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Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Joining me now is somebody who quite a bit of
Speaker 1: experience in the in the world of startups and business
Speaker 1: and sports, also dabbled.
Speaker 2: In politics a little bit, and it is I.
Speaker 1: Thought it would be an interesting conversation with somebody more
Speaker 1: in the entrepren newer space, given I'm also in my
Speaker 1: own entrepreneur space.
Speaker 2: So it's Matt Haggins.
Speaker 1: I hope I've he sort of dabbled in politics at
Speaker 1: a time, working for Rudy Giuliani back when he was
Speaker 1: mayor of New York City, but has mostly been on
Speaker 1: the business side over the last twenty years. But understands
Speaker 1: both sides of the street, and I kind of want
Speaker 1: to get a better understanding with the business community how
Speaker 1: they really view politics necessary, evil or partner in different aspects. Matt,
Speaker 1: how'd I do in describing your background?
Speaker 3: Pretty good? I mean that hit the most important points.
Speaker 2: Are you you consider yourself a serial entrepreneur? How do
Speaker 2: you describe your path and business?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say I'm a super a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: I'm a builder, and my building impulses come from childhood.
Speaker 3: I grew up abject poverty in Queens, New York. And
Speaker 3: what does that mean. It took care of a disabled parent.
Speaker 3: I would sell flowers on street corners and scrape gum
Speaker 3: tables and McDonald's. Literally, I really grew up with nothing,
Speaker 3: and then I had to create my own path to
Speaker 3: get out of poverty. I dropped out of high school
Speaker 3: when I was sixteen, tok gd to go to college
Speaker 3: so I could get a job. So that that faith
Speaker 3: that I could architect my own life then began to
Speaker 3: translate into into just building businesses. And we can go
Speaker 3: deeper into any of that, but.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting. I'm going to start there
Speaker 1: a little bit because I for somewhat different reasons. I also,
Speaker 1: I always say, ended up growing up early. In some ways,
Speaker 1: my childhood ended when my dad died at sixteen. And
Speaker 1: you just does right your childhood you didn't sounds like
Speaker 1: you didn't really you didn't have the traditional childhood and
Speaker 1: there and I'm curious, as you've gotten more resources where there,
Speaker 1: how you've scratched that itch. And I'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. But that is sort of what makes
Speaker 1: this country. I always say, what makes this country different
Speaker 1: is that there are different paths up the ladder. Yes
Speaker 1: there are. It does feel like there are hers that
Speaker 1: sometimes are bigger than they should be for the average American,
Speaker 1: But it's not impossible to climb over them, right it is.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious how you view Do you view your
Speaker 1: success as hey, anybody can do this, or do you
Speaker 1: think you had unique help at certain forks in the road.
Speaker 3: Such a great question. The answer is both. I do think.
Speaker 3: I always believe that education and work was my way
Speaker 3: out of poverty, and those two never failed me, so
Speaker 3: that's definitely true. I remember as a kid realizing it
Speaker 3: was a lot better to be the person who bought
Speaker 3: the flowers and put margin on them, r, I'm the
Speaker 3: kid who knocked on your window. That was like my
Speaker 3: first lesson on capital deployment. I grew up in a
Speaker 3: really poor neighborhood and Queen's but I was also very
Speaker 3: cognizant of the fact that there was a difference between
Speaker 3: being a white kid and a black kid growing up
Speaker 3: in that area. And to this day, I still feel
Speaker 3: and people say, what do you mean, what advantages did
Speaker 3: you have? You grew up with nothing. Your mother literally
Speaker 3: died when you were twenty six, so I was living
Speaker 3: in a roach motel, and I was like, there still
Speaker 3: was an advantage of being a kid who grew up
Speaker 3: in that context, and so I had.
Speaker 2: To be totally cynical about this.
Speaker 1: You could get a cab a lot easier than a
Speaker 1: black man your age.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what it was. And I see. The
Speaker 3: good part is I can transcend both sides because I
Speaker 3: have a gd that came from nothing. So you can't
Speaker 3: tell me I'm not credible to speak on this topic
Speaker 3: of you know, is there any kind of eyes in
Speaker 3: the world if you back when I was growing up,
Speaker 3: if you had a kid back then, at least in
Speaker 3: the eighties, a black kid who had a ged maybe
Speaker 3: there would be a degree. It's confirmatory, right, Lots of
Speaker 3: kids and I never had you meet, you know, smiley,
Speaker 3: little white kid, you know who's out there hustling and
Speaker 3: he has a GD and you say, oh, what happened?
Speaker 3: So I talk about that in my book like that
Speaker 3: is that is a difference. Does that mean you can't overcome?
Speaker 3: But of course not. I also have my own things
Speaker 3: to overcome. I had a mother who's completely not equipped
Speaker 3: to take care of kids, sadly, and she died rotting
Speaker 3: in a chair. We had no health insurance, right, so
Speaker 3: I had to overcome the absence of health insurance and
Speaker 3: the trauma of raising a parent. So and then other
Speaker 3: kids had to overcome the color of their skin. And
Speaker 3: so I don't think any it doesn't you know, that's
Speaker 3: we're in a funny time. It doesn't invalidate anybody's journey
Speaker 3: to say that you had some type of built in advantage, you.
Speaker 2: Know, so well, it goes actually the other way. It's funny.
Speaker 1: It's like it doesn't matter whether it's somebody who's a
Speaker 1: scholarship football player on college team or somebody. We are
Speaker 1: almost we have convinced ourselves we all have to tap
Speaker 1: into a her radio Alger story or we don't have
Speaker 1: a story to share. And I don't know whether I
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think I worry that it almost encourages victimhood.
Speaker 3: That's so funny you said that. I say. I get
Speaker 3: asked this question recently. Somebody said a teacher at Harvard
Speaker 3: Business School, and they were saying, oh, when you get resumes, now,
Speaker 3: are you like, you know, you throw away those kids
Speaker 3: from those elite schools because you only look at the
Speaker 3: kids from who are dog Downtrod? And I said, no,
Speaker 3: that's not true at all. Actually, I have a greater
Speaker 3: appreciation for what it would actually take to go to Harvard.
Speaker 3: Number one. Number two, I have a built in excuse
Speaker 3: why I didn't go to Harvard. I was working and
Speaker 3: taking care of my mom for seven years going to
Speaker 3: Queen's College. But could I really gotten into Harvard even
Speaker 3: if I didn't have the circumstances. So I agree everyone
Speaker 3: now has to have this, you know, come up and
Speaker 3: story of transcendence, and I think, honestly a lot of
Speaker 3: people make it up or amplify it, but it does
Speaker 3: create this culture of victimhood, and I completely reject it.
Speaker 3: The reality is if I didn't grow up in that circumstance.
Speaker 3: There is zero chance that I would end up going
Speaker 3: from sixteen, you know, and Julian's secretary of twenty six.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, it's funny I say that. It's
Speaker 2: like it's it is. It is true. It's sort of like.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you see this with super successfully ambitious people where
Speaker 1: in some ways they needed chase something, you know, in politics.
Speaker 1: I always say, it's fascinating to me how many presidents
Speaker 1: we've had that have had daddy issues. And I say
Speaker 1: this with no disrespect to anybody. I have my own.
Speaker 2: I my dad died.
Speaker 1: At sixteen when I'm constantly trying to to help live
Speaker 1: the life that he should have had, and he never
Speaker 1: got to live. And he had a variety and there's
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons for that. And I've watched all
Speaker 1: these presidents, but there's something about if you don't have
Speaker 1: that drive, maybe you don't run for president.
Speaker 2: George W. Bush or Donald Trump or Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: But if you look at our particularly the last five presidents,
Speaker 1: they've all had some form either they were looking, you know,
Speaker 1: searching for the father figure they never had. See Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: see Barack Obama, or they were trying to prove something
Speaker 1: to a father figure, right see Donald Trump, see George W.
Speaker 2: Bush.
Speaker 1: Arguably even you see it a little bit in Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's story. But it is funny how This is why
Speaker 1: I always say, you know, and I'm gonna guess it
Speaker 1: is hard to imagine an alternative path because.
Speaker 2: You know no other path than the one than the
Speaker 2: one you travel, right.
Speaker 3: I love the patterns that govern us. I always govern us.
Speaker 3: I get made fun of a lot because I use
Speaker 3: psychologists a lot in business all the time. Because one
Speaker 3: time I went through one twenty five years ago and
Speaker 3: revealed everything I thought I was hiding was perfectly on
Speaker 3: display to anybody who worked for me or around me.
Speaker 3: So I was like, apparently I'm bleeding out in front
Speaker 3: of everyone. But my decisions to this day, you're talking
Speaker 3: about daddy issues, minor mommy issues that nobody helped, you know,
Speaker 3: nobody cared to intervene. And I got to witness what
Speaker 3: powerlessness looks like up front, and that there's no happy endings.
Speaker 3: She died without ever taking a plane, and so I
Speaker 3: have these you know, un boundless empathy that shows up
Speaker 3: for a single love. But he I agree We're all
Speaker 3: just little creatures.
Speaker 1: Primitively, what is your Let me ask you this, what
Speaker 1: is it? How has it informed your views of the
Speaker 1: role of government? And where where do you think government
Speaker 1: should be involved in your life? Looking back now, where
Speaker 1: should government have been more involved or less? In law?
Speaker 3: Such a great question. I mean, I take a cynical
Speaker 3: view of both sides because I've been on both sides.
Speaker 3: I've been up close. My earliest days. We're working for
Speaker 3: a Democratic Congressman, Gary Ackerman back in Queen's I got
Speaker 3: to see what that looked like, and I worked for
Speaker 3: Rudy Giuliani for a while. Then I helped mid Romney's
Speaker 3: campaign and John Mcca. I've been everywhere, and the reality is,
Speaker 3: you know when when let's just take on the left,
Speaker 3: you know this sort of cynical over promising and then this,
Speaker 3: you know, populous blame somebody for what you're not given.
Speaker 3: I as a kid, I was subjected to those feelings too,
Speaker 3: like who's wronging me? Why is no one taking care
Speaker 3: of me? And that didn't do me any to be honest.
Speaker 3: What did me good was cultivating my belief that I
Speaker 3: have agency, that I can transcend my circumstances, and so
Speaker 3: the answer is where does government belong level the playing field?
Speaker 3: Passionate conservatism is something that has really resonated with me
Speaker 3: as I've gotten older, but didn't What.
Speaker 1: Do you think that means now? I mean, because I
Speaker 1: don't know what it means. I had an idea of
Speaker 1: what George W. Bush meant by it. But what do
Speaker 1: you think compassionate conservatism means?
Speaker 3: I think it begins with empathy of somebody's circumstances and
Speaker 3: trying to figure out a solution that you wish would
Speaker 3: be advocated for if you were in the same position.
Speaker 3: And so what does that really mean? We should figure
Speaker 3: out a way that everybody can have health care, because
Speaker 3: you would want that if you were not in that position.
Speaker 3: There's nothing wrong though, with requiring people to work and
Speaker 3: work as the path to self respect and self esteem.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I don't know what it means,
Speaker 3: but weirdly resonates with me. Is probably closer to the truth, right.
Speaker 3: I just remember as a kid when I would be
Speaker 3: sold those empty promises too and trying to point you know,
Speaker 3: who's to blame for my circumscs. They didn't do anything
Speaker 3: for me. What did something for me was work, And
Speaker 3: so I think government's role is leveling the playing field
Speaker 3: and approaching everything with a degree of empathy.
Speaker 2: You've been sounds like the last chopped I know.
Speaker 3: That's not like I didn't give you no.
Speaker 1: I mean I get it. I mean I think it's
Speaker 1: a fair no. And I think ultimately you know your description.
Speaker 1: I find that to be a fair description. I have
Speaker 1: no you know, I don't feel the need to make
Speaker 1: you follow up, which is, you know, sounds like you
Speaker 1: believe in equal access, not equal outcomes, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that sometimes there is a different I think some
Speaker 1: people want equal outcomes, and that is that gets you
Speaker 1: in one type of redistribution of wealth versus equal access,
Speaker 1: equal opportunity, which I think is ultimately probably at the
Speaker 1: core of even what the founders thought they were creating
Speaker 1: here in the United States, right, like this is about
Speaker 1: creating so that you don't have to be related to
Speaker 1: the king or you don't have right you know at
Speaker 1: that time, right, you have an equal opportunity versus equal outcome.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's always been arguably one of
Speaker 1: the simplest ways to differentiate left and right at times.
Speaker 3: And one thing remains true whatever we are in our
Speaker 3: current political climate and what people think, like what's great
Speaker 3: about this country that die is never cast. I love
Speaker 3: the fact that I always say I'm here. I'm here
Speaker 3: in the circumstances I'm in through an accident of birth
Speaker 3: that I didn't make a choice. But I'm really glad
Speaker 3: that nothing about my future is going to be pretty
Speaker 3: determined based upon where I was born.
Speaker 1: I knew one at every single person born in America
Speaker 1: or frankly born in the world. In theory, right, this
Speaker 1: is what the Founders said, right, the life, liberty and
Speaker 1: the pursuit of happiness. In theory, they were saying that
Speaker 1: that all of us, that that's we have the those
Speaker 1: are the inalienable rights that we are born with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think we're struggling with where that pendulum
Speaker 3: is right. Where where does leveling the playing field in
Speaker 3: terms of trying to reckon with the past fit in
Speaker 3: with that excluding other people had nothing to do with
Speaker 3: it rights. It's a really I mean, I'm hoping that
Speaker 3: the pendulum comes right back to where it's supposed to be,
Speaker 3: which is probably what will happen in the long arc of.
Speaker 2: His It always does, right, It always does.
Speaker 3: I would say, I'm not sure what period we're in
Speaker 3: and what we're reckoning, to be honest, because there was
Speaker 3: a period in which we had the exclusion with the
Speaker 3: other direction, which isn't right answer either.
Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting is that in the in the moment
Speaker 1: when we're living through one of these transitional periods, right,
Speaker 1: and I think we're in the middle of a realignment,
Speaker 1: and we think every election is an answer to the realignment. Oh,
Speaker 1: re alignment so or no, we just don't have another
Speaker 1: election for another two years, right, like we're it just
Speaker 1: because we hold you know, an election happens as a
Speaker 1: main realignment stopped. Right, We're sort of we're in the
Speaker 1: middle of something, and we have been, frankly since the
Speaker 1: end of the Cold War. Right, the country had a
Speaker 1: north star defeating communism in the Soviet Union, Well, then
Speaker 1: we did it. We've actually struggled with our next north star.
Speaker 3: And what I find I wrote, I gave a commencement
Speaker 3: of speech at my mom's college from where my mom
Speaker 3: had went the place she had any dignity, and I
Speaker 3: came back and gave gave the speech, and I was
Speaker 3: in my speech I noted that when I was when
Speaker 3: she had when I was there, when she was graduating
Speaker 3: on that you know, same quad, the percentage of people
Speaker 3: that believed in gay marriage was completely flipped. So in
Speaker 3: the time that it took for me to graduate and
Speaker 3: give that speech, you know, a decade. And so I
Speaker 3: always think, I use this metaphor of attacking, you know,
Speaker 3: with a boat that doesn't look like it's looking forward progress,
Speaker 3: But if you were looking down from above, you would
Speaker 3: see it's moving. We are always moving. Our values aren't evolving.
Speaker 3: And then there are these reckonings where the pendulum swings
Speaker 3: violent leave one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Way, turning an aircraft carrier, you know, I mean we
Speaker 1: are an aircraft carrier and moving. It takes a long
Speaker 1: time to turn, but watch out when we turn. You know,
Speaker 1: we're a powerful force.
Speaker 2: So let's get into the world of business.
Speaker 1: It sounds to me over the last twenty five years,
Speaker 1: the first half of it you spent in politics, the
Speaker 1: second half in business.
Speaker 2: Is that roughly the split?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's probably right. I mean I started so young,
Speaker 3: so I've had a degree of a little bit before
Speaker 3: a scum career, because if I started with Giuliani, I
Speaker 3: started as a reporter. Actually a cub reporter in when
Speaker 3: I was seventeen, and then I started Rudy when I
Speaker 3: was maybe twenty, and I became Pressbactoria by twenty six.
Speaker 3: So I've been able to lead multiple lives. So I
Speaker 3: was a first employee and one of the first of
Speaker 3: the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site, and then
Speaker 3: I became chief operating officer. So I spent two years
Speaker 3: of ground zero at the age of twenty nine. I
Speaker 3: guess my government career ends. So and I'm fifty, which
Speaker 3: I cannot believe. Fifty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, thought every check engine light's going to go off. Brother,
Speaker 1: just trust me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm feeling it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because I rarely I don't think I interview
Speaker 1: anybody older than me anymore. It feels like everybody I'm
Speaker 1: interviewing any three. Yeah, I know, I'm making you feel
Speaker 1: better a couple of years older than you. So tell
Speaker 1: me on the transition to business. The longer you've been
Speaker 1: on the business side, has it, how has it changed
Speaker 1: your view of politics?
Speaker 3: Well, when you're in politics. Anybody in politics can relate
Speaker 3: to this when they leave one of these heady jobs,
Speaker 3: like when I had to leave being press secretary to
Speaker 3: the mayor, the you know, ground zero. There is this
Speaker 3: fear that you're just not going to be valued the
Speaker 3: same by the society. And then once you step out,
Speaker 3: you realize you're in an ecosystem that a lot of
Speaker 3: people are frankly apathetic about. First that bothers you don't
Speaker 3: you realize how important it is to, you know, work
Speaker 3: with the mayor. And I worked all night and I
Speaker 3: showed up to every crisis, and you realize, oh, it's
Speaker 3: because you're trying to feed yourself and you want government
Speaker 3: to exist in the background and you don't want it
Speaker 3: to occupy every minute of your life, which is.
Speaker 1: The theory of I ascribe to the theory of the
Speaker 1: clog toilet that most people view don't want to think
Speaker 1: about government, and then when the toilet's clogged, they don't
Speaker 1: want to think about the plumber until the toilet's clog,
Speaker 1: and they really hope they don't have to call the plumber.
Speaker 1: That's how most people view government. They just don't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just make sure the toilet.
Speaker 3: Plushes I thought that was like, that was unsophisticated and apathetic.
Speaker 3: I do you understand how important it is to be
Speaker 3: dialed in? But as I've gotten over, I realized, no,
Speaker 3: people just want to take care of the family of
Speaker 3: a degree of peace, which is why I'm sure we
Speaker 3: have collective adrenal fatigue at the moment because you're bombarded
Speaker 3: with politics, you know, every day.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so yeah, go ahead, finish.
Speaker 3: No. No, I was making the point that was one
Speaker 3: of the things that was the first transition I had
Speaker 3: to get used to going into is that that people
Speaker 3: didn't care as much as I thought they cared, and
Speaker 3: then as a result, there is a degree of narcissism
Speaker 3: when you're in government that you think there's nothing more important.
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Speaker 1: It's interesting and it's it's true, right, it's by the
Speaker 1: way true the media side.
Speaker 3: Apologies at city Hall or where No.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, look, I didn't get
Speaker 1: into this to become a celebrity reporter or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call that. And unfortunately or it happened, right,
Speaker 1: It just it's I say unfortunately because I think the
Speaker 1: personalization of the media has politicized the media, where when
Speaker 1: we were more of the fourth estate mindset, where we
Speaker 1: you know, we were there, we were the we were
Speaker 1: a check and balance. You know, we were a branch
Speaker 1: in some ways, the fourth branch, and that meant we
Speaker 1: were supposed to be a check and balance, not necessarily
Speaker 1: picking a side type of mindset. But then you know,
Speaker 1: the politicians in some ways surfaced us up individually in
Speaker 1: order to whack us down, right like.
Speaker 2: And that's that's the mistake.
Speaker 1: We collectively made it because we individually could get more
Speaker 1: station and more prominence, but it actually collectively weakened us
Speaker 1: as the individual became this.
Speaker 3: Conversation I was obsessed about when I was there. I
Speaker 3: started as a CUB reporter. I thought I was I
Speaker 3: was going to go work for the city section of
Speaker 3: the Times and always investigative pieces. Bob Wouldward owned a
Speaker 3: piece of my newspaper, so he nominated me for a
Speaker 3: pulz er anybody by the way, but it sounded good
Speaker 3: when I was at city halls of press. I used
Speaker 3: to be obsessed with the fact that each reporter has
Speaker 3: their own, their own context, that they live in that
Speaker 3: cultivation bias. But yet you're holding me accountable in a
Speaker 3: pseudo objective way. We believe all the news that's you know,
Speaker 3: but no one's actually revealing your bias. I used to
Speaker 3: be a assessed by shouldn't there be a way in
Speaker 3: which I could look into your bib your backgrounds, I
Speaker 3: can assess whether or not you bring some type of
Speaker 3: bias to the table. Now, well the other direction.
Speaker 1: But I would argue this, and this is where I
Speaker 1: just don't accept the premise of I think bias is
Speaker 1: the wrong part of this conversation to have, right because
Speaker 1: we're born you just you said it earlier in this conversation.
Speaker 1: We're all born with original bias. Who you're born to,
Speaker 1: where you're born, your circumstances, your geography, your socioeconomic status,
Speaker 1: color of your skin, all of that is original bias.
Speaker 1: All right, And it's just the life you lead, where
Speaker 1: you grow up, how you grew up, It just, you know.
Speaker 1: So I always want to know where somebody, I always
Speaker 1: want to know where you grew up and how you
Speaker 1: grew up that I have an idea of the different
Speaker 1: biases that may have contributed to your political worldview. I
Speaker 1: sort of get it, you know. I do my best
Speaker 1: to try to be transparent about I. You know, I
Speaker 1: always say I was lucky enough to grow up and
Speaker 1: household where my parents canceled each other's.
Speaker 2: Vote out and talked about it.
Speaker 1: So I heard the conversation that they had about Reagan
Speaker 1: versus Carter, and I remember it very intuitively. And my
Speaker 1: mother just couldn't bring herself to vote for Reagan. Thought
Speaker 1: Carter had to go. So she writes in Gerald Ford,
Speaker 1: my father's a big Reagan guy. But hearing the conversation
Speaker 1: and then reading about it later as an adult, you
Speaker 1: realized that was the conversation of many voters were having.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like they knew Carter needed to
Speaker 1: be fired. They just weren't comfortable yet handing the reins
Speaker 1: to Reagan, and they were trying to figure that out.
Speaker 2: And it is so I grew up I was.
Speaker 1: I always say I was lucky to grow up hearing
Speaker 1: those conversations, so at least understanding how my parents were
Speaker 1: a microcosm of a debate about that. But you know,
Speaker 1: as far as bias and a reporter, to me, it's
Speaker 1: not about bias. Every reporter is going to have a bias.
Speaker 1: Are they fair? I think fairness is the only That's
Speaker 1: why I never accepted the premise of fair and balanced.
Speaker 2: You can't balance the truth. All you can do is
Speaker 2: be fair. Are you a.
Speaker 1: Jerk to boat everybody that's the press secretary to the mayor?
Speaker 1: You know those reporters. Some reporters are just irascible, right,
Speaker 1: They're just going to be a pest no matter who
Speaker 1: which side of the aisle they come from. And then
Speaker 1: there are those that get in the tank, and you
Speaker 1: know who those are pretty quickly too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I think we're saying the same thing. But
Speaker 3: I was saying twenty five years ago, the idea that
Speaker 3: somehow a context, let's not call bias, let's call this
Speaker 3: your framework. Wherever you grow up at the environment sure
Speaker 3: influenced how you chose the lead or how you chose
Speaker 3: The first quote was sort of rejected. Back there, that's like,
Speaker 3: you know that there was some theoretical objectivity about writing,
Speaker 3: which is impossible to obtain. And now I think the
Speaker 3: pendulum has gone so far the other way that we
Speaker 3: can't trust anything, which I don't think is the right view.
Speaker 3: The right view is we should assess how you've chosen
Speaker 3: to present those facts and understand that you have your
Speaker 3: own implicit context that's shaping how you write an article.
Speaker 3: Now we've gone well, now we can't trust anything, which
Speaker 3: I completely reject. But back then it was interesting saying
Speaker 3: you couldn't have the debate that somehow are you the
Speaker 3: way you chose that first quote might have been influenced
Speaker 3: by your background.
Speaker 1: Now you're right and it's true and you get that,
Speaker 1: and then the question becomes and I always say this
Speaker 1: about covering a story or covering a person. Right, there
Speaker 1: was this debate about plat, you know, deplatforming Trump, which
Speaker 1: I think when if I were to say, what did
Speaker 1: legacy media, why did they essentially knock themselves out right?
Speaker 1: And I always believe this was a self inflicted wound
Speaker 1: in this respect, deep platforming Trump was couldn't have been more,
Speaker 1: you know, couldn't have been a bigger mistake. And I
Speaker 1: thought it internally, I thought it externally because it sort
Speaker 1: of got to this. It it sort of the voters
Speaker 1: decided to platform these people, right, You as a reporter,
Speaker 1: are there to explain what's happening, to tell people what's happening.
Speaker 1: But hey, the voters have done this. And if you
Speaker 1: don't accept the PREMI as a political reporter, that you
Speaker 1: know so and so is important because the voters have
Speaker 1: decided it is, then you don't accept the premise of
Speaker 1: the democracy.
Speaker 3: Which is amazing. I never would have thought, I mean,
Speaker 3: you were similar ages that we could have such a
Speaker 3: shift in the collective way we express ourselves and social norms.
Speaker 1: And these are the algorithms. To me, it's the algorithms
Speaker 1: that have destroyed us. I mean, to constantly feed people.
Speaker 1: I mean, you strike me as somebody that probably sought
Speaker 1: out you want contradictory information, I do. The tech companies
Speaker 1: make it impossible to get contradictory information that isn't sort
Speaker 1: of overly contradictory, right, It isn't well thought out contradictions.
Speaker 1: It's just almost partisan contradictions. It's very hard to get
Speaker 1: a more balanced view because I can't curate what I want.
Speaker 1: The algorithms keep trying to curate what they think I
Speaker 1: want because I match some profile. That is what I
Speaker 1: think has been so destructive to the trust of the
Speaker 1: of the media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. If you're on Twitter, I mean that's
Speaker 3: your whole existence, right, you could see where you're spending
Speaker 3: your time.
Speaker 1: I want Elon Musk needs to get off his own platform.
Speaker 1: You know, if you spend only your time on there,
Speaker 1: you think the world is on the brink of a
Speaker 1: civil war every night.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 1: Get off of online and you realize now most people
Speaker 1: are pretty comfortable living in this country. They're basically pretty
Speaker 1: you know, they're you know, they wish the economy were
Speaker 1: more even, and they wish a lot of things. But
Speaker 1: we're not ready to pull guns on each other. But
Speaker 1: that's not the way it feels on Twitter sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a new approach, by the way, which
Speaker 3: has really been helpful for how I approach both business
Speaker 3: and my sanity. Is that ideal after I check in
Speaker 3: on it, so I have to go through the extra
Speaker 3: step of reinstalling it, which has been so healthy productivity
Speaker 3: wise and otherwise. Because to your point, it was I
Speaker 3: couldn't tell what's real? Or are we on the brink,
Speaker 3: you know, or are we as Kim Kardashian launching a
Speaker 3: new you know, sweatpants on skins, Like it's like what's reality?
Speaker 3: So I literally deal everything? But LinkedIn LinkedIn is like
Speaker 3: eating vegetables and lima beans all day, like it's not
Speaker 3: going to hurt you.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's funny you say that because LinkedIn
Speaker 1: has become a fairly trusted space, and I've been interested
Speaker 1: as to why that is. And I think the users
Speaker 1: of LinkedIn don't want it to become like X. And
Speaker 1: I think LinkedIn at least those folks realize, hey, be careful,
Speaker 1: don't overserve people what they want here, or you might
Speaker 1: create yet another Instagram or another X or another Facebook
Speaker 1: that just divides and that isn't what the LinkedIn community wants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to your point, now, you don't get the extremes,
Speaker 3: which is good, but you also don't get any toxic toxicity.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Well, let me get back to your world of entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: and you it is you've had more of a background
Speaker 1: in sports than any other sector of business.
Speaker 2: Or is that am I overreading?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: It is I can give you a quick for the audience.
Speaker 3: So I've had a crazy career of business and that
Speaker 3: I partnered up after running the Jets, and then I
Speaker 3: ran the Dolphins as a vice chair. So I ran
Speaker 3: two NFL teams in one capacity at least off the field.
Speaker 2: For career post So you worked for Woody Johnson? Did
Speaker 2: you work for Steve Ross?
Speaker 3: Well, I have this philosophy and for anyone listening is like,
Speaker 3: never put yourself in a box. So as a kid
Speaker 3: who grew up in a certain box right abject poverty,
Speaker 3: total dysfunction, I had to get out of that box,
Speaker 3: and government was my path. What's great about government is
Speaker 3: it has a bias towards young people because then it's
Speaker 3: dumb enough to work these hours and they believe too. Finally,
Speaker 3: like you know that the cause matters and you know
Speaker 3: whatever it takes. So I put in those crazy hours.
Speaker 3: But in fairness, government didn't judge me for being a
Speaker 3: poor kid wearing second hand clothes and living in a
Speaker 3: roach motel. Was I going to put in the hours
Speaker 3: and that was my first path out. So that was
Speaker 3: one box. I knew that if I didn't transcend from
Speaker 3: being a press secretary, ID always be the press guy.
Speaker 3: But as you know, Chalk, the press guy or girl
Speaker 3: ends up running a lot of the power. Right, they
Speaker 3: have a lot more power than you would ever believe.
Speaker 2: More now and not at first.
Speaker 1: Boy, when I first started covering politic ninety two was
Speaker 1: my first campaign professionally, and the press shops were definitely.
Speaker 3: Down.
Speaker 1: The totem pole rights were held in higher esteem, the
Speaker 1: media consultants were held in higher esteem, the policy person
Speaker 1: was held I think in the twenty first century that
Speaker 1: is completely flipped. And I think now the communication side.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, even in business in two thousand, there
Speaker 1: was probably not a single Fortune five hundred company that
Speaker 1: had a chief Comms officer that the word Comm's office
Speaker 1: comms in a C suite title did not exist. Now
Speaker 1: that a majority of Fortune five hundreds have that title.
Speaker 1: So I do think we've transitioned to believing that communicating,
Speaker 1: whether in politics or business, is now a front of
Speaker 1: you know, brain lob right, it's a frontal lobe necessity
Speaker 1: in order to succeed.
Speaker 3: I think that's true so externally, but internally in the
Speaker 3: Apparasa government, that comms person, if they were good, was
Speaker 3: all powerful because they had proximity. They have proximity, so
Speaker 3: I was close to power and I had a power
Speaker 3: externally though back to your point, it would not be
Speaker 3: seen as anything. So my whole life is career in
Speaker 3: business has been about breaking out of the boxes. And
Speaker 3: the first box was to become an operator. I became
Speaker 3: chief operating officer of the World Trade Center site, and
Speaker 3: now I had this new skill of being able to
Speaker 3: manage complex variables in a land use context in a
Speaker 3: city of New York, and I use that to join
Speaker 3: the Jets to run their effort to build a stadium.
Speaker 3: Now I'm in a new box. I'm in a business guy.
Speaker 3: I'm running a sports team. And then but my dream
Speaker 3: was to build businesses from scratch. And then I became
Speaker 3: partners with Steve Ross, owner of the Dolphins, so left
Speaker 3: that last skill to run the team, but started doing
Speaker 3: what I would really want to do was build businesses
Speaker 3: from scratch. And so now I'm at the end of
Speaker 3: this journey of Okay, Now I'm a builder. I build businesses,
Speaker 3: and I've been able to do it in different different
Speaker 3: contexts communications, but also i'm military of a pretty significant
Speaker 3: drone company. Now that is very important and it serves
Speaker 3: the US Army and a bunch of other government agencies
Speaker 3: that I'm the co founder of. So so it's been
Speaker 3: this constant evolution, but leveraging the last thing I did
Speaker 3: to get out of that box.
Speaker 1: Let me start with the drones, because I think I
Speaker 1: had a long podcast interview with Dexter Filkins, who's one
Speaker 1: of the best war correspondents, living war correspondents that we have,
Speaker 1: always embeds himself in different variety of places. It's just
Speaker 1: one of those a war correspondent is just wired differently
Speaker 1: than most reporters.
Speaker 2: And you know, he wrote a big piece.
Speaker 3: Is a great movies in the Civil War. By the way,
Speaker 3: have you seen it about it War? About war photographers.
Speaker 3: You have to see this.
Speaker 2: Movie a doc a documentary.
Speaker 3: It's a movie. I don't think it did that that well,
Speaker 3: but it's actually fantastic and it covers it's a theoretical
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Oh, the Civil War movie. I refused to watch it.
Speaker 2: I didn't like.
Speaker 1: I don't well because I think it plays off of
Speaker 1: some cynical stereotypes of our political discourse these days.
Speaker 2: Not the actual but I war a photographer.
Speaker 1: That I yeah, well, what I know what Filkins was
Speaker 1: writing about though, was just like, how much warfare has
Speaker 1: changed just in the three and a half years we've
Speaker 1: been in a hot war between the Russians and the Ukrainians,
Speaker 1: and how that is probably and it's panicking the Pentagon
Speaker 1: at the moment that basically we are prepared for a
Speaker 1: war we'll never fight, but we are not prepared for
Speaker 1: the next war we're going to fight. And it's been
Speaker 1: the acceleration of drone war drone warfare that is really
Speaker 1: catching the Pentagon off guard, and I imagine has been
Speaker 1: a pretty big boom for your business.
Speaker 3: Right we'll tell you the origin story, since we were
Speaker 3: talking about patterns than childhood. But when I partnered with
Speaker 3: Steve Rosby started writing checks into some nascent sports. The
Speaker 3: first check I wrote was into the drone Racing League
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen, and my partner, who's you know now
Speaker 3: eighty five? And back then it's like, what the hell
Speaker 3: and why is anybody gonna watch flying Robots's fair point,
Speaker 3: But nonetheless took a flyer and as I got closer
Speaker 3: to the technology that way, By.
Speaker 2: The way, two hundred years ago, do you think people said,
Speaker 2: why would anybody want to watch two horses race?
Speaker 1: And eventually it became a thing. Why would anybody want
Speaker 1: to watch two cars race go ahead?
Speaker 3: That was my logic, and also who cares to fly?
Speaker 3: But as I got close to what we were inventing,
Speaker 3: we broke the Guinness Book. We're records for flying a
Speaker 3: drone one hundred miles an hour. We were organizing drone
Speaker 3: races and stadiums, so you had to fly around the crevice,
Speaker 3: you know, make sure there was no latency between the
Speaker 3: drone and the pilots.
Speaker 2: Sounds like the Star Wars prequels.
Speaker 1: It was that you're describing in arenas and stadiums and stuff.
Speaker 3: Getting to the point of the story. Because of my
Speaker 3: pattern recognition and because I was on the ground at
Speaker 3: the World Trade Center site on Church Street looking up
Speaker 3: at that building, I always have had that terror and
Speaker 3: that just intersectional military very clear to me early on
Speaker 3: and my co founders that Pandora's box has been opened,
Speaker 3: and that actually at the time, China was running an
Speaker 3: economic sabotage campaign undermine the entire US drone market. Those
Speaker 3: close to it knew what China was doing. We didn't
Speaker 3: know the ultimate endgame, but completely undermining the US drone market.
Speaker 3: So in twenty seventeen, we started working on standing up
Speaker 3: sub Rosa a company to make sure that we had
Speaker 3: this technology on us soil. Nobody at the time there
Speaker 3: was no market, there was no anything, So we put
Speaker 3: it into all Alabama. We put tens of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars through the value of death, which is the long
Speaker 3: period of time it takes place to win a single contract.
Speaker 3: So my point to you is, I've been living this
Speaker 3: nightmare for a long time, and then Ukraine starts and
Speaker 3: everything changes. So let me bring you forward. Our drunes
Speaker 3: are fitting a rugsack. They can enable a warfire to
Speaker 3: call in their own air support on the edge. It
Speaker 3: does a ton of things. But what's remarkable is how
Speaker 3: incredibly behind our country is and how hard this administration
Speaker 3: has been working to catch up. You could say whatever
Speaker 3: you want politically, but what the Trump administration has tried
Speaker 3: to do in this category is so overdue and so necessary.
Speaker 3: But for the longest time, people just were ignoring it.
Speaker 3: Ukraine has been on the radar for years now, right,
Speaker 3: but there wasn't a lot devoted to it in any
Speaker 3: meaningful way. So when you see the Pentagon scrambling to
Speaker 3: catch up, it's because the need is so urgent, and
Speaker 3: it was going unaddressed, not not entirely. A lot of
Speaker 3: good people in the military were trying to sound the alarm.
Speaker 1: Right, So are we to you know, sort of sort
Speaker 1: of going forward if all warfare is going to be
Speaker 1: to start with, Yeah, I was just going to say,
Speaker 1: we go to robotic war. Of course, the biggest, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest concern I would have about that, right, is
Speaker 1: the unintended consequence of automating warfare. Does it one allow
Speaker 1: smaller countries to potentially be on equal footing if you're
Speaker 1: essentially just buying robots that's one.
Speaker 2: Two? Does it make if if does it make it
Speaker 2: easier to kill?
Speaker 1: If it looks like a video game, right, which has
Speaker 1: always been a I think of fear that the the
Speaker 1: the drone wars, if you will become sort of almost like,
Speaker 1: you know, life imitating sci fi, right, the Clone wars.
Speaker 1: You know, if the if the damage to humanity is minimal,
Speaker 1: does it increase the likelihood.
Speaker 2: That people go to war?
Speaker 1: Or does it decrease it because there's less casualties war?
Speaker 3: Does it decrease it because it's futile and we just
Speaker 3: simply know it's ai generated you know, warfare about.
Speaker 1: Allow so that it's mutual assured destruction to go back
Speaker 1: to the old ICBM.
Speaker 3: Right. But let's before we get to that deterrent, we
Speaker 3: need to go through this phase. I'll tell you my hierarchy.
Speaker 3: Hierarchy of things I worry about so well. Number one,
Speaker 3: the United States needs a drone arsenal that we don't
Speaker 3: currently have, particularly FDV drones. The Administration is working over
Speaker 3: time to fix that problem, to their credit. But when
Speaker 3: I care more about I was watching a documentary some reason.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed with this nineteen eighties period of the Mujahdin,
Speaker 3: and you know what we did in Afghanistan through proxy wars, right,
Speaker 3: and then we gave them the Stinger missiles you know,
Speaker 3: to the Mujaddin, right, And it ended up haunting us
Speaker 3: because now Stinger missiles are everywhere similar in Ukraine, our
Speaker 3: adversaries are getting a PhD and how to operate an
Speaker 3: FPV and all the tactics, which is forget about IP.
Speaker 3: That knowledge is very scary. That knowledge. Once this war ends,
Speaker 3: it's going to be disseminated actors all over the world.
Speaker 3: So you pst Afghanistan and we need and don't have
Speaker 3: nor does any country on Earth have a multi layered
Speaker 3: solution to an incoming drone attack for not just a swarm,
Speaker 3: but just like any drones. And so there's a whole
Speaker 3: effort behind the scenes to do whatever we can to
Speaker 3: get ready. But I think that is the scariest part
Speaker 3: of it. So how are they related. You need to
Speaker 3: master offensive drone tactics on your soil, including the supply chain,
Speaker 3: to also be able to understand defense because they go
Speaker 3: hand in hand. So there's a tremendous effort behind the
Speaker 3: scenes to redomesticate all the means of production around drones.
Speaker 3: And the most important part of that is magnets. You
Speaker 3: cannot make drone motors without magnets, and magnets are not
Speaker 3: made in the United States. So when you read all
Speaker 3: this geopolitical stuffing magnets, it all goes back to drone wars.
Speaker 3: So back to your point, Chuck, maybe one day it
Speaker 3: becomes mutually assured destruction and therefore deterreent, But in the
Speaker 3: interim there are a lot bigger problems.
Speaker 1: I think to get that, you view this as an
Speaker 1: arms race, right, China's trying to drone up that we're
Speaker 1: in the sort of in the early days. This is
Speaker 1: like nuclear weapons circa nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 3: I think it is the biggest arms race that we've
Speaker 3: had since nuclear weapons and is not one answer to it.
Speaker 3: And I think drones eventually become like the rifle or
Speaker 3: the artillery, the one five to five shell. You need
Speaker 3: all sorts of different kinds. But there's no question, and
Speaker 3: it was very intentional. I don't know if China had
Speaker 3: the foresight to recognize we're going to undermine the US
Speaker 3: domestic drone industry through And for those who don't know,
Speaker 3: I know I'm going on on about this, but I
Speaker 3: will make it very simple. We used to make a
Speaker 3: lot of drones in this country and then Dji came
Speaker 3: along and started selling exquisite drones that are really to
Speaker 3: this day incredible atred a suspiciously low price. And what
Speaker 3: ended up happening is a lot of the drone makers
Speaker 3: in the US disappeared, and at the same time, all
Speaker 3: law enforcement in the U In the United States, I
Speaker 3: think almost ninety percent now used Chinese made drones. So
Speaker 3: a dependency was created in the US on these rones,
Speaker 3: and now there's no drone industry of fill it. So
Speaker 3: they said Okay, well, why can't we just build a
Speaker 3: drone industry. It costs a lot of money to make
Speaker 3: a competitive consumer drone. It's up four billions of dollars.
Speaker 3: And then okay, well the military can help. If there's
Speaker 3: no demand signal from the military, then there's no market.
Speaker 3: So that's what's being fixed right now. Government is putting
Speaker 3: out affirmative demand signals so that a domestic dun industry
Speaker 3: can sprout up.
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Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. What's the biggest impediment?
Speaker 1: So if you've got a defense department that says, hey,
Speaker 1: we're ready to be the biggest customer, that obviously matters
Speaker 1: a lot. What's the next impediment you talked about magnets?
Speaker 1: What would it take for us to be able to
Speaker 1: produce our own.
Speaker 3: Government has to speak in very concrete demand signals so
Speaker 3: that the different drone companies out there can raise the
Speaker 3: venture funding against it. We still aren't quite in that place.
Speaker 3: Two as just having the means of production to build
Speaker 3: those drones at scale all very insurmountable in the next
Speaker 3: twenty four to thirty six months.
Speaker 2: You know, the surmountable, not insurmountable.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry I should have said surmountable. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Insurmountable. I know that's one of those words, but we
Speaker 2: don't always you know, we.
Speaker 1: Say insurmountable a lot. We never say surmountable.
Speaker 3: That is surmountable in the next thirty for thirty six months.
Speaker 3: What we need to work on as a country before
Speaker 3: there's a disaster is this multi layered counter drone solution. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that part is the part. There's lots of directed energy
Speaker 3: and you know, catch a drone with a net. There's
Speaker 3: all sorts of you know, geeky solutions, but none of
Speaker 3: them quite broad together stitch together in a solution that
Speaker 3: could protect a city.
Speaker 1: Well, I was just going to say, let's let's go
Speaker 1: back to your coming Arguably, I'm going to guess is
Speaker 1: in some ways you're almost coming of age moment right
Speaker 1: being being pressed secretary on the ground during nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: You know, now, if those nineteen hijackers and if those
Speaker 1: folks planing that attack on America, they you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have used airplanes, they'd be they'd be it would
Speaker 1: have been a drone like assault on us that we
Speaker 1: were quote unquote not ready for, right, we were.
Speaker 2: Not back then.
Speaker 1: The biggest what was the biggest criticism of the intelligence
Speaker 1: community both. You know, it didn't matter partisanship, it was
Speaker 1: simply failure of imagination.
Speaker 3: Rights all the time. We have a failure imagination right now.
Speaker 1: And I think right now it sounds like what you're advocating.
Speaker 1: And some might be a little say, well, he'd make
Speaker 1: his business, will make money on this fet Well, look,
Speaker 1: the drone wars are here, whether whether whether we like
Speaker 1: it or not, we got to come up with some
Speaker 1: sort of.
Speaker 2: Per perimeter.
Speaker 1: I mean, I look, some of us laugh at the
Speaker 1: Golden Dome, right you know, a'llah, the Iron Dome type
Speaker 1: of security structure that we've helped Israel build. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we can put an entire dome essentially invisible
Speaker 1: dome over the continental United States, but we do need
Speaker 1: some sort of security field on drones that you could
Speaker 1: picture could suddenly. I mean, look at the panic. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the panic about six to nine months ago
Speaker 1: over the drones off the coast of New Jersey And
Speaker 1: it turns out they were weather drones, right, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the problem.
Speaker 1: We don't even know the inventory of drones that are
Speaker 1: constantly in the air all the time as it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So first of all, I live in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: So everyone assumed I had the answer to that, which
Speaker 3: I which I I don't believe anybody did, which should
Speaker 3: tell you something. Second, whether I stand a benefit, I
Speaker 3: actually don't do counter uas. But regardless, that's not even
Speaker 3: the point the point of course, But I did want
Speaker 3: to know that everybody. Yeah, it would be a fair
Speaker 3: It would be fair. I don't want people to reject
Speaker 3: it base it on, So it's fair. It's a fair suspicion.
Speaker 3: More importantly, we live in a paternalistic society subconsciously, so
Speaker 3: we presume when we walk into a stadium, somebody's got
Speaker 3: that figured out, right, Like there's a way that somebody
Speaker 3: could get and let me tell you something. They don't
Speaker 3: have it figured out. And so if you know that
Speaker 3: they don't have it figured out and you, we are vulnerable.
Speaker 3: We know that nine to eleven was a failure of imagination.
Speaker 3: We know that there was a cell, for example, in Europe,
Speaker 3: a has bal of cell that had been ordering drone
Speaker 3: parts on Amazon. We know that AI is going to
Speaker 3: make autonomy and automatic target recognition, these kinds of tools
Speaker 3: that enable a drone to fly with no signature. They're
Speaker 3: going to make it possible for anybody to do a
Speaker 3: eighteen year old, you know, aspiring Paris in the next
Speaker 3: twenty four months. We know these things are happening, then
Speaker 3: we know that we need a national, multi layer solution.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately the problem is we don't always learn from the past,
Speaker 3: so we don't respond until something happens. That's my biggest fear.
Speaker 3: And again maybe like I saw a lot of traunta
Speaker 3: from nine to eleven. To be honest, if I take
Speaker 3: the train to New York and I get stuck underneath
Speaker 3: the tunnel, I have a total panic attack. I'll start
Speaker 3: texting my wife just stay with me. I know this
Speaker 3: sounds totally unbalanced, and I'm fifty years old. So I
Speaker 3: live with the memory standing under those towers, just thinking like,
Speaker 3: how does that happen?
Speaker 1: Well, I always thought, I'll be honest, I always thought
Speaker 1: meant that DC in New York nine to eleven was
Speaker 1: personal for us. I mean, I was in d C.
Speaker 1: I was at the Watergate building. We were seeing smoke
Speaker 1: come from a pentagon. I was trying to keep my
Speaker 1: staff as calm as you could in a situation you
Speaker 1: had no idea what was happening.
Speaker 2: Our offices were acrossed from the Saudi Embassy. We were
Speaker 2: all freaked.
Speaker 3: Out and.
Speaker 1: The It's always been remarkable to me that the rest
Speaker 1: of America cared for as long as they did. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is, think about your reaction
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma City. You probably had a visceral reaction at first,
Speaker 1: and then over time because it wasn't in our face
Speaker 1: every day, we sort of it ventured to.
Speaker 2: The back of your brain. Being a New Yorker.
Speaker 1: Nine eleven doesn't venture back to your brain being a
Speaker 1: DC or nine to eleven never ventures back to my brain. Right,
Speaker 1: I know I live. We can argue about whether it's
Speaker 1: New York or d C, but we know that they
Speaker 1: are two of the most biggest targets in the world.
Speaker 1: Right you know, I've always sort of since nine to
Speaker 1: eleven had a All Right, if I think a nuke's coming,
Speaker 1: what am I doing?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Where am I going? And can I leave in time?
Speaker 1: How much time would I actually have and find way
Speaker 1: would I need?
Speaker 3: I go? In the last subway car, I was thinking,
Speaker 3: that's not the one to tear. It was a strike.
Speaker 3: You'd strike the middle. I mean, like we.
Speaker 1: Interesting, it's good, But that's the point It's sort of
Speaker 1: like I and I do wonder, right, when you think
Speaker 1: about it, we don't really have you know, there's most
Speaker 1: you know, yes, there's a New Yorker's president, and there's
Speaker 1: two New Yorkers in leadership, and certainly people that were
Speaker 1: here when nine to eleven happen that are kind of
Speaker 1: still in power, though not many of them left. You
Speaker 1: do wonder how much of that contributes to this lack
Speaker 1: of realizing that, hey, we might want to look at
Speaker 1: nine to eleven is okay, what's the next nine to
Speaker 1: eleven look like?
Speaker 2: What could we be missing?
Speaker 1: Drones feels like some combination of cyber sabotage and drones
Speaker 1: feels like the most likely way next sort of tragedy
Speaker 1: that we quote miss as a society that we have
Speaker 1: to fix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And I don't know quite how you
Speaker 3: sound the alarm to make people hacked, because then people say, well,
Speaker 3: what am I supposed to do about that? Right at
Speaker 3: the end of the day. But the difference the next
Speaker 3: nine to eleven is next nine to eleven doesn't require
Speaker 3: elaborate flight training at a flight school. It's a simulator
Speaker 3: that you do online. It requires parts that you could
Speaker 3: buy in Amazon. It's just so much very it's just
Speaker 3: a different attack. There is a way to there is
Speaker 3: a way to counter it, but it requires such a
Speaker 3: multi layered federal, state, local solution that that I think
Speaker 3: is the part that hasn't come into focus. So when
Speaker 3: you read the government pentagony one advocating, it's because they
Speaker 3: know more than you do about the true nature of
Speaker 3: it and how at the moment where you are unflanked.
Speaker 1: I could go this, I don't have it done. But
Speaker 1: that's that's all right. That's what makes a good that's
Speaker 1: what makes a good conversation. Let me get you out
Speaker 1: of here. On sports, I was like you, I've gone
Speaker 1: back and forth in sports and politics in the media.
Speaker 1: I helped found the Sports Business Journal, which is used
Speaker 1: to be called the Sports Business Daily, So you probably
Speaker 1: were familiar with it back in your Jets and Dolphins days.
Speaker 2: So let me ask it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Chuck for that.
Speaker 1: Congrats all right? You know my man ad met Core,
Speaker 1: he knows that identify him, so good.
Speaker 2: Good for you. So what makes a good NFL owner?
Speaker 2: And does it matter?
Speaker 1: Because it is a socialistic enterprise, right, even a bad
Speaker 1: owner makes money because everybody makes money in the NFL.
Speaker 2: What do you think.
Speaker 1: Separates a good owner from a bad owner?
Speaker 3: Such a great question. Well, yeah, your audience might be
Speaker 3: surprised if I've been around a lot of owners, work
Speaker 3: for two directly, but know all of them sit at
Speaker 3: the table at the NFL for a long time. Every
Speaker 3: single one of them desperately wants to win. So there's
Speaker 3: some sentences and they're in for the money. No, they're
Speaker 3: in it to compete the competing.
Speaker 1: They bought a trophy. I've always said, they bought trophies.
Speaker 1: There's thirty two trophies to own in the NFL. And
Speaker 1: these guys, you know, they're just another Bill Simmons has this,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, if Woody Johnson doesn't.
Speaker 2: Own a sports team, nobody knows who Whatdy Johnson is.
Speaker 3: Well, there's that also, any one of them have different
Speaker 3: levels of success and failure. They're not on display every Sunday,
Speaker 3: so they're now stepping into the arena where the where
Speaker 3: their success. So that's number one. I never met somebody
Speaker 3: who was appetetic about winning and didn't.
Speaker 1: Really know, right because they're already rich guys, so they
Speaker 1: want something to get as much money as they got, right,
Speaker 1: now they want to Now they're get to play in
Speaker 1: the rich guys circle, and they want to beat the
Speaker 1: other rich guys.
Speaker 3: Right. I think what makes a good owner for owner,
Speaker 3: probably makes what makes a good CEO or business owner
Speaker 3: anywhere else, is you have very strong values and you
Speaker 3: telegraph them and apply them consistently throughout the entire organization.
Speaker 3: Like you really you believe in what you believe you
Speaker 3: are Consistent values can form around that. Consistent because an
Speaker 3: owner is an asset too, because it means it's not
Speaker 3: changing every every two years. Right, we're not president the
Speaker 3: United States got eight years, right, an owner could have
Speaker 3: thirty years. And so I think consistent values that spread
Speaker 3: through willingness to invest and play the long game, maybe
Speaker 3: not respond to headlines and make changes, you know, on
Speaker 3: a win. Number one bad quality would be placating the
Speaker 3: press you know, or or or or an uprising of
Speaker 3: sorts by making a short term move, because then you're
Speaker 3: then you're under You're undermining the very benefit of the
Speaker 3: fact that no one could displace you. You're an owner,
Speaker 3: no one could fire you. So you should be able
Speaker 3: to make long term decisions, even more so than a
Speaker 3: but we traded CEO right, Yeah, Yeah, at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, it's.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, do you think in some ways there's
Speaker 1: it's it's look, you're you're part of this larger organism
Speaker 1: that's the NFL, where there's thirty two equal partners, and
Speaker 1: there's just you actually don't have enough leeway where in baseball,
Speaker 1: for instance, the Dodgers could actually have a more unique
Speaker 1: way of building because they can spend money in ways
Speaker 1: that you actually can't spend money in the NFL. Well,
Speaker 1: that's imagine.
Speaker 3: So they're the the the the the advantage you can
Speaker 3: gain is so marginal that one, no one advantage is
Speaker 3: going to be outcome to determinative. I've seen that on
Speaker 3: the sports science space all these years I was involved.
Speaker 3: There were different ebbs and flows depending on the coach.
Speaker 1: Eventually everybody gets the same data. So then what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then you search for some kind of advantage
Speaker 3: and you realize the end of the day, it's not
Speaker 3: making that much of a difference. I just think that
Speaker 3: it's really truly a you know, game of inches. And
Speaker 3: so I'm sorry to give you a diplomatic answer. I
Speaker 3: just think fondly of both of them, and I don't,
Speaker 3: and I would not the right answer as to what
Speaker 3: would make the difference.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny, it is. It is.
Speaker 1: It's a head scratcher to me that the Giants and
Speaker 1: the Jets don't win as much as they should.
Speaker 3: It's a head squirrel. So again, you have to give
Speaker 3: us the formula to what they need to do. And
Speaker 3: it's not obvious. No, it's not.
Speaker 2: Well it is.
Speaker 1: It is obvious, but it's not easy. Which is you
Speaker 1: just you know you need the right quarterback and it
Speaker 1: is it really.
Speaker 3: Is around the most important issue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, And the more you realize, I don't think even
Speaker 1: today's really smart football fan understands that quarterback is ten
Speaker 1: times harder to be, no matter whether it's a bad
Speaker 1: quarterback or not, than it is to be a running back.
Speaker 1: Like I'm all for Jonathan Taylor being the NFL MVP,
Speaker 1: but I promise you all thirty two starting quarterbacks job
Speaker 1: is much harder than Jonathan Taylor's, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: convey that. I think the Manning broadcast does a good
Speaker 1: job of conveying the difficulty of being the coach on
Speaker 1: the field, but it's the only place you get that cough.
Speaker 3: It's the other hard job to hire as the coach.
Speaker 3: I've been involved multiple coaching searches. One thing consistency. I've
Speaker 3: seen that the pendulum always swings violently from one direction
Speaker 3: of the other. Players coach think a disciplinarian and yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the joke is like, you know, the first thing
Speaker 1: a new coach does is decides what to do with
Speaker 1: a ping pong table.
Speaker 2: If there's a ping pong table in the locker room,
Speaker 2: they take it out. Oh, this is a serious coach.
Speaker 1: If there wasn't a ping pong table in the in
Speaker 1: the locker room, they put one in.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a different But it's like.
Speaker 3: The second thing they do they paint. They paint the
Speaker 3: walls and they put up new slogans. I always look
Speaker 3: sobody good. Now some of them are good, Rex Ryan
Speaker 3: Gamy one, you appreciate you play through the whistle, play
Speaker 3: through the way, her her herm ed where's you played?
Speaker 3: You play to win the game? You know Eric Mangini,
Speaker 3: who is you know, very smart, the man genius. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he had all his own things like what found. There
Speaker 3: is always a consistent attempt on the coach level to
Speaker 3: bring a control and try to isolate some variables that
Speaker 3: can make the difference, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is true. But what whatever the culture was,
Speaker 1: you just change it to the other culture.
Speaker 3: Right, So back to what you wanted. Would you a
Speaker 3: good owner? You want to go owner as a culture
Speaker 3: that can transcend coaching changes.
Speaker 1: Matt, this was great. I am out of I think
Speaker 1: we're both running up against time.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the uh so is the drone world your
Speaker 2: full time job? Is? That?
Speaker 3: Is that where? This is what I was meant to
Speaker 3: be working on. It's from a degree of destiny. It's
Speaker 3: that brings me. It's the most important work I've ever
Speaker 3: done in my life. I get to be around the
Speaker 3: military all the time, and it is mostly what I
Speaker 3: focus on now peacefully.
Speaker 1: You how much of your business is commercial and how
Speaker 1: much of it is all defense contracting?
Speaker 2: These days?
Speaker 3: Oh so hard. We only own a lot of brands
Speaker 3: and a lot of businesses. But in terms of where
Speaker 3: I put my time, over half a half of my
Speaker 3: time is spent on this. We have other businesses, but
Speaker 3: this is where my heart, my energy goes because the
Speaker 3: mission is so important, That's where I spent my time.
Speaker 1: Well, this is something that I have a feeling I
Speaker 1: want to be checking in with you a lot more
Speaker 1: because I do. I don't think Washington official Washington is
Speaker 1: fully aware of how dramatically warfare is changing right now,
Speaker 1: and we are we we just are. It explains why
Speaker 1: they you know, why there's so much effort in the
Speaker 1: in the tech community. And I know it's at times
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable with how much government and tech are fusing.
Speaker 1: But it is because of this panic of the nature
Speaker 1: of the change in warfare is.
Speaker 3: A danger We're so part is and only leave you
Speaker 3: with this. It's so easy to dismiss the efforts based
Speaker 3: upon which side of the Ali you're on. But the
Speaker 3: one thing I can deliver you from the other side
Speaker 3: a dispatch, which is the response is because there's exiting
Speaker 3: crisis happening that we need, we need to stand up
Speaker 3: this industry and you. Lastly, the seventy percent of all
Speaker 3: you know kills or casualties in Ukraine are caused by
Speaker 3: a flying object the size of a dinner plate that
Speaker 3: you can make for eight hundred dollars. You can't make
Speaker 3: it here for eight hundred dollars, But that what does
Speaker 3: that tell you? So the second question is our adversaries
Speaker 3: North Korea, all our different enemies are getting a PhD
Speaker 3: and how to make these at scale and listen very quickly.
Speaker 3: So what you're reading about is because of that threat,
Speaker 3: and that we're not no.
Speaker 1: I think we just generally all need a better education
Speaker 1: in what is happening at the moment. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is unfortunate. We cover the war in Ukraine now through
Speaker 1: the prism of how it ends. We don't actually cover
Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine collectively anymore through what's happening in
Speaker 1: the moment, and that that's probably actually is hindering your
Speaker 1: ability to communicate the urgency of this and frankly mine
Speaker 1: as well. We need more pictures of what's happening in
Speaker 1: the moment.
Speaker 3: I agree, Thanks for.
Speaker 2: That was exactly. Other than that, enjoy the end of
Speaker 2: the year holiday.
Speaker 3: That was the plan. Exactly.
Speaker 2: Good to meet with you like that.
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