December 16, 2023 • 52 mins
Ben Williams is a former US Navy Surface Warfare Officer and current CEO of Exyn Technologies. Drones serve a vital function in search and rescue missions, like in Acapulco recently, providing valuable information to rescuers on the best routes and plans that mean the difference between life and death.
Williams shares dicey situations back in the Navy when he led small boat boarding teams and encountered a caricature of the quintessential Russian captain—a half-finished bottle of vodka in one hand and pistol in the other. He also talks about how he transitioned from the military to civilian life and how combat-specific duties comprise just 10% of a serviceman or woman's skill set.
Learn more about Ben:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bentropy/
Website - https://www.exyn.com/
Join the SOFREP Book Club here: https://sofrep.com/book-club
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to SOFTWAB Radio Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hey, welcome back to soft rep Radio. I am your host,
Rad and I have a very cool conversation to have today.
But before I get into who my guest is, I
want to remind you to continue supporting our merch shop.
Right soft rep dot com. Check out the merch store
all the branded goods that are in there. There's coffee mugs.
It's Christmas time. Pick something up, send it to a
(00:57):
loved one and tell them Rad sent you right. Keep
the fireplace. And then also, you know we have that
book club. It's soft rep dot Com Forward slash book
hyphen Club. We're really pushing it. Also, join our email
list to get updates and all sorts of tips and
tricks on you know, how to stay in the know
with soft rep dot com. Now, someone reached out to
(01:17):
me named Lily and she's like, Rad, we need to
get Ben on and I have Ben Williams today from
Exeon Technologies, Who's going to talk to us about autonomous
drones the AI world. How you know he's using his
company's capabilities to try to solve problems like finding people
who are missing. For example, our friend Lily, that is
(01:38):
a mutual acquaintance. She lived in Aqua Poco. She's very
familiar with the area, and just recently, less than about
a month ago from filming this in October time frame,
they were hit with a Category four or five hurricane.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Right, Yeah, so a serious problem with you know, a
huge storm destroyed tons of infrastructure, you know, a place
where there was a large tourist base and you know
a lot of sort of varied kind of kind of
buildings and just utter destruction. Lots of stuff destroyed, and
(02:12):
a real problem for search and rescue crews that are
going into an area where there was some regulation around
you know, resiliency for natural disasters, but probably not as
much as might be used to in the United States,
for instance, or nor northern or western Europe, that sort
of thing. So you're in an area where it's not
(02:34):
you know, it's not a really really easy and established
process for search and rescue and medical response, disaster response,
et cetera. So you have a lot of folks going in.
You have international workers, you have domestic and regional workers
that are trying to come in and help, but the
infrastructure not being in place, the tools not being standardized,
(02:54):
so there's a lot of a lot of problems with
being able to go in and help, even if the
help is available, even if the money or the resources
are available. It's hard to operate in those kind of worlds.
And you know, of course that there's a lot of
similarities to government defense scenarios where you are operating often
in areas where you don't have the infrastructure. You have
(03:16):
to bring stuff along with you. Similar even to some
of the other commercial worlds that we operate in, which
are like remote industrial scenarios where you can't depend on
super high bandwidth communications, really well established GPS or COMMS networks,
you know, dependable roads, all that sort of thing. You
kind of have to be a little bit more flexible
(03:36):
with the environments.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So difficult with your company, right, and this is not
your first time on Software Radio, so I feel like
I have the relationship with you. Just to give you
a little background to my listener who may not have
saw our previous episode, you know your former Navy service warfare.
Tell us a little bit about your Navy background.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Sure, so I was what's called a service warfare officer,
which is an unrestricted line role. I was on a
surface ship cruiser at Bunker Hill for my first tour,
and this was just just post nine to eleven. So
as part of the all the work that went into
going into a Rock that time around, ran small boat teams,
(04:18):
ran communications division, and a bunch of battle group stuff
there as well. Then followed on with nuke school and
running the a portion of the reactor plant on an
aircraft carrier after that.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So, no, kid, you were the guy. You were Scottie
in the engines. You were like, giving her he's got everything.
No kid, I mean, like, I know I've talked to you,
but that's pretty cool to rethink about that. You are like,
I'm giving her else it's got. It's like, you know,
not stern fall. You're like, sir, it's nuclear. It's it
(04:52):
a core is that, yeah, as it flooded with water
and all that to keep it all probably top secret class.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, well, I mean that's that's part of the nuclei plant,
is that you have water that sort of cools the reactor.
And you know, there's actually an interesting parallel here is
that when I was on on my second deployment with
the aircraft carrier, we actually did a disaster response, I
think it was for Hurricane Katrina, and so we were
(05:18):
anchored not far off of the coast in the Gulf
of Mexico, and all of the cooling water that comes
into the plant to cool down the reactor and you know,
keep all the equipment running kept getting clobbed with debris
that was coming down the river from all the wreckage
and the floods, and so we had to sort of
(05:38):
continuously shut down parts of the those water intakes, clear
the debris, and then restart those systems. And you know,
for an aircraft carrier used to operating out in the
middle of the ocean, you know, in thousands of feet
of water, not usually a problem. And so it was
a really interesting transition where we were flying you know,
(05:58):
twenty four to seven flights helicopters into do resupply and
you drop fresh water and food and you know, bring
medics and all.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
That kind of stuff into the districts and the wars
of like nar Orleans and everything where it was just
like completely the levees broke. You know, that was a
huge disaster, right and ye Yeah, that's crazy, and you
were just right. You were involved in that, you know,
a humanitarian effort from the Navy, right, and here we
are talking about more humanitarian efforts. I mean you're autonomous, right,
so you can literally back then, if you had autonomous
(06:29):
capabilities like you do today. Now you can go into Acapulco,
or you can map out the area right and try.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
To see Yeah, I mean so this is a great example, right,
is like if you're going in fresh to a disaster zone,
you might have the old map of the downtown or
you know of a facility like a resort or something
like that, Right, so you go, I know what it
used to look like. But the only thing I know
for sure is that it doesn't look like that now
(06:57):
because you know, things have collapsed. There's roads that might
not be passable. You don't know if any of the
running water is still in play, or if it's still
running but it's you know, contaminated water now, or is
power still going in Are we able to receive any
radio or telephone or you know, are there cell networks
(07:17):
that are still in play or has power knocked all
those out as well?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Is the major pole still standing? You know that we
need to look at that has everything on it, So
you can just get in there and just look and say, okay,
that's up. Well, then where's the plug unplugged that and
try to figure the situation out.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
And so in these context like that, first sort of
look at what the what the situation is on the
ground is so important because that impacts all of your
planning going forward. Right, you can't deploy fresh water or
doctors or rescuers or anything unless you get some sense
of what's going on. So in this context, if you
have autonomous systems that you can just deploy and say,
(07:53):
go map whatever you can find, give me the structural
model from widar and the visual and infrared cameras that
are on there, you can come back and you say,
all right, my best guess is you know, Road X
is clear enough that we can get rescue vehicles in,
but there's a rubble where there used to be these
three buildings. We're getting some heat signatures, so maybe there
(08:15):
are survivors in this area. You know, focus your efforts
in this area first, and then as a result of
that you get a good sense for how to operate.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
How does the Mexican government, you know, risk you know,
take like they invite you in come take care of this.
Is this like something that well are they okay with
flying drones in their hood?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
I mean it's a good question, right, Like every every
place is different. So even within the US, it gets
a little complicated because you have overlapping you know, fiefdoms
in a sense. Right, you have each state that can
basically get access to federal resources if they declare a
disaster and then they get access to federal funding that
(08:57):
sort of set aside for it. You have FEMA, right
that is, will come in, but only if they're asked, right,
They don't just sort of drop in no matter what.
So local law enforcement, local disaster response has the first
sort of coverage. And the further we get from the US,
the more difficult it is to know that you're operating,
(09:17):
you know, with the right folks. So, you know, Mexico,
there's a lot of familiarity. We do a lot of
joint work as a country with Mexico. Obviously it's you know,
in neighborho south, so it's a little bit clearer there,
but it's still a lot of figuring out how to
coordinate successfully. Right, Plus there's a language theyer. You know,
Spanish their primary language, English primary language here, lots of overlap,
(09:39):
but still there's the challenges in how do you coordinate successfully?
And so in a lot of cases, what you have
is you get in there and then you get you know,
equipment and money and resources in play, and then it's
trying to figure out who does what first and coordinating it.
So getting information is so much more more important than
(10:01):
getting like material in the early steps of.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That, right, it's almost like, you know, the cart before
the horse. You know, everybody wants to go in with
the brick and mortar, but it's like, what are you
going in with brick and mortar for? Right, So it's
like having all that stuff, but you't you might not
need it all. You just need to get in there
and maybe move the trees and there's the building that
the trees have fallen in front of, versus rebuilding. I
totally am all for, you know, using it in a healthy,
(10:25):
you know, manageable way. I also know that what we're
talking about can be possibly taken and you know, turned
into opposite.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I've seen terminator now, right, even though I'm forty six,
I saw it this year for the first of the
Terminator one with my wife and my kids because I
grew up in the eighties wanting Rambo more than Schwarzenegger.
No offense, right, Okay, if either of them want to
come on the show, let me know. But I finally
saw a Terminator and I'm like, yeah, you know, you're
only as good as the people who program them. Okay,
(10:56):
John Conner, Right, So are you John? Are you creating
sky neet? Are you not creating sky net?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
What?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
What is your role in the world here? Can we
hear just straight from you because you're the COO, right.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
That's right? Yeah. So, I mean we've we've actually focused
very explicitly on a mode of autonomy here that is
focused on self contained elements. So we're not trying to
sort of broadly network and deploy you know, a an
entire sort of net of independent ais here. But these
are these are dedicated individual units that are specifically focused
(11:32):
on doing exploration or doing information gathering. So we are
not in the business of, for instance, delivering kinetics. We
don't do that work even with the d D. We
focus on on information gathering and trying to remove people
from difficult or dangerous environments. That's sort of our charter
as a company, and so all of our work is
(11:54):
focused around that same kind of thing. Whether it's uh,
you know, civil defense, commercial, industrial, you know, search and rescue,
all of these things revolve around the same basic idea,
which is get as much information as quickly as possible,
make sure that you have the right knowledge before you
put people in harm's way.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
That's right, recon. I got a friend who's about twenty
some years old. He's going through the academy at US
Air Force for a pilot, and he's I was like,
oh sweet, what are you gonna fly? He's like drones.
I was like, of course, it's like, of course, not
the A ten, you know, not they have thirty five,
any of the configurations, but the drones okay. And I
was like, of course, you know, in a flight suit,
(12:31):
flight gloves, okay, sitting there with a big gulp, all right,
he can literally take a leak. He can get up
and go probably take a leak, and soone could take
over the controls for him. You can't do that in
a real aircraft. You know, all these things that you
know are the smallest detail that matters on a mission.
(12:51):
Whether you're doing recovery or you know, a defense of
your nation, or whatever the case may be. With it,
a pilot has to fly that it's right, right, and
I call that snow piercer. That human element always has
to be involved with the machine, right. And here we are.
You're creating something autonomous that has human element where it's
programmed right. And for my listener and correct me if
(13:13):
I'm wrong. Autonomous is like a boomerang. I could send
it out there with its coordinates, and then I could
coordinate it to do its job, which is map for
twenty four hours, and then it comes back home to
me with all the information.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
In general, that's exactly right. So what we focus on
is the implementation of what we call level four autonomy,
which is you do not have to do the sort
of minutia of mission planning. Instead, you give it a
high level mission objective. You say, within this bounding box,
explore whatever you can come back with the best information
(13:47):
model you can find, and then you know it will
decide its own safe fight corridors. It will avoid people
and objects and wires and rebar and whatever, find its
way back home. And then you get all this information
to make better decisions.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
With my goodness, it's just going to be like a
little hummingbird that's just like moving around all these little
things around like, oh, rebar, I don't want that, gotta
go over this. It's just going to be like at
the same time mapping, Oh, the rebar is right there
and exactly all the information right. And so there's there's
there's some cool sensors out there that help find people
that are like in minds that are collapsed and whatnot
(14:24):
is I mean, I can only imagine setting it like
a drone into a mine, you know, in this day
and age, to be able to see if they could
get through, you know, to see what's going on. I
don't know, man, that's so crazy.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean, we've been used. I'm not allowed to
share the exact location, but we we participated in a
mind collapse emergency reaction where we overnighted a system to
another continent. We got on the phone for thirty minutes
and just gave them quick training and then they went
underground and they explored a whole section of the mine
(14:56):
where a tunnel had collapsed down into the next level
down and very dangerous environment. You know, they were they
were worried about making any progress towards it. It would
have taken probably a week or two sort of progress
into the area that had collapsed. But with these kind
of systems, they did one sort of test flight up
to the area and then one exploration volume and within
(15:18):
an hour they had a full model of the whole
collapsed area. So they saved you know, probably a week
or two of time trying to access that.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Environment and also lives. You know, you're you're not risking
someone happened to low crawl into there to try to
like you're although there was nothing that could quite replace
the human touch and feel of something, right, of course,
but I think that you're ninety nine percent the next
best bet.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Right, Yeah. And it makes people more effective too, right
if they if they're going into an area, better to
have at least a sense for what's going on, you know,
know the areas that are definitely dangerous and almost definitely safe,
so that you can kind of weigh the differences between everything.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It's basically armor. Rightly, you have a night and shining
armor who goes into battle and he still has all
these open areas to be stabbed, but he feels like
he's going to do it all okay, And so that's
kind of what the drone gives its operator and its
team is like, here's your armor on. Feel free to
go ahead and be value and go ahead with the drone,
and then you can follow in behind it, you know,
(16:18):
to take care of him. D It's like it's armor. Yeah,
it's like mental armor, like an EOD robot for the
robot guy. You know, he's like, hey, I got a robot.
I'm going to look inside this room real quick. I mean, well,
knowledge is safety in this context, right, And you know,
I'm not saying that robots are going to fight the wars,
but I think the current president did say he's not
(16:40):
afraid of a gunshot starting a war. It's a keystroke, yeah,
you know, you know he's like, that's ah, if everybody
sit behind these keystrokes.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Yeah. Well, and I mean that that is like, you know,
in the grand scheme of robotics in sort of conflict
like that is that is a critical element that you know,
all of the countries in the world are going to
have to really figure out how they want to interact there, right,
because it's one layer removed. When you don't have people
interacting directly, you reduce that sort of empathic response of like,
(17:14):
this is a person right that I'm going against, versus
I see a thing on a screen, and that's like
layers removed from the impact.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Like let's think about like I think it's World War one,
World War two. You know, they had a quiet Christmas
in the trenches because they all were like singing to
each other because they all had moms and dads at
some point in their life that love them and taught
them how to love Christmas and love each other. And
here they are fight each other. I don't see you know,
T one thousand and T two thousand singing in harmony together.
(17:43):
It's just going to be complete, like wasteland of like
you know, until one is gone. And then you wanted
me to build a perfect world, right, yeah, get them
trying get them. You're like, wait, but I'm the creator.
I don't know if you get my references, but I
hope so.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, no, I watched both of those, Oh.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Man, you know so true though it's like, hey, you
made me right, yeah, to be the best, right, it's
gonna have to get you out of the way now though,
right right? Sorry, holy cal so with with Exian technologies,
you know, is that something that you would Is there
(18:27):
a consumer market for that, like a regular consumer versus
just like such a we need it for search and rescue.
Is there something that's going to be you know, applicable
to the daily lives of us here is just regular
civilians without it or with it?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Probably not in the short run. I mean, our systems
are more sort of industrial scale, industrial usage, right they're not.
I mean, you can buy them, I guess in theory
as a consumer, but most people don't have you know,
one hundred thousand dollars laying around to make those purchases.
And so most of the time we are useful for
(19:00):
industrial scale enterprises that see huge value from increased speed
to decision making, removing people from dangerous environments, and being
able to digitize the sort of physical industry. And so
consumer side really isn't isn't an area we've put any
time or effort into As a result of that, In theory,
you probably could. I mean, you see folks like Skidio
(19:22):
that gave that a run and then sort of gave
it up recently. You know, they focused instead on purely
enterprise and defense, and that probably is because there's not
enough demand in the market. Plus paired with the fact
that djip has just been building very high quality products.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Which they have, which they have, and they have and
they have, and they've been doing it for a while now,
so they have like a little skin in the game.
And you know, I'm still waiting for this thing that
was supposed to come out during the covid TikTok social
media thing. It's like buy it now where you hook
it onto your arm and then it follows you while
you snowboard, right, any type of those like say you're
(20:01):
rock climbing, right, and it's just like going to go
up with you or repelling whatever whatever. It just is
like a pet above you, following you. Right, Yep, I
want one. Don't remember what it is, but you know,
that's what I was thinking. Maybe there's something in the
consumer market, you know, for that type of a thing.
But yeah, you know, Holy County, it's a huge industry
(20:25):
now that I think about it.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, it is well, And I think what you're
going to see is more and more of the physical
industries adopting elements here, right, Like we got our start
in the drone space, but we do ground robotics as well,
and we see a large uptick in you know, factory
floors and manufacturing and logistics and warehousing, all of these
(20:49):
areas where you know there's a there's a viable business
running there, but it's a physical business, right and it's
hard to get digital information about even things that you own,
like you're warehouses, still hard to digitize. And so as
you get better and better at automating and making autonomous
the systems that gather that data, all of a sudden
(21:09):
it goes from being an expensive one off to something
where you have a couple dozen robots gathering information all
the time, and all of a sudden, you've got a full,
up to date digital representation of your whole physical built environment.
And that changes the game in terms of the decisions
you can make, the tools you use, and even how
(21:30):
you staff that place. Like it makes you so much
more efficient. You probably don't have any less people, but
they're much more productive as individuals.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
And maybe someone doesn't have to do that dangerous aspect
of the situation anymore because you figured out a way
to do it without it. But they're still like overseeing
the project. They haven't lost their job. You know, you're
just incorporating this into their their payroll, so that they
feel like you're feeding them pizza. You feed your true
they're going to fight for you. That kind of attitude.
(22:01):
It's like you put a little bit into the staff's
needs and they're gonna be like, hey man, why would
I go anywhere else? This guy they supply us with
the right tools. We have the information that comes to
help us. The guys across the street are still like,
you know, using a pic in an ass to do this.
It's like, now, oh, I had a thought here. It
was kind of kooky, but I don't I don't remember it.
(22:22):
I thought I thinking about like what about like hold on,
it's all about these drones because there's so many of them.
It's like, I don't even know, bro, there's like photography,
there's I got. I got guys that are like doing
movies with drones, big, huge, dooty drones. Man, oh Ai,
here's my question about AI to you. You know, podcasts
(22:46):
and things like that are starting to go AI, and
you know they're trying to say, hey, what if we
had you know, somebody speak on modern terms, but they're
from like, you know, the eighteen hundreds, and you get
this like classy voice talking about like black Mount data. Right,
You're like, okay, hey Bill, the kids telling about black
Hawk down AI. It's all AI. I get. How entertaining
that is?
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Right?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
However, when does AI talking to AI only become just
AI talking to AI and all information is just computer
generated because it can't it's not getting any am I
making sense?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, you're well, let me say, if I'm summarizing, correction,
you're saying, at a certain point when you don't have
humans in that conversation anymore and it's just two ais
sort of talking to each other, then you may get
further and further off the reservation where it becomes less
relevant for people as consumers or parts.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Corrects.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Maybe right. Yeah, So it is a really good question,
and that actually is one of the one of the
underlying questions that a lot of the the new like
LM sort of GPT style AI companies are really trying
to tackle. Now, is you know, how do you how
do you accelerate the process of training those machine learning
(23:58):
models quickly and cost effectively without having to train it
on real world data, which is by itself very imperfect,
Like you know, all the all the chatbots that are
trained on you know, Twitter data sets or you know,
they end up just being like terrible humans, like equivalents, right,
because they're taking the worst impulses of people on social
(24:19):
media and going, so this is a person exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
It's like it's like create this image of what this
is and then they go and pull all that data
from what it's been fed, right, right, And if AI
is only feeding AI, you know, and that human interaction
starts to go because people do want to you know,
use it and bring it in and you know, they
can have you know, a major news outlet's probably use
chat GPT to write articles, you know, and this AI
(24:44):
is just mashing it all up. And if all AI
is getting it, I just think that the interaction of
the human element always has the snow piercer Have you
ever seen that movie?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, well so, I mean I think the
biggest worry in my view is where you have state
independent actors like you know, sort of the equivalent of
terror organizations. But folks that are that are saying, I
don't care what the impacts are, I'm just trying to
affect this negative outcome for a group. And you know,
(25:12):
this was popularized in the last election where there was
a lot of paid disinformation from North Korea, Russia, you
know whatever, fill in the blank. But as you get
to America. Yeah, and as you get further into that world,
then the AI models accelerate the ability for what the
Intelligence Committee would call an asymmetric threat. Right, it's a
(25:34):
single individual that kind of large impact by driving these
these sort of negative conversations, and so AI and especially
LMS have a huge outsize impact there. And that that's
what worries me the most is you know, there's no
regulation for that, and there couldn't be because they are
outside of that that sort of category. So then what
(25:54):
happens with that? And unless we can figure out a
way to sort of bypass that or to evaluate or
you know, get in front of that, you know, we
as citizens and individuals are in a bad place to
kind of evaluate all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I don't even think this conversation that you and I
are having is really happening. Yeah, you know, this is
something that if you're listening right now to our show
and you're hearing stuff that nobody's really talking about around
the dinner table, okay, and because nobody's really thinking like, oh,
this is happening, but it is yep, very much. So
you're going to like conferences and you're seeing like you know, uh,
(26:32):
vendors who are just probably just flourishing and trying to
like say, by our thing, by our thing. You need
this thing, you know, this little screw to go into
all your AI stuff. You need this little bolt, you know,
because it's space age stuff. Whatever.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Yeah, it's very wild.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It is wild, it is and yeah, that's that's the
consumer market show. Do you guys go to cees? Is
that what you guys do? How do you may? I?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, I mean we will be a SEES this year.
We are more in the sort of market specific survey
and geospatial and mining sort of industrial shows where you
have other vendors and customers that are looking for very
specific sort of sets of solutions and in that world,
you know, those are those are great conversations to have
(27:20):
because it's often people who have very specific problems and
we can listen to them and that's you know, the
fundamental product building, right is like listen, learn understand what
the what their existing process is, what's bad about it,
and how we might be able to help them out.
And so those conversations that having the sort of centralized
is great. That's a big opportunity for us and helps
(27:40):
us you know, guide product development and you know, hopefully
we sell systems as a result of that as well.
But it all is a link to better understanding of
the problems people are facing in their in their operating scenario.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Right right, right, Like maybe how can you come together
to solve problems versus cause problems?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
That's right?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, a lot of percent. No, I love that. I
love your I'm sure you have think tanks and you're
involved in all sorts of stuff that is just outside
the box. Typically we try six sigma this bro Okay,
it's like you better six sigma this autonomous drone man,
it's like word with math, math with words. Let me
figure this out. Blades, props, camera together, Yes, exactly right. Wow,
(28:27):
that's really neat dude. Now, well, now, as a young
man growing up before you went in the Navy, did
you think you were going to be working in such
futuristic stuff or were you like I'm going to be,
you know, a full time.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Navy Yeah, I mean I probably I I liked the categories.
I don't know that I really thought I would be
able to do them all for a bit. I probably
was like, you know, in my rebellion phase, I probably
was like, I want to go live in the woods
and write angry poetry or something. But you know, then,
you know, we all go through our own that. But
(29:01):
you know, later on I was like, you know, really
really dig on the idea of service. I was. I
was a big fan of Robert Heinland, and he wrote
a particular book called Starship Troopers, which was made into
sort of this sort of odd ball, over the top movie,
but he actually wrote that book around the concept of
service and citizenship and you know, whether you deserve citizenship
(29:24):
through birthright or through service, which is a really really
interesting philosophical question and one that is incredibly contentious all
over us included, and my my take on it was
basically that you know, I, you know, white male, born
in New England, and you know, at a time when
(29:44):
I've got a lot going for me, so you know,
I figured, you know, given that, and I should be
doing service first and then thinking about what what can
I do for me or for my family or whatever.
So that was kind of my background for going the
military in the first place. But you know, as a
result of that, I had focused on like, let me
(30:05):
learn and understand and you know, get a sense for
how the country works. And like, I'm sure there's a
lot wrong with it, but however we got here, it's
not bad. Let me see how I can participate in
improving it and making it better. So, you know, that
was kind of my starting point, the fact that I
get to work on all this cool stuff. Now, you know,
full thumbs up, I'm a huge fan, love it.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I keep, you know, trying to press and go after
interesting projects and interesting categories, you know, trying to help
people make things better. But yeah, and pretty.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Much how many years you do in the navy, I did,
like about.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Six years I did. I did RTC, so I owed
two tours. I did a little bit more than that.
I went to new school and did that stuff. But yeah,
so and.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Then the transition. Right, a lot of our listeners are
veterans or are mb in and they're like, hey, you
know the transition. We hear it all the time. How
do I transition from military to civilian life? Well, you
were a civilian and you transition to the militar terry.
So first of all, you're successful at it, so you
could do it again, and so what was it that
made you transition into this field?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
May I Yeah, So I think the way that I
kind of viewed coming out of the military was, you know,
I had this sense that I wanted to have an
impact and you know, drive the conversation and the technologies forward.
But there were such huge gaps in my experience. Like
you know, junior officer in the Navy, you learn a lot,
(31:28):
you get to do a lot of things, but you
can also fill a ship with what I didn't know
and what I thought I knew and really didn't And
you know, coming out of that, I didn't know anything
about finance. You know, I knew operations, I knew you know,
some form of leadership I had. I had to learn
to lead people quickly and under duress. But you know,
(31:48):
I didn't have any idea how the finances worked. I
didn't have any idea about a lot of the sort
of the business theory behind things that I sort of
guessed at or had like sort of a street level
knowledge of. And so going in and saying, Okay, maybe
that's the next thing to do, is do business development, sales, finance,
Just get how does it work? What's the underpinning there? Right?
(32:10):
And then being able to apply leadership and management and
operations experience to that then gives you a pretty good
baseline for you know, learning the next thing, learning a
new industry, learning a new jargon, you know, et cetera.
And I think that honestly, I do a lot of
mentorship for people transitioning out of the military. I've been
(32:31):
a coach and mentor for over a decade doing that stuff,
and by far the biggest problem people have is trying
to describe how their experience in the military is relevant
to different scenarios. And you know, the easiest you know
trap people fall into, especially for like a guy that
was a riflement or something, is like, well, what kind
(32:54):
of yeah, like what kind of job am I going
to have that's going to pay me to like carry
a gun still? And you're like, sure, serve security or whatever, right,
But like it's kind of missing the point because even
as isn't even as a junior rifleman, ten percent of
your job is like combat specific, right, Most of it
is you know organization, you know, doing like small management maintenance,
(33:17):
you know the in the Navy it's called you know,
preventative maintenance systems like PMS. And like that is, you know,
the day to day of every sale or junior or senior,
and like most of that stuff translates to the civilian world,
but you've got to learn how to break it down
into little building blocks so that you're going out of
a forty hour week, you know, three hours was shooting
(33:39):
the rest of it relevant and so helping people to
sort of break that stuff down has been a huge,
huge piece of how I've been doing mentorship in that category.
And you know, a lot of it helps people to
sort of just transition into yours using different terminology, different phrases,
you know, recognizing that all of the the three letter
(34:00):
summaries you have for things don't apply. And it's probably
going to get confusing because there's civilian or corporate jargon
versions of those same.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Three A PMS, yeah, exactly uses the PMS, and they're
gonna be like, what God to hr You're like, no,
I'm just trying to do cofeitive maintenance exaclutions. Yeah, so
so you gotta I get that. I get that.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
So it's a really interesting that.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Transition, yeah, to get there, you know, and if somebody
is in the military and they're transitioning what's something that
X and Technologies might be looking for out of them?
You know, are you looking for all bachelor's masters guys?
Is there somebody out there that could can the chef apply?
Is there a you know position, you know, because he
could translate?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
That's right. So we've got We've had a bunch of
transitioning folks come across. We've had an Air Force pilot,
we had a Navy seal, We've had I think a
Marine Corps rifleman. We had a like an IT guy, so,
you know, we it depends on the role you're hiring for,
of course, Like we have some production technicians that don't
(35:04):
require a college degree. We bring folks in and we
help them sort of train up, and it's a fairly
technical role. You don't need you know, a four your
degree for it. And so a lot of times that
structure from being in the military is great for coming
in and doing especially operational things where you're like, all right,
here's the process, and they go, got it. I can
nail that, you know, day two, and then you begin
(35:25):
to extract, like who are the ones that can think
on their feet and can you know, operate with more
vague guidance? And you know, high level objectives and then
they self define their paths and you know, you start
to figure out who can who can promote easily, and
who you know is better served to go to another
place or whatever. And you know we try and help
people figure that out.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
That's awesome And I love the aspect of like, you know,
bringing someone over who maybe worked let's say the ship's
armory k where they have to check in the guns
all day and all the equipment they have to check
it out. You know, you're like, now, how am I
going to transition this into life? It's like bro inventory
man management number one, you know, like, you know, it
doesn't have to be cleaning at all. You could be like, oh,
I know how to keep inventory a direct? How many
(36:11):
businesses have inventory? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, absolutely all of them?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
You know, you know, you know so I mean there's
always something out there, right, You just got to think
outside how can I apply this to this? When people
ask me, hey, rad, are you hiring at your airsoft shop?
And I'm like, I never say no. Yeah, I never
say no to the fourteen the twelve year old who's
asking can you hire me? I'm like, I won't say
no because maybe that kid knows how to edit.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah. Total.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
So if they send me a resume and it looks
good and it's got something on there, yeah, you know,
we might reach out to you and say, hey, you
want to do some side gigs or whatever or But
if you apply to the job and you are applying
to be a manager of a department store and you
put down that you know you can snipe real well,
you got it. You gotta you gotta, you gotta massage
(36:58):
that for the person reading that resume. Okay, you got
to say, oh, I can pay attention to detail.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yeah, you gotta hit exactly. You got to pull apart
the common building blocks and say, you know, have I
got all the exact experience? No, but all of the
building blocks overlapped, and I can wear on the other twenty.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
P exactly exactly. And if you give me a shot,
I'll show you I can do it on the job,
no problem. Yeah exactly. So if you're a veteran out
there and you're looking to transition, just just do it.
Just get it, get going, just apply, apply yourself, you know,
and it's okay to fail. That's where the word success
comes from, right, So every time I go to the gym.
I know I'm going to go in there and fail
(37:36):
because I'm going to push myself to failure, so that
hopefully the success of a longer heart rate or a
better heart and no diabetes and you know all the
other things come along with some weight, you know, nothing like.
And also I've just been boxing, you know, that's really
what I've really found to be a mental cleanser. And
(38:00):
so not only am I, you know, throwing the gloves
at the at the gym, I'm I'm clearing my head
and I'm paying one hundred bucks a month to do this.
Like where can you get a psychiatrist for that?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
The coach comes over, he's like yeah, rad three four
three three four three. You're like, yes, coach, Yes, coach.
It's just yes, coach, you know. And that kind of environment,
you know, where there's like that camaraderie and everybody's in there.
She'd be a better healthy you, is all I'm trying
to say. You know, I'm not perfect. I can only
strive for perfection, and this is what striving for perfection
looks like. Okay, oh see, now I'm glad Lily introduced
(38:37):
us again to talk about this cause you know, we're
I really do care about Aca Poco and all the
people there. I really want that to be, you know,
kind of brought to the forefront, because nobody's really talking
about how hard Mexico did get hit. And it is
such a thing that you know, she's she's been already,
you know, relating back and forth through emails with me
so much. I just wanted to just embarrass her a
little more, lily, throw her name out there again. So yes,
(39:01):
just to make her smile when she watches this.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I'm happy to know that folks like yourself, Ben are
out there trying to do the right thing with these
new modern technologies that you know are gonna just keep
going and going and going and going. And you're the
building blocks of this. You guys go to these conventions
and see everything else that's going to be happening. So,
I mean, holy cow, man, I can't wait for the
(39:27):
movie you're gonna write Fingers crossed.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
I'll get that ghost right.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
And moving, Oh seriously, right, yeah, bro, Because the things
that you're dealing with, I mean, you could bring that
into a film. I don't know whether you're filming the
movie with it or it's about what you're doing. Yeah,
ar to life, dude. Let me okay, now, now I
ask my folks that come on the show if they've
had any type of an instance and your navy, Now,
(39:56):
what kind of a ship were you on when you
first went out or what have you ever had? Here's
my question, have you ever had that? I'm going to
Davy Jones's locker moment because of the mother Nature's like
you're screwed today.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
We had. I had a few times where it was
pretty dicey. I led small boat boarding teams doing VBSS
all right. At the time it was called VBSS. I
think it's called something different now, but it was a
board search and seize yep, and so visit. One of
(40:29):
the one of the ships we boarded was, I want
to say it was a Russian flagged ship that had
maybe been smuggling something. And the master on board was
like a complete caricature, like you could not have created
a more made from movie caricature of like a Russian captain.
(40:51):
It was just like holding a half empty bottle.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
He was like, what do you want, just.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Like like a Russian mobster who decided to capped in
a ship like half empty bottle of vodkill, like waving
a pistol around like we we really thought out of
just you know, drunkenness, he was going to start shooting.
And so we went and secured the ship. We got
all the crew and they were they were totally fine.
They were like, yeah, understood, you know what's going on here.
(41:19):
So they were chilling down in the salon, but you know,
we we were sort of having this face off with
this guy. And it was me and the assistant boarding officer, who,
you know, thank god, it was like a super experienced
senior enlisted chief petty officer that you know, had a
lot of experience here. And so me twenty two year old,
you know, junior officer or twenty three I guess at
the time, but you know, I was, I think, pretty
(41:41):
decent at the job, but nowhere near the experience that
you know, the senior list the chief had, and he
he and I both sort of like we're able to
talk this guy down. But it was a pretty wild experience.
So I think that's probably the closest I've ever come
to to someone like, you know, eyes eyes in my eyes,
like something might go here.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Holy yeah, yeah, now that is that is Yeah, you're
just like and thank goodness for your senior listed chief.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Right, Yeah, he talked the guy down like see chief, Yeah,
you know I wouldn't would.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
The officer respects the chief. Chief.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
I can't do anything about the chiefs, come.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
On anything without the chiefs. I'm just putting that out there.
And I saw them back there with their mugs that
are stained at the black top. Don't ever watch that mug.
Never watched their mug.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
No sitting in the goat locker going.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Damn right, that's right. It's the chiefs, every single one
of me. Chiefs. Would you exit out of the navy
ass you went in as an ensign? Is that how
it starts out?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
I came in as an ensign, I left asobu tenants
and three and then uh, you know, made my transition
from there.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
So and have you almost ever thunk.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
We had? We were in some pretty heavy, heavy seas
off of San Francisco actually where this is actually a
terrible story. You know, we weren't really really in danger,
but it was the worst I've ever felt at sea
where it was a new moon, so no visual horizon,
just total darkness, and we were going directly into pretty
(43:24):
high seas it's like at twenty foot maybe twenty five
foot swells, so like, and I was on a cruiser,
so it was a small enough ship that you know,
you go up over top of that wave and you
crest and then the bottom drops out. And I was
on the midwatch from ten ten pm to two am,
and of course they'd serve Mongolian barbecue that night, so
(43:44):
everyone was just throwing up NonStop. But you know, you're you,
you go up, you ride the crest the wave, no
visual horizon, You're just waiting for it, and then bottom
drops out and you literally are in free fall for
you know, one or two seconds. You know, then you
slam hit the deck because it it was like a
fifteen to twenty foot drop. And yeah, everyone just like
hanging on and you know, the ships are built for that,
(44:06):
so it's not like you're in real danger. But that
felt pretty wild. And that was I've definitely never felt
worse like seasick than I have at that time, and
that was.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Just that was a shitty respect for mother nature? Is
that your you respect to see? Yeah, one hundred percent? Hunt, Yeah,
holy coy. Yeah, I was talking to a salty dog
to the day and I was interviewing him and he
said that, you know, he was in a four day
typhoon off the coast of Nam on a destroyer and
(44:37):
he was about to go down. Yeah, but they lived,
he said. Out of everybody on the crew, only three
were eating. Yeah, I can say that. Yeah, that's goadly
what we're talking about. You know, Holy cow, holy cow. Yeah,
the Navy. You know, I decided on the Air Force.
My dad was a Green Beret and former Navy himself. Right,
But now that I think about the Navy today as
(44:57):
a forty five year old, forty six year old dad,
I'm like, yeah, that sounds just like, you know, like
you know, you're playing with the ocean. Dude. It's like
these ships seem so big when they're reported, but once
you're out into the vastness of the ocean, you're just
like a toothpick.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Is. It is. It's amazing the technology to float on
water and dive down with ballats on submarines, and just
the Navy is bad ass. I'm just gonna say that
right now. United States Navy and all you sailors are awesome. Okay.
I just want to shout out to that Wow, that
was right inside my heart. I feel it all too.
Oh man, jeez, cause I only get to see what
(45:39):
like Tom Hanks shows us on the movies, or like
some kind of crazy like you know top ten, you
know sea freight, who's crossing into the water. But bro
if I can only imagine though. You know, you're a
captain with your mug and you're just like, just send it, sir,
five thousand men on board Roger. You'll see it. Turn
(46:01):
into it. You'll see turn into it. Let's sir, just
do it.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, some stalthy guys there that are on the run
the ships.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
There is there is. Did you ever have what they
call a polywog moment?
Speaker 3 (46:15):
Yep? So I did the shell back ceremony when we
crossed the equator and got my got my card and everything.
So it was a it was an.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Interesting baby that they had to kiss or is that
what I heard? Is that what I hear you that?
Or so I was? Or were you holding your coffee
mug just like looking good boys?
Speaker 3 (46:33):
No, I got shell acted pretty well. It was I
think you know are at that point when it was
this must have been two thousand and two maybe, so
it was after my first deployment, but like still just
post nine to eleven. So I think at that point
it was very much like they had started removing some
(46:55):
of the worst parts of the ceremony, but it was
still not very comfortable, and so it's still some some
pain and discomfort involved, but it wasn't It wasn't probably
what you know, you would have gone through in like
the Vietnam era, where I think you really just got.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Like, oh, yeah, that's what I've heard. That's why. That's
where I heard the story from. Man. He's like, there
was no weight management. Yeah, so they had the biggest
guy get greased up on his belly and they all
had to like kiss his belly with the grease from
the the takeoff of the aircraft carrier, the stop put thing.
Holy cow, dude, the navy man, that's why it's though,
(47:33):
that's what it is. You know, I would probably have
so much tattoos, Dude, I'd be like, I've been across
the equator, I've returned home fifteen times. I have all
these birds on me.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Well, most most of the guys can.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Did you get tatted up with anything?
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I didn't. I came from but I got usually a
senior officer would intervene. But do you really think that's
a good idea. I'm like yes, and they're like, no,
I get back on the ship. No.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, that'd be like my dad talking to me. Are
you sure you want to do that? You sure about that?
You're sure about that? No? Yeah, Well, listen, I've had
you for almost just about an hour of our time,
and you've been a really wonderful guest to come back,
and I'm glad that we were able to talk about,
you know, the positive services that you guys are providing
to people who need it, like in Acopoco, right and
(48:22):
in other warrant torn areas, and I'm sure you know,
to wind it down, I want to know, do you
feel that you'll use your stuff in the greater stuff
that's going on, like over in Gaza. Is that something
that's you know, it's a good question.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
I think there's still a lot of people figuring out
how and where to use systems on the battlefield. In general,
the US and Allies have been a little slower to
use very AI driven stuff. It's been a lot of
adoption on the Russian side, the Turkish side, Chinese side,
and so I don't really know what the role is
(48:59):
for like hours specifically, I think you're going to see
a lot of AI driven technologies enter the battlefield shortly
driven by a lot of the you know, the war
innovation that's happening, especially around Ukraine Russia right now. I
think you know, you're seeing shield AI and you're seeing ANDERIL,
and you're seeing Skydio sort of playing in those worlds
(49:19):
as well. From those are like a cheaper, cheaper system side,
and I mean ANDERIL is using witering munitions and that
sort of thing, like you know, actual basically drones with
explosives on them. And so I think there's a lot
of different categories that are going to start being utilized.
I think where where you're going to see technologies like
ours the most is on logistics and i SR and
(49:43):
sort of getting a better sense for what's happening on
the battlefield and you know, trying to make sure that
we're not putting people into the most dangerous parts and
you know, being more effective when we.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
And i SR correctly. It's international search and rescue right in.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
This case an example, so in this case it's intelligence
surveillance reconnaissance and so it's the idea of trying to
get a better sense of the battlefield from an intel perspective.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
All right, cool, I'm glad you corrected me. I can
always be right. That's for you, Dad, who sits on
the mantle right over there on the fireplace on every
one of these shows, looking over my shoulder. Yeah, that's right,
that's right. Okay. Well, you know the best place to
go and check out more about Xian Technologies is xian
(50:32):
technologies dot com. You know, and if you want to
learn more or try to put yourself out there and
set a resume because you have what it takes to
work with Ben and his crew, then do that and
he'll let you know. And do you have anything you
want to say in the last parting words before I
close out the show.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
No, I appreciate the time here like you, like you
alluded to before you know, it's it's a it's a
huge shame about the the stuff that happened down in Acapoco,
and unfortunately it won't be the last of you know,
major disasters that happened. So you know, if you if
you're if you are interested in want to help in
those kind of scenarios, go for the aid organizations. They
are going to be better at coordinating getting this stuff
(51:13):
in in the right way, in the right order. With coordination,
then you know, sort of a grassroots thing a lot
of times. So you know, that would be my recommendation.
Try and find the right the right orgs that are
that are practiced at getting things in there, that.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Are already ready to go, Like they've already grassrooted themselves,
and they're just like they need you to supply the
that extra manpower to them versus you trying to start
from the ground up. You know, I get that. Hey, well,
what a wonderful show. It's been a pleasure. I want
to give a shout out to Lily for arranging everything.
And I want to thank Ben Williams, former Navy officer,
(51:49):
a surface warfare humanitarian and just a really nice, cool
dude that just wants to talk about cool stuff like polywog. Okay,
I just want to say thanks on behalf of brand Web,
former Navy seal from the Navy. Give him a shout out.
Go buy his book for the holidays, any of them.
Go look up Brandon Webb and uh. I'm also on
all the audioble for most of the books, so I'm
(52:11):
the voice of Finn, go check out Chief Finn and
uh I want to say the bookstore. Don't forget that
we have soft Rep, dot Com, Forward Slash Book hyphen
Club and the merch and On behalf of Ben Williams
and Lily. This is rad say in peace.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
You've been listening to Self Rep Radio
Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to SOFTWAB Radio Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hey, welcome back to soft rep Radio. I am your host,
Rad and I have a very cool conversation to have today.
But before I get into who my guest is, I
want to remind you to continue supporting our merch shop.
Right soft rep dot com. Check out the merch store
all the branded goods that are in there. There's coffee mugs.
It's Christmas time. Pick something up, send it to a
(00:57):
loved one and tell them Rad sent you right. Keep
the fireplace. And then also, you know we have that
book club. It's soft rep dot Com Forward slash book
hyphen Club. We're really pushing it. Also, join our email
list to get updates and all sorts of tips and
tricks on you know, how to stay in the know
with soft rep dot com. Now, someone reached out to
(01:17):
me named Lily and she's like, Rad, we need to
get Ben on and I have Ben Williams today from
Exeon Technologies, Who's going to talk to us about autonomous
drones the AI world. How you know he's using his
company's capabilities to try to solve problems like finding people
who are missing. For example, our friend Lily, that is
(01:38):
a mutual acquaintance. She lived in Aqua Poco. She's very
familiar with the area, and just recently, less than about
a month ago from filming this in October time frame,
they were hit with a Category four or five hurricane.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Right, Yeah, so a serious problem with you know, a
huge storm destroyed tons of infrastructure, you know, a place
where there was a large tourist base and you know
a lot of sort of varied kind of kind of
buildings and just utter destruction. Lots of stuff destroyed, and
(02:12):
a real problem for search and rescue crews that are
going into an area where there was some regulation around
you know, resiliency for natural disasters, but probably not as
much as might be used to in the United States,
for instance, or nor northern or western Europe, that sort
of thing. So you're in an area where it's not
(02:34):
you know, it's not a really really easy and established
process for search and rescue and medical response, disaster response,
et cetera. So you have a lot of folks going in.
You have international workers, you have domestic and regional workers
that are trying to come in and help, but the
infrastructure not being in place, the tools not being standardized,
(02:54):
so there's a lot of a lot of problems with
being able to go in and help, even if the
help is available, even if the money or the resources
are available. It's hard to operate in those kind of worlds.
And you know, of course that there's a lot of
similarities to government defense scenarios where you are operating often
in areas where you don't have the infrastructure. You have
(03:16):
to bring stuff along with you. Similar even to some
of the other commercial worlds that we operate in, which
are like remote industrial scenarios where you can't depend on
super high bandwidth communications, really well established GPS or COMMS networks,
you know, dependable roads, all that sort of thing. You
kind of have to be a little bit more flexible
(03:36):
with the environments.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So difficult with your company, right, and this is not
your first time on Software Radio, so I feel like
I have the relationship with you. Just to give you
a little background to my listener who may not have
saw our previous episode, you know your former Navy service warfare.
Tell us a little bit about your Navy background.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Sure, so I was what's called a service warfare officer,
which is an unrestricted line role. I was on a
surface ship cruiser at Bunker Hill for my first tour,
and this was just just post nine to eleven. So
as part of the all the work that went into
going into a Rock that time around, ran small boat teams,
(04:18):
ran communications division, and a bunch of battle group stuff
there as well. Then followed on with nuke school and
running the a portion of the reactor plant on an
aircraft carrier after that.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So, no, kid, you were the guy. You were Scottie
in the engines. You were like, giving her he's got everything.
No kid, I mean, like, I know I've talked to you,
but that's pretty cool to rethink about that. You are like,
I'm giving her else it's got. It's like, you know,
not stern fall. You're like, sir, it's nuclear. It's it
(04:52):
a core is that, yeah, as it flooded with water
and all that to keep it all probably top secret class.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, well, I mean that's that's part of the nuclei plant,
is that you have water that sort of cools the reactor.
And you know, there's actually an interesting parallel here is
that when I was on on my second deployment with
the aircraft carrier, we actually did a disaster response, I
think it was for Hurricane Katrina, and so we were
(05:18):
anchored not far off of the coast in the Gulf
of Mexico, and all of the cooling water that comes
into the plant to cool down the reactor and you know,
keep all the equipment running kept getting clobbed with debris
that was coming down the river from all the wreckage
and the floods, and so we had to sort of
(05:38):
continuously shut down parts of the those water intakes, clear
the debris, and then restart those systems. And you know,
for an aircraft carrier used to operating out in the
middle of the ocean, you know, in thousands of feet
of water, not usually a problem. And so it was
a really interesting transition where we were flying you know,
(05:58):
twenty four to seven flights helicopters into do resupply and
you drop fresh water and food and you know, bring
medics and all.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
That kind of stuff into the districts and the wars
of like nar Orleans and everything where it was just
like completely the levees broke. You know, that was a
huge disaster, right and ye Yeah, that's crazy, and you
were just right. You were involved in that, you know,
a humanitarian effort from the Navy, right, and here we
are talking about more humanitarian efforts. I mean you're autonomous, right,
so you can literally back then, if you had autonomous
(06:29):
capabilities like you do today. Now you can go into Acapulco,
or you can map out the area right and try.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
To see Yeah, I mean so this is a great example, right,
is like if you're going in fresh to a disaster zone,
you might have the old map of the downtown or
you know of a facility like a resort or something
like that, Right, so you go, I know what it
used to look like. But the only thing I know
for sure is that it doesn't look like that now
(06:57):
because you know, things have collapsed. There's roads that might
not be passable. You don't know if any of the
running water is still in play, or if it's still
running but it's you know, contaminated water now, or is
power still going in Are we able to receive any
radio or telephone or you know, are there cell networks
(07:17):
that are still in play or has power knocked all
those out as well?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Is the major pole still standing? You know that we
need to look at that has everything on it, So
you can just get in there and just look and say, okay,
that's up. Well, then where's the plug unplugged that and
try to figure the situation out.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
And so in these context like that, first sort of
look at what the what the situation is on the
ground is so important because that impacts all of your
planning going forward. Right, you can't deploy fresh water or
doctors or rescuers or anything unless you get some sense
of what's going on. So in this context, if you
have autonomous systems that you can just deploy and say,
(07:53):
go map whatever you can find, give me the structural
model from widar and the visual and infrared cameras that
are on there, you can come back and you say,
all right, my best guess is you know, Road X
is clear enough that we can get rescue vehicles in,
but there's a rubble where there used to be these
three buildings. We're getting some heat signatures, so maybe there
(08:15):
are survivors in this area. You know, focus your efforts
in this area first, and then as a result of
that you get a good sense for how to operate.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
How does the Mexican government, you know, risk you know,
take like they invite you in come take care of this.
Is this like something that well are they okay with
flying drones in their hood?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
I mean it's a good question, right, Like every every
place is different. So even within the US, it gets
a little complicated because you have overlapping you know, fiefdoms
in a sense. Right, you have each state that can
basically get access to federal resources if they declare a
disaster and then they get access to federal funding that
(08:57):
sort of set aside for it. You have FEMA, right
that is, will come in, but only if they're asked, right,
They don't just sort of drop in no matter what.
So local law enforcement, local disaster response has the first
sort of coverage. And the further we get from the US,
the more difficult it is to know that you're operating,
(09:17):
you know, with the right folks. So, you know, Mexico,
there's a lot of familiarity. We do a lot of
joint work as a country with Mexico. Obviously it's you know,
in neighborho south, so it's a little bit clearer there,
but it's still a lot of figuring out how to
coordinate successfully. Right, Plus there's a language theyer. You know,
Spanish their primary language, English primary language here, lots of overlap,
(09:39):
but still there's the challenges in how do you coordinate successfully?
And so in a lot of cases, what you have
is you get in there and then you get you know,
equipment and money and resources in play, and then it's
trying to figure out who does what first and coordinating it.
So getting information is so much more more important than
(10:01):
getting like material in the early steps of.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That, right, it's almost like, you know, the cart before
the horse. You know, everybody wants to go in with
the brick and mortar, but it's like, what are you
going in with brick and mortar for? Right, So it's
like having all that stuff, but you't you might not
need it all. You just need to get in there
and maybe move the trees and there's the building that
the trees have fallen in front of, versus rebuilding. I
totally am all for, you know, using it in a healthy,
(10:25):
you know, manageable way. I also know that what we're
talking about can be possibly taken and you know, turned
into opposite.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I've seen terminator now, right, even though I'm forty six,
I saw it this year for the first of the
Terminator one with my wife and my kids because I
grew up in the eighties wanting Rambo more than Schwarzenegger.
No offense, right, Okay, if either of them want to
come on the show, let me know. But I finally
saw a Terminator and I'm like, yeah, you know, you're
only as good as the people who program them. Okay,
(10:56):
John Conner, Right, So are you John? Are you creating
sky neet? Are you not creating sky net?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
What?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
What is your role in the world here? Can we
hear just straight from you because you're the COO, right.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
That's right? Yeah. So, I mean we've we've actually focused
very explicitly on a mode of autonomy here that is
focused on self contained elements. So we're not trying to
sort of broadly network and deploy you know, a an
entire sort of net of independent ais here. But these
are these are dedicated individual units that are specifically focused
(11:32):
on doing exploration or doing information gathering. So we are
not in the business of, for instance, delivering kinetics. We
don't do that work even with the d D. We
focus on on information gathering and trying to remove people
from difficult or dangerous environments. That's sort of our charter
as a company, and so all of our work is
(11:54):
focused around that same kind of thing. Whether it's uh,
you know, civil defense, commercial, industrial, you know, search and rescue,
all of these things revolve around the same basic idea,
which is get as much information as quickly as possible,
make sure that you have the right knowledge before you
put people in harm's way.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
That's right, recon. I got a friend who's about twenty
some years old. He's going through the academy at US
Air Force for a pilot, and he's I was like,
oh sweet, what are you gonna fly? He's like drones.
I was like, of course, it's like, of course, not
the A ten, you know, not they have thirty five,
any of the configurations, but the drones okay. And I
was like, of course, you know, in a flight suit,
(12:31):
flight gloves, okay, sitting there with a big gulp, all right,
he can literally take a leak. He can get up
and go probably take a leak, and soone could take
over the controls for him. You can't do that in
a real aircraft. You know, all these things that you
know are the smallest detail that matters on a mission.
(12:51):
Whether you're doing recovery or you know, a defense of
your nation, or whatever the case may be. With it,
a pilot has to fly that it's right, right, and
I call that snow piercer. That human element always has
to be involved with the machine, right. And here we are.
You're creating something autonomous that has human element where it's
programmed right. And for my listener and correct me if
(13:13):
I'm wrong. Autonomous is like a boomerang. I could send
it out there with its coordinates, and then I could
coordinate it to do its job, which is map for
twenty four hours, and then it comes back home to
me with all the information.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
In general, that's exactly right. So what we focus on
is the implementation of what we call level four autonomy,
which is you do not have to do the sort
of minutia of mission planning. Instead, you give it a
high level mission objective. You say, within this bounding box,
explore whatever you can come back with the best information
(13:47):
model you can find, and then you know it will
decide its own safe fight corridors. It will avoid people
and objects and wires and rebar and whatever, find its
way back home. And then you get all this information
to make better decisions.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
With my goodness, it's just going to be like a
little hummingbird that's just like moving around all these little
things around like, oh, rebar, I don't want that, gotta
go over this. It's just going to be like at
the same time mapping, Oh, the rebar is right there
and exactly all the information right. And so there's there's
there's some cool sensors out there that help find people
that are like in minds that are collapsed and whatnot
(14:24):
is I mean, I can only imagine setting it like
a drone into a mine, you know, in this day
and age, to be able to see if they could
get through, you know, to see what's going on. I
don't know, man, that's so crazy.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean, we've been used. I'm not allowed to
share the exact location, but we we participated in a
mind collapse emergency reaction where we overnighted a system to
another continent. We got on the phone for thirty minutes
and just gave them quick training and then they went
underground and they explored a whole section of the mine
(14:56):
where a tunnel had collapsed down into the next level
down and very dangerous environment. You know, they were they
were worried about making any progress towards it. It would
have taken probably a week or two sort of progress
into the area that had collapsed. But with these kind
of systems, they did one sort of test flight up
to the area and then one exploration volume and within
(15:18):
an hour they had a full model of the whole
collapsed area. So they saved you know, probably a week
or two of time trying to access that.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Environment and also lives. You know, you're you're not risking
someone happened to low crawl into there to try to
like you're although there was nothing that could quite replace
the human touch and feel of something, right, of course,
but I think that you're ninety nine percent the next
best bet.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Right, Yeah. And it makes people more effective too, right
if they if they're going into an area, better to
have at least a sense for what's going on, you know,
know the areas that are definitely dangerous and almost definitely safe,
so that you can kind of weigh the differences between everything.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It's basically armor. Rightly, you have a night and shining
armor who goes into battle and he still has all
these open areas to be stabbed, but he feels like
he's going to do it all okay, And so that's
kind of what the drone gives its operator and its
team is like, here's your armor on. Feel free to
go ahead and be value and go ahead with the drone,
and then you can follow in behind it, you know,
(16:18):
to take care of him. D It's like it's armor. Yeah,
it's like mental armor, like an EOD robot for the
robot guy. You know, he's like, hey, I got a robot.
I'm going to look inside this room real quick. I mean, well,
knowledge is safety in this context, right, And you know,
I'm not saying that robots are going to fight the wars,
but I think the current president did say he's not
(16:40):
afraid of a gunshot starting a war. It's a keystroke, yeah,
you know, you know he's like, that's ah, if everybody
sit behind these keystrokes.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Yeah. Well, and I mean that that is like, you know,
in the grand scheme of robotics in sort of conflict
like that is that is a critical element that you know,
all of the countries in the world are going to
have to really figure out how they want to interact there, right,
because it's one layer removed. When you don't have people
interacting directly, you reduce that sort of empathic response of like,
(17:14):
this is a person right that I'm going against, versus
I see a thing on a screen, and that's like
layers removed from the impact.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Like let's think about like I think it's World War one,
World War two. You know, they had a quiet Christmas
in the trenches because they all were like singing to
each other because they all had moms and dads at
some point in their life that love them and taught
them how to love Christmas and love each other. And
here they are fight each other. I don't see you know,
T one thousand and T two thousand singing in harmony together.
(17:43):
It's just going to be complete, like wasteland of like
you know, until one is gone. And then you wanted
me to build a perfect world, right, yeah, get them
trying get them. You're like, wait, but I'm the creator.
I don't know if you get my references, but I
hope so.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, no, I watched both of those, Oh.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Man, you know so true though it's like, hey, you
made me right, yeah, to be the best, right, it's
gonna have to get you out of the way now though,
right right? Sorry, holy cal so with with Exian technologies,
you know, is that something that you would Is there
(18:27):
a consumer market for that, like a regular consumer versus
just like such a we need it for search and rescue.
Is there something that's going to be you know, applicable
to the daily lives of us here is just regular
civilians without it or with it?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Probably not in the short run. I mean, our systems
are more sort of industrial scale, industrial usage, right they're not.
I mean, you can buy them, I guess in theory
as a consumer, but most people don't have you know,
one hundred thousand dollars laying around to make those purchases.
And so most of the time we are useful for
(19:00):
industrial scale enterprises that see huge value from increased speed
to decision making, removing people from dangerous environments, and being
able to digitize the sort of physical industry. And so
consumer side really isn't isn't an area we've put any
time or effort into As a result of that, In theory,
you probably could. I mean, you see folks like Skidio
(19:22):
that gave that a run and then sort of gave
it up recently. You know, they focused instead on purely
enterprise and defense, and that probably is because there's not
enough demand in the market. Plus paired with the fact
that djip has just been building very high quality products.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Which they have, which they have, and they have and
they have, and they've been doing it for a while now,
so they have like a little skin in the game.
And you know, I'm still waiting for this thing that
was supposed to come out during the covid TikTok social
media thing. It's like buy it now where you hook
it onto your arm and then it follows you while
you snowboard, right, any type of those like say you're
(20:01):
rock climbing, right, and it's just like going to go
up with you or repelling whatever whatever. It just is
like a pet above you, following you. Right, Yep, I
want one. Don't remember what it is, but you know,
that's what I was thinking. Maybe there's something in the
consumer market, you know, for that type of a thing.
But yeah, you know, Holy County, it's a huge industry
(20:25):
now that I think about it.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, it is well, And I think what you're
going to see is more and more of the physical
industries adopting elements here, right, Like we got our start
in the drone space, but we do ground robotics as well,
and we see a large uptick in you know, factory
floors and manufacturing and logistics and warehousing, all of these
(20:49):
areas where you know there's a there's a viable business
running there, but it's a physical business, right and it's
hard to get digital information about even things that you own,
like you're warehouses, still hard to digitize. And so as
you get better and better at automating and making autonomous
the systems that gather that data, all of a sudden
(21:09):
it goes from being an expensive one off to something
where you have a couple dozen robots gathering information all
the time, and all of a sudden, you've got a full,
up to date digital representation of your whole physical built environment.
And that changes the game in terms of the decisions
you can make, the tools you use, and even how
(21:30):
you staff that place. Like it makes you so much
more efficient. You probably don't have any less people, but
they're much more productive as individuals.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
And maybe someone doesn't have to do that dangerous aspect
of the situation anymore because you figured out a way
to do it without it. But they're still like overseeing
the project. They haven't lost their job. You know, you're
just incorporating this into their their payroll, so that they
feel like you're feeding them pizza. You feed your true
they're going to fight for you. That kind of attitude.
(22:01):
It's like you put a little bit into the staff's
needs and they're gonna be like, hey man, why would
I go anywhere else? This guy they supply us with
the right tools. We have the information that comes to
help us. The guys across the street are still like,
you know, using a pic in an ass to do this.
It's like, now, oh, I had a thought here. It
was kind of kooky, but I don't I don't remember it.
(22:22):
I thought I thinking about like what about like hold on,
it's all about these drones because there's so many of them.
It's like, I don't even know, bro, there's like photography,
there's I got. I got guys that are like doing
movies with drones, big, huge, dooty drones. Man, oh Ai,
here's my question about AI to you. You know, podcasts
(22:46):
and things like that are starting to go AI, and
you know they're trying to say, hey, what if we
had you know, somebody speak on modern terms, but they're
from like, you know, the eighteen hundreds, and you get
this like classy voice talking about like black Mount data. Right,
You're like, okay, hey Bill, the kids telling about black
Hawk down AI. It's all AI. I get. How entertaining
that is?
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Right?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
However, when does AI talking to AI only become just
AI talking to AI and all information is just computer
generated because it can't it's not getting any am I
making sense?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, you're well, let me say, if I'm summarizing, correction,
you're saying, at a certain point when you don't have
humans in that conversation anymore and it's just two ais
sort of talking to each other, then you may get
further and further off the reservation where it becomes less
relevant for people as consumers or parts.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Corrects.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Maybe right. Yeah, So it is a really good question,
and that actually is one of the one of the
underlying questions that a lot of the the new like
LM sort of GPT style AI companies are really trying
to tackle. Now, is you know, how do you how
do you accelerate the process of training those machine learning
(23:58):
models quickly and cost effectively without having to train it
on real world data, which is by itself very imperfect,
Like you know, all the all the chatbots that are
trained on you know, Twitter data sets or you know,
they end up just being like terrible humans, like equivalents, right,
because they're taking the worst impulses of people on social
(24:19):
media and going, so this is a person exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
It's like it's like create this image of what this
is and then they go and pull all that data
from what it's been fed, right, right, And if AI
is only feeding AI, you know, and that human interaction
starts to go because people do want to you know,
use it and bring it in and you know, they
can have you know, a major news outlet's probably use
chat GPT to write articles, you know, and this AI
(24:44):
is just mashing it all up. And if all AI
is getting it, I just think that the interaction of
the human element always has the snow piercer Have you
ever seen that movie?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, well so, I mean I think the
biggest worry in my view is where you have state
independent actors like you know, sort of the equivalent of
terror organizations. But folks that are that are saying, I
don't care what the impacts are, I'm just trying to
affect this negative outcome for a group. And you know,
(25:12):
this was popularized in the last election where there was
a lot of paid disinformation from North Korea, Russia, you
know whatever, fill in the blank. But as you get
to America. Yeah, and as you get further into that world,
then the AI models accelerate the ability for what the
Intelligence Committee would call an asymmetric threat. Right, it's a
(25:34):
single individual that kind of large impact by driving these
these sort of negative conversations, and so AI and especially
LMS have a huge outsize impact there. And that that's
what worries me the most is you know, there's no
regulation for that, and there couldn't be because they are
outside of that that sort of category. So then what
(25:54):
happens with that? And unless we can figure out a
way to sort of bypass that or to evaluate or
you know, get in front of that, you know, we
as citizens and individuals are in a bad place to
kind of evaluate all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I don't even think this conversation that you and I
are having is really happening. Yeah, you know, this is
something that if you're listening right now to our show
and you're hearing stuff that nobody's really talking about around
the dinner table, okay, and because nobody's really thinking like, oh,
this is happening, but it is yep, very much. So
you're going to like conferences and you're seeing like you know, uh,
(26:32):
vendors who are just probably just flourishing and trying to
like say, by our thing, by our thing. You need
this thing, you know, this little screw to go into
all your AI stuff. You need this little bolt, you know,
because it's space age stuff. Whatever.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Yeah, it's very wild.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It is wild, it is and yeah, that's that's the
consumer market show. Do you guys go to cees? Is
that what you guys do? How do you may? I?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, I mean we will be a SEES this year.
We are more in the sort of market specific survey
and geospatial and mining sort of industrial shows where you
have other vendors and customers that are looking for very
specific sort of sets of solutions and in that world,
you know, those are those are great conversations to have
(27:20):
because it's often people who have very specific problems and
we can listen to them and that's you know, the
fundamental product building, right is like listen, learn understand what
the what their existing process is, what's bad about it,
and how we might be able to help them out.
And so those conversations that having the sort of centralized
is great. That's a big opportunity for us and helps
(27:40):
us you know, guide product development and you know, hopefully
we sell systems as a result of that as well.
But it all is a link to better understanding of
the problems people are facing in their in their operating scenario.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Right right, right, Like maybe how can you come together
to solve problems versus cause problems?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
That's right?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, a lot of percent. No, I love that. I
love your I'm sure you have think tanks and you're
involved in all sorts of stuff that is just outside
the box. Typically we try six sigma this bro Okay,
it's like you better six sigma this autonomous drone man,
it's like word with math, math with words. Let me
figure this out. Blades, props, camera together, Yes, exactly right. Wow,
(28:27):
that's really neat dude. Now, well, now, as a young
man growing up before you went in the Navy, did
you think you were going to be working in such
futuristic stuff or were you like I'm going to be,
you know, a full time.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Navy Yeah, I mean I probably I I liked the categories.
I don't know that I really thought I would be
able to do them all for a bit. I probably
was like, you know, in my rebellion phase, I probably
was like, I want to go live in the woods
and write angry poetry or something. But you know, then,
you know, we all go through our own that. But
(29:01):
you know, later on I was like, you know, really
really dig on the idea of service. I was. I
was a big fan of Robert Heinland, and he wrote
a particular book called Starship Troopers, which was made into
sort of this sort of odd ball, over the top movie,
but he actually wrote that book around the concept of
service and citizenship and you know, whether you deserve citizenship
(29:24):
through birthright or through service, which is a really really
interesting philosophical question and one that is incredibly contentious all
over us included, and my my take on it was
basically that you know, I, you know, white male, born
in New England, and you know, at a time when
(29:44):
I've got a lot going for me, so you know,
I figured, you know, given that, and I should be
doing service first and then thinking about what what can
I do for me or for my family or whatever.
So that was kind of my background for going the
military in the first place. But you know, as a
result of that, I had focused on like, let me
(30:05):
learn and understand and you know, get a sense for
how the country works. And like, I'm sure there's a
lot wrong with it, but however we got here, it's
not bad. Let me see how I can participate in
improving it and making it better. So, you know, that
was kind of my starting point, the fact that I
get to work on all this cool stuff. Now, you know,
full thumbs up, I'm a huge fan, love it.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I keep, you know, trying to press and go after
interesting projects and interesting categories, you know, trying to help
people make things better. But yeah, and pretty.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Much how many years you do in the navy, I did,
like about.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Six years I did. I did RTC, so I owed
two tours. I did a little bit more than that.
I went to new school and did that stuff. But yeah,
so and.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Then the transition. Right, a lot of our listeners are
veterans or are mb in and they're like, hey, you
know the transition. We hear it all the time. How
do I transition from military to civilian life? Well, you
were a civilian and you transition to the militar terry.
So first of all, you're successful at it, so you
could do it again, and so what was it that
made you transition into this field?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
May I Yeah, So I think the way that I
kind of viewed coming out of the military was, you know,
I had this sense that I wanted to have an
impact and you know, drive the conversation and the technologies forward.
But there were such huge gaps in my experience. Like
you know, junior officer in the Navy, you learn a lot,
(31:28):
you get to do a lot of things, but you
can also fill a ship with what I didn't know
and what I thought I knew and really didn't And
you know, coming out of that, I didn't know anything
about finance. You know, I knew operations, I knew you know,
some form of leadership I had. I had to learn
to lead people quickly and under duress. But you know,
(31:48):
I didn't have any idea how the finances worked. I
didn't have any idea about a lot of the sort
of the business theory behind things that I sort of
guessed at or had like sort of a street level
knowledge of. And so going in and saying, Okay, maybe
that's the next thing to do, is do business development, sales, finance,
Just get how does it work? What's the underpinning there? Right?
(32:10):
And then being able to apply leadership and management and
operations experience to that then gives you a pretty good
baseline for you know, learning the next thing, learning a
new industry, learning a new jargon, you know, et cetera.
And I think that honestly, I do a lot of
mentorship for people transitioning out of the military. I've been
(32:31):
a coach and mentor for over a decade doing that stuff,
and by far the biggest problem people have is trying
to describe how their experience in the military is relevant
to different scenarios. And you know, the easiest you know
trap people fall into, especially for like a guy that
was a riflement or something, is like, well, what kind
(32:54):
of yeah, like what kind of job am I going
to have that's going to pay me to like carry
a gun still? And you're like, sure, serve security or whatever, right,
But like it's kind of missing the point because even
as isn't even as a junior rifleman, ten percent of
your job is like combat specific, right, Most of it
is you know organization, you know, doing like small management maintenance,
(33:17):
you know the in the Navy it's called you know,
preventative maintenance systems like PMS. And like that is, you know,
the day to day of every sale or junior or senior,
and like most of that stuff translates to the civilian world,
but you've got to learn how to break it down
into little building blocks so that you're going out of
a forty hour week, you know, three hours was shooting
(33:39):
the rest of it relevant and so helping people to
sort of break that stuff down has been a huge,
huge piece of how I've been doing mentorship in that category.
And you know, a lot of it helps people to
sort of just transition into yours using different terminology, different phrases,
you know, recognizing that all of the the three letter
(34:00):
summaries you have for things don't apply. And it's probably
going to get confusing because there's civilian or corporate jargon
versions of those same.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Three A PMS, yeah, exactly uses the PMS, and they're
gonna be like, what God to hr You're like, no,
I'm just trying to do cofeitive maintenance exaclutions. Yeah, so
so you gotta I get that. I get that.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
So it's a really interesting that.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Transition, yeah, to get there, you know, and if somebody
is in the military and they're transitioning what's something that
X and Technologies might be looking for out of them?
You know, are you looking for all bachelor's masters guys?
Is there somebody out there that could can the chef apply?
Is there a you know position, you know, because he
could translate?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
That's right. So we've got We've had a bunch of
transitioning folks come across. We've had an Air Force pilot,
we had a Navy seal, We've had I think a
Marine Corps rifleman. We had a like an IT guy, so,
you know, we it depends on the role you're hiring for,
of course, Like we have some production technicians that don't
(35:04):
require a college degree. We bring folks in and we
help them sort of train up, and it's a fairly
technical role. You don't need you know, a four your
degree for it. And so a lot of times that
structure from being in the military is great for coming
in and doing especially operational things where you're like, all right,
here's the process, and they go, got it. I can
nail that, you know, day two, and then you begin
(35:25):
to extract, like who are the ones that can think
on their feet and can you know, operate with more
vague guidance? And you know, high level objectives and then
they self define their paths and you know, you start
to figure out who can who can promote easily, and
who you know is better served to go to another
place or whatever. And you know we try and help
people figure that out.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
That's awesome And I love the aspect of like, you know,
bringing someone over who maybe worked let's say the ship's
armory k where they have to check in the guns
all day and all the equipment they have to check
it out. You know, you're like, now, how am I
going to transition this into life? It's like bro inventory
man management number one, you know, like, you know, it
doesn't have to be cleaning at all. You could be like, oh,
I know how to keep inventory a direct? How many
(36:11):
businesses have inventory? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, absolutely all of them?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
You know, you know, you know so I mean there's
always something out there, right, You just got to think
outside how can I apply this to this? When people
ask me, hey, rad, are you hiring at your airsoft shop?
And I'm like, I never say no. Yeah, I never
say no to the fourteen the twelve year old who's
asking can you hire me? I'm like, I won't say
no because maybe that kid knows how to edit.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah. Total.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
So if they send me a resume and it looks
good and it's got something on there, yeah, you know,
we might reach out to you and say, hey, you
want to do some side gigs or whatever or But
if you apply to the job and you are applying
to be a manager of a department store and you
put down that you know you can snipe real well,
you got it. You gotta you gotta, you gotta massage
(36:58):
that for the person reading that resume. Okay, you got
to say, oh, I can pay attention to detail.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yeah, you gotta hit exactly. You got to pull apart
the common building blocks and say, you know, have I
got all the exact experience? No, but all of the
building blocks overlapped, and I can wear on the other twenty.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
P exactly exactly. And if you give me a shot,
I'll show you I can do it on the job,
no problem. Yeah exactly. So if you're a veteran out
there and you're looking to transition, just just do it.
Just get it, get going, just apply, apply yourself, you know,
and it's okay to fail. That's where the word success
comes from, right, So every time I go to the gym.
I know I'm going to go in there and fail
(37:36):
because I'm going to push myself to failure, so that
hopefully the success of a longer heart rate or a
better heart and no diabetes and you know all the
other things come along with some weight, you know, nothing like.
And also I've just been boxing, you know, that's really
what I've really found to be a mental cleanser. And
(38:00):
so not only am I, you know, throwing the gloves
at the at the gym, I'm I'm clearing my head
and I'm paying one hundred bucks a month to do this.
Like where can you get a psychiatrist for that?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
The coach comes over, he's like yeah, rad three four
three three four three. You're like, yes, coach, Yes, coach.
It's just yes, coach, you know. And that kind of environment,
you know, where there's like that camaraderie and everybody's in there.
She'd be a better healthy you, is all I'm trying
to say. You know, I'm not perfect. I can only
strive for perfection, and this is what striving for perfection
looks like. Okay, oh see, now I'm glad Lily introduced
(38:37):
us again to talk about this cause you know, we're
I really do care about Aca Poco and all the
people there. I really want that to be, you know,
kind of brought to the forefront, because nobody's really talking
about how hard Mexico did get hit. And it is
such a thing that you know, she's she's been already,
you know, relating back and forth through emails with me
so much. I just wanted to just embarrass her a
little more, lily, throw her name out there again. So yes,
(39:01):
just to make her smile when she watches this.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I'm happy to know that folks like yourself, Ben are
out there trying to do the right thing with these
new modern technologies that you know are gonna just keep
going and going and going and going. And you're the
building blocks of this. You guys go to these conventions
and see everything else that's going to be happening. So,
I mean, holy cow, man, I can't wait for the
(39:27):
movie you're gonna write Fingers crossed.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
I'll get that ghost right.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
And moving, Oh seriously, right, yeah, bro, Because the things
that you're dealing with, I mean, you could bring that
into a film. I don't know whether you're filming the
movie with it or it's about what you're doing. Yeah,
ar to life, dude. Let me okay, now, now I
ask my folks that come on the show if they've
had any type of an instance and your navy, Now,
(39:56):
what kind of a ship were you on when you
first went out or what have you ever had? Here's
my question, have you ever had that? I'm going to
Davy Jones's locker moment because of the mother Nature's like
you're screwed today.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
We had. I had a few times where it was
pretty dicey. I led small boat boarding teams doing VBSS
all right. At the time it was called VBSS. I
think it's called something different now, but it was a
board search and seize yep, and so visit. One of
(40:29):
the one of the ships we boarded was, I want
to say it was a Russian flagged ship that had
maybe been smuggling something. And the master on board was
like a complete caricature, like you could not have created
a more made from movie caricature of like a Russian captain.
(40:51):
It was just like holding a half empty bottle.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
He was like, what do you want, just.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Like like a Russian mobster who decided to capped in
a ship like half empty bottle of vodkill, like waving
a pistol around like we we really thought out of
just you know, drunkenness, he was going to start shooting.
And so we went and secured the ship. We got
all the crew and they were they were totally fine.
They were like, yeah, understood, you know what's going on here.
(41:19):
So they were chilling down in the salon, but you know,
we we were sort of having this face off with
this guy. And it was me and the assistant boarding officer, who,
you know, thank god, it was like a super experienced
senior enlisted chief petty officer that you know, had a
lot of experience here. And so me twenty two year old,
you know, junior officer or twenty three I guess at
the time, but you know, I was, I think, pretty
(41:41):
decent at the job, but nowhere near the experience that
you know, the senior list the chief had, and he
he and I both sort of like we're able to
talk this guy down. But it was a pretty wild experience.
So I think that's probably the closest I've ever come
to to someone like, you know, eyes eyes in my eyes,
like something might go here.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Holy yeah, yeah, now that is that is Yeah, you're
just like and thank goodness for your senior listed chief.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Right, Yeah, he talked the guy down like see chief, Yeah,
you know I wouldn't would.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
The officer respects the chief. Chief.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
I can't do anything about the chiefs, come.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
On anything without the chiefs. I'm just putting that out there.
And I saw them back there with their mugs that
are stained at the black top. Don't ever watch that mug.
Never watched their mug.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
No sitting in the goat locker going.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Damn right, that's right. It's the chiefs, every single one
of me. Chiefs. Would you exit out of the navy
ass you went in as an ensign? Is that how
it starts out?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
I came in as an ensign, I left asobu tenants
and three and then uh, you know, made my transition
from there.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
So and have you almost ever thunk.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
We had? We were in some pretty heavy, heavy seas
off of San Francisco actually where this is actually a
terrible story. You know, we weren't really really in danger,
but it was the worst I've ever felt at sea
where it was a new moon, so no visual horizon,
just total darkness, and we were going directly into pretty
(43:24):
high seas it's like at twenty foot maybe twenty five
foot swells, so like, and I was on a cruiser,
so it was a small enough ship that you know,
you go up over top of that wave and you
crest and then the bottom drops out. And I was
on the midwatch from ten ten pm to two am,
and of course they'd serve Mongolian barbecue that night, so
(43:44):
everyone was just throwing up NonStop. But you know, you're you,
you go up, you ride the crest the wave, no
visual horizon, You're just waiting for it, and then bottom
drops out and you literally are in free fall for
you know, one or two seconds. You know, then you
slam hit the deck because it it was like a
fifteen to twenty foot drop. And yeah, everyone just like
hanging on and you know, the ships are built for that,
(44:06):
so it's not like you're in real danger. But that
felt pretty wild. And that was I've definitely never felt
worse like seasick than I have at that time, and
that was.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Just that was a shitty respect for mother nature? Is
that your you respect to see? Yeah, one hundred percent? Hunt, Yeah,
holy coy. Yeah, I was talking to a salty dog
to the day and I was interviewing him and he
said that, you know, he was in a four day
typhoon off the coast of Nam on a destroyer and
(44:37):
he was about to go down. Yeah, but they lived,
he said. Out of everybody on the crew, only three
were eating. Yeah, I can say that. Yeah, that's goadly
what we're talking about. You know, Holy cow, holy cow. Yeah,
the Navy. You know, I decided on the Air Force.
My dad was a Green Beret and former Navy himself. Right,
But now that I think about the Navy today as
(44:57):
a forty five year old, forty six year old dad,
I'm like, yeah, that sounds just like, you know, like
you know, you're playing with the ocean. Dude. It's like
these ships seem so big when they're reported, but once
you're out into the vastness of the ocean, you're just
like a toothpick.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Is. It is. It's amazing the technology to float on
water and dive down with ballats on submarines, and just
the Navy is bad ass. I'm just gonna say that
right now. United States Navy and all you sailors are awesome. Okay.
I just want to shout out to that Wow, that
was right inside my heart. I feel it all too.
Oh man, jeez, cause I only get to see what
(45:39):
like Tom Hanks shows us on the movies, or like
some kind of crazy like you know top ten, you
know sea freight, who's crossing into the water. But bro
if I can only imagine though. You know, you're a
captain with your mug and you're just like, just send it, sir,
five thousand men on board Roger. You'll see it. Turn
(46:01):
into it. You'll see turn into it. Let's sir, just
do it.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, some stalthy guys there that are on the run
the ships.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
There is there is. Did you ever have what they
call a polywog moment?
Speaker 3 (46:15):
Yep? So I did the shell back ceremony when we
crossed the equator and got my got my card and everything.
So it was a it was an.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Interesting baby that they had to kiss or is that
what I heard? Is that what I hear you that?
Or so I was? Or were you holding your coffee
mug just like looking good boys?
Speaker 3 (46:33):
No, I got shell acted pretty well. It was I
think you know are at that point when it was
this must have been two thousand and two maybe, so
it was after my first deployment, but like still just
post nine to eleven. So I think at that point
it was very much like they had started removing some
(46:55):
of the worst parts of the ceremony, but it was
still not very comfortable, and so it's still some some
pain and discomfort involved, but it wasn't It wasn't probably
what you know, you would have gone through in like
the Vietnam era, where I think you really just got.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Like, oh, yeah, that's what I've heard. That's why. That's
where I heard the story from. Man. He's like, there
was no weight management. Yeah, so they had the biggest
guy get greased up on his belly and they all
had to like kiss his belly with the grease from
the the takeoff of the aircraft carrier, the stop put thing.
Holy cow, dude, the navy man, that's why it's though,
(47:33):
that's what it is. You know, I would probably have
so much tattoos, Dude, I'd be like, I've been across
the equator, I've returned home fifteen times. I have all
these birds on me.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Well, most most of the guys can.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Did you get tatted up with anything?
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I didn't. I came from but I got usually a
senior officer would intervene. But do you really think that's
a good idea. I'm like yes, and they're like, no,
I get back on the ship. No.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, that'd be like my dad talking to me. Are
you sure you want to do that? You sure about that?
You're sure about that? No? Yeah, Well, listen, I've had
you for almost just about an hour of our time,
and you've been a really wonderful guest to come back,
and I'm glad that we were able to talk about,
you know, the positive services that you guys are providing
to people who need it, like in Acopoco, right and
(48:22):
in other warrant torn areas, and I'm sure you know,
to wind it down, I want to know, do you
feel that you'll use your stuff in the greater stuff
that's going on, like over in Gaza. Is that something
that's you know, it's a good question.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
I think there's still a lot of people figuring out
how and where to use systems on the battlefield. In general,
the US and Allies have been a little slower to
use very AI driven stuff. It's been a lot of
adoption on the Russian side, the Turkish side, Chinese side,
and so I don't really know what the role is
(48:59):
for like hours specifically, I think you're going to see
a lot of AI driven technologies enter the battlefield shortly
driven by a lot of the you know, the war
innovation that's happening, especially around Ukraine Russia right now. I
think you know, you're seeing shield AI and you're seeing ANDERIL,
and you're seeing Skydio sort of playing in those worlds
(49:19):
as well. From those are like a cheaper, cheaper system side,
and I mean ANDERIL is using witering munitions and that
sort of thing, like you know, actual basically drones with
explosives on them. And so I think there's a lot
of different categories that are going to start being utilized.
I think where where you're going to see technologies like
ours the most is on logistics and i SR and
(49:43):
sort of getting a better sense for what's happening on
the battlefield and you know, trying to make sure that
we're not putting people into the most dangerous parts and
you know, being more effective when we.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
And i SR correctly. It's international search and rescue right in.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
This case an example, so in this case it's intelligence
surveillance reconnaissance and so it's the idea of trying to
get a better sense of the battlefield from an intel perspective.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
All right, cool, I'm glad you corrected me. I can
always be right. That's for you, Dad, who sits on
the mantle right over there on the fireplace on every
one of these shows, looking over my shoulder. Yeah, that's right,
that's right. Okay. Well, you know the best place to
go and check out more about Xian Technologies is xian
(50:32):
technologies dot com. You know, and if you want to
learn more or try to put yourself out there and
set a resume because you have what it takes to
work with Ben and his crew, then do that and
he'll let you know. And do you have anything you
want to say in the last parting words before I
close out the show.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
No, I appreciate the time here like you, like you
alluded to before you know, it's it's a it's a
huge shame about the the stuff that happened down in Acapoco,
and unfortunately it won't be the last of you know,
major disasters that happened. So you know, if you if
you're if you are interested in want to help in
those kind of scenarios, go for the aid organizations. They
are going to be better at coordinating getting this stuff
(51:13):
in in the right way, in the right order. With coordination,
then you know, sort of a grassroots thing a lot
of times. So you know, that would be my recommendation.
Try and find the right the right orgs that are
that are practiced at getting things in there, that.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Are already ready to go, Like they've already grassrooted themselves,
and they're just like they need you to supply the
that extra manpower to them versus you trying to start
from the ground up. You know, I get that. Hey, well,
what a wonderful show. It's been a pleasure. I want
to give a shout out to Lily for arranging everything.
And I want to thank Ben Williams, former Navy officer,
(51:49):
a surface warfare humanitarian and just a really nice, cool
dude that just wants to talk about cool stuff like polywog. Okay,
I just want to say thanks on behalf of brand Web,
former Navy seal from the Navy. Give him a shout out.
Go buy his book for the holidays, any of them.
Go look up Brandon Webb and uh. I'm also on
all the audioble for most of the books, so I'm
(52:11):
the voice of Finn, go check out Chief Finn and
uh I want to say the bookstore. Don't forget that
we have soft Rep, dot Com, Forward Slash Book hyphen
Club and the merch and On behalf of Ben Williams
and Lily. This is rad say in peace.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
You've been listening to Self Rep Radio
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.