Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
jaco willink a retired u.s navy seal
co-author of extreme ownership dichotomy
of leadership
discipline equals freedom and many other
excellent books
and he's the host of jaco podcast
jacob spent 20 years in the seal teams
he was the commander
of seal team 3's task unit bruiser
that became the most highly decorated
special operations unit
of the iraq war this conversation was
intense
and to the point we agreed to talk again
probably many times
and what i find very interesting aside
from the talk
of leadership is the conversation about
military tactics
of specific battles in history quick
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since it's the 4th of july a holiday in
the united states
let me say a few words about what this
country
my country the united states of america
means to me
first by way of background i was born
and raised in the soviet union
just long enough to get a bit of the
russian soul an appreciation of soviet
history
music culture of wrestling and
mathematics
of engineering and philosophy stoicism
and humor
tragedies and triumphs of war and
revolutions
all in ways that are uniquely russian i
do
happen to at times mention that i'm
russian
this is what i mean that i got a bit of
that
russian soul but of course who i really
am
is an american this country gave me the
opportunity
the freedom to become and to be who i am
to stand
as an individual this seemingly simple
freedom to be a sovereign human being in
the face of
all the beauty and cruelty of life is
why i love this country
much of life can be unfair unjust even
tragic
but this is the country where if i'm
clever enough
work hard enough and just get lucky
enough i have a chance to dream big
and make my dream a reality the united
states welcomed me
my family and millions of immigrants
throughout its history
so that we can make something meaningful
of ourselves to love to dream to create
to find joy and meaning it lets me be
the weird kid i am
who wears a suit talks about love and
has a
fascination with robots i know some
people these days
have an aversion to pride and love for
their country
i don't i love america i also love
humanity
i believe these two patriotism and
humanism are not in conflict much like
loving your family and loving your
country are not in conflict
they are all manifestations of the human
spirit longing to strive
for a better world i was born a russian
but i believe i'll die an american a
proud american
hopefully not too soon but uh life is
short i already had one hell of a fun
journey
so i'm ready to go when it's time this
is the lex friedman podcast and here
is my conversation with jocko willink
is it tragic or beautiful to you that
some of the closest bonds that are
formed
between people are through war often
i think it's both both tragic and
beautiful
and for the obvious reasons
what are the obvious reasons why is it
so obvious
well it's tragic because a lot of people
die
and it's beautiful because you form
bonds with people that
are very difficult to break once you've
been through them what is it about
the trauma of war that makes bonds
difficult to break
because what you realize when you're in
the war
is that the people that are next to you
you rely on them and they're relying on
you to survive
and without them you will not survive
and when you realize that you need to
work together as a team
to to live
that forms a very strong bond and
there's nothing like that team
outside of the realm of war
i don't know because i've there's a lot
of things that i haven't experienced in
my life
but i think the pressure and the
consequences
of war there could be similar situations
in survival scenarios in various
atrocities
where people need to work together
in order to survive and i think you
could probably get something that was
similar there's a very particular nature
to the kind of war that world war
ii was especially for the soviet union
where it didn't just
influence the lives of people it created
culture
the music the poetry the literature it's
it's in the
um it's in the way people think
it's in the way people see the world
it's in the way they talk even still to
this day
and um
of course i was talking about the
directly relationship between two
soldiers
but there's something about the depth of
human connection
that results from those almost like uh
reverberations of war like generations
later you're still
close to other humans you're you're
there's a coldness towards other humans
like
in russia but once you open
up its depth you seek depth
of connection versus like breadth of
career kind of thinking how can i make
friends with this so i can move into
this direction what can this person
benefit me you
instead you seek a depth of human
connection and appreciation that that
brings a lot
and maybe i'm romanticizing war here
but it feels like that's inextricably
connected to world war ii
for russians is this does that resonate
at all is it
so if you look at military training
what they do is they take people in the
military from the civilian world they
bring them into the military and they
put them through
boot camp which is the stereotypical
thing that you see on tv you're going to
get yelled at you're going to get
screamed out you're going to get
you're gonna get put in the mud and
you're gonna made to be made to do hard
things together
and what does that do with those
civilians well it gives them a common
background
it gives them a common suffering that
they've been through together
and they form some sort of connection
some sort of bond
now to make that bond a little bit
stronger
after you get done with boot camp they
send you to advanced infantry school
and you suffer some more together
and when you suffer more together now
you're in a smaller group too because
now it's
infantry it's not supply people anymore
or logisticians it's
strictly people that are going to
fight their infantrymen so they go
through a school together and now they
get a little bit tighter
get done with that and maybe you go to
an airborne division so you go to
airborne school and now you all
overcome this fear of jumping out of an
airplane together and you celebrate
surviving that
then maybe you get done with that and
now you go at an airborne division now
you're an even tighter group because
you've
suffered together what comes next is
special forces training or ranger
training and what they do is they put
you in these situations where
you're going to suffer together and
you're going to build these bonds
because as i said earlier you have to
rely on each other to survive
and by the way not everyone does not
everyone makes it through this training
so you sort of have these memories of
people that didn't make it you
share that connection as well and you
can keep going down this road until you
go into combat
with a military unit and military units
that go through combat
have an even tighter bond and the harder
the combat that they go through the
tighter the bond is going to be
so i think when you talk about what the
soviet union went through in world war
ii
there was a shared suffering
to survive and so the entire nation
has that common thread and that's
probably the thing that you
sense or feel when you refer back to
the bond that resonates all the way back
to
world war two so in your podcast in your
writing
you talk about some of the most
fascinating things i listen to you
talk about in terms of military conflict
is uh tactics and sort of the details
of of combat
but allow me to stick on world war two
for a second
there's a particular aspect to that war
i don't know if you can speak to it
where twice the number of civilians died
in military personnel
so the soviet union especially
um you know my uh
my grandfather was a machine gunner on
uh
the in um ukraine as the
germans were marching towards moscow
there's this main there's
this important push in 1941 where they
were trying to get before the winter to
uh to moscow
and what stalin was doing is he was
basically throwing bodies
at at uh to slow the attack
and what that meant is everybody
understood that you
your job was you have this heavy machine
guns
it's very it's almost unreasonable to be
able to be mobile any kind of way with
them
so you're you're throwing at the front
and you're just non-stop
shooting and you know 95 plus percent of
people are just dead
other soldiers are just dead and then
you just go back
back and you're trying to protect as
many civilians as you can throughout
this whole process but you don't
and so you have millions of civilians
that die along the way into this march
is there something you can say about
this complete perhaps it's naive for me
to say but
a war that lacks tactics
that lacks strategy
and is purely about just
no consideration of human life and just
throwing bodies
and bullets into a mix together where
millions die
and that in particular felt much less
like
conflict and much more like
torture or suffering
it didn't it didn't come off as torture
only that
interestingly enough as you probably
know my grandfather including everybody
else
volunteered they were proud to do this
they were proud to march to their death
for country for love of country
but the question on the civilian side
when
when more civilians die the military
personnel what do you make of that
it's awful and it's awful when
a soldier dies it's awful when a
civilian dies
it's awful when 10 civilians or 10
soldiers and it's
even more awful when millions and
millions of soldiers and civilians die
i think it's safe to say that the soviet
union was facing an existential threat
to their existence against the nazis
so to not fight
would be to die as well maybe die a
death a few years later
maybe die a different way but
the choice was die now trying
or die later on your knees
and i think the choice was pretty clear
as far as the
tactics go i mean there is
this is attrition warfare that's what
that is we are going to
keep you know you said throwing bodies
at the problem
that's attrition warfare and the soviet
union had
a lot of bodies more than the germans
and when you fight with attrition
warfare whoever has more men and
material will eventually win
it's an awful it's an awful way
but that's the that's that's what the
strategy was you often talk about
leadership
let's put the evils of hitler aside
the boldness of hitler in making some of
the strategic decisions he did
was considered by many military
historians quite brilliant
early in the war are insane
and brilliant stalin on the other hand i
think universally is seen as somebody
who is
terrible military strategist especially
early in the war
he did not see all the possible
trajectories that the war could take
is there something you could say about
failure of leadership
stalin also the united kingdom
before churchill and also fdr on the
united states side
who basically
was trying to turn a blind eye to
everything that was happening over
over there with a perspective of
we just want to make we want to keep
america's interests
uh as the primary interest and
everything else let other countries work
out their problems
you know i think one of the things with
hitler was in the beginning of the war
he listened to
his advisors he listened to his generals
and
therefore they did pretty well with that
i think as the war went on
he believed that he was smarter than he
was
and made decisions that were bad
that cost him dearly
you know i mean case in point as
everyone knows going and attacking the
soviet union
while you're still fighting a war on the
other front is not not a good move
there's an example of yeah bad
leadership letting your ego get in the
way
believing that you can do things that
you that are beyond your capabilities
but you know as you mentioned in the
beginning with blitzkrieg
those were really dynamic and bold moves
and they worked
and that what does that do that fuels
your ego and makes you think that
you can win many people consider that
war
a just war
what do you think makes it just war
i think you have the nazis and the
imperial japanese
trying to impose their will on other
nations and other peoples
and when that happens i think on a grand
scale
people look at that and
believe it's just to step in and do
something about it
is there some gray area here there's
there's nothing but gray area
the united states has been involved in a
lot of military conflicts since then
how do you draw the line to the grey
area
what what war should we engage in and
not
i know you don't get into politics much
but
what the decision to go to war you have
to look at the situation that you're
going into and you have to make sure
that you have
the will to go to war and
the will to go to war means that you are
willing to kill people
and when i say people i don't just mean
enemy because in war
civilians are going to die women and
children are going to die
every a lot of people are going to die
and so you and you are going to kill
them
it doesn't matter what kind of smart
munitions you have doesn't matter how
disciplined your soldiers are
when you go into a war civilians are
going to die and you have to understand
that
and the other thing that you have to
understand is that
your troops are also going to die
and it seems like sometimes we're a
little bit naive about the calculation
of what that's going to look like
and maybe we think well not that many
civilians and maybe not that many of our
our personnel are going to die and
that's where you get into
sticky situations and you know another
thing when you were talking about
the soviet union versus the nazis
that's total war that's what that is and
we don't engage in that very often it's
total war
it's we will do absolutely anything to
win
and america doesn't fight like that very
often
in fact the last time we fought like
that was world war ii
we it was total war we will do whatever
it takes
to up to and including the atomic bomb
to destroy the enemy so
those are the kind of things you need to
think about before you go to war
and i don't think we think about that
very often
you know even the united states the
atomic bomb
nuclear weapons is an interesting one
because there's a lot of
there's a lot of hesitation on that
there's a lot of critics of that
decision as it was happening
so even america you can imagine other
countries like germany would not be so
hesitant
to use nuclear weapons
it's interesting to think about
in deciding military strategy to inject
ethics into it
into morality it's not just about
winning the war but
should we do this and doing the
calculation of human life
usually those decisions are made by
leaders
not by the the soldier that's going to
be implementing
that the the that decision do you put
some responsibility
i should even say blame on the leaders
and not doing that kind of calculation
here you could say that
you could say about the vietnam war you
could say that about even the war that
you're involved with in iraq
is there some criticism here that you
could apply to leaders
for failing not to consider the broader
moral questions
yes
natural like all leaders will make these
mistakes
or should leaders not make these
mistakes
leaders are going to make mistakes it's
impossible to know what's going to
happen in war
just like it's impossible to know what's
going to happen in life you make that
you make decisions based on the
information that you have at the time
and you will make mistakes and if you
fail to
admit that you made a mistake that's
where i have a more significant problem
than someone that makes a mistake and
says hey this is the mistake that i made
this is the intelligence that i thought
we were utilizing
and it actually is not what i thought it
was going to be
and here's the new direction that we're
going in
we don't have enough of that
type of ownership in
in leadership globally
just saying i made a mistake
that resulted in the loss at scale of
human life
being able to say that and when you
don't say that
you end up with a more loss of human
life
can i ask you about the loss of human
life
how does killing a human being change
you
what does it mean to kill a human being
what does it feel like to kill a human
being
well i mean i guess you'd have to look
at what circumstances a person's in
when this is taking place if you've got
someone that's in a
fit of rage that goes and kills somebody
you know they're going to come out of it
and think wow i just really messed up
if you've got a someone that is a
sociopath right they're not going to
feel anything and
that person deserved to die and that's
why they died if you've got a
soldier who feels like they're trying to
protect their friends
they'll move through that if you've got
a soldier that's doing it because they
want some kind of
personal glory they'll probably not feel
good about it later
so i think it depends on the situation i
think it depends on the psychology of
the individual that's going through it
he said move through that
is there some calculation here that a
soldier
when they kill another soldier a
realization that is
just another human being i mean is there
some
heavy burden to that aspect
that it's ultimately just human on human
i think it depends a lot on the scenario
i know that when i was in iraq fighting
you we we talk a lot about the
dehumanization
of the enemy and it's something that the
governments will do i mean governments
and will do that to each other i mean
the
the japanese dehumanized the americans
and the americans dehumanized the
japanese
and the americans dehumanized the nazis
and the nazis dehumanized the americans
so that to remove as much of that human
on human
killing aspect that you're talking about
and what i what i've said is that
in when we were in iraq we didn't have
to dehumanize the enemy because the
the enemy dehumanized themselves through
their actions through their behaviors
when when
we know that they are torturing and
raping
and murdering the local populace
they've been dehumanized and so as far
as
looking at them and thinking oh this is
a you know a human another human that's
that's on the level of you know my
my uncle or my brother
i did i didn't think of them out that
way i thought of them as
as murdering raping
evil
sub-humans yeah iraq is different
and america's position is different
you're right that america has not been
involved in a war where it's quite like
two humans fighting like teenage boys
fighting against each other
and you've got to remember i mean we're
we're seeing
these iraqi kids that are living under
this
sadistic sadistic terror
the iraqi women that are being
raped and abused by these insurgents
and so on the one side we become
the the iraqi populace is very
humanized to us because we're talking to
them we've got interpreters
we understand we're seeing them day
after day the same individuals
and so we form a bond with the local
populace
and yet we see what the insurgents are
doing
and so it's again not difficult
to dehumanize people that behave in that
manner
yeah i suppose i'm i worry about the
dehumanization at a much larger scale
when it's not the kind of case that
you're talking about even now
hopefully i'm not fear-mongering but
there's a sense in which there's the
drums of war slowly starting to build
with china there
in the best case it would be a cold war
of there's a dehumanization aspect
that's happening with china currently
which is they're the other and they're
after stealing all of your data there's
a cyber security it starts with cyber
security and it
it worries me because it creates the
other out of
a very large population
that that may ultimately lead to
conflict
in the worst case hot conflict that
would no longer be
the situation you are in in iraq and
more
similar to the soviet union conflict
with the
with germany that its kids
and then they're dehumanized to where
you're at scale slaughtering them or at
least
hurting their quality of life in a way
that's uh maybe
you know suffering has many forms it
doesn't have to be through just a hot
war it could be um
through starvation through camps
all those kinds of things and i worry i
worry about that
we kind of tend to think that these wars
are behind us
and i'm not always so sure that's the
case
and at least in the way that uh it
ultimately starts with hate
and if again hopefully i'm not being too
dramatic
but i i see that there's a kind of
brewing
of uh it starts with dehumanization and
turns to hate
of the other you see that with china you
see it a little bit with russia
and uh you have an early podcast between
the the
where you break down the tactics of the
chechen war versus russia it's
fascinating
but that's the kind of conflicts i'm
referring to and um
i don't know um there's a i know you're
a bit of a musician uh
i love uh i love dad straight song
called brothers in arms i don't know if
you know that one
and there's a line in it i think they
they play it uh quite often in military
funerals which i just recently learned
but
it's this powerful song as a line um
we're fools
to make war on our brothers in arms
do you think there's some sense in which
at the leadership level but just as
human beings
were perhaps foolish and engaging
in military conflict
as much as we have
or is full a very inappropriate word
here
well i think the using the term brothers
in arms means
the people that are on my side right so
it doesn't make sense
to start wars with people that are on
your side
so that's that might just be the way the
lyrics are written so that it
fit the song or whatever um i think
broadly what you're asking me is
is war foolish yeah
and i would say the answer is yes and if
you can avoid it you absolutely should
but if there is a
bear or a wolf that is trying to get
into your house
is it foolish to shoot that bear or
shoot that wolf
i think the answer is pretty obvious so
when
you're you're threatened or your family
are threatened or your way of life is
threatened
then you have to do something to
try and defend your family your way of
life
it should be the last resort should be
the last resort
you had a conversation with jordan
peterson
where he asked you a question
in terms of war being last resort
whether you would like your kids to grow
up
in peace in a time of no war
you said yes but and so happens jordan
didn't let you finish
can you um can you elaborate what
follows the butt
well you you and i have been talking
about the fact that struggle
brings people together and and brings
out the best and
and the worst brings out the worst in
people war brings out the worst people
it also brings out the best in people
so would you want your kid
to go and enter in a wrestling
tournament
where you paid all the
other kids off and your kid won
or you enter them in a jiu jitsu
tournament where
they're a purple belt and you know that
everyone that they're going to fight
against is a white belt
and so they get the they get the big w
they get the win
but they don't really get tested and
they don't really struggle and if you
don't struggle you don't grow
so that's the but right
the the absolute best
times of my life
were in combat and the worst times of my
life
were in combat and so even though i
wouldn't want any of my children to
suffer through the worst of times
at the same time the bud is i would want
them to
have the opportunity to feel that bond
that you're referring to
earlier and to see human beings
that are willing to sacrifice their
lives for their friends
you mentioned the worst what are some of
the worst aspects
of when you were in iraq what are the
things that um
the hardest on you
have my guys killed
is there uh absurd cruelty to it
was it due to mistakes or natural
consequences of fighting
is there any difference is that at the
end is just losing those or
brothers in arms there's a million
different ways to get killed in the war
and you can go out in an operation and
you can do everything
wrong and you can survive and you can go
out in an operation and do everything
perfect and you can get killed
is there some aspect which makes it
worse when there's mistakes made
well yeah if there's mistakes made then
you're gonna sit there and
beat yourself up eternally for mistakes
that were made
but to you the things that hurt is just
losing
losing people close to you yes
are you yourself afraid of death no
do you think about it does it make sense
to you that this thing
ends like do you uh the stoics
contemplate a death it gives flavor to
life it makes you appreciate
there's something about finiteness of
life that makes it
that makes it this uh
jocko discipline go drink sour apple
that i'm enjoying
it's delicious makes it taste better
because i'm going to die one day
and i think about that a lot do you
think about it
other than i know that it's gonna end
i mean but i don't think about it on a
daily basis i think about just the fact
i think about i know that i'm lucky to
be here
i know that many people sacrificed to
give me this opportunity
to be here so
but i don't dwell on it
what about when you were in combat
nothing
there's there's tactics there's strategy
there's the mission
and then your immortality
is not part of the calculation i think
you get to a point where you
accept the fact that you can die
like i i you know like i said you can do
everything right you roll out the gate
you hit an ied
a triple stack subsurface ied and you're
dead you're done
and there's nothing that's going to stop
that it's going to happen and
i think if you're scared of that or
you're thinking about that
it's going to inhibit your ability to do
your job properly
and i think it's also going to drive you
crazy the thing that i thought about
more was that happening to
my guys and that's the gut-wrenching
terror that you feel
when when operations happen
can i ask you about love of country is
it's uh
it continues to
just how much i've studied stalin
recently in the past
few years it continues to surprise me
not surprise me it's just tragic in some
kind of way i'm
not sure exactly if i could put wars to
it but how many people and still do but
at the time
were willing loved stalin and were
willing to die
for country for the love of country and
i
too maybe because i was born there
and now i am a red-blooded american
uh i love nationalism is a bad word but
i love the love of country
it gives it somehow gives a meaning
like a brotherhood like we're in this
together
i love that's why i love the olympics
that's just the the unity of it
it uh takes a step out of the selfish
pursuits of
any one particular ant and looks at us
as a big ant colony
and it's inspiring it's uh it's exciting
but at the same time it seems to get us
to do
horrible things if um
if uh manipulated by charismatic leaders
what do you make of this love of country
is it a is it a bad thing is it a thing
that gets in the way
or is it a good thing well i think like
anything else
if it's balanced correctly it's great
and if it goes
to some extreme level then it becomes a
negative and i think it
i think it's probably sourced in some
sort of
animalistic tribalism that we all have
to be part of a tribe
and this is a real big tribe that you
get to be a part of
and all you have to do is kind of show
up and so when someone says hey
we're going to play hockey against the
russians
well we're gonna cheer for the american
boys
so my my area of work is artificial
intelligence
it'd be interesting to ask your thoughts
about something which is
um autonomous weapon systems us
has now officially
released the report saying that they're
open to
uh not open they're engaging in in um
adding more and more autonomy in
artificial intelligence into its weapon
systems because china is doing it
so there's these are the first steps and
then something that
ai folks worry about which is uh
a race an ai race
in the space of autonomous weapons that
can run away
uh too quickly is that something um
i don't know if in general if you have
thoughts about
weapon systems that make autonomous
decisions
at the small scale of just targeting
where to shoot
and the largest scale of military
strategy
of just get being given a mission of
destroy this particular target this
particular
say terrorist human being
and then figure out what is the right
bombing campaign on your own
to accomplish this task that minimizes
civilian death
and and then just loading that in and
letting the ai system automatically
decide
that what are your general thoughts
about it
do you do you worry about it because as
the positive effects
that in the best version of that world
you kill fewer civilians
you kill hurt fewer of your own
human beings but at the negative side of
that
you might lose the the thing we kind of
talked about which is the basic humanity
even
in the individual soldier of what is
right and what is wrong
and not making huge mistakes that hurt
thousands or millions of people
i guess what you're asking me is if they
could make a machine that could
do more surgical attacks on
enemy individuals would i be for it
yes i would be for it the problem is
if you've ever used machines of any kind
their initial design may not be there
there's unintended consequences there's
uh
there's ways in the the machine actually
behaves
that you realize there's bugs in this
thing
so do we not put protocols in place to
prevent
something from going too far outside the
boundaries of what we wanted to execute
you do but the question is uh
this is the first time in human history
you can create things
machines toaster microwave oven
that's smarter than you in this
particular task
i mean it's not yet there what you're
learning a lot with military strategies
humans are actually really damn smart
it's very hard to do to improve on a
human
and so most actual drones that are
unmanned are still piloted by humans
it's very difficult to do every aspect
of war
but it's not out of the realm of
possibility that
machines will start doing those things
better in certain certain
things a certain more precise
targeting of the enemy
the question is so what happens
when you start to rely on the machine to
do some of the task
is you get lazy
you forget what it is like to do that
task
or more importantly you lose the
knowledge of the intricacies of that
task
and you forget the ways you can go wrong
so the protocols
may not be sufficient to constrain the
power
of the ways that things go wrong
especially when things are moving really
quickly
especially when the ethics of the two
sides aren't perfectly aligned
when people are some certain sides like
on the chinese side may be more willing
to take risks
for dangerous consequences than others
so what
happened on the bioweapon side is
internationally
maybe you can speak to this more but my
sense what i was told
there's a sense globally that buy
weapons are not going to be used
they're unethical there's a sense like
we're not going to engage in this
and with ai currently china
and u.s said green light
i'll go ahead it's it's totally ethical
if if it can decrease the
loss of human life um
why not my worry is
that it's much more it's
it's much easier to design weapons
that are effective
than design weapons who have the the
depth of ethics
and morals that humans do which i think
we don't as human beings don't
acknowledge enough
that even like the cold calculated
killing of others
like precise effective execution of a
mission
still has ethics in it at every level
you know what's right and what's wrong
and i don't know if that
i don't know if you take that away
you're not going to make huge mistakes
that you regret
is that something you don't
i don't really worry about it um but
as you design something like i said you
you put protocols in place and
and from what i am hearing you say or
trying to hear you say
there's be a point where our protocols
wouldn't be
wouldn't be sufficient to stop the
machine
from doing something that was unethical
i'm kind of worried that this is
something you don't worry about
because a lot of people i respect don't
worry about it and i don't know what to
do about that
a lot of generals don't worry about it a
lot of people who know
much more about war like you than me
don't worry about it and that worries me
well that's because you have a vision
into
the shortfalls of a.i and i don't
i don't have a vision of the shortfalls
of ai i don't know enough about it
as far as i'm concerned you put a on off
switch somewhere you put a
a kill switch on a system
and if it starts going awry you hit the
kill switch and that's it
so if you know when you look at me and
say well there's
no possible way to put a kill switch
that would be 100 effective and here's
you draw those concerns to me and we
could talk through it and say okay
well here's where we should draw the
line yeah
i mean it's like again for the soviet
union chernobyl meltdown
there's always the ability i believe to
have a kill switch
the problem is uh the more power you
give to the machine
the more opportunity you give to the
to the human supervising that machine to
make a mistake and not
shut off the switch at the right time so
yes the solution i mean you're putting
the responsibility still in the human
hands and i think that's the correct
place to put it
there should be good protocols good
leadership good execution competency all
around
your protocol should consider the basic
failures of human nature the human
factor
of how things go wrong so there should
be multiple people supervising the
system all those things
but i am just very skeptical
of greater and greater power in the
machine that can create war
that can not lead to death yeah and
that's why like i said and like you just
said you have protocols in place that
that are a kill switch and if if you
think about the amount of
nuclear weapons that we've had on planet
earth for the past however many years
and there's been you know no
rogue element that said you know what
i'm gonna shoot this thing there's been
no
protocol that took place where all of a
sudden we said
oh no i mean there's been there's been
escalations
but the protocols worked have worked so
far
now that's a scary thing to think about
that we rely on these protocols to stop
some rogue element out there from
launching a
missile that could kill millions of
people and trigger
a global war so yeah the protocol should
be strict
okay ask uh jacqueline a ridiculous
question
if human civilization goes extinct what
would be the reason
you mention nuclear war do you worry
about this
the reason i bring that up a lot of
people in the ai community
worry about artificial general
intelligence so super intelligent
ai systems creating a lot of damage
autonomous weapon systems is one
possibility
a lot of folks recently especially with
this pandemic
if you want to be terrified listen uh
somebody i talked to recently sam harris
did a four-hour
podcast on how bioengineering of viruses
is likely to destroy human civilization
i recommend
that highly if you if you were too
optimistic about the future of the human
species
so apparently the in the space of
bioengineering becomes is becoming
easier and easier and easier to
engineer viruses engineer pathogens
[Applause]
[Laughter]
this is the world's most depressing
question what uh is
do you is there something in particular
you worry about
like that we should be thinking as a
human species about
uh yeah i'm sorry to disappoint you
again with my lack of worry for
all these problems but i don't worry too
much about it um
you know what we we've made it through a
bunch of wickets so far as a species and
we'll make it through some more or we
won't and if we don't make it through
some of these wickets and
someone decides that what they're gonna
do over the weekend is create some crazy
virus that spreads and
kills everybody yeah
you know what uh i'm usually extremely
optimistic about the stuff i
am now i'm with you except
we won't well there's always a chance we
won't
but i have a sense that human first of
all
i believe that most people have much
more capacity for good than evil all of
us are capable of evil i believe but
most people are much more capable of
doing good and want to do good
and uh i also believe in the resiliency
of the human species
that we're an innovative bunch and we
can respond to tragedy
especially we respond more to tragedy as
the scale of tragedy grows
and our response is much better so
that's why i'm not worried about it
bro
uh what makes a great man
let's start at the individual what makes
a great man what makes a great woman
what makes a great human being
somebody that puts others above
themselves
what makes a great leader of humans
same thing but that sentence does a lot
of work
there's uh when you're a leader there's
a lot of egos
there's a lot of tension there's the
humans the human factor
there's people who are timid there's
people who are
assholes there's people who are
incredibly competent but
uh self-obsessed i don't know there's
complexities of human nature how do you
get all those people
to do uh to be the best version of
themselves and to lift
up everyone else around them okay so now
that
that question is a little bit different
now so now it's getting into a
more specific question but at the same
time a more broad question of
what elements does it take to make a
good leader yes
so you're right that different people
have different personalities
different tendencies different levels of
ego
and the the way that i try and explain
this is
um like a video game and i'm not even a
video game player but i've seen this
before where video game
characters have various skills
various strengths and weaknesses so
maybe they're strong but they're dumb or
maybe they're strong
and smart but they're slow they just
give them these these ratings
and so that's what human beings are and
that's the way leaders are
and you can have different leaders with
different characteristics
and depending on how all those
characteristics
match up you can have somebody that
is very introverted but they're but but
they're
still a very good leader because when
they do communicate
they do it in a clear simple manner that
everyone understands so even though
they're a little bit introverted people
still
respect them and listen to them because
they communicate in a clear way
you could have somebody that's extremely
charismatic
extremely charismatic and everyone looks
to them but
they're slow in making decisions and so
now we've got someone that
can't really make decisions when
decisions need to get made so
even though they're charismatic they're
still not a good leader
so depending on the human being that
we're talking about and you just
mentioned earlier that human beings are
you know more complex than anything and
do a better job at
just about everything than a robot so
that's the same thing with leadership
you've got all these different
characteristics and you
you match them or mix them together and
depending on
where the ratings come out depending on
how that thing
does in the end can we almost like as a
case study look at a few people in the
tech area that i'm familiar with that i
know well
we can the only caveat being that i may
have no familiarization with them
whatsoever you may have to brief me on
them yeah
so i'll do my best to brief i'll do my
best to reduce
human beings into simple descriptions
and then you can give me insights of why
the hell they're such effective leaders
uh based on my description not based on
your actual deep knowledge of the
human beings uh so uh that caveat of my
inability to speak both the english
language and describe humans
well let's talk about first elon musk
so he's known as being quite
harsh in the sense of first of all
a very high bar of excellence
and also willing to what he calls kind
of first principles thinking
of asking the the questions that hurt
which is why the hell are we doing it
this way
why can't it be done a lot but not just
better but a lot better
so so let's i don't want to hear his
whole character i'll go want it
one section at a time so we got a guy
that's harsh yeah
and and asking the really hard questions
how can that be
good or why is that good well first of
all it can be horrible
and there's leaders out there that are
harsh and they're hated and no one likes
them and no one wants to work for them
and they never do anything
so what is it that elon musk does that
makes gives him the ability to be harsh
so i was
i was hearing a description of
me yeah when i would give feedback
to young seals that had made mistakes
during training operations and
the description was that same thing like
this
harsh blunt force trauma
and just totally direct
sledgehammer of truth that i would hit
guys with
but it's interesting because i always
talk about you know building
relationships and making sure
you're not offending someone yeah so how
do these things
match up well i can tell you how they
match up when i was
being harsh the guys that i was being
harsh with
knew without one shred of doubt
that i cared about them more than
anything else and that the reason i was
giving them this feedback is because i
wanted them to be able to lead their
troops i wanted them to be able to go
accomplish their mission
and i wanted them to be able to bring
their guys home from war
so i wasn't being harsh because it
elevated my ego i wasn't being harsh
because i wanted to
denigrate them i was being actually
being harsh because i wanted them to
accomplish the mission
so if that's where elon comes from
hey listen we got to make this happen
this is for this is for the good of the
world to do this
and people know that then it works
i'll bring this point back up with
another guy steve jobs but let me stay
on elon for a second
the uh the other thing he does
which is interesting i'm i see the value
of this
it'd be great to hear you uh speak about
it it's unlike many of the other ceos
very rich billionaires uh
you know involved in leading a lot of
people he
puts a lot of time into making sure he's
on the factory floor
he famously sleeps on the sort of like
in the middle of things
and he puts a lot of effort he's also
very good at it
is being a low-level engineer so like
whatever the task is
he wants to understand the details and
he'll talk to
the lowest level person in terms of like
you know somebody who's
like uh working literally on putting
parts together
he wants to understand what the problem
is what the challenge is if there's an
emergency
he wants to understand the actual
details of the problem not like
delegating you to a manager but like
because a lot of ceos a lot of managers
will will talk about sort of the the
power and the importance of delegation
here he wants to know if there's a big
problem he wants to know the exact
detail
he wants to know the exact problem he
wants to
at the fundamental level understand how
to solve that problem
whether it has to do with materials
whether it has to do with the actual
manufacturing the uh
mechanical engineering aspect like we're
talking about like engineering
this is a guy who wears a suit there's a
ceo
tweets about deutsche coin but like an
actual job
he's low level engineering and that to
me
was always inspiring to see somebody who
knows
what the fuck they're doing that's what
it like he gains the respect
of engineers at the lowest level
i don't know if that's scalable but
that's always been inspiring to me and i
wonder
how many people it's inspiring to maybe
you can speak to the value of doing that
of
of no matter how high your level of
leader is to be able to do the low level
shit
yeah and that's that's a common trait
that good leaders have
and maybe he doesn't necessarily know
how to do everything a good leader
but they go down there and talk to the
front line troops and say
hey what is the issue that you're
dealing with or
you know how can i support you how can i
give you help and what one key point
that you said is he said when there's a
problem
he gets in there so there's things
happening at his companies that
they're working and so he doesn't have
to die i'm not saying he never does but
he doesn't have to spend as much time
working on
or or looking at some sub-system that's
functioning well
he's got a good leader in there that's
handling it and he checks in with that
leader and the leader says yeah it's
working perfectly he says great
that when there's a problem that's when
he might have to get down there and dig
into some details so that he fully
understands it so that
he when he digs down in the details and
this is important
he's coming from an altitude where he
has a
better bigger perspective not
necessarily better but a bigger
perspective
so if you sit there and work on a
problem whatever
for eight hours and you're staring at
you know if you were planning a mission
and you were
you were planning it for eight hours
you're staring at the
the maps and the charts and you're
figuring out where all the troops are
going to be located
and i come in after eight hours and i
look at your plan
from a from a distant perspective
there's a good chance i'll be able to
see
holes in your plan that you couldn't see
because your perspective was too close
so so that's good for me to be able to
come in from a higher perspective and
have a look at it
but also there's times where
i need to get down there and actually
look you know if you're looking at a
problem you say look i can't figure out
boss i can't figure out how to get to
this target
and i'm looking at it from a distance
and i don't see i might need to start
digging in
and looking and saying oh here's a route
that we can take that actually makes
sense
let's try that so i think it's a good
example of someone
going up and down in altitude to look at
problems understanding what's happening
with the front-line troops and at the
same time being able to go
back to the strategic level and i can
it's probably this way the reason that
he's successful is because he doesn't
get stuck
down there yeah because if he felt the
need to micromanage each and every part
on a tesla
it wouldn't be it would be very unlikely
that he would have the capacity to do
all that
now he can hand over some broad
chip design and say hey this is what the
function needs to be and he gives it to
lex and lex goes there with your team
and you figured out and you make it
happen
if he had to actually do that all
himself most likely not possible
so that's what leaders should be doing
they should go elevate and
and and then get down in the weeds when
they have to and then go back up
the sad thing this is the part that
makes me not want to do a startup
is basically his whole life is dealing
with emergencies
just like you said he's not dealing
this is not shooting the shit about
details of engineering
it's dealing with like in this in the
case of the company
life and death like something that can
just
completely damage the production line
right so he's constantly dealing with
emergencies putting out fires
and um i don't know if there's something
to be said about the psychology of that
of how uh like he he's spoken himself
that he's worried
whether his mind can hold up much longer
so hopefully in the near future he will
start to
form more decentralized command where he
has some subordinate leadership
that he fully trusts and most important
that he has properly trained
so that they can handle these day-to-day
fires at least
80 percent of them so only 20 of the
time
does he actually need to go and solve a
problem
if he's not doing that right now then
that's going to end up being a problem
anytime so i work with companies all the
time and that's what's interesting about
this is
i go and work with a ceo or with a with
the c-suite of a company
it takes a little while to figure out
what's going on i'm kind of going off of
the things that you're telling me
yeah almost anecdotally right yes but
let's say that what you get
and also i don't know how familiar you
actually are with the
inner workings of his companies but
if we were to assume that what you're
saying is accurate then my advice would
be hey listen
you need to start putting a little bit
more time and effort into training up
some subordinate leadership that has the
trust knowledge and expertise that you
will be able to turn over
some of these some of these details too
for two reasons number one so you can
let your brain um you know you can you
can survive a little longer as he put it
but also
all the time that you spend as a leader
looking down and into your organization
is time that you're not looking up and
out
so when you're not looking up and out
you're not seeing what the competitor's
doing you're not seeing where the
market's going there's problems that
that that can come from that so if right
now he's spending too much time looking
down and in
and you mentioned you know you said i
don't know if i want to do a startup
when you do a startup you're going to be
looking down and in for a while
yeah it's going to take a while you're
going to have to do all this work
yourself you're not going to have the
finances to put
people manpower behind these things so
that's probably he maybe he's in that
mindset a little bit because he's done
so many startups over the years and so
he's in the
he's habitually in the weeds
so my advice would be all right let's
start looking at formulating some
subordinate leadership that has the like
i said the expertise the trust that you
can
you can start to turn over some of these
more
minute details to them so you can start
looking up and out
yeah i think he's done that more
successfully in some places than others
the spacex a lot of people give
the credit to gwen shawwal for the ceo
um the ceo of spacex as
as a very successful person that runs
shit but
in tesla not as much so i wonder if you
can comment on
something a lot of people worry about
and this applies to a lot of tech
companies
which is a lot of people worry about
that if elon disappears
the the innovative spirit the company as
as we know them today