Psychological Operations in Combat and on the Joint Staff

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is the SPEAR the Story of the Profession of Arms, a production of the Modern War Institute at West Point, brought to you by the west point class of 1984. Welcome back to the Spear, the story of the profession of arms. I'm Dr. Charlie Feint, your host and today's guest is Colonel Jabesco Cook. Chevy, welcome to the show. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for having me, Charlie. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Chevy, we've been friends a really long time, since the first time you and I were at West Point. You have an amazing life history. We're going to talk in detail today about your time being a psychological operations officer and doing, doing non kinetic work on the Joint Staff. But before that there was a lot that went into your background experience before you rose to that level. And I'd like to start us there. Can you begin with a little bit of a, an origin story? Why did you decide to join the army and what attracted you to West Point? [00:00:46] Speaker B: So I've shared this a lot. People know that if anybody's been around me or listened to something else I've been on like, you know, I didn't have some deep patriotic background. I didn't grow up belting out the national anthem or anything, had love for my, my space, my city, my state. But I don't know if I had a larger context of what America was or what, you know, serving America was until I joined JROTC in high school and had these Vietnam veteran instructors that were, you know, just involved with me from a fatherly perspective, from a, you know, leadership perspective, from an instructor perspective. And they were starting to ask those questions about what's the future, what's next? And as such, they would bring in folks to talk about future. So they would bring in army recruiters, Marine recruiters, they would bring people from the state, locally, I'm from South Carolina. And one odd time they brought in a West Pointer, right? She was from the area, she was a recent graduate and she talked about this place that I thought was in Virginia. I found out it was in New York. And she talked about how great an education it was and how it was an opportunity and all I needed to do was serve on the back end. So I just raised my hand and I was like, how much does it cost? And she was like, nothing, you just need to serve in the Army. And this is in the 90s, so you know, we hadn't as a, as a larger army deployed since like Desert Storm at the time. So I was like, well, I guess I'm just going to kind of go there and do the get this education, and then I guess I'll be in the army and I guess I won't do anything. Yeah, I was wrong. But anyway, that was the story. That's how I got interested in West Point, paying for college and going to an institution that I thought was really about my leadership, which I thought I had a little bit of. And I thought this would be a great place. And I thought I needed a little bit of discipline as well, because I was a wild teenager. I was like, this is probably just what the doctor ordered. And ultimately it was. [00:02:40] Speaker A: That sounds very similar to my own experience. I was in Jerry Ortizia also. And we had a lieutenant colonel retired and a sergeant major retired that were war veterans. Both of them had been in Korea and one of them had been in Korea and Vietnam. That's how old they were when they were there. And just like you were saying, great mentors, always pushing options in front of us, including the option to go serve in some other way. Not everyone who did JRTC like us went on to ROTC or college of the army or whatever. So many ways to serve. That's what they pushed on us. I was smiling when you're talking about how the army, back in the time that when you and I were young and our experiences were what, Grenada, Panama, first Gulf War, where you have wars that are 20 days maybe, versus 20 years. So I guess we learned, didn't we, after that? [00:03:27] Speaker B: We certainly did. You know, I came in and 9, 11 happened when I was a cadet. And it, it changed the academy. And I always tell people, unless you were there at the academy during a time, like, picture this picture going to the academy in the very late 90s, and the only cadre staff and faculty that had works. But you got like one person who's been to Somalia. You got like two or three people who've been to Desert Storm. And I think the commandant and the soup at the superintendent at the time had been. Were Vietnam veterans. And we were. We treated them like we worshiped the earth they walked on because they had, you know, real world combat experience. And then fast forward, by the time I was a senior, we had incoming freshmen or plebes. Like, we had three. I remember very specifically, we had one from the Ranger Regiment and we had two from the 82nd who had been to Afghanistan. And there was this, like, debate on campus. Okay, like, how do we treat these plebes? There was like the one cohort of folks that was like, they're plebes, they're the lowest scum. Like, we're Going to treat them like crap, like we have for millennia. And then there are others like, no, these guys have been to combat. Like, we need to learn a whole lot. It was just a paradigm shift. It was really different. And then, you know, you start hearing about upperclassmen that graduated before me, and, you know, we started having casualties. So it became extremely real. And I graduated in 2004 in my class. Just the timing that we came out, we all ended up. Either our first deployment was into the surge, or that was our second deployment into the surge in Iraq. And unfortunately, my class has a dubious distinction of having the most combat deaths since a class since Vietnam. So we really bore the brunt of that learning, as you would call it, really early and new in our careers. And I couldn't, you know, me sitting in a high school JRTC classroom hearing about Vietnam War stories, which are. They're, you know, all wars have their stories, but there's a certain color and texture to Vietnam. And that's the context I had, thinking there was going to be nothing that I was going to see that was like that. And then we come into our version of the new. I wouldn't call it the new Vietnam, but our Iraq and our Afghanistan, those early times in the 2000s. Needless to say, it is. It has its own color and texture and feel and difficulty and triumph and valor and everything that goes with it. But it was long and enduring, to say the least. [00:05:58] Speaker A: It was. And very different than kind of what we expected based on how we grew up. I remember watching the movie Platoon on Repeat and thinking that's what it was going to be like. And there's no jungle out there. I guess you have a parallel with Viet Cong, with fighting Al Qaeda and the other insurgents, but definitely a different experience than I think most of us were expecting, 100%. [00:06:20] Speaker B: But I think, you know, true to, you know, the institution, true to West Point at least. I can't speak for other institutions, but West Point as a microcosm of the Army, I do think West Point was still preparing graduates in the most proper way for us all to be ready. Right? The Modern Warfare Institute to this day is still preparing people for, you know, what's next. And I think the army at the time, I'm no historian, I'm no, no politician, so I don't want to get, like, super deep on that side of it. But I do think the army was prepared enough, stutter, stepped a little bit, and then got deep into doing what the nation called of us at all costs. And I will tell you, you know, you know, I'm still young, so I won't know how I will look back on all of this stuff as a granddad or so, but I will tell you, I'm proud of what I saw my classmates, what I saw the formations around me do during those early years and beyond, because we kept going and kept going and kept going. And there was, obviously there's some costs with that and there's lot of debate about the worthiness of that. But I will tell you at West Point, I think prepared me and those around me to do what the nation called for. And if, if there's anything we can ask of our institutions is just that, to make sure we are ready and make sure we have the foundational characteristics and capabilities to go out there and do the nation's bidding. Whether that's in the streets and deserts of Iraq or Afghanistan, or whether that's current day models in different parts of the planet where we might not have a named area, conflict or war, but we are competing in a way that requires us to be know, do differently. [00:08:09] Speaker A: I could not agree more. I think West Point in particular, and the army in general does a job of giving us enough. We, there's no way that we can be prepared or that you and I can prepare the next generation of warriors for everything they're going to encounter because there's just no way to anticipate it. But we can put them in enough situations in the field, in real life, in the classroom, to where they confront something new. They at least have some type of intellectual background or some type of experience, some type of confidence going into it. They can handle anything. Was that kind of how you felt the first time that you deployed after you graduated and then did your initial training? [00:08:45] Speaker B: I think so. I think, you know, some people would, would say like, oh, I was lucky to go to West Point and have all that training and you know, have all the, the, the monster of the fundage and everything that goes behind the funding rather, that goes behind, you know, West Point. I, I would say absolutely not. I don't, I don't believe in luck and I don't think West Point believes in luck either. You know, my attack when I was a cadet who ends up, he's a special forces officer, ends up being a public affairs officer, retired a couple moons ago. Now, As a, as an 06 told us as cadets, like, you know, luck isn't a thing. Luck is an equation. It is preparedness plus opportunity. So to your point, I got the opportunity to deploy, I got the opportunity to go to combat with my initial unit. And if I was lucky in those senses, it was because I was prepared when that opportunity arose. And I do think at a very base level, West Point prepared me for one. The. The ability to lead in a tumultuous environment. And then at the echelons beyond that was having some semblance of, I know how I react in moments of stress. I know how to lead through that. I know how to maybe lead others through that. And regardless of the context, whether that be Iraq or Afghanistan or some other place, I think kind of those initial. The initial push, pullback, zoom out, see what's going on around us, and then zoom immediately back in and get people moving and doing things. Regardless of where you are and what you were doing, whether that was, you know, a direct fire fight or reacting to an ambush, or if you were doing base security and kind of the simple things of just dealing with the stresses of being in a place where it's hostile and it's hot, I think I was not lucky, but prepared for the opportunity for sure. [00:10:44] Speaker A: Chevy, you're a psychological operations officer right now, but you didn't start off that way. In fact, you can't grant commission into that. So talk to us a little bit about what you studied at West Point in terms of what your major was, and then why you decided to go in the branch you went to before you went to psyop. [00:11:00] Speaker B: Okay. So I studied psychology as an undergrad at West Point. I thought I was going to be a computer science major. That's what I planned on. And then I took CS101, CS103, and we were like coding robots and stuff, which would be really helpful today. But back then I was like, man, I can't do this, and this is not interesting. And I just was like, what am I going to do? And then the next semester, I took PL100, which is general psychology for the military leader. Still name that today, I think. And I was like, oh, this is intuitive and this feels right. And this is like a people thing. And I think leadership is about this people stuff. So that's why I picked that. Fast forward to my senior year, and myself, like many others, were trying to pick our branches and pick our posts off of who could get into combat fastest, which is not ideal, but, you know, the young at heart and the people who thought we were going to miss out on the opportunity, that's what we were doing. And I've told this story a couple of times. I wanted to be an infantry guy, just like all my friends. But I was 630something or so in my class and I knew if I picked infantry I would not be going into a rotational unit. I'd be doing probably more of an institutional unit, which is also important. You know, back then, grtc, ntc, those folks weren't deploying. They eventually did did, but I was like, I don't necessarily want to do that. I had the opportunity to go to over overseas for CTLT or the summertime shadowing of a lieutenant and I went to a Patriot unit, an ADA unit in Germany. And I had a phenomenal time. So I said, hey, maybe I pick air defense because I'll be high enough ranked in that branch specifically to maybe get the post of my choice. And I was. And so I got the, the chance to choose the post of my choice. I chose the 82nd. I chose Fort Bragg. At the time, my then girlfriend, now wife was still going to college down there in Columbia, South Carolina. I just wanted to be close. So I got a chance to come in the army as an air defense artillery officer in the 82nd. And that's how my, my, my journey started. And I chose to swap over after that first deployment because ADA was changing in a way that um, I was like, well, if I gotta change and learn new systems and stuff, I want to change and do something bespoke. And I got a chance to see special operations folks overseas and I thought that was very interesting. I wanted to keep jumping out of planes and I thought that was very interesting. My knees and my back are paying for it today. But at the time talking to my wife literally went to the MD MWR tent, waited my, you know, 30 minutes in line for my five minute call. And during that call, I remember it like it was yesterday. I talked about maybe staying in the army when I got back because I was gonna have to go to the Captain's career course. And either you're gonna push that off and just be a staff officer and ride your time out and get out, or you're gonna go to captain's career course and keep going forward. And we were having a discussion about what we were going to do and she asked, what do you want to do? I was like, I want to study psychology more and maybe do something in psychology. And she's like, how are we going to pay for that? And I was like, well you're looking at our finances and stuff, how can we. And she was like, I think you need to stay in the army. So I was like okay. She was like, can you do Something with psychology in the army. And I knew about PSYOP and I knew it was becoming a branch and I knew it would keep us at Bragg. And her only ask at a time when she was like, hey, I don't want to move to Korea and, and move all over the. I kind of want to just stay local for now. And I was like, I got you, I gotcha. We can stay at Bragg. I can do something with psychology. And I keep jumping out of planes and blah, blah, blah. And that was the rest of history. And that's how I came to siop. [00:14:34] Speaker A: How long was it between the time that you graduated the in the ADA Basic course and the time that you switched over to siop? [00:14:42] Speaker B: About three years? Yeah, about three years to the day. Okay. Like I was a. I basically went to the Captain's career course for my basic branch for Air Defense. Now you don't do that if you come into PSYOP now. Just they have RSoft, CCC. As I said, I have a special operations Captain's career course for psyop, CA and SF that's all integrated. Back then you went to whatever. You went to something else. Some people went to the Maneuver Career course. I just went back to the air defense one because I could guarantee the date, it could get me out the fastest and it could get me into my training the fastest. And they had paired with University of Texas El Paso for a night and weekends master's program at the time. So I got a chance to get my first master's degree with, you know, civilian clothes on and going to a quote unquote real campus. So I did that and then I immediately came back and I came right into SWCC Special Warfare center down there at Fort Bragg and started my, my training pipeline. And by the time I graduated from that, I was just at the edge of my five, my initial five year commitment and I was rotating back into Iraq. [00:15:51] Speaker A: You said you're rotating back into Iraq. You did a deployment there while you're in the 82nd. [00:15:54] Speaker B: Then I did and it was a year in split between Balad, Baghdad and Fallujah on the first rotation. [00:16:04] Speaker A: So I was stationed in Balad as well. And that was interesting. But Baghdad and Fallujah were pretty sporty. What kind of things were you doing there as an ADA officer? There was not a lot to shoot down at that time. Right? [00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So we were doing a force protection mission called C Ram, Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar. And at the time they were installing C RAM in Baghdad at the big bases like Victory Base Complex and Then out there in Fallujah, they were putting together a similar component, a couple of components of C ram, which is not. Not like shooting down the rockets and mortars, but like, in placing the radar system. So Camp Fallujah at the time could. Like, they were receiving some. Yeah, it was very sporty. There's some stories there, but we don't necessarily have to get into that. We were in placing radars and helping them build out their base defenses. So I was a part of what felt like a little special operations team. This is like my real kind of first dabbling, doing some independence. So I was the. I was a young lieutenant. They paired me with a Navy chief, so a E7. Then I had a contractor from. I think it was Northrop Grumman was running the system. And then I had this other kind of like, radar specialist that went around with us. So the LAFOR kind of group team. And we went down to Baghdad for the better part of two months to help them set up their entire base structure with respect to the defense of Baghdad from rockets and mortars and artillery strikes. And I did the same thing out a very similar thing. Just focus more on the sensors out there in Fallujah. So, again, not a typical air defense role. Not a typical. Well, I mean, air defense, I think, does see some C RAM missions now, but very unique to be on that kind of small traveling team to pick up and go on trucks or pick up and go on a set of aircraft and fly someplace and be alone and unafraid in these tents and doing what you do when you're in intense and mortars and things start coming in and then coming back home and reporting all that stuff and trying to be good for your higher headquarters and rinse, recycle, repeat on into the surge. [00:18:20] Speaker A: Well, as someone who spent a lot of time on the FOB in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm a believer in the C ram. And I remember seeing one for the first time. It just reminded me of R2D2 with. With. With a minigun on it. And then watching the first time fire and actually shoot something out of the air as it was coming in is pretty impressive. Chevy, that's a great system. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Those. Those teammates that I was with during that turn at that time, those guys shot down a lot of stuff, saved a lot of lives. And, you know, again, as I look back on, you know, my particular time, my particular service, I've gotten a chance to do some different and unique things, obviously. But I will tell you, on that first appointment, there were some of Our guys that didn't want to do that, they wanted to go out on patrol and like go up and down, right? Irish, I will tell you over time, when they saw the lives we were saving and we were getting visits from every the who's who, Schoomacher came out, Odierno came like everyone was rotating to us every time we shot some stuff down. And there are just kudos all over. I think it was an extremely important mission that people could look back on and be proud of and understand like where that legacy lies now is, you know, air defenders, for those that don't know, are the most deployed service folk in our army to this day. It doesn't matter whether it's a named area conflict or war going on. Those guys are still rotten rotating those guys and gals still rotating to the Middle East. Those guys are still getting like shot at and stuff from Iranians right now, just to, to be clear and blunt about it. So, you know, I look back on it as something pretty unique and pretty worthy calls and, and fairly unique and different. It also like lifted me up, right? Like I finally got to see a strategic picture, right. Most of us deployed as platoon leaders and, and saw kind of like they're very tactical. But I was immediately like pulled up to what does this look like for the defense of Iraq as a country and our duty stations therein. I think that set me up for [00:20:28] Speaker A: success for the softcomm and at that level, in that experience, you're already operating jointly. You mentioned you had a Navy E7, which is a very atypical experience for a young lieutenant. Certainly if you'd have been an infantry platoon leader, chances are you would not have had any folks in there other than infantry men. And here you are with a Navy E7. What was that experience like working with a sister service right out of the gate? [00:20:57] Speaker B: Well, I would constantly say beat Navy because, you know, being a West Wing grad is where you start. But in truth, it made me just the simple things, right? You learn, you, you start to work at a joint environment. You start the different languages. The way Navy chiefs are seen and lifted up is slightly different than the way we look at some of our junior and even some of our senior NCOs in the Army. Chiefs are, quote unquote, you know, little G gods in their formations and are respected like a E8 or E9 almost how we sometimes some formations in the Army. So it was really, really unique. They are also technically savvy. Most chiefs have a, have a technical component in them almost like A warrant, a warrant officer in the army, which was something new and unique to work through. And then when you combine that with walking around, also with a contractor, again, very, very joint feel, very interagency feel as a little team. And I don't have like, I'm a lieutenant, a first lieutenant, and there's no like captain walking around with me or some major I'm reporting to. Super, super unique. And it made me think about a couple different things. One, you know, how do we build a tight knit culture that's not necessarily based around army fundamentals, but based around joint doctrine, how we speak, how we liaise with others. Two, how do we make our, for our little tiny formation as effective as possible? So when we're going into these engagements that we're always at a very senior level that they could trust without looking at our ranks and our name tapes and all that stuff. And now even from our service, how am I supposed to trust this little specific niche team to advise me on this bigger, broader thing? Which I didn't get that at West Point, with all due respect. And I didn't get that in my basic course. And I didn't get that as we trained up for deployment. You know, I was focused on being a platoon leader. So those are the two things that really gave me. And I think that is the, the real push and the impetus that like. Well, the soft community does this all the time. Like, I want to think bigger, broader. I'm not saying the, the regular army mission is too small. It is ginormous and important. But I wanted to take my brain power and put it toward kind of those things. And I think that was that first, like, touch and taste and feel of it in a very unique way. And that Navy chief was, he was not easy. He pushed my ass super hard and he expected a lot out of me as a, as lieutenant. And he never messed up and called me an ensign, which was, which was also great. [00:23:56] Speaker A: Well, first of all, I think you being a West Point graduate, you are contractually obligated to say, beat Navy as many times as you can. I think, I think that's a requirement. Going back to your point about the soft, like, nature of that deployment. You're there in a small unit, you're doing joint ops, you have a large degree of autonomy and you're having outsized positive effects on the operation and support of the general purpose force. That has a very soft flavor to it. And I gotta imagine it might, might've been hard to go back to the 82nd to doing line and block DRF, one small fish in a big pond after that. So you went from doing the soft like activity straight into SOF with these psychological operations. And Chevy, can you talk a little bit about the application process? How does one become a PSYOP officer and what was your training pipeline like before you went back out in force? [00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so at the time, SIOP was becoming a brand new branch as opposed to, it had previously been a functional area. So it looked a little bit different then than it does now. So I think it's important to talk about how you do it now for those listeners who might want to do it. So it looks like just like if you were to go to SFAs and try to become a Green Beret, and it looks very, very similar to becoming a Civil affairs leader as well, because those are the three soft branch RSOFT Special Operations Forces branches in the Army. Civil Affairs, Special Forces and Psychological Operations. So you, you put in a packet. You got to do your lieutenant time somewhere else. You got to prove yourself, prove your mettle. And you know, I tell people all the time I've, I've recruited for my branch forever it feels like, and there's tons, tons of, I mean now there are, there are majors in, in my branch and budding lieutenant colonels that I knew as cadets, just to put it in perspective. But you know, everybody's got to do their time somewhere else. And I tell people that the, the best thing you can do is not about being MI or being something niche and specific out there. Are having, you know, some language on your, your, your records is actually just, just go be a good lieutenant. Okay? Just be the best lieutenant you can be somewhere and show promise, show that you can execute, you know, have an ability to execute independently too, is, is extremely important. And then you get a chance to go to selection. Selection is, is, is shorter in duration than sfas is, but it's just, it's bespoke, is specific for us. You're going to do some physical stuff, you're going to do some intellectual stuff and you're going to do some of that mixed together. And, and we're not going to talk about selection because I'm not supposed to talk about selection, but it's an opportunity for, for those out there to, to test your mettle. And then you go into a pretty long pipeline of studies around, you know, regional kind of studies that, that get you culturally attuned. You're going to take a language, and that language course can be kind of on the shorter end, three to four months. It could be on a longer end. That's more like six months. And it just depends on the language you're learning. If you're losing a quote unquote using or learning quote unquote easier language, then that won't be on the shorter end. If you're learning a longer, a harder language, that'll be on the longer end. So think the difference between a Mandarin versus a Spanish. Nothing against the culture there, but just they're different. One of those languages has a new Alphabet for you to learn and then you're going to do the normal stuff like sear school and you're going to do some field training and things like that as well. All in all, it can balloon, especially if you recycle anything. It can balloon to an 18 month or two year pipeline. It can be very long. I doubt that you can get in there and out any faster than about a year. So it's, it's a pretty long extensive pipeline and it should be right. Like if you're creating a Green Beret, if you're creating a civil affairs officer, if you're creating a psychological operations officer, you should get all of that training and be again re baseline to the RSoft principles, baseline to this community and then be prepared to go forth and do things at a at on a small team but at the largest scale you can imagine thereafter. So that's how you come over. [00:28:20] Speaker A: So first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about fight clubs. So for our listeners out there interested, if you want to find out what to do in selection for psyop, you got to go selection because Chevy's not talking. [00:28:29] Speaker B: Nope. [00:28:30] Speaker A: That's great. I'm really pleased to hear how much PSYOP has progressed. I was in the special operations community when SIOP became its own branch and there were some growing pains there as there any organization that started off new. But I really like how professionalized it's become. I love the fact that the RSOF guys go to their own captain's career course. And I really like how much enthusiasm there is for the PSYOP branch. I see it all the time here with cadets. They're super interested in PSYOP and civil affairs in a way that I don't think they were when you and I first got to West Point. Chevy, when we first met. [00:29:08] Speaker B: No, not at all. It's just, it's, it's a different way of looking at similar problem sets. Right. Like again, I've been a long time PSYOP guy. I call myself a non kinetics Guy now, just because I look at the kind of broader scope of it all. But I will tell you this like. And I again, I don't want to put down anybody's specialty, but if I have a gun in my hand and I'm trying to compel you to do something, I think while that may be difficult, I have lethal means to get you to comply. Now, that might be an SF person, that might be an infantryman, that might be a field artillery person, you know, doing Force Pro, whatever it may be. But a gun in my hand, I think it's probably easier for me to make you do something. Now, flip the script. I don't have a gun. I'm not dressed in a uniform. And I'm saying, which in Arabic means raise your hands. So I'm speaking to you in your language. You don't know what I am because you can't make that out with respect to what I'm wearing. And I'm not pointing anything pointy at you. And then to have a conversation, maybe to get you to compel or comply or whatever it is without those lethal means, though they may be near or they may be concealed, I think is a more difficult or unique challenge. I'm not saying it makes a psyop or better than somebody else. What I'm saying is it's a different means by. With which to do the nation's bidding or. Or to defend your nation or the unit you're supporting in a way that is, I think, compelling and interesting and new nuanced in a way that, you know, with respect to the hard tasks that we're being asked to do as a nation and what we're being asked to do as a Department of War and a set, a subset of that being the army, man, it is very interesting to use the lightsaber that's in your skull rather than a scoped out M4. And that's just how I've always kind of looked at it. Again, not taking anything away from my brethren. I'm glad that other people want to do that stuff, but I think there's just a. There are people that are cut for that, and then there's people who are cut from another cloth that want to do this kind of influential piece or. Or think through the stickiness of that. That which I just described. [00:31:50] Speaker A: Debbie, before you came into the training pipeline, did you have any other foreign language proficiency? [00:31:57] Speaker B: No, I took, you know, I took French as a middle schooler. I took Latin in high school because it would allow me to go to this school. Across town instead of the bad school that I was really near. And then at West Point, I was like, I want to do something different. I'm going to learn German. And my friend and still serving buddy and classmate Mike Hamilton, who's a brigade commander right now, he was like, I'm going to take Arabic. And I'm like, what are you going to do with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that worked itself out. And then I came in the army and went through training and they gave me Arabic. No. And if you take the D lab, the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, there's no language on it. It's like this made up gobblygook. And they're just testing your language competency and your ability to learn. And I tell people, like, as an hr, kind of, if you put on your HR hat for a second, that's amazing, right? Like, think about hiring folks where you're not, like, how many languages do you know? Think about the. The flip of it saying, like, how many languages can you potentially learn? Yeah, right. That's what that test does is what kind of proficiency applicability do you have for learning languages? So apparently I scored well enough to be in a Cat 3 or Cat 4. I asked for Spanish. I did. I'll admit, I asked for Spanish. It was like, no, you scored too high. You're going to get Arabic or Mandarin. What do you want? I was like, well, I think Arabic's more applicable right now. And, well, we can debate whether that's still relevant or not, but that's for maybe another podcast. [00:33:32] Speaker A: What kind of things did you find yourself doing after you finished the pipeline? We're back out in the forest at the psyop Officer. [00:33:37] Speaker B: Well, you know, they told us in the. In the Q course that we were going through the qualification course. You know, they had us raise our hands like, hey, who wants to teach? And go be an APMS and ROTC and all of that stuff. And some of us raised our hands and like, you're not doing that, you're deploying. And at first that's. That was the case. I mean, four months out of the course, I was back in Iraq. So what I found myself doing is your typical stuff that every team leader should do. Just like, if you're running an ODA in the SF world, you're running a detachment in the world. You gotta prove yourself. The course doesn't teach. Everybody knows in the soft community, you're just qualified, you just trained. You're not real until you go somewhere. And that go somewhere is not, you know, JROTC or NTC or the woods, it's go somewhere with your team and, and, and go look at things across the planet. So I got a chance to go back to Iraq as a young team leader and obviously we can't get into this, all the specific details therein, but I got to do stuff with social media when it was just burgeoning as a concept of influence that I didn't necessarily want to do right at the beginning, I will tell you. But again I was lucky in the sense of preparedness plus opportunity to be involved in social media exploitation and stuff when it was before it was a thing, this is before cyber command existed for example, like just to put it in perspective. So I got in on kind of the cutting edge of what is like Internet based influence and perception management look like. And what does it mean to use other means as well, using maybe contractors or other forces and their Internet means. And that's about as far as I can go. And then I came back and did all the normal stuff, did more training, did more cool stuff. You know they teach you how to drive and shoot really well and you get advanced language training and stuff like that. And then I went back over and I did some more stuff with Afghanistan, Bahrain, Qatar, on that kind of second rotation as a team leader, looking more regionally and really focusing on the Central Asian states and the problem set from Tajikistan to Pakistan, Iran included and all of that stuff back then. And looking at broad, broader, even broader, more specific influence. Looking into the landscape of behind the scenes with tv, behind the scenes of marketing, behind the scenes of cultural influence within institutions like prisons and other things that again we can't get into the details of. But an opportunity to help partners, interagency partners, three letter agency partners with their influence efforts and trying to stop people from smuggling drugs and using other kind of things like that for influence. So again, super unique opportunities in embassies, working in embassies, working with partner forces, working with interagency. Dressed like locals. I never wore a uniform in Afghanistan, for example. I was always dressed like a local or somebody in a suit and tie out of the embassy. Didn't have a cover. Just so we're clear. Like I'm not a CIA, I was in there, I didn't work for the CIA. You know, we don't do that kind of stuff in siop specifically what I cover. And that kind of, that's a whole nother slice of the pie. But you know, got to dress like a local and speak with sheikhs and imams and important Folks ministers at the governmental level and represent our American interests in a funky, unique way. And that was just like super busy. My kid was almost three. I had been gone for 24, 25, 26 months of her life. And my wife was like, hey, time to get off this train. Let's figure out a way to be non deployable. And I was like, well, sweetie, I have this concept, this mindset. They've trained me to do some unique things and the only place I can do it is overseas, so we're gonna keep doing that. And she was like, well, let's go somewhere where you can't. And that's how I came back to West Point back then. [00:38:06] Speaker A: So talk to me a little bit about that. I understand your reasoning and mine was largely the same way after some deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. And kind of seeing that, in my opinion, that we weren't going to be allowed to do the types of things it's going to take to win in those locations. And having two young, young children of my own, I also decided to come to West Point. So we're largely similar in those paths. But talk to me about what path you took, what the program was like with the application was like, and what you did when you returned to West Point as a commissioned officer. [00:38:39] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I'm going on this deployment and on the back end I know, like I got to get myself together because I'm getting to be a senior captain and you know, I had two options. I was going to try to be a, I think it's now called a Bradley fellow, but back then it was called joint staff's intern. So I put in an application for that. So operas weren't getting picked. Still have not get picked to this day, by the way. We've not had a Bradley fellow. So shout out to those who are going to keep trying to break that glass ceiling in the SOP community. Yeah, applied didn't make it. And a parallel process. Knew I could go back to West Point. Had been so influenced, like I mentioned earlier, by my tactical officer, Tom Gilleron, that I wanted to go back and be Tom Gilloran and Jeff Helms, who was also my other TAC officer. And at the time, you know, that the cohorts were rotating through Columbia University and they were getting, oh, by the way, a psychology degree from an Ivy League institution. I was like, man, slap me twice and call me silly if I don't sign up for this. So I did and luckily that one worked out. So I came back and I got the chance to go to Columbia and get an organizational psychology degree. It was one of the best years of my army career. I met some extremely phenomenal officers in my cohort. And then we got a chance to get in front of cadets and pour back into them just like somebody had poured into me. And the last thing I'll say there is, I asked Tom, hey, how do I know I'm going to be successful at this job? And he said, you won't know immediately. You'll only know when one of your cadets is calling you one day, like you are calling me right now asking you the same question. So treat every day like you don't know what you're doing right now, but invest in that future version of you and them, and you'll be just fine. And eventually, that's what I did. [00:40:39] Speaker A: That sounds like some pretty amazing and thoughtful advice. Were you at West Point long enough there that you saw some of your prior cadets come back? [00:40:48] Speaker B: I do know that cadets have come back from my tenure there. There are a number of them that ended up being taxed and teachers that are. I wrote letters of recommendation from, literally saw them as cadets. They circled back and was like, hey, sir, I want to do this later. And come. And they're there now. The craziest thing is to be attack or a teacher, because I ended up doing both. And we can maybe talk about that, too, and have a cadet follow them out into the army. They follow you, you stay connected. You write a letter of recommendation. They hit you with the message of, sir, I got. You know, I'm going back and I'm getting a chance, and da, da, da, da, da. And then fast forward their attack, asking you to come speak to their cadets. That's crazy. Or they're a teacher and they ask you to speak in front of their class, which I've done. I've done both of those. It is mind blowing to kind of be in that. That feeder loop of. Of continual investment and purposeful engagement with the academy, and not just the academy with the army's future. [00:41:57] Speaker A: Chevy, for our listeners who aren't West Point graduates or aren't otherwise familiar, can you explain what a tac officer is and what that role is at West Point? [00:42:07] Speaker B: So a tactical officer is the legal company commander. About 130 cadets there are. It fluctuates because we can't figure out whether we want the extra companies in each of the regiments, whether we want, you know, alpha through golf and we add a hotel or not, but. Or we add an indigo company sometimes, too, but you have these. You know, 32 to 36 companies within the regiment. And then there's a tac officer, tactical officer, and there's a tactical NCO for each one. And typically the attack officer is a captain, probably a senior captain in the broadening assignment. And there's a very senior E7, maybe a junior E8. That's the. The NCO there. And your job is to not only be kind of the legal UCMJ authority, all that stuff, because you need that kind of command structure with respect to legalese, but also you're there to be there in the broadest sense, mentor and coach. You're helping them through the decisions that they need to make to best prepare themselves for the opportunities that the army affords. Right. You're trying to make them lucky. To go back to the equation, and, you know, you're not only, like, using your expertise and experience from the military, but you're just helping them see themselves. Because cadets, while phenomenal, are still in the last developmental stages of becoming an adult. So oftentimes they're very reflective. They can be very introspective, which is another part of this. But they're not really circumspective. That's just my perspective on those kind of three things. Circumspective is this ability to future forecast in a way and get input from others and integrate it into your introspection and your reflection. So you're helping him with that circumspection, I. I believe, and I think those are different. Just so, like, I'm a super nerd on the psychology stuff. But you're helping them with that, and you're pairing that with your NCO to do the same. You know, they're acting not like the cadets, like platoon sergeant or something, but really giving them the perspective of the NCO side of it. And that side of the house, you know, deals with all the UCMJ or the disciplinary actions. It's. It's the cleaning of the barracks and all those kind of like, things that can seem mundane but are extremely important to build not only character, but attention to detail. So that's what tax and tech officers, tech NCOs do, which is very different than the schoolhouse folks, which I did that side too. And obviously you did. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Charlie, what other things were you into at West Point outside of being TAC officer? You mentioned being an instructor. I'd like to unpack that a little bit. But what other things did you do while you were back at West Point as a, as a tac? [00:44:53] Speaker B: There was a. There was a counterterrorism like club that I was in. And it's just something unique, right? That was where you found all the like guys who were in Delta Force or you know, were Green Berets and like, oh, we want to talk about regular warfare. Like, yeah, let's, let's go over there and do that. So I was in a, I was in that club to talk with cadets who were interested in this craft. And you know, at the time I was the only psychological operations guy walking around the campus. So it was just a natural fit for me to go advocate for my branch and, and talk about, oh, this is the other thing you can do in this community, you know, and talk about deception and all that other stuff that we bring to the, the fore to the fight of the regular warfare. So I did that. I was a boxer as a cadet, so I wanted to be involved with the boxing team. So I did. And my coach, Coach Barone was still hanging around. Everybody knows if you took army boxing as a class and you were on that team in the last like 700 years, you know, Coach Barone. So you know exactly what I'm talking about. So, you know, I got involved not, not formally, but just kind of dabble because I was busy being a teacher as well. And that was pretty much it because I was also dual hatting as an instructor. [00:46:08] Speaker A: Right on. And what did you teach? [00:46:10] Speaker B: I taught PO100, that class that changed, you know, my major. I taught general psychology for the military leader. And that was a super phenomenal chance to talk to incoming freshmen, which half of them are uninterested because it's like, it's a mandatory class and I don't like psychology and I'm more of an engineer, chemistry kind of person. Which West Point recruits 400 tracks. And then the other half like, oh, this is going to save me because I want some piece of liberal arts education at this institution. But also very interesting because it's, you know, I was teaching 7:30 in the morning, they're super sleepy, you know, maybe didn't do the homework. You know, it's kind of one of those things first thing in the morning, but really great, really great opportunity. And then I also taught an upper class elective called Leadership in Combat. At the time it was PL471. And we talk about, we talked about all the nasty stuff. We talked about killing, death, destruction, post traumatic growth and post traumatic stress, you know, leading folks into danger. The textbook itself was Leadership in Dangerous Situations. So the context of that was talking about swat, firefighters, other police forces, emergency Medical technicians. How do you lead when blood is gushing in your face? And how your body physiologically responds to that was the basic nature of that class. And I had folks from BSNL or the Behavioral Sciences Leadership Department, but I also had people from Defense Strategic Studies, DSS folks from the dmi, the Department of Military Instruction. So I had a couple different types of cadets in the class, a couple juniors, but mainly seniors in that. And we ran it like a seminar. We didn't have, I didn't have any slides. We had one textbook, we had a bunch of readings. Sometimes I dressed the part like I dress in my Afghan clothes or I dress like a kitted up, you know, SF person, soft person. And a lot of times I also included my journals. So I'm not necessarily a journaler. I'm a, I do bullet journal, but long form journaling I've only done on my deployments. And I captured all the nasty, difficult, uneasy stuff in there. It was just a way for me to process. And I brought those to class and sometimes I would read like we had a class on suicide. I've dealt pretty heavily with suicide. So I pulled out the journal and I, I read that journal entry and, and some of us got pretty teary eyed about it, but I wanted to bring that kind of fresh, real perspective in the classroom as well. And I left my journals in the classroom so they could, you can take. And some of them did. They took it with them and read more and asked me questions about it. So pretty dy. I tried to make it as dynamic as possible because leadership in combat is that extremely dynamic at this point. [00:49:10] Speaker A: You already have two master's degrees in addition to your undergrad. West Point. Yes, but that wasn't the end of your educational journey. If I remember correctly, you went on to get a Ph.D. is that correct? [00:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah, West Point was interested in bringing me back and as a KD major doing my key and developmental jobs, I was sucking. Right. Like it was just so difficult. It is for so many iron majors out there. And I just had a particularly tough row. PSYOP majors don't usually deploy because we don't deploy companies like that. We're just structured smaller and differently. A lot of SF majors do because they'll go run like an ODB somewhere. So yeah, psyop majors don't usually deploy just the way we're structured. We don't take our companies somewhere, we deploy our teams and we don't really deploy battalions like that either. But my experience as a site major is the exact opposite. We did do that. So I did deploy as a site major twice. And you know, I told my wife we weren't going to get back on the deployment train. And you know, I did. And it was, you know, it was ISIS related. So I went forward and I was a special operation Task Force J5 and then J3, which I didn't expect to do, but I did. And then fast forward, the Tango Tango incident happened in Africa, in Niger. And we, we took our whole battalion for what was, quote, unquote, a training exercise, but had other ramifications happening. That again, I, I hate to say it, but I don't necessarily, I want to talk about here, but I wasn't, we weren't structured and weren't necessarily supposed to do stuff like that. And then here I was doing that. So I got back on the train again and Ashley's like, look, this whole, like Fort Bragg and you just going and going and going. We gotta, we gotta do something different. And, and so West Point was calling and I was receiving and Ashley had always scratched the back of my skull with respect to, you need to get a PhD, you need to get a PhD. You need to figure out how the army can pay for it. And the army was offering and West Point was sponsoring. So I did. I went to Tufts University and I got my fourth degree on the Army's dime in psychology. Once again, I studied human development cradle to grave, like how we, you know, become who we are and how we end up who we are. I focused on post adolescence growth, so kind of the more adult end of the spectrum. And within that, I focused on character development and how organizations, institutions give us character, help us train and develop character. But also like at the individual level, how, how do we, how does character form? Really, really unique bespoke opportunity. At Tufts University, I studied with a gentleman who was advising the Pope on character education globally. That was my advisor, Dr. Rich Lerner. I studied alongside a colleague who had served in Delta Force who was getting the same exact degree in the same exact department, looking at the same stuff, which is again, such a unique opportunity to be around a unique, talented individual who also come from the soft community, who's just like on your same timeline, you get to share and grow together. And he is, you know, one of. Andy Farina is one of the most, the humblest, most accomplished, strongest, fastest, best shooting individuals I've ever been around. It was like being alongside. It's like going to NASA and the guy's already an astronaut. Qualified, but just kind of just going through them, going through the program again, just to help you out. That's, that's, that's Andy. And then just, you know, it got a chance, I got a chance to connect with West Point during that time as well. Because we were, you know, the, the, the large models we were looking at data set was based upon cadets and, and built upon some of the work that Angela Duckworth had championed so many years earlier with respect to grit and resilience. So looking at very large old detailed data sets and you know, being able to connect with West Point through it en route to potentially coming back to West Point, which I just didn't do. [00:53:40] Speaker A: Before we go into what you did do, I also want to echo what you were saying about Andy Farina. I work with them on the combat weapons team here. Just total package, really likable dude. Super strong, super fast, super fit like you said. And I'm pretty comfortable saying he's at least the best shot at West Point and there's a lot of competition for that standard. So what a great dude. And on top of that, like you said, he's got a PhD. So he's kind of the prototypical PhD that can win a bar fight that so many soft leaders say they want. [00:54:09] Speaker B: Oh yes. I mean this guy was like, we didn't even need to do it or learn it, but he was doing machine learning to help with his data when we were getting our PhDs. And this is from 18 to 21. So this is like on the edge of all of that AI driven data chunking and tabulating. And he was just like, ah, this is just a side project. This is just kind of what I'm doing to make my stuff better and make myself better. Like Andy is a phenomenal human being and to be in that environment with people again, that's one of the reasons I came to the soft community. Andy is a very n of 1. He is very unique and one of the best people I've humans I've been around. But there are people of that ilk just sprinkled throughout the special operations community, the JSOC community. That man, I've always had an itch and I've always felt most comfortable being around those folks because they're so intimidating in a way that makes you want to stay up a little bit longer so you work a little bit harder, get up a little bit earlier so you'd be in a little bit better shape, read a little bit more so you can add more contextual nuance and come at it from a different angle. You know, be in different spaces, so you can just uplift your game. Andy is a guy that's like, he just winks at you and you're like, oh, I got to get my stuff together, right? And I just, I've always loved being around people like that and hoped in some way, shape or form fashion that I was able to do that for somebody else as well. [00:55:51] Speaker A: Chevy, you didn't end up coming back to West Point, but let's talk about something you did end up doing and that's working. Non kinetic effects on the joint staff. Now in the army we're very focused, especially right now in lethality, as we should be. But then the whole other side that contributes to getting national interest secured and that's non kinetic effects. So can you talk to us a little bit about what non kinetic effects are, what they might look like in practice and what your job was on the joint staff that involved that work. [00:56:22] Speaker B: So we're going to start from a doctrinal perspective because I think that's important and that's the, you know, I'm wearing my glasses right now, so I got to keep, keep my nerdiness going. First of all, like in joint doctrine, it is non lethal or lethal effects. And I think we can understand just by that phrasing exactly what non lethal versus lethal effects are. Everything that goes boom and makes people go splat is on the lethal side, to be very blunt about it. Right. The non lethal side of it is everything that is encompassed around those booms and splats, if you will. So if you think full spectrum operations, so you're thinking about satellite, you're thinking about cyber, you think about space in general and then you're also thinking about those non technical means. So you're starting to think about public affairs, you're starting to think about psychological operations, you're starting to think about deception, you starting to think about maybe a special, special supply chain management kind of stuff as well. All the things that kind of can go into having a, a full spectrum effect in an area on a target, etc. The reason non kinetic becomes, you know, kinetic versus non kinetic becomes kind of term du jour these days is on the simple side. It's, it's when you're talking about not wartime conditions is it's hard to say like lethal versus non lethal when you're not talking about a named area of conflict or actual war, right? Because why would we be doing anything lethal or non lethal when there's no war set, right? So it's easier on the ears from a politically savvy perspective to just say kinetic versus non kinetic. And then just to be kind of simple and blunt about it, the Chairman uses the terms non kinetic. Right. Like so there's a secretary, right. So it's in the, it's in the linguistic sphere to use kinetic versus non kinetic. And they're kind of, if you bend non, non kinetic with non lethal that's, that's appropriate and lethal with kinetic that's appropriate kind of dimension as well. And when I first came to the Joint Staff, I didn't come to the Joint Staff to specifically advise on non kinetic effects. There's a PSYOP06 on the joint Staff has long been many predecessors to me. I came to basically advise on at the time military Information Support Operations or miso, which is now changed back to reverted back to psychological operations and military deception. Those two kind of bins are always kind of put together. That's what I came to the Joint Staff to originally do, report to Congress. Because we're a special interest item. And that's kind of a very specific kind of denotation. The way our money's transferred and how we do things requires regular reports to the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. I came to do that and then we had a change of administration, change of some priorities to how we look at the world and how we scope competition with respect to our near peer competitors. And we started looking at, well, advisement with respect to all kinetic and non kinetic effects. I was working in the J39 on the joint Staff, which is the Deputy Directorate for Global Operations, the ddgo. So we joke that that's the junk drawer of the Joint Staff because it's like, I don't know what to do with this thing. Throw it in a junk drawer, put it all down on the end of the Joint Staff. But one of my bosses also called it the Batman's toolkit because it's where all the bespoke stuff is. That's where all your special access programs are, your special technical operations are, your special projects and innovations are, and then stuff like me, siop, Mildex, Space Cyber, et cetera. So there became a need for an advisor to the Chairman and the Secretary with respect to everything non kinetic for things we were doing globally. And I got the tag you're it. Just because I had dabbled and I had in various deployments and training and stuff had been not just doing the PSYOP thing very specifically. I had touched on and understood the, the processes, procedures, requirements, authorities, asks, permissions, etc with respect to Everything non kinetic. So I got asked to advise on all those things. This is great. It was also very difficult. [01:01:11] Speaker A: It doesn't surprise me that you get picked for a position like that. Chevy, your West Point grad, you got two masters, you got a PhD from Tufts, which is very respected not only in academia but in the security space. Plus your multiple deployments and your SOF experience. How did you feel when you first got told that you were going to be doing this job? [01:01:33] Speaker B: I'm sorry I left, but I remember being. You know, I won't name any names in the parties involved. I've already said the chairman. This the chairman. I've already said the secretary. We know who that is. But I won't dime out any of my bosses or anything. But I will tell you this. You know, I will worked in an office that I had. I had five computers and seven phone systems. Just to give you a layout of my office. [01:02:04] Speaker A: Wow. [01:02:04] Speaker B: Because of all of those things in my little small office, it's not a co. This is my office. It's not like with other teammates. It's just my small space doesn't make me important. Just trying to give you some context. I had all those systems at work. Never on green, never on unclass, basically. So my phone's always outside. I'm in a SAP F, which is a. A skiff of a skiff. Right. It's like. It's like the. There's. There's like being inside of all. Inside of a vault. Right. We would never do anything at home. I didn't have any technology in my house, so I'd never do work at home. There was no calls. There was no after, if it was a thing. I got a text. We got to work on this in the morning. That's about it. My boss called me one night and I was like, wait a minute. I turned the phone to my wife. I'm like, hey, my. My general officer is calling me. She was like, he never calls. I'm like, I know that I probably need to take this. And it's just the nature of the job. Like, they don't. We don't. That's not what we do. We work at work. So this was my experience. That's why I laughed. I pick up the phone. He says, hey, Chevy, you know I'm going to leave tomorrow, right? This is a Thursday night. Like, yes, sir. He's like, we got some stuff where I might not be at LE on leave and I'm gonna really need your help. I was like, okay, sir, can you tell me a little bit more. He's like, nope. But I'll tell you this, you're gonna be at the 7:30 standup, right? I'm like, yes sir. Okay, if I come into that standup, our weekend is screwed. That's not the word he used. This. [01:03:42] Speaker A: I'm not. [01:03:43] Speaker B: He said our weekend is screwed. Okay? So if you see me in the morning, just know that we're gonna be working pretty hard on some stuff, so I'm gonna need your help. I was like, okay. He's like, but I fully plan on right now. It's like 8:30 at night. He's like, I fully plan on going on leave. I was like, okay, sir, got it. Hang up the phone. So I walk in 7:30 to the meeting. He's not in there. I'm like, oh awesome. I'm not screwed. Well why did he walk in? Why was he not there? Cause he's walking in late. Cause he's getting more update, more updates. So he walked in and he just straight up gave me the kind of look over the glasses thing. And I looked back at him and he nodded and I nodded. And that was my first experience of being asked. Right after that, he whisked me into a room with other people, we signed some documents and we started working on some things. And yes, my weekend was screwed and many more weeks to come in the best way possible. You know, screwed in the sense of my time was not my time. But we were asked to do things and advise on options that quite literally had never been talked about before, were never options for our government and ultimately led to what I would characterize in the most humblest sense, some of the most historic things we've done in the non kinetic effects space in history, period. So again, worthy of the cause. If you go back to my early journey of being a young air defender, looking up, seeing something bigger, broader, maybe you know, not as sexy as being involved in a tick and exchanging directly with Al Qaeda, but being seeing that as worthy and different and strategic and the most senior leaders are interested and wanting options in that space. And then translate it to now where I'm directly interfacing and engaging with the chairman, sometimes on a daily basis to provide optionality that he took directly to the Secretary or the President and they made direct decisions on and brought it right back to the space where I could then assist various combatant commands, various tiered forces with implementing the things that don't go boom, but provide optionality for our defense in a way that allows us to not put people in Harm's way maybe. Or make people's decision calculus change in a way that is advantageous for our government in a way that has never been seen in that light before. It's great. [01:06:29] Speaker A: That's strategic level input and effort. And I gotta imagine that it's definitely gonna be stressful, but probably rewarding. Do you feel like that was a rewarding assignment? [01:06:40] Speaker B: You know, I, I'm at 23 years. I, I don't know. You know, if, if I were to get the question what's the most rewarding assignment? I would probably default to, you know, being back at West Point, pouring in the cadets. But you know, I will tell you my time, two years on the joint staff, just you know, leaving it recently and, and the, the way the team took care of me on the way out of the door, I'm the stuff they gave me. You know, my wife actually came to the award ceremony, which we don't actually ever never do. We never do that. And just it was an opportunity to like bring Ashley in and let her, you know, hear all of those. Well, all the unclassified version of the stuff. Right. It was hard, but phenomenal. I will. The simplest way, the most straightforward way I can put it is this. I'm a psyoper. A lot of times people think they don't either understand what we do or we're not necessarily a priority with respect to the fight. [01:07:42] Speaker A: Sure. [01:07:43] Speaker B: And then in the grand scheme of what is the soft community? Right. You know, I'm not, I'm not haloing into some place and doing something, you know, you know, I'm not repelling onto the top of a building and extracting a high value. I'm not doing those things. Right. So it can be not as sexy. But what I will tell you is being a sign upper that now understands the broader scope of packaging opportunity for effect. So you know, can we do this cyber action that is space enabled, that is also has a messaging component to it that has another kind of deceptive phase that makes people look a different way versus this which has a technical solution involved that turns some things on. So I can even do it that were turned off that I didn't have control of. And oh by the way, I'm doing this all from the United States of America. I can't, you can't get any more rewarding than, than that. And then telling the most senior leadership. Right. Speaking directly to the chairman, sometimes speaking directly to the secretary and them speaking directly to our president and them making decisions on that. I don't think it can get even more. Any more rewarding. [01:09:10] Speaker A: Shelby, what do you think best prepared you for that type of assignment? [01:09:16] Speaker B: Sorry for laughing again. You know, that's an interesting question. I laugh because I immediately go back to, you know, my mama, my Mama J. I grew up In a typical 80s neighborhood, you know, moving. There was drugs moving around me. I was involved in some of that stuff, too, and crime and, you know. You know, there's a shootout in my neighborhood. Some people know this shootout. My yard. The first time I saw a dead body was not in the streets. Iraq. It was in my yard from a shootout that happened in a pathway in my yard. And my mama told me way back in the day, Mama J, she told me, like, you got to get out of this. You got to get out of this. In order to get out of this, you got to go get educated. You got to see the world. You got to see a bigger picture. So I laughed because initially my gut reaction was Mama J prepared me for this. She wanted me to see something bigger and broader than my street, my block, my neighborhood. Right. Like many stereotypical people from my community did at the time, like, represent your hood or claim your block. Right. She wanted me to see something broader than that. So it started there. You know, you fast forward to having Vietnam veteran instructors who, again, were not at a time of war in the 90s. They're saying, like, this was my experience of Vietnam. This is how I was received when I came back. This is why I'm continuing to serve in your classroom as a retiree, getting me to lift up my view and pushing me toward West Point and then a place like West Point doing that, too. And then a time of war starting when I was a cadet. So it became super real, all the training and things, and the. No longer is it like, oh, you killed your whole platoon. And that's just being kind of silly. It's now like, oh, no, no. This is, like, actually real. Let's take this training very seriously. And then on throughout my career, it was about, you know, I just have always been in a situation, and my teams that I've been on have been in situations where we had to, like, level up. I wrote speeches for the secretary as a part of my career, for secretary warmth. Her first year, I was constantly in her sphere. Her sphere, sorry. Watching her engage with senior leaders, industry leaders. So I got a front row view of how she spoke about our army and our national defense from a global perspective. And I didn't just see her do that with general officers. I got a chance to see her do that with industry professionals, right? So again, I got this layered up. It was always level up. It was always, hey, Chevy, level yourself up. You can't just. Just be the lieutenant, the captain, the major, the lieutenant colonel. It was always like, get up, level up. So when I got the chance to, you know, be asked to advise, you know, the chairman as a part of, you know, my role there in a three, nine, and with alongside the three, alongside the J2, and I'm constantly in the room with three stars, four stars. It was, hey, you can't just be the colonel in the room, PhD or not. Like, you gotta level up. Because I'm gonna take this product and I'm gonna take it over to the White House today. And I think I just from. From very jump street from start Mama J saying, think bigger, broader. Get outside of your own head. Get outside of your own heart even. I think it started back then and I've just been prepared, right, for the opportunity which made me look lucky. Seems there's a theme here there, Charlie. [01:13:05] Speaker A: That might be the name of this episode. Well, shout out to Mama J in her early preparation. [01:13:11] Speaker B: She's very proud. [01:13:14] Speaker A: Chevy, you mentioned speech writing and writing has been a passion of yours for a long time. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you got into writing, how it manifested itself, and whether you think that's something that's good for the profession? [01:13:27] Speaker B: Well, I think I've always tried to figure out a means to collect my thoughts. So I talked about long form journaling and bullet journaling and stuff like that. And I'll tell you, most people don't think so, but I am more introverted than not. So I'm always, like, deep inside my own psyche head, you know, that's where I find comfort and safety. And, you know, I've long been a reader as well and like to jot and take notes and all of that. So I was trying to figure out a way to, like, be a better, effective communicator. I was, you know, a young cyber. You know, my. My mouth is my actual, like, primary weapon system, right? The magazine that's feeding the. The gun there is my brain. So I got to get this thing better. And I wanted to be a lucid and efficient and good communicator. So I started writing poetry, actually. And then I wanted to get out of this shell. And I thought Toastmasters was kind of corny, so I just went to portrait events. So I started writing for poetry events and spoken word poetry and performing in front of people. And getting to be a better communicator, which made me want to write poetry better. And it just kind of fed itself, right? And then I get myself back to West Point and I get to teaching and a couple people there, like Morten Ender, who are, who's still serving him and bsnl, I mean, they were having these, these sessions where they were bringing in junior faculty and they're talking about publication. And I was like, well, I want to, I want to come see what you guys are talking about here. Even though I'm attack and a teacher and quote unquote, not, you know, like a pseudo academic, not a quote unquote real academic. So, you know, I just got in there and I got super interested in and what they were talking about. And you know, there, there became this idea in me like where. Well, your ideas aren't like really like vetted ideas until you like bounce them off of people, right? And at the time I was reading stuff that was saying Act 2. Paul Ardenne has this book called whatever you think, think the opposite. And in it he says, and an idea unshared is not an idea at all. This is a chemical response in your brain. I was like, man, this is kind of powerful stuff. And then it was like, hey, I'm sitting amongst these people who are talking about like publishing and getting it vetted through other people. And I was like, well, I guess if I have a really good idea, I gotta bounce it off of people. But the kind of next level of that is putting it through the sifting of the editorial process of acceptance or rejection and then the editing that comes after that if it is accepted. So I was like, man, I would really want to publish something. And it was really hard that first time I tried to publish something and it was in a small wars journal. And then the one after that was like Joint Forces Quarterly, which is a super jump up, which I couldn't believe. And then it just kind of was a trickle. And I was like, oh, this is, you know, my ideas are accepted, they're vetted, they're, they're, they're meshed through a system and they're permanent. And that was something else because it's like, well, Socrates didn't write anything, but he passed along ideas to Plato. Plato didn't necessarily write anything down either. A lot of people don't know this, but he passed a lot of stuff to Aristotle. Aristotle wrote all of their stuff down. So that's how we have stuff from Plato and Socrates, so we're able to capture stuff from Those three ginormous great minds, those planets of history, because somebody wrote the stuff down and we still read it to this day. There's this huge push to be like into the Stoics and you know, of this philosophy and read about all. Yeah, those people wrote stuff down, right? Marcus Aurelius wrote so much stuff down that we have a whole like culture around, you know, his ability to be the stoic leader or stoic gentleman or the stoic person. So that's the other part of it was. Well, this allows for legacy and permanence in a way that especially in today's age where even everything you type on the computer can be probably seen a millennia from now, became really important to me. And you know, I think that's how you kind of sum up. It's just, you know, it's. That publication is permanence piece. It's the, it's the part about like ideas that are unsure aren't really ideas at all. And trying to just be a lucid communicator. Writing is extremely important. You know, if you can speak and lead a formation, that's great. If you can't write, you're not a good leader. I'm sorry, it just is what it is. [01:18:21] Speaker A: You were selected for the Dubik Fellows program twice, which might be a first, certainly rare in that, in that world. Can you talk to us about what the DUIK Writing Fellowship program is and what kinds of things you did as part of. [01:18:39] Speaker B: Is named after Lt. Gen. Retired James Dubik or Jim, if you know him, who's still around and still writing. Writes a lot and is an intimidating human. He helped start one of the Ranger battalions in the 70s as a young leader and has a very unique, up to three star level leadership that was capped off in the, in the early 2000s. Named after him because he's a writer and a thinker and you know, a guy that would, you know, a PhD that would win a bar fight. Right. It's around that mentality of, you know, can the, the purpose of the, of the, of the Dubik Fellowship is can we elevate the professional dialogue through writing? Can we talk about leadership? Can we talk about the challenges facing our nation? The challenges across the international relations space through, through writing and specifically through publication. The Dubik Fellowships do. Works closely with the Harding Fellowship. And the Harding Fellowship is about like actually putting soldiers and officers because they use NCOs too, to go out and be editors of our, of our, of our magazines and our journals, our professional journals. And this was something that was Started with the last chief of staff of the army who just wanted to elevate the professional dialogue and modernize the professional dialogue, because a lot of the, you know, the Infantry Journal and some of our kind of branch journals across the army had kind of fell off and were hard and to access. And, you know, they. They came in and. And revitalized all of that. Dubik. The Dubik Fellowship and the Harding Fellowship were part of those things. So that's what it is. And it's an application process. Do it every spring. You get to do it for a year. It's a unique kind of cohort of folks that can be as senior as 06s, as juniors, lieutenants, there are some NCOs, there's some civilians in there as well. So you get a mix of ideas, and they really, really encourage you to write. Not only write, but they really encourage you to connect with other writing professionals. So you're really connected with the Harding fellows. You kind of got some of those inroads into some of the institutions, the center for Junior Officers, as well as the Modern Warfare Institute and other places that like to publish our writing. So you get close connections to the editors. They also encourage, in a broader sense, for you to, like, publish books, you know, with AUSA and even, you know, broader opportunities as well. So Dubik Fellowship, really cool. Jim Dubik is a phenomenal scholar and warrior and is an intimidating person to like, share your writing or your writing ideas with because he's got, like, books. He's always got a book on. On Deck that he's writing. He's always got some research that he's doing. He's always writing. And he is not a young chap. So it makes you tighten up your. Tighten up your bootstraps and sharpen your pencil, for sure. [01:21:52] Speaker A: Well, Sheby, I don't know him, but I did meet him at the AUSA convention this past fall, and I was going to say that was the last time I saw you, but it wasn't. And I keep running into you all over the place. Our paths just keep crossing. It's pretty amazing. [01:22:06] Speaker B: That's why the army is small. [01:22:09] Speaker A: It is indeed. And good people congregate. It's good to see old friends again. Sheby, one more thing I want to cover, because I told you that we talked for about an hour and we're way past that, so apologies for the Sunday takeover. I want to talk to you briefly about mentorship because that's been so much of your career in the military. You've got a lot More years to give. But you're at the twilight of your career. Yep. And you've benefited from and you've paid back. Mentorship. Can you talk to us a little bit about the types of mentoring that you've been involved in? Formal and informal, [01:22:46] Speaker B: you know, more formally? I've got a chance to start a military based nonprofit called Military Mentors. We focus on elevating, educating and facilitating mentoring for the military and beyond. And those kind of three words, I think explain themselves. Elevating, educating, and facilitating. But I think for the mentoring and beyond is where some added layers would help illuminate some of the things I got to do. So for the military and beyond means like, yeah, we're trying to elevate, educate and facilitate mentoring in military formations, for sure. And we've done that and we've done it in all kinds of different means across the joint force. I've been out to Pac Fleet in Hawaii. I've been in our tiered units in jsoc. I've been in your local mom and pop, like chemical company on an installation as well. And I've been doing stuff for bases. We have been involved, like for Hanscom Air Force Base, for example, when I was up there going to Tufts. So yes, it can be like, hey, how can we take these industry based practices, how can we take like the art and the science of mentoring into the, into the military formation? Science being very important. I'm a guy with a PhD. I can't, like, get rid of it. All right. Like, you know, a lot of times mentoring is just about the art and, and the je ne sais quoi of building the relationship. But the science, right. There's 50, 60 years worth of adult developmental science around mentoring that we try to infuse in those military formations. But it's for military and beyond. So don't let the name military mentors fool you. We also go to industry. I've done stuff with Mayo Clinic, I've done stuff with teachers and administrators in the California school system. I've done things with this Council on Foreign Relations and everything in between with respect to civilian, sometimes HR professionals, sometimes scientists, sometimes researchers. With respect to the art and the science of mentoring. [01:24:55] Speaker C: Right. [01:24:56] Speaker B: And sometimes that's taking the best practices from my military experiences from those military formations that I was talking about and infusing them into the civilian space. But often it's, hey, this is what industry is doing. This is what kellogg, the Fortune 500, like food company is doing in their space of talent management and infusing that back into the military. Case in point. I was at a conference. It was a. It was the Human Capital Institute. It's a crowd of 500 people that I'm speaking in front of, and it is basically HR folk. Going back to your D lab conversation we had earlier about language. Right? I brought up the D lab in that presentation because I was trying to get them to understand. What if you weren't looking for the people who already had an MBA or MPA or PMP as you're assessing them into your organization? What if you were like us, where you're giving them some type of test that says, hey, what if you're just giving them the gmat or you're giving them another. Another test that's out there that actually test their. Their gre, that, their. Their competence? For what? If you're hiring for that, maybe if you gave them that and you with the intention of sending them to get advanced degree or some type of certification, that'd be a paradigm shift. And that was a big hit at the conference because they had not thought like that. And I'm like, yeah, the special operations community, this is what we do. The military, this is what we do. We assess for competencies and abilities, and then you can grow that in that other direction. So military mentors has allowed me to do that in a very formal fashion. I just recently stepped away from being the executive director over the winter, and I transitioned over to the board. So a mentee of mine to talk to, the informal piece of it could step into that seat. Who, oh, by the way, was attacked as well? Who, oh, by the way, I wrote his letter of recommendation for him to be attacked way back in the day. Who, oh, by the way, only found me on the Internet because I was involved in some wacky nonprofit on the side, and he knew I was also an army officer, and he's like, sir, how in the world do you balance being a father and all of that stuff? So that's how I've also done it, kind of informally. Informally. It's been a call on my heart, and I. I am not one to turn somebody down who needs help. So because so many people have poured into me, and because I believe I have a life's purpose of serving others, I've gotten a chance to be a mentor for people on my block, people on my street, people that were at my high school even when I wasn't there from a distance, and just cadets and everybody in between over time. Because if they ask the way my faith is set up, I'm not Allowed to say no. [01:27:56] Speaker A: Why not? Well, Chevy, one more question before we wrap it up. What advice do you have for young leaders getting ready to start their careers of service? Could be in the military, could be some other way to serve. What kind of things would you offer these young folks that are getting ready to start down the path that you and I traveled? [01:28:14] Speaker B: Oh, man, that's a. That's a heavy one. That. That'd probably be its own podcast, too. But to be honest, it's maybe a couple things for these. These young folk out there trying to tread these waters. One, find out who you are authentically and really, really search for that, but don't let that get in the way of becoming what's being asked of you. And to unpack that a little bit is, I think a lot of young leaders don't know who they truly are and identify so much with being a Ranger or a policeman or what have you with respect to this kind of this defense space that they let that become who they are. And I will tell you, on the back end, on the twilight end of my career, having been in front of cadets, having been in front of special operators, having been in front of seas of, you know, civilian folks and the various exploits I've done in a lot of different ways, I will tell you, you are all you're going to have when the shit hits the fan or when life is difficult. It's just you. And what you bring to the table, most specifically is your primary weapon system. So you might. You got to know it, you got to maintain it, you got to know, do a functions, check on it, so know who you authentically are. But then the other piece of that is don't let that get in the way of who you can be. I think some folks, and this is generalizing, and I think some folks are so because of social media and everything else, we are like, we're gonna be us in spite of ourselves. And you gotta accept who I uniquely am, or there's a problem with you. Well, I will tell you this. I got a tattoo on my arm drawn by my daughter. It says, draw just you, be you. And it has an asterisk at the end of that sentence. And the asterisk at the end of that sentence is exactly what I'm talking about. Don't let you get in front of yourself. You can be a complete jokester and you can drop the wrong joke in a wedding and it can ruin the wedding, and it can be. That can cause some family strife. You can also drop the wrong joke in front of the chairman or some other senior leader or maybe an international leader. And now you've caused an incident that you can't crawl back from just because you're a jokester and you wanted to be yourself. Remember, the asterisk gives it context, gives it. Gives it some nuance. So again, be authentic. Find your authentic self. But don't let that get in front of who you can be or who the world is asking you to be. You know, I could go on with others, but I think I'm gonna stop there because I think that's heavy enough. [01:31:18] Speaker A: I think it's pretty heavy. Something you would expect from someone with multiple degrees in psychology and a lifetime of experience in the Army. Chevy, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for giving up part of your Sunday to talk to our audience on behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Modern War Institute. I really appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you back at West Point or wherever you and I run into each other again. [01:31:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. Charlie, this was a great conversation, great time. Always going to be a fan of MWI and what you guys are doing. Always a huge fan of West Point. It's tattooed on my heart. So, however, I can help you or any listener out there, find me and I'll be there for you. [01:31:57] Speaker A: Thank you so much. [01:31:58] Speaker B: Thanks, Charlie. [01:32:06] Speaker C: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spear. The Spear is produced by the Modern War Institute at West Point. What you hear in each episode are the views of the participants and don't represent the position of West Point, the Army, or the US Government. Be sure you're subscribed to the Spear on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, where you can also give the podcast a rating or leave a review which helps us reach new listeners. And if you aren't yet following MWI on social media, please find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening.