Sean Naylor

The reputation of them has been very poor for a bunch of reasons that we can maybe get into later on in the discussion.

But what my colleague Warren Strobel and I were told was that Since essentially the beginning of the second Trump administration, there has been a renewed interest inside the Pentagon to create a new NOC program, either through an entirely new unit or a kind of expansion and integration of pre-existing deep cover clandestine capabilities that already exist at the Pentagon.

And it has been recast as kind of a part of a larger program of so-called economic warfare against the Chinese.

And the program that we discussed in our story is incipient.

I mean, with the creation of the Economic Defense Unit and the Office of Strategic Capital, which predates this administration, but has been seriously plussed up.

I mean, I think you are seeing... you are seeing a little bit of the public, like you're seeing the kind of the top of the iceberg, right? In terms of what they're trying to get into.

My question about Hegseth was really an opening to bring up something I've wanted to discuss with you for some time, which is that you and I, and a former colleague of ours, Sean Naylor, are singularly responsible for, may have been singularly responsible for Pete Hegseth being secretary of war in the first place.

Secretary Hegseth, you're welcome.

And then I was on a panel and I had kind of a funny story.

Our listeners may know Sean Naylor.

He was standing around by my panel right before it started and I was talking to him.

And we were reliving the days of the global war on terror when I used to run into him at war conferences talking about droning civilians and such that was in the news during the Obama years.

And Slavinsky's team was landing right on the X of the kill box.

For details on the cascade of bad decisions made by Slavinsky, read Not a Good Day to Die by Sean Naylor.

Award-winning combat journalist Sean Naylor reveals a firsthand account of the largest battle fought by American military forces in Afghanistan.

He says Slavinsky was the team leader, the mission leader.

It was his repeated decisions that led to the cascade of catastrophes that resulted in Chapman's heroism, heroism that saved Slavinsky's life and every other team member, as well as the second rescue team on the approach of the Gila.

Of course, you wanna check out Jack's, uh, Substack called The High Side.

Him and Sean Naylor do investigative journalism of the highest standard.

Um, anything else, Jack? We're not going on a field trip this week.

I was go- I was going to go apple picking today, but it got canceled because of the rain.

I, I didn't think it needed to be, but now apparently it does.

Um, I'm not gonna speak too much about this because I'll let the people who were there talk about it or people who have actually gone through and, and interviewed those who were involved, um, like Sean Naylor did and, and others.

Uh, Dan Schilling wrote a book.

Um, there are people out there who are subject matter experts on this topic, and I'm not-