real warlike activity end quote his gospel deprived strategy of its laurels and reduced the art of war to the mechanics of mass slaughter moreover it incited generals to seek battle at the first opportunity instead of creating an advantageous opportunity cosworth contributed to the subsequent decay of general ship oh man when he when in an oft-quoted passage he wrote philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming the enemy without great bloodshed and that is the proper tendency of the art of war that is an error which must be extirpated so like hey this idea of bloodshed we gotta get rid of that idea that you can that you can have war without bloodshed you gotta get rid of that idea it is obvious that when he wrote that he did not pause to reflect that what he decried had been recorded as the proper aim of generalship by all masters of the art of war including napoleon himself like everyone sun tzu napoleon everyone in between like hey man if you can win without fighting that’s what we’re doing and he’s saying the opposite klaus woods phrase would henceforce be used by countless blunderers to excuse and even justify their futile squandering of life in bullheaded assaults the danger was increased because of the way he constantly dwelt on the decisive importance of a numerical superiority with deeper penetration he pointed out in one passage that surprise lies quote at the foundation of all undertakings for without it the preponderance at the decisive point is not properly conceivable so that’s what we’re talking about that’s cool that’s maneuver warfare but his disciples struck by his more frequent emphasis on numbers came to regard mere mass as the simple recipe for victory horrible and you know what what’s a similar idea to that is like my rank right it’s a rank hey i outrank you that’s my superiority and that’s what i’m going to use to lead i mean that was that was brutal yeah that was kind of a brutal there’s there’s some little statements that was like hey he also said this but it’s like uh when the general reads it when the soldier reads it what does he want to read he wants to read about kicking ass yeah and what does he want his corporals to read he wants his corporals to read about kicking ass so what do we start reading about kick and ass yeah we hear what we want to hear echo charles yes sir we’re not done yet with call so it’s klaus what’s theory of the object even worse was the effectiveness theoretical exposition and exaltation of the idea of absolute warfare income in proclaiming that the road to success was through the unlimited application of force thereby a doctrine which began by defining war only as a continuation of state policy by other means led to the contradictory end of making policy the slave of strategy and bad strategy at that you know that’s i would say that’s one of his most famous quotes right is that war is a continuation of state policy by other means but he he he ends up taking things to a point where it’s like war is what we’re doing like you said what the military exists for the military that everything else exists because of the military yeah the government is here to provide the military with the resources that we need to go fight battles the trend was fostered above all by his dictum that quote to introduce into philosophy of war a principle of moderation would be an absurdity war is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds dude he’s getting some good quotes therefore they sound kick ass unless you’re a freaking soldier in world war one yeah the crazy thing is i’m as i’m just kind of picturing this i mean i’m asking myself now a question that i probably should have asked five years ago 10 years ago when i was thinking about this on a more academic mind of of how did klauswitz or any of these people that are i guess disciples of that of that kind of pure logic train how did they perceive the value of their own people you know because you could see the train of thought of like hey the this is the the the purpose of the military is the utter destruction or what you know those those quotes where’s the the the you could make a very easy link of like hey my soldiers they’re just implementing tools they’re just resources to be expended to achieve that end state and how quickly you can make the the stretch like in world war one you can almost imagine like yeah they’re not they’re not people they’re resources they just give me 10 000 more resources or more tools to accomplish this thing yeah i i mean you kind of phrased that as a question i don’t think there’s much of a question for sure i think it’s pretty obvious where where these guys were coming from and it’s it’s it’s really scary that you had a culture that supported that and you had you know uh you know it’s like it’s it’s really strange or you think about like kipling and and kipling who wrote these very patriotic poems that fueled this culture inside of england and his son was killed in in world war one and like the last thing they saw of him was he’s blinded and he’s kind of like stumbling on the battlefield before he was killed in his body i don’t think they ever even recovered his body just lost in the mud and muck and he’s got a really harrowing poem i think i i i know the phrase of the poem is is my boy jack or my son jack it’s it’s it’s harrowing to read and if you know what the [ __ ] he’s talking about which is that he you know he was this patriotic guy who supported england and and was contributing to that propaganda this victorian this this this culture of look look you go over the top it’s time to go you go and and he lost his son and you wonder what kind of um you know how that just the impact that that had on him and it there is an impact when you read his poems and you see before and after you see what happened you can see that it definitely had an impact but the man the idea that tens and thousands and hundreds of thousands of of people like you said like we’re like okay cool that’s what we’re doing that’s what we’re doing we’re gonna go over there and when they say go over the top we’re gonna go over the top the germans the french the canadians the americans the i mean that’s what we’re doing it’s very very hard you know you talk about the value of life and your question around like what do they think of these people it’s like yeah what did they and how did we get to a point where modern civilization well this is a hundred years ago yeah it’s a hundred years ago a hundred years ago this was happening it’s like it’s crazy to think about and uh and you can kind of see i mean what’s there’s another good saying uh it’s uh something along the lines of like old men like to send young men to fight and young men like to go fight like that’s kind of a thing right and you can see how those sort of animalistic instincts that we have and tribal instincts that we have are and and the heroic instincts that we have are captured and capitalized on and by leica koswitz like when you read klaus which you’re like cool i’m down with heroic efforts i’m down with tribal behavior i’m down with being brave like all those things just roll right into this so if you don’t want to be that guy that’s sort of like well maybe we should think about these soldiers as human beings who’s doing that apparently no one apparently no one so what you have i guess what i’m saying is you have a human instinct and a human animal instinct to be tribal to be heroic to be sacrificial to make sacrifices for the tribe i mean what is a hero you know i’ve talked about this before a hero is someone that’s not doing not making a sacrifice for himself right a hero is someone that’s making a sacrifice for someone else and that’s a common that’s just the definition of a hero in any language so when you say hey we’ve got kind of a program here that allows us to be heroic on a massive scale this is what you end up with and we kind of lean towards and we tend towards and you can see how you can see how the contrary is that you have bh liddell hart who’s saying hey not smart yeah not smart it’s better to maneuver it’s better to leave it’s better to retreat it’s better to attack on a different day and and how is he getting branded he’s getting branded like what the hell are you talking about were you a coward yeah is that what’s going on you’re a coward he’s like hey bro i went wounded three times and gassed almost to death you [ __ ] savages and you don’t know what that was like you talk about i don’t know how many times this has come up this the the capacity for the dehumanization of our enemies and how there’s a danger in there and there’s there’s a natural piece of that but you got to keep it to a to a certain place but i think for me just that to reconcile the dehumanization of your own men i i understand the dehumanization of the enemy i understand that and i also understand that there is a limit to that too and if you go too far you can undermine your own objectives we know that we know that but the ability to do that with your own men your your own people is it’s it i think that’s just why world war one sort of just sits in its own category of just so hard to come to grips with with us doing that yeah it does it’s it’s in its own category as far as i’m concerned yeah right and i guess that’s where we end up with these two kind of opposing theories of war and who wants to be called the wimp who wants to be called the weak right because that’s where you could easily go back to bh without heart and say like he wants to run away yeah he wants to you know attack people from the rear there’s a time where attacking someone in the rear shoot him in the back was like a horrible thing right it’s a sign of cowardice yeah it’s a sign of cowardice to go around and you know not line up like the other team shoot him in the back yeah you know i i’ve been the coolest part about being on the podcast in this seat is that this is i hear this live as you’re reading it i don’t i don’t get the advanced copy you don’t like say dave we’re prepping this i get to hear this and i i i’m i’m thinking and i’m trying to analyzing i’m making connections and correlations and i’ve kind of just been chuckling a little bit of like heart is just hammering klauswitz but he he it’s almost like i understand more now of why he’s so brutal on the attack of him when he made that connection of he’s the reason why we had generals and i think he used the word blunders which is about as nice as you can describe what those leaders did in world war one is i actually think i understand why he’s so brutal on him is because of what it led to and and i don’t and i think he’s doing a good job saying i know klaus was his goal was not to create this circumstance and he’s defending components of that but his point was this is the outcome that he created this his words and his philosophy is what facilitated this this window of warfare in our time that allowed us to dehumanize our own men in on a scale that’s really hard to really comprehend and and i think i’m understanding in real time why he’s saying what he’s saying about him in such a brutal fashion and i understand it yeah and i kicked off this whole podcast with the last podcast by explaining what he’d been through and i said this [ __ ] left a mark on him i mean look it leaves a mark on you when you lose one guy in combat one one guy in combat is gonna leave him you’re never gonna forget it you’re never gonna live it down you’re never gonna go a day without thinking about it can you imagine when your battalion gets wiped out yeah can you imagine when you’re brigade when you’re division when you take 60 000 casualties in a day that’s what’s going on and and the quote that you’re reaching back for was klaus what’s phrase would henceforce be used by countless blunderers to excuse and even justify their feudal squandering of life in bullheaded assaults yeah he’s talking about exactly what he lived through and that [ __ ] left a mark on him without question yeah and this is his his opportunity to tell a generation of leaders contemplating the impact of that guy’s words with the reality of without some logical thinking about what he really is trying to say this is the path you will go down and this is his way of saying you cannot go down that path yeah you want to go and read the wave tops of this guy and turn it into how you’re going to fight a war right you’re an idiot war is an act of violence pushed to its upmost bounds that’s the last quote i give he says that declaration has served as a foundation for the extravagant absurdity of modern total warfare his principle of force without limit and without calculation of costs fits and is fit only for a hate maddened mob so he’s not done yet it is the negation of statementship and intelligence strategy which seeks to serve the ends of policy if war be a continuation of policy as switz had elsewhere declared it it must necessarily be conducted with a view to post-war benefit a state which expands its strength to the point of exhaustion bankrupts its own policy and by the way that’s all players in world war one koswitz himself had qualified the principle of quote utmost force by the admission that quote the political object as the original motive of war should be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made still more significant was a reflective passage in which he remarked that to pursue the logical extreme entailed that quote the means would lose all relation to the end and in most cases the aim at an extreme effort would be wrecked by the opposite weight of forces within itself what’s the rule what’s the return on investment you’re going to get his classic work on war was the product of 12 years of intensive thought if it’s author had lived to spend a longer time in thinking about war he might have reached a wiser and clearer conclusion as his thinking progressed he was being led toward a different view penetrating deeper unhappily the process was cut short by his death from cholera in 1830 it was only after his death that his writings on war were published by his widow they were found in a number of sealed packets bearing the significant and prophetic note so he wrote a note on his writings and it said should the work be interrupted by my death then what is found can only be called a mass of conceptions not brought into form open to endless misconceptions sorry klaus wits i mean he covered it he did his best to cover it yeah much of the harm might have been avoided but for that fatal cholera germ for there are significant indications that in the gradual evolution of his thought he had reached a point where he was about to drop his original concept of absolute war and revise his whole theory on more common sense lines when death intervened in consequence the way was left open to endless misconceptions far in excess of his anticipation for the universal adoption of the theory of unlimited war has gone far to wreck civilization the teaching of klaus wits taken without understanding largely influenced both the causation and the character of world war one thereby it led on all too logically to world war ii theory influx next section after world war one the course and effects of the first world war provided ample cause to doubt the validity of clausewitz theory at least interpreted by his successors on land innumerable battles were fought without ever producing the decisive results expected of them but the responsible leaders were slow to adapt their aim to circumstances or develop new means to make the aim more possible and maybe that’s why when he was going through the eight um items that we were talking about earlier on the earlier podcast his number one thing remember you’re saying the number one thing was his number eight thing his number one thing was adjust your adjust your end to your means and here he’s saying the responsible leaders were slow to adapt their aim to the circumstances or develop new means to make the aim more possible instead of facing the problem they pressed theory to a suicidal extreme draining their own strength beyond the safety limit in pursuit of an ideal of complete victory by battle which was never fulfilled that one side ultimately collapsed that one side ultimately collapsed so the germans ultimately collapsed do more to emptiness of stomach produced by economic pressure of sea power than the loss of blood although blood which was lost in the abortive germ german offensive 1918 and the loss of spirit and consequence of their palpable failure to gain the victory hasten the collapse if this provided the opposition the opposing nations with the semblance of victory their efforts to win it cost them such a price in moral and physical exhaustion that they the seeming victors were left incapable of consolidating their position it became evident there was something wrong with the theory or at least with its application alike on the planes of the tactics strategy and policy the appalling losses suffered in vain pursuit of the ideal objective and the post-war exhaustion of the nominal victors showed that a thorough re-examination of the whole problem of the object and aim was needed besides these negative factors there were also several several positive reasons to prompt a fresh inquiry one was the decisive part that seapower had played without any decisive battle at sea and producing the enemies collapsed by economic pressure that raised the question whether britain in particular had not made a basic mistake in departing from her traditional strategy and devoting much of her effort at such terrific cost to herself to the prolonged attempt to win a decisive victory on land yeah england freaking survived forever just by rolling ruling the sea britannia rules the waves that’s what we do in england now we’re over here fighting these these people on land two other reasons arose from the new factors the development of air forces offered the possibility of striking account the enemy’s economic and moral centers without having to first achieve the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield air power might attain a direct end by indirect means hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it good deal dave i mean that’s always been the goal whether it’s whether it’s ever going to prove to be true you could make a couple arguments but that’s always been the goal we can do this without actually fighting on the ground on the ground yeah at the same time so at the same time we have air power at the same time the combined development of the petrol motor and the caterpillar track opened up a prospect of developing mechanized land forces of high mobility this in turn foreshadowed a newly enlarged possibility of producing the collapse of the enemy’s main forces without a serious battle by cutting their supply lines dislocating their control systems or producing paralysis by the sheer nerve shock of deep penetration in the rear seat also you got vehicles that can haul ass not get shot up and move a bunch of troops in a short amount of time mechanized land forces of this new kind might also provide like air power though in a lesser degree the possibility of striking direct at the heart and nerve system of the opposing country while air mobility could achieve such direct strokes by an overhead form of indirect approach tank mobility might achieve them by indirect approach on the ground avoiding the obstacle of the opposing army to illustrate the point by a board game analogy with chess air mobility introduced the knights move and tank mobility of queens move into warfare analogy does not of course express their respective values for an air force combined with the vaulting power of the knights move with the always flexibility of the queen’s move on the other hand a mechanized force a mechanized ground force though it lacked vaulting power could remain an occupation of the square it gained a couple other things these these new these new technologies increase the range of military action against military objectives making it easier to overthrow an opposing body such as an army by by paralyzing some of its vital organs instead of having to destroy it physically as a whole by hard fighting if you could you could knock out some of the key nodes that’s going to be better the some effect of the advent of this multiplied mobility both on the ground and in the air was to increase the power and importance of strategy relative to tactics the higher commanders of the future would have the prospect of achieving decisive results much more by movement than by fighting compared with their predecessors unfortunately though skipping ahead a little bit unfortunately those who were at the head of the armies after world war one were slow to recognize the need of a fresh definition of the military aim in light of changed conditions and war instruments i mean you should be absolutely rethinking every you imagine going from not having tanks and aircraft to having tanks and aircraft you should be completely changing the entire way you’re thinking about warfare and by the way this is after world war one right you know we did a piece we did a podcast on the boor war and they learned all these lessons during the boomer war and they freaking didn’t capitalize on any of them like world war one shouldn’t happen just based on what they learned in world war in the boomer war i’m going extreme i don’t want to go this extreme there are many lessons that that were learned during the boor war that they could have taken back and said we need to do things differently and they didn’t freaking adjust very many of them at all well going back to the last podcast and one of the first comments he made about the the the natural resistance the the automatic resistance that will happen when you propose change and i’m paraphrasing i don’t remember the exact quote but the idea that when i suggest a change to the norm there will be there will be resistance you know one thing to call me even a hist an amateur is is a compliment but i even think about you know the advent of air power and the resistance even in the navy to the idea that air power would somehow supplant the battleship as the preeminent force and how obvious it seems now certainly but at the time you’re thinking hey do you not can you not see the the potential advantage if we could somehow occupy this third dimension of battle exclusively and how much risk it creates and the resistance and my guess would be is that for the few folks that have the audacity to vocalize those lessons oh run out of the navy and by the way remember the last podcast when i talked about 17 out of 20 advancements in naval warfare one of them was aircraft carriers and air power totally that’s one of the more people are you kidding me we have a battleship bro right back off yeah it’s it’s this book is getting harder and harder to listen to it because yeah because the because i have the the his the hindsight of his of of what he’s saying in the context of that which he he didn’t have the future context that we all have now but it’s making it just so much more damning to he you know what he’s saying fast forward a little bit practice in world war ii when the next war came the handful of new land forces of mechanized kind that had been created amply fulfilled the claims that have been made for them and for their decisive effect if employed for long-range strokes at strategic objectives unfortunately it’s the nazis that are just going to say yeah a mere six divisions of this kind were largely instrumental in producing the collapse of poland in a few weeks um a mere 10 such divisions virtually decided the so-called battle of france before the infantry mass of the german army had even come in action and made the collapse of all western countries an almost inevitable sequel this conquest of the west was completed in barely a month’s campaign with amazingly small costs to the victor indeed the bloodshed all around was very slight and in the decisive phase trifling by a klaus witsian standard i mean can you imagine you fight those freaking three bloody satanic battles i mean campaigns in world war one just incomprehensible and then fast forward how many years 20 years 20 years 20 years 22 years whatever and it’s over in less than a month like that’s what we’re talking about and there’s almost no bloodshed because it just happened so fast because we have maneuver on our side yeah even and even in between those two examples not not to marginalize you know what the germans did to to poland but it’s what happened to the french that seems to me more remarkable because because of of what they had just been through and then to see i mean the image of of hitler at the eiffel tower i mean like that’s a that’s a it’s hard to put into words what that means for him to be standing there with with with basically no real cost of doing it relative uh crazy crazy while this sweeping victory was attained by action against objectives of military nature it was mainly through action of maneuver strategic more than tactical so it’s a different he’s playing a different game yeah playing a different game similar reflections apply to the even swifter conquest of the balkans in april of 1941 which once again demonstrated the paralyzing effect of the new instruments of strategic application battle was insignificant in comparison and destruction palpably an appropriate term for the way that the decision was achieved when it came to the invasion of russia a somewhat different method was tried many of the german generals particularly halder the chief of the general staff complain of hitler’s tendency to aim at the economic rather than military objectives but analysis of the operational orders and of their own evidence does not bear out the charge while hitler was inclined to think that the economic aim would be more effective it is clear that in the crucial period of 1941 campaign he conformed to the general staff’s preference for fighting battles thankfully thank god yeah the pursuit of this aim did not prove decisive although it produced several great victories in which immense forces of the enemy were destroyed okay we went and killed a bunch of russians whether concentration on economic objectives would have been more decisive remains an open question but the reflection that some of the ableist of the german generals consider that the best chance of defeating soviet russia was lost by aiming to win battles in the classical way instead of driving through as fast as possible to the moral come economic objectives offered by mascot moscow and leningrad the leading exponent or gordian the leading exponent of the new school of mechanical mobile warfare wish to do on this key question hitler had cited with the orthodox school like we said thank god in the series of swift german conquest the air force combined with the mechanized elements of land forces in producing the paralysis and moral disintegration of the opposing forces and of nations behind its effect was terrific and must be reckoned fully as important as that of the panzer forces the two are inseparable in any valuation of the elements that created the new style of lightning war for warfare the blitzkrieg so i’m going to fast forward a little bit there’s a section in here about strategic bombing and and what he calls grand strategic bombing or industrial bombing and he kind of goes into into how effective actually how effective it actually was he says the the actual effect which this kind of bombing achieved in contribution to victory is very difficult to assess despite much detailed investigation the estimation of the data is confused bipartisan estimate assessments both by those who favored industrial bombing and those who opposed it on various grounds apart from the fog thus created a correct assessment is handicapped and made almost impossible by the amount of imponder bilia in the data even more than the evidenced about any other type of military action imponderabilia meaning things that can’t be determined so he’s basically saying that some of the industrial bombing may have not have been effective as we thought it was fast forward a little bit still clear is the extremely detrimental effect of industrial bombing on the post-war situation again we’re going to think grand strategy we’ve got to think about what’s happening afterwards beyond the immense scale of devastation hard to repair are the less obvious but probably more lasting social and moral effects this kind of action inevitably produces a deepening danger to the relative shallow foundations of civilized life think about what you’re doing to this civilian populace and how is that going to affect the future that common danger is now immensely increased by the advent of the atomic bomb here we are brought to the fundamental difference between strategy and grand strategy whereas strategy is only concerned with the problem of winning military victory grand strategy must take the longer view for its problem is the winning of the peace such an order of thought is not a matter of putting the cart before the horse but of being clear where the horse and cart are going and i’ll tell you what with that we’re approaching two hours right now we’re probably really close if not at two hours and we have a lot more to cover so echo is it cool if we wrap this one up for now sure all right so we’ll come back to you one more podcast about this book and well about these books until then until then and look we’re going deep right now we’re we’re drinking some we’re drinking some drinks uh we’re getting after it how do we get these drinks we’re drinking what are we doing you just cracked another one open sure where do we go actually real quick i had a thought that so klaus switz and liddell hart they’re kind of like your watch karate kid yes the og original karate kid john crease mr miyagi okay yep so crossfits klaus bits or klaus wits depends on what kind of an accent i’m kind of like attempting but gotcha so he’s john crease strike first strike hard no mercy like kind of that philosophy wait that’s mr miyagi no that’s john crease oh okay you know kind of the bad guy but yeah he’ll get you fired up he’ll get you fired up the fight let’s face it we all want to say no mercy in this dojo yeah i kind of like that fear does not exist in this dojo jack right all this stuff so it gets you fired up you know but mr miyagi for 42nd by the way oh really using for real life no okay in the story i got a book about the 442nd i got to get a better one i got one of it as a history book and it was cool and somebody sent it to me and i was kind of stoked like yeah but it was a history book wasn’t a lot of first person i was like cool we can do history book as long as a bunch of first person accounts really wasn’t that many in there i got to get i got to get on the 442nd i dig it nonetheless mr miyagi his whole thing was balanced right takes daniel’s son out on the river or the lake and he has him on the boat right balance first before he’s like when do i learn how to fight all this stuff what else did he say why i learned karate and he was like so you don’t have to fight whatever the balance man it’s what it seemed like to me i don’t know i think there you go provided some more okay here i am reading these books and you’re just getting it from a karate kid you could have figured it all out yeah that’s true nonetheless you are right we are here drinking discipline go sometimes you gotta drink discipline go yeah that’s good unless last time i was saying how now the path is a little bit easier thing is i don’t know if the path is actually easier because easy easy is not the right word maybe it’s comfortable okay that doesn’t sound like the right word either because like comfort do you want to be cable you want to be comfortable nonetheless it’s more pleasurable how about that we’re drinking discipline go it tastes good it’s good for you it’s a win-win strategically and tactically okay i think all this stuff is bringing it all together along those lines all right same thing with milk you can have something that tastes really really good plus provides protein plus it’s healthy boom this is all the jocko fuel stuff so also we got your joint stuff uh your immunity stuff joint warfare super krill oil vitamin d3 and cold water that’s true get these things at jackalfuel com get the discipline go energy drinks i’m just gonna call them energy drinks just for because that’s what we’re doing drinking the energy drinks get those at wawa and vitamin chop actually you can get everything from from vitamin c by the way also yes or at jockofield com get the subscription if you don’t want to get uh if you want you don’t want to forget about um you know just restock check it out if you subscribe to whatever you want from jogglefuel shipping’s free and shipping can be expensive let’s face it and we want to not expend resources that we don’t have to that’s true a little indirect attack get subscription all of a sudden shipping is free it’s true your resources are spared and can be utilized for other offensive operations yeah that’s kind of like a kind of badass way of saying that right yeah kind of i agree i agree yeah yeah fully also speaking of operations origin usa american made stuff durable goods clothing what that means is you want to get some american-made jeans made out of american-made denim made out of american-made cotton origin usa that’s where you can get this stuff also has athletic wear some uh jiu jitsu stuff geez rash guards belts wallets boots i still have your boots by the way oh i think i’m gonna need those soon yeah don’t worry they’re downstairs in the car nonetheless origin usa that’s where you can get this stuff real good stuff it’s a big deal too made in america the way it is made in america from the beginning all the way up into the final product yeah we have a factory full of awesome american people up there creating this stuff sewing it printing it i mean just every aspect cutting it sewing it it’s just legit and if you follow that if you if you pull the thread on a pair of jeans you’re going to end up in a cotton field in in texas or in georgia like that’s where it’s coming from so know your roots it’s true speaking of roots also jackal has a store that’s his roots it’s called jocko store that’s where you can get the discipline equals freedom or good or get after it all you can get the shirts the hats hoodies some rash guards on there stuff a bunch of stuff anyway yeah check that one out it’s at jackostore com and yeah if you like something get something we also have a subscription situation there called the short locker if you want a cool kind of off shoot conceptual designs i don’t think you’ve really figured out how to describe your designs yet no it’s a work in progress i see but each time you got to progress you haven’t progressed your description yeah but just like um what do you call uh warfare yeah you know you don’t you’re not always progressing you see i’m saying but you want some sometimes you go forward sometimes you go backwards you know hopefully the whole grand uh what do you call freaking grand strategy yeah hopefully i end up forward hopefully i end up achieving the goal of explaining how cool the shirt locker is so you already did a better job right there you just needed a little help a little help okay good some criticism some direct feedback about your weak ass repetition i’m over here trying and you know and i think the people are responding you know people seem to like it i gotta admit when we were at the muster and i saw some people that had you know shirt locker shirts on totally representing extra level of connection yeah yep i agree i felt the exact same thing anyway yeah sherlock that’s at dropletstore com so yeah sign up for that if you’re down yeah you can subscribe to this podcast too we also have jockle unraveling podcast that i’m doing with daryl cooper who knows what’s gonna happen we’re getting crazy on that thing got all kinds of topics we’re digging into um we don’t always agree on stuff let’s come come to find out in dc sometimes it gets a little hectic in the podcast room uh check out that the jocko unraveling podcast check out the grounded podcast check out the warrior kid podcast you can also check out we have another alternative podcast called jocko underground you can go to jockowunderground com if you want to hear some amplifying information if you want to hear some other topics that are adjacent to yet not fully embedded with jocko pondcast topics but look even though i think about leadership 20 hours a day there’s other things i think about like psychology like sociology like questions do answering questions from people so there’s a lot of stuff going on that also gives us the opportunity to have an alternative platform besides the mainstream platforms which we do not control we we don’t mind you know being on those platforms but they could make moves that would we would mind that we would not appreciate and we know you wouldn’t appreciate so in order to prevent us from being in a situation that we have lost total control we have some contingency plans it’s called jocko underground jockowinderground com you can join we’ll get you this little extra podcast costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month that way we have it if we need it and if you can’t afford it it’s cool we still got your back you know email assistants at jockowunderground com we’ve got a youtube channel where i am the assistant director for many of the videos and hence some of the videos have very high quality some of them that i don’t work on a little bit subpar but cool echo’s working on it he’s working on improving yeah so there you go uh psychological warfare it’s an album jack album with chocolate tracks where you know if you want to skip the workout you want to cheat on the diet when you’re having those feelings you need some help boom jacqua’s there to help get you through those moments of weakness sort of play the tracks boom and around we go you can get those anywhere you get mp3s that’s where you can get them amazon google play all those places and don’t forget about flipsidecanvas com if you want to hang some cool stuff on your wall which you probably do things that remind you of the path go to flipsidecampus com dakota meyer imagine having something from dakota myers hanging in your house it was freaking just legit if you think about dakota meyer you just be like cool i’m gonna i’m gonna get after it that’s true right that’s what i think yeah fully you know what’s funny dakota dakota and i when we talk we will have conversations and that we will be laughing hysterically about stuff he’s not surprised he actually makes me laugh harder than anyone currently in my uh regime of contacts interesting yeah theo vaughn huh theo can crazy up too that’s true yeah that’s a good point but it’s a different kind yeah yeah yeah it’s true uh you know what theo will getting me to laugh get me laughing on a tactical level sure with with with playing with dakota man sometimes we’re laughing at us strategic deep level uh yeah so we got that flipsidecampus com dakota meyer we also got a bunch of books final spin it’s a book poem manuscript transcript new form new format of literature sure notice how i said that new format of literature my wife says literature because she’s british literature yeah so a new form of literature which i invented the text text you got to go oh yeah if you want to observe the text that’s the eyebrow yeah deal no no you don’t know about that guy yeah you taught me that did i teach you that that’s what they say did you they say that in uh when you went to get your masters or they say if you if you if you reference the text in this situation like they don’t call it a book because you’re just like a loser if you just have a book you have to refer to the text yeah the text yeah we don’t like that anyways if you want to check out the text you can check out final spin you can pre-order it right now also leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluation the protocols disciplinary freedom field manual way the warrior kid one two and three mike and the dragons about faced by hackworth extreme ownership of the dichotomy of leadership just all the things that we’re talking about when it comes to leadership and all these different books also speaking of leadership we have a leadership consultancy what do we do dave we solve problems through leadership but aren’t but what about problems that aren’t really leadership related all your problems are leadership problems isn’t that crazy it’s true if you want us to come and help you inside your organization go to echelonfront com we also have an online training program efonline com it’s extreme ownership academy we have we have courses on every chapter we have live q and a’s that we do we have leadership primers we have questions today we got we had a forum on there we got all kinds of stuff on there to help you with the most important skill that a human being can have which is leadership leadership can prevent things like freaking the battle of the song check muster 2021 orlando done next up phoenix august 17th and 18th las vegas october 28th and 29th these are our leadership conferences come and get it we also have the ftx where you where you get your gear on get set up with a high speed laser tag gun get taught some of the basic tactics military tactics and then you go with your team and you conduct operations you put these strategies and tactics and principles that we talk about all the time you put them to use and you see how they work out and you learn and you get debriefed so if you want to do that check out the ftx san diego july 12th and 13th go to ashlandfront com if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families you can check out mark lee’s mom mama lee she’s got a charity organization and if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you want more of my exhaustive explanations or you need more of echo’s disjointed delirium perhaps you need more of dave’s exhilarated expositions you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram and on facebook echoes with charles dave is that david r burke and i am at jocko willink and to all the military personnel out there thank you for taking these tactics that we are talking about and putting them to work around the world to keep us free and the same to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thank you for keeping us safe here at home and to everyone else out there well if you know the way broadly you see it in all things so i’ve got an idea try your best to open up your eyes look around and see the way in everything that you do and until next time this is dave and echo and out