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Joining me now is somebody who quite a bit of experience in the in the world of startups and business and sports, also dabbled.

In politics a little bit, and it is I.

Thought it would be an interesting conversation with somebody more in the entrepren newer space, given I'm also in my own entrepreneur space.

So it's Matt Haggins.

I hope I've he sort of dabbled in politics at a time, working for Rudy Giuliani back when he was mayor of New York City, but has mostly been on the business side over the last twenty years.

But understands both sides of the street, and I kind of want to get a better understanding with the business community how they really view politics necessary, evil or partner in different aspects.

Matt, how'd I do in describing your background?

Pretty good?

I mean that hit the most important points.

Are you you consider yourself a serial entrepreneur?

How do you describe your path and business?

Yeah, I would say I'm a super a serial entrepreneur.

I'm a builder, and my building impulses come from childhood.

I grew up abject poverty in Queens, New York.

And what does that mean.

It took care of a disabled parent.

I would sell flowers on street corners and scrape gum tables and McDonald's.

Literally, I really grew up with nothing, and then I had to create my own path to get out of poverty.

I dropped out of high school when I was sixteen, tok gd to go to college so I could get a job.

So that that faith that I could architect my own life then began to translate into into just building businesses.

And we can go deeper into any of that, but.

Well, you know, it's interesting.

I'm going to start there a little bit because I for somewhat different reasons.

I also, I always say, ended up growing up early.

In some ways, my childhood ended when my dad died at sixteen.

And you just does right your childhood you didn't sounds like you didn't really you didn't have the traditional childhood and there and I'm curious, as you've gotten more resources where there, how you've scratched that itch.

And I'll get to that in a minute.

But that is sort of what makes this country.

I always say, what makes this country different is that there are different paths up the ladder.

Yes there are.

It does feel like there are hers that sometimes are bigger than they should be for the average American, But it's not impossible to climb over them, right it is.

But I'm curious how you view Do you view your success as hey, anybody can do this, or do you think you had unique help at certain forks in the road.

Such a great question.

The answer is both.

I do think.

I always believe that education and work was my way out of poverty, and those two never failed me, so that's definitely true.

I remember as a kid realizing it was a lot better to be the person who bought the flowers and put margin on them, r, I'm the kid who knocked on your window.

That was like my first lesson on capital deployment.

I grew up in a really poor neighborhood and Queen's but I was also very cognizant of the fact that there was a difference between being a white kid and a black kid growing up in that area.

And to this day, I still feel and people say, what do you mean, what advantages did you have?

You grew up with nothing.

Your mother literally died when you were twenty six, so I was living in a roach motel, and I was like, there still was an advantage of being a kid who grew up in that context, and so I had.

To be totally cynical about this.

You could get a cab a lot easier than a black man your age.

Well, you know what it was.

And I see.

The good part is I can transcend both sides because I have a gd that came from nothing.

So you can't tell me I'm not credible to speak on this topic of you know, is there any kind of eyes in the world if you back when I was growing up, if you had a kid back then, at least in the eighties, a black kid who had a ged maybe there would be a degree.

It's confirmatory, right, Lots of kids and I never had you meet, you know, smiley, little white kid, you know who's out there hustling and he has a GD and you say, oh, what happened?

So I talk about that in my book like that is that is a difference.

Does that mean you can't overcome?

But of course not.

I also have my own things to overcome.

I had a mother who's completely not equipped to take care of kids, sadly, and she died rotting in a chair.

We had no health insurance, right, so I had to overcome the absence of health insurance and the trauma of raising a parent.

So and then other kids had to overcome the color of their skin.

And so I don't think any it doesn't you know, that's we're in a funny time.

It doesn't invalidate anybody's journey to say that you had some type of built in advantage, you.

Know, so well, it goes actually the other way.

It's funny.

It's like it doesn't matter whether it's somebody who's a scholarship football player on college team or somebody.

We are almost we have convinced ourselves we all have to tap into a her radio Alger story or we don't have a story to share.

And I don't know whether I Sometimes I think I worry that it almost encourages victimhood.

That's so funny you said that.

I say.

I get asked this question recently.

Somebody said a teacher at Harvard Business School, and they were saying, oh, when you get resumes, now, are you like, you know, you throw away those kids from those elite schools because you only look at the kids from who are dog Downtrod?

And I said, no, that's not true at all.

Actually, I have a greater appreciation for what it would actually take to go to Harvard.

Number one.

Number two, I have a built in excuse why I didn't go to Harvard.

I was working and taking care of my mom for seven years going to Queen's College.

But could I really gotten into Harvard even if I didn't have the circumstances.

So I agree everyone now has to have this, you know, come up and story of transcendence, and I think, honestly a lot of people make it up or amplify it, but it does create this culture of victimhood, and I completely reject it.

The reality is if I didn't grow up in that circumstance.

There is zero chance that I would end up going from sixteen, you know, and Julian's secretary of twenty six.

And I, you know, it's funny I say that.

It's like it's it is.

It is true.

It's sort of like.

Sometimes you see this with super successfully ambitious people where in some ways they needed chase something, you know, in politics.

I always say, it's fascinating to me how many presidents we've had that have had daddy issues.

And I say this with no disrespect to anybody.

I have my own.

I my dad died.

At sixteen when I'm constantly trying to to help live the life that he should have had, and he never got to live.

And he had a variety and there's a variety of reasons for that.

And I've watched all these presidents, but there's something about if you don't have that drive, maybe you don't run for president.

George W.

Bush or Donald Trump or Barack Obama.

But if you look at our particularly the last five presidents, they've all had some form either they were looking, you know, searching for the father figure they never had.

See Bill Clinton, see Barack Obama, or they were trying to prove something to a father figure, right see Donald Trump, see George W.

Bush.

Arguably even you see it a little bit in Joe Biden's story.

But it is funny how This is why I always say, you know, and I'm gonna guess it is hard to imagine an alternative path because.

You know no other path than the one than the one you travel, right.

I love the patterns that govern us.

I always govern us.

I get made fun of a lot because I use psychologists a lot in business all the time.

Because one time I went through one twenty five years ago and revealed everything I thought I was hiding was perfectly on display to anybody who worked for me or around me.

So I was like, apparently I'm bleeding out in front of everyone.

But my decisions to this day, you're talking about daddy issues, minor mommy issues that nobody helped, you know, nobody cared to intervene.

And I got to witness what powerlessness looks like up front, and that there's no happy endings.

She died without ever taking a plane, and so I have these you know, un boundless empathy that shows up for a single love.

But he I agree We're all just little creatures.

Primitively, what is your Let me ask you this, what is it?

How has it informed your views of the role of government?

And where where do you think government should be involved in your life?

Looking back now, where should government have been more involved or less?

In law?

Such a great question.

I mean, I take a cynical view of both sides because I've been on both sides.

I've been up close.

My earliest days.

We're working for a Democratic Congressman, Gary Ackerman back in Queen's I got to see what that looked like, and I worked for Rudy Giuliani for a while.

Then I helped mid Romney's campaign and John Mcca.

I've been everywhere, and the reality is, you know when when let's just take on the left, you know this sort of cynical over promising and then this, you know, populous blame somebody for what you're not given.

I as a kid, I was subjected to those feelings too, like who's wronging me?

Why is no one taking care of me?

And that didn't do me any to be honest.

What did me good was cultivating my belief that I have agency, that I can transcend my circumstances, and so the answer is where does government belong level the playing field?

Passionate conservatism is something that has really resonated with me as I've gotten older, but didn't What.

Do you think that means now?

I mean, because I don't know what it means.

I had an idea of what George W.

Bush meant by it.

But what do you think compassionate conservatism means?

I think it begins with empathy of somebody's circumstances and trying to figure out a solution that you wish would be advocated for if you were in the same position.

And so what does that really mean?

We should figure out a way that everybody can have health care, because you would want that if you were not in that position.

There's nothing wrong though, with requiring people to work and work as the path to self respect and self esteem.

That's a good question.

I don't know what it means, but weirdly resonates with me.

Is probably closer to the truth, right.

I just remember as a kid when I would be sold those empty promises too and trying to point you know, who's to blame for my circumscs.

They didn't do anything for me.

What did something for me was work, And so I think government's role is leveling the playing field and approaching everything with a degree of empathy.

You've been sounds like the last chopped I know.

That's not like I didn't give you no.

I mean I get it.

I mean I think it's a fair no.

And I think ultimately you know your description.

I find that to be a fair description.

I have no you know, I don't feel the need to make you follow up, which is, you know, sounds like you believe in equal access, not equal outcomes, right, And I think that sometimes there is a different I think some people want equal outcomes, and that is that gets you in one type of redistribution of wealth versus equal access, equal opportunity, which I think is ultimately probably at the core of even what the founders thought they were creating here in the United States, right, like this is about creating so that you don't have to be related to the king or you don't have right you know at that time, right, you have an equal opportunity versus equal outcome.

And I think that that's always been arguably one of the simplest ways to differentiate left and right at times.

And one thing remains true whatever we are in our current political climate and what people think, like what's great about this country that die is never cast.

I love the fact that I always say I'm here.

I'm here in the circumstances I'm in through an accident of birth that I didn't make a choice.

But I'm really glad that nothing about my future is going to be pretty determined based upon where I was born.

I knew one at every single person born in America or frankly born in the world.

In theory, right, this is what the Founders said, right, the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In theory, they were saying that that all of us, that that's we have the those are the inalienable rights that we are born with.

Yeah, and I think we're struggling with where that pendulum is right.

Where where does leveling the playing field in terms of trying to reckon with the past fit in with that excluding other people had nothing to do with it rights.

It's a really I mean, I'm hoping that the pendulum comes right back to where it's supposed to be, which is probably what will happen in the long arc of.

His It always does, right, It always does.

I would say, I'm not sure what period we're in and what we're reckoning, to be honest, because there was a period in which we had the exclusion with the other direction, which isn't right answer either.

Well, what's interesting is that in the in the moment when we're living through one of these transitional periods, right, and I think we're in the middle of a realignment, and we think every election is an answer to the realignment.

Oh, re alignment so or no, we just don't have another election for another two years, right, like we're it just because we hold you know, an election happens as a main realignment stopped.

Right, We're sort of we're in the middle of something, and we have been, frankly since the end of the Cold War.

Right, the country had a north star defeating communism in the Soviet Union, Well, then we did it.

We've actually struggled with our next north star.

And what I find I wrote, I gave a commencement of speech at my mom's college from where my mom had went the place she had any dignity, and I came back and gave gave the speech, and I was in my speech I noted that when I was when she had when I was there, when she was graduating on that you know, same quad, the percentage of people that believed in gay marriage was completely flipped.

So in the time that it took for me to graduate and give that speech, you know, a decade.

And so I always think, I use this metaphor of attacking, you know, with a boat that doesn't look like it's looking forward progress, But if you were looking down from above, you would see it's moving.

We are always moving.

Our values aren't evolving.

And then there are these reckonings where the pendulum swings violent leave one way or the other.

Way, turning an aircraft carrier, you know, I mean we are an aircraft carrier and moving.

It takes a long time to turn, but watch out when we turn.

You know, we're a powerful force.

So let's get into the world of business.

It sounds to me over the last twenty five years, the first half of it you spent in politics, the second half in business.

Is that roughly the split?

Yeah, that's probably right.

I mean I started so young, so I've had a degree of a little bit before a scum career, because if I started with Giuliani, I started as a reporter.

Actually a cub reporter in when I was seventeen, and then I started Rudy when I was maybe twenty, and I became Pressbactoria by twenty six.

So I've been able to lead multiple lives.

So I was a first employee and one of the first of the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site, and then I became chief operating officer.

So I spent two years of ground zero at the age of twenty nine.

I guess my government career ends.

So and I'm fifty, which I cannot believe.

Fifty one.

Yeah, yeah, thought every check engine light's going to go off.

Brother, just trust me.

Yeah, I'm feeling it.

Yeah, yeah, because I rarely I don't think I interview anybody older than me anymore.

It feels like everybody I'm interviewing any three.

Yeah, I know, I'm making you feel better a couple of years older than you.

So tell me on the transition to business.

The longer you've been on the business side, has it, how has it changed your view of politics?

Well, when you're in politics.

Anybody in politics can relate to this when they leave one of these heady jobs, like when I had to leave being press secretary to the mayor, the you know, ground zero.

There is this fear that you're just not going to be valued the same by the society.

And then once you step out, you realize you're in an ecosystem that a lot of people are frankly apathetic about.

First that bothers you don't you realize how important it is to, you know, work with the mayor.

And I worked all night and I showed up to every crisis, and you realize, oh, it's because you're trying to feed yourself and you want government to exist in the background and you don't want it to occupy every minute of your life, which is.

The theory of I ascribe to the theory of the clog toilet that most people view don't want to think about government, and then when the toilet's clogged, they don't want to think about the plumber until the toilet's clog, and they really hope they don't have to call the plumber.

That's how most people view government.

They just don't, Yeah, just make sure the toilet.

Plushes I thought that was like, that was unsophisticated and apathetic.

I do you understand how important it is to be dialed in?

But as I've gotten over, I realized, no, people just want to take care of the family of a degree of peace, which is why I'm sure we have collective adrenal fatigue at the moment because you're bombarded with politics, you know, every day.

But yeah, so yeah, go ahead, finish.

No.

No, I was making the point that was one of the things that was the first transition I had to get used to going into is that that people didn't care as much as I thought they cared, and then as a result, there is a degree of narcissism when you're in government that you think there's nothing more important.

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It's interesting and it's it's true, right, it's by the way true the media side.

Apologies at city Hall or where No.

I mean, I think, you know, look, I didn't get into this to become a celebrity reporter or whatever you want to call that.

And unfortunately or it happened, right, It just it's I say unfortunately because I think the personalization of the media has politicized the media, where when we were more of the fourth estate mindset, where we you know, we were there, we were the we were a check and balance.

You know, we were a branch in some ways, the fourth branch, and that meant we were supposed to be a check and balance, not necessarily picking a side type of mindset.

But then you know, the politicians in some ways surfaced us up individually in order to whack us down, right like.

And that's that's the mistake.

We collectively made it because we individually could get more station and more prominence, but it actually collectively weakened us as the individual became this.

Conversation I was obsessed about when I was there.

I started as a CUB reporter.

I thought I was I was going to go work for the city section of the Times and always investigative pieces.

Bob Wouldward owned a piece of my newspaper, so he nominated me for a pulz er anybody by the way, but it sounded good when I was at city halls of press.

I used to be obsessed with the fact that each reporter has their own, their own context, that they live in that cultivation bias.

But yet you're holding me accountable in a pseudo objective way.

We believe all the news that's you know, but no one's actually revealing your bias.

I used to be a assessed by shouldn't there be a way in which I could look into your bib your backgrounds, I can assess whether or not you bring some type of bias to the table.

Now, well the other direction.

But I would argue this, and this is where I just don't accept the premise of I think bias is the wrong part of this conversation to have, right because we're born you just you said it earlier in this conversation.

We're all born with original bias.

Who you're born to, where you're born, your circumstances, your geography, your socioeconomic status, color of your skin, all of that is original bias.

All right, And it's just the life you lead, where you grow up, how you grew up, It just, you know.

So I always want to know where somebody, I always want to know where you grew up and how you grew up that I have an idea of the different biases that may have contributed to your political worldview.

I sort of get it, you know.

I do my best to try to be transparent about I.

You know, I always say I was lucky enough to grow up and household where my parents canceled each other's.

Vote out and talked about it.

So I heard the conversation that they had about Reagan versus Carter, and I remember it very intuitively.

And my mother just couldn't bring herself to vote for Reagan.

Thought Carter had to go.

So she writes in Gerald Ford, my father's a big Reagan guy.

But hearing the conversation and then reading about it later as an adult, you realized that was the conversation of many voters were having.

It was sort of like they knew Carter needed to be fired.

They just weren't comfortable yet handing the reins to Reagan, and they were trying to figure that out.

And it is so I grew up I was.

I always say I was lucky to grow up hearing those conversations, so at least understanding how my parents were a microcosm of a debate about that.

But you know, as far as bias and a reporter, to me, it's not about bias.

Every reporter is going to have a bias.

Are they fair?

I think fairness is the only That's why I never accepted the premise of fair and balanced.

You can't balance the truth.

All you can do is be fair.

Are you a.

Jerk to boat everybody that's the press secretary to the mayor?

You know those reporters.

Some reporters are just irascible, right, They're just going to be a pest no matter who which side of the aisle they come from.

And then there are those that get in the tank, and you know who those are pretty quickly too.

Yeah.

No, I think we're saying the same thing.

But I was saying twenty five years ago, the idea that somehow a context, let's not call bias, let's call this your framework.

Wherever you grow up at the environment sure influenced how you chose the lead or how you chose The first quote was sort of rejected.

Back there, that's like, you know that there was some theoretical objectivity about writing, which is impossible to obtain.

And now I think the pendulum has gone so far the other way that we can't trust anything, which I don't think is the right view.

The right view is we should assess how you've chosen to present those facts and understand that you have your own implicit context that's shaping how you write an article.

Now we've gone well, now we can't trust anything, which I completely reject.

But back then it was interesting saying you couldn't have the debate that somehow are you the way you chose that first quote might have been influenced by your background.

Now you're right and it's true and you get that, and then the question becomes and I always say this about covering a story or covering a person.

Right, there was this debate about plat, you know, deplatforming Trump, which I think when if I were to say, what did legacy media, why did they essentially knock themselves out right?

And I always believe this was a self inflicted wound in this respect, deep platforming Trump was couldn't have been more, you know, couldn't have been a bigger mistake.

And I thought it internally, I thought it externally because it sort of got to this.

It it sort of the voters decided to platform these people, right, You as a reporter, are there to explain what's happening, to tell people what's happening.

But hey, the voters have done this.

And if you don't accept the PREMI as a political reporter, that you know so and so is important because the voters have decided it is, then you don't accept the premise of the democracy.

Which is amazing.

I never would have thought, I mean, you were similar ages that we could have such a shift in the collective way we express ourselves and social norms.

And these are the algorithms.

To me, it's the algorithms that have destroyed us.

I mean, to constantly feed people.

I mean, you strike me as somebody that probably sought out you want contradictory information, I do.

The tech companies make it impossible to get contradictory information that isn't sort of overly contradictory, right, It isn't well thought out contradictions.

It's just almost partisan contradictions.

It's very hard to get a more balanced view because I can't curate what I want.

The algorithms keep trying to curate what they think I want because I match some profile.

That is what I think has been so destructive to the trust of the of the media.

Yeah, it's true.

If you're on Twitter, I mean that's your whole existence, right, you could see where you're spending your time.

I want Elon Musk needs to get off his own platform.

You know, if you spend only your time on there, you think the world is on the brink of a civil war every night.

It's true.

Get off of online and you realize now most people are pretty comfortable living in this country.

They're basically pretty you know, they're you know, they wish the economy were more even, and they wish a lot of things.

But we're not ready to pull guns on each other.

But that's not the way it feels on Twitter sometimes.

Yeah, I have a new approach, by the way, which has really been helpful for how I approach both business and my sanity.

Is that ideal after I check in on it, so I have to go through the extra step of reinstalling it, which has been so healthy productivity wise and otherwise.

Because to your point, it was I couldn't tell what's real?

Or are we on the brink, you know, or are we as Kim Kardashian launching a new you know, sweatpants on skins, Like it's like what's reality?

So I literally deal everything?

But LinkedIn LinkedIn is like eating vegetables and lima beans all day, like it's not going to hurt you.

Well, you know, it's funny you say that because LinkedIn has become a fairly trusted space, and I've been interested as to why that is.

And I think the users of LinkedIn don't want it to become like X.

And I think LinkedIn at least those folks realize, hey, be careful, don't overserve people what they want here, or you might create yet another Instagram or another X or another Facebook that just divides and that isn't what the LinkedIn community wants.

Yeah, and to your point, now, you don't get the extremes, which is good, but you also don't get any toxic toxicity.

No, it doesn't.

Well, let me get back to your world of entrepreneurship and you it is you've had more of a background in sports than any other sector of business.

Or is that am I overreading?

No?

It is I can give you a quick for the audience.

So I've had a crazy career of business and that I partnered up after running the Jets, and then I ran the Dolphins as a vice chair.

So I ran two NFL teams in one capacity at least off the field.

For career post So you worked for Woody Johnson?

Did you work for Steve Ross?

Well, I have this philosophy and for anyone listening is like, never put yourself in a box.

So as a kid who grew up in a certain box right abject poverty, total dysfunction, I had to get out of that box, and government was my path.

What's great about government is it has a bias towards young people because then it's dumb enough to work these hours and they believe too.

Finally, like you know that the cause matters and you know whatever it takes.

So I put in those crazy hours.

But in fairness, government didn't judge me for being a poor kid wearing second hand clothes and living in a roach motel.

Was I going to put in the hours and that was my first path out.

So that was one box.

I knew that if I didn't transcend from being a press secretary, ID always be the press guy.

But as you know, Chalk, the press guy or girl ends up running a lot of the power.

Right, they have a lot more power than you would ever believe.

More now and not at first.

Boy, when I first started covering politic ninety two was my first campaign professionally, and the press shops were definitely.

Down.

The totem pole rights were held in higher esteem, the media consultants were held in higher esteem, the policy person was held I think in the twenty first century that is completely flipped.

And I think now the communication side.

I mean, look, even in business in two thousand, there was probably not a single Fortune five hundred company that had a chief Comms officer that the word Comm's office comms in a C suite title did not exist.

Now that a majority of Fortune five hundreds have that title.

So I do think we've transitioned to believing that communicating, whether in politics or business, is now a front of you know, brain lob right, it's a frontal lobe necessity in order to succeed.

I think that's true so externally, but internally in the Apparasa government, that comms person, if they were good, was all powerful because they had proximity.

They have proximity, so I was close to power and I had a power externally though back to your point, it would not be seen as anything.

So my whole life is career in business has been about breaking out of the boxes.

And the first box was to become an operator.

I became chief operating officer of the World Trade Center site, and now I had this new skill of being able to manage complex variables in a land use context in a city of New York, and I use that to join the Jets to run their effort to build a stadium.

Now I'm in a new box.

I'm in a business guy.

I'm running a sports team.

And then but my dream was to build businesses from scratch.

And then I became partners with Steve Ross, owner of the Dolphins, so left that last skill to run the team, but started doing what I would really want to do was build businesses from scratch.

And so now I'm at the end of this journey of Okay, Now I'm a builder.

I build businesses, and I've been able to do it in different different contexts communications, but also i'm military of a pretty significant drone company.

Now that is very important and it serves the US Army and a bunch of other government agencies that I'm the co founder of.

So so it's been this constant evolution, but leveraging the last thing I did to get out of that box.

Let me start with the drones, because I think I had a long podcast interview with Dexter Filkins, who's one of the best war correspondents, living war correspondents that we have, always embeds himself in different variety of places.

It's just one of those a war correspondent is just wired differently than most reporters.

And you know, he wrote a big piece.

Is a great movies in the Civil War.

By the way, have you seen it about it War?

About war photographers.

You have to see this.

Movie a doc a documentary.

It's a movie.

I don't think it did that that well, but it's actually fantastic and it covers it's a theoretical you know.

Oh, the Civil War movie.

I refused to watch it.

I didn't like.

I don't well because I think it plays off of some cynical stereotypes of our political discourse these days.

Not the actual but I war a photographer.

That I yeah, well, what I know what Filkins was writing about though, was just like, how much warfare has changed just in the three and a half years we've been in a hot war between the Russians and the Ukrainians, and how that is probably and it's panicking the Pentagon at the moment that basically we are prepared for a war we'll never fight, but we are not prepared for the next war we're going to fight.

And it's been the acceleration of drone war drone warfare that is really catching the Pentagon off guard, and I imagine has been a pretty big boom for your business.

Right we'll tell you the origin story, since we were talking about patterns than childhood.

But when I partnered with Steve Rosby started writing checks into some nascent sports.

The first check I wrote was into the drone Racing League in twenty fifteen, and my partner, who's you know now eighty five?

And back then it's like, what the hell and why is anybody gonna watch flying Robots's fair point, But nonetheless took a flyer and as I got closer to the technology that way, By.

The way, two hundred years ago, do you think people said, why would anybody want to watch two horses race?

And eventually it became a thing.

Why would anybody want to watch two cars race go ahead?

That was my logic, and also who cares to fly?

But as I got close to what we were inventing, we broke the Guinness Book.

We're records for flying a drone one hundred miles an hour.

We were organizing drone races and stadiums, so you had to fly around the crevice, you know, make sure there was no latency between the drone and the pilots.

Sounds like the Star Wars prequels.

It was that you're describing in arenas and stadiums and stuff.

Getting to the point of the story.

Because of my pattern recognition and because I was on the ground at the World Trade Center site on Church Street looking up at that building, I always have had that terror and that just intersectional military very clear to me early on and my co founders that Pandora's box has been opened, and that actually at the time, China was running an economic sabotage campaign undermine the entire US drone market.

Those close to it knew what China was doing.

We didn't know the ultimate endgame, but completely undermining the US drone market.

So in twenty seventeen, we started working on standing up sub Rosa a company to make sure that we had this technology on us soil.

Nobody at the time there was no market, there was no anything, So we put it into all Alabama.

We put tens of millions of dollars through the value of death, which is the long period of time it takes place to win a single contract.

So my point to you is, I've been living this nightmare for a long time, and then Ukraine starts and everything changes.

So let me bring you forward.

Our drunes are fitting a rugsack.

They can enable a warfire to call in their own air support on the edge.

It does a ton of things.

But what's remarkable is how incredibly behind our country is and how hard this administration has been working to catch up.

You could say whatever you want politically, but what the Trump administration has tried to do in this category is so overdue and so necessary.

But for the longest time, people just were ignoring it.

Ukraine has been on the radar for years now, right, but there wasn't a lot devoted to it in any meaningful way.

So when you see the Pentagon scrambling to catch up, it's because the need is so urgent, and it was going unaddressed, not not entirely.

A lot of good people in the military were trying to sound the alarm.

Right, So are we to you know, sort of sort of going forward if all warfare is going to be to start with, Yeah, I was just going to say, we go to robotic war.

Of course, the biggest, you know, the biggest concern I would have about that, right, is the unintended consequence of automating warfare.

Does it one allow smaller countries to potentially be on equal footing if you're essentially just buying robots that's one.

Two?

Does it make if if does it make it easier to kill?

If it looks like a video game, right, which has always been a I think of fear that the the the drone wars, if you will become sort of almost like, you know, life imitating sci fi, right, the Clone wars.

You know, if the if the damage to humanity is minimal, does it increase the likelihood.

That people go to war?

Or does it decrease it because there's less casualties war?

Does it decrease it because it's futile and we just simply know it's ai generated you know, warfare about.

Allow so that it's mutual assured destruction to go back to the old ICBM.

Right.

But let's before we get to that deterrent, we need to go through this phase.

I'll tell you my hierarchy.

Hierarchy of things I worry about so well.

Number one, the United States needs a drone arsenal that we don't currently have, particularly FDV drones.

The Administration is working over time to fix that problem, to their credit.

But when I care more about I was watching a documentary some reason.

I'm obsessed with this nineteen eighties period of the Mujahdin, and you know what we did in Afghanistan through proxy wars, right, and then we gave them the Stinger missiles you know, to the Mujaddin, right, And it ended up haunting us because now Stinger missiles are everywhere similar in Ukraine, our adversaries are getting a PhD and how to operate an FPV and all the tactics, which is forget about IP.

That knowledge is very scary.

That knowledge.

Once this war ends, it's going to be disseminated actors all over the world.

So you pst Afghanistan and we need and don't have nor does any country on Earth have a multi layered solution to an incoming drone attack for not just a swarm, but just like any drones.

And so there's a whole effort behind the scenes to do whatever we can to get ready.

But I think that is the scariest part of it.

So how are they related.

You need to master offensive drone tactics on your soil, including the supply chain, to also be able to understand defense because they go hand in hand.

So there's a tremendous effort behind the scenes to redomesticate all the means of production around drones.

And the most important part of that is magnets.

You cannot make drone motors without magnets, and magnets are not made in the United States.

So when you read all this geopolitical stuffing magnets, it all goes back to drone wars.

So back to your point, Chuck, maybe one day it becomes mutually assured destruction and therefore deterreent, But in the interim there are a lot bigger problems.

I think to get that, you view this as an arms race, right, China's trying to drone up that we're in the sort of in the early days.

This is like nuclear weapons circa nineteen fifty five.

I think it is the biggest arms race that we've had since nuclear weapons and is not one answer to it.

And I think drones eventually become like the rifle or the artillery, the one five to five shell.

You need all sorts of different kinds.

But there's no question, and it was very intentional.

I don't know if China had the foresight to recognize we're going to undermine the US domestic drone industry through And for those who don't know, I know I'm going on on about this, but I will make it very simple.

We used to make a lot of drones in this country and then Dji came along and started selling exquisite drones that are really to this day incredible atred a suspiciously low price.

And what ended up happening is a lot of the drone makers in the US disappeared, and at the same time, all law enforcement in the U In the United States, I think almost ninety percent now used Chinese made drones.

So a dependency was created in the US on these rones, and now there's no drone industry of fill it.

So they said Okay, well, why can't we just build a drone industry.

It costs a lot of money to make a competitive consumer drone.

It's up four billions of dollars.

And then okay, well the military can help.

If there's no demand signal from the military, then there's no market.

So that's what's being fixed right now.

Government is putting out affirmative demand signals so that a domestic dun industry can sprout up.

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What's the biggest impediment?

So if you've got a defense department that says, hey, we're ready to be the biggest customer, that obviously matters a lot.

What's the next impediment you talked about magnets?

What would it take for us to be able to produce our own.

Government has to speak in very concrete demand signals so that the different drone companies out there can raise the venture funding against it.

We still aren't quite in that place.

Two as just having the means of production to build those drones at scale all very insurmountable in the next twenty four to thirty six months.

You know, the surmountable, not insurmountable.

I'm sorry I should have said surmountable.

Thank you.

Insurmountable.

I know that's one of those words, but we don't always you know, we.

Say insurmountable a lot.

We never say surmountable.

That is surmountable in the next thirty for thirty six months.

What we need to work on as a country before there's a disaster is this multi layered counter drone solution.

Yeah, that part is the part.

There's lots of directed energy and you know, catch a drone with a net.

There's all sorts of you know, geeky solutions, but none of them quite broad together stitch together in a solution that could protect a city.

Well, I was just going to say, let's let's go back to your coming Arguably, I'm going to guess is in some ways you're almost coming of age moment right being being pressed secretary on the ground during nine to eleven.

You know, now, if those nineteen hijackers and if those folks planing that attack on America, they you know, they wouldn't have used airplanes, they'd be they'd be it would have been a drone like assault on us that we were quote unquote not ready for, right, we were.

Not back then.

The biggest what was the biggest criticism of the intelligence community both.

You know, it didn't matter partisanship, it was simply failure of imagination.

Rights all the time.

We have a failure imagination right now.

And I think right now it sounds like what you're advocating.

And some might be a little say, well, he'd make his business, will make money on this fet Well, look, the drone wars are here, whether whether whether we like it or not, we got to come up with some sort of.

Per perimeter.

I mean, I look, some of us laugh at the Golden Dome, right you know, a'llah, the Iron Dome type of security structure that we've helped Israel build.

I don't know if we can put an entire dome essentially invisible dome over the continental United States, but we do need some sort of security field on drones that you could picture could suddenly.

I mean, look at the panic.

Do you remember the panic about six to nine months ago over the drones off the coast of New Jersey And it turns out they were weather drones, right, you know.

I mean that's the problem.

We don't even know the inventory of drones that are constantly in the air all the time as it is.

Yeah, So first of all, I live in New Jersey, So everyone assumed I had the answer to that, which I which I I don't believe anybody did, which should tell you something.

Second, whether I stand a benefit, I actually don't do counter uas.

But regardless, that's not even the point the point of course, But I did want to know that everybody.

Yeah, it would be a fair It would be fair.

I don't want people to reject it base it on, So it's fair.

It's a fair suspicion.

More importantly, we live in a paternalistic society subconsciously, so we presume when we walk into a stadium, somebody's got that figured out, right, Like there's a way that somebody could get and let me tell you something.

They don't have it figured out.

And so if you know that they don't have it figured out and you, we are vulnerable.

We know that nine to eleven was a failure of imagination.

We know that there was a cell, for example, in Europe, a has bal of cell that had been ordering drone parts on Amazon.

We know that AI is going to make autonomy and automatic target recognition, these kinds of tools that enable a drone to fly with no signature.

They're going to make it possible for anybody to do a eighteen year old, you know, aspiring Paris in the next twenty four months.

We know these things are happening, then we know that we need a national, multi layer solution.

Unfortunately the problem is we don't always learn from the past, so we don't respond until something happens.

That's my biggest fear.

And again maybe like I saw a lot of traunta from nine to eleven.

To be honest, if I take the train to New York and I get stuck underneath the tunnel, I have a total panic attack.

I'll start texting my wife just stay with me.

I know this sounds totally unbalanced, and I'm fifty years old.

So I live with the memory standing under those towers, just thinking like, how does that happen?

Well, I always thought, I'll be honest, I always thought meant that DC in New York nine to eleven was personal for us.

I mean, I was in d C.

I was at the Watergate building.

We were seeing smoke come from a pentagon.

I was trying to keep my staff as calm as you could in a situation you had no idea what was happening.

Our offices were acrossed from the Saudi Embassy.

We were all freaked.

Out and.

The It's always been remarkable to me that the rest of America cared for as long as they did.

But the fact of the matter is, think about your reaction to Oklahoma City.

You probably had a visceral reaction at first, and then over time because it wasn't in our face every day, we sort of it ventured to.

The back of your brain.

Being a New Yorker.

Nine eleven doesn't venture back to your brain being a DC or nine to eleven never ventures back to my brain.

Right, I know I live.

We can argue about whether it's New York or d C, but we know that they are two of the most biggest targets in the world.

Right you know, I've always sort of since nine to eleven had a All Right, if I think a nuke's coming, what am I doing?

You know?

Where am I going?

And can I leave in time?

How much time would I actually have and find way would I need?

I go?

In the last subway car, I was thinking, that's not the one to tear.

It was a strike.

You'd strike the middle.

I mean, like we.

Interesting, it's good, But that's the point It's sort of like I and I do wonder, right, when you think about it, we don't really have you know, there's most you know, yes, there's a New Yorker's president, and there's two New Yorkers in leadership, and certainly people that were here when nine to eleven happen that are kind of still in power, though not many of them left.

You do wonder how much of that contributes to this lack of realizing that, hey, we might want to look at nine to eleven is okay, what's the next nine to eleven look like?

What could we be missing?

Drones feels like some combination of cyber sabotage and drones feels like the most likely way next sort of tragedy that we quote miss as a society that we have to fix.

Yeah, I agree, And I don't know quite how you sound the alarm to make people hacked, because then people say, well, what am I supposed to do about that?

Right at the end of the day.

But the difference the next nine to eleven is next nine to eleven doesn't require elaborate flight training at a flight school.

It's a simulator that you do online.

It requires parts that you could buy in Amazon.

It's just so much very it's just a different attack.

There is a way to there is a way to counter it, but it requires such a multi layered federal, state, local solution that that I think is the part that hasn't come into focus.

So when you read the government pentagony one advocating, it's because they know more than you do about the true nature of it and how at the moment where you are unflanked.

I could go this, I don't have it done.

But that's that's all right.

That's what makes a good that's what makes a good conversation.

Let me get you out of here.

On sports, I was like you, I've gone back and forth in sports and politics in the media.

I helped found the Sports Business Journal, which is used to be called the Sports Business Daily, So you probably were familiar with it back in your Jets and Dolphins days.

So let me ask it.

Thank you, Chuck for that.

Congrats all right?

You know my man ad met Core, he knows that identify him, so good.

Good for you.

So what makes a good NFL owner?

And does it matter?

Because it is a socialistic enterprise, right, even a bad owner makes money because everybody makes money in the NFL.

What do you think.

Separates a good owner from a bad owner?

Such a great question.

Well, yeah, your audience might be surprised if I've been around a lot of owners, work for two directly, but know all of them sit at the table at the NFL for a long time.

Every single one of them desperately wants to win.

So there's some sentences and they're in for the money.

No, they're in it to compete the competing.

They bought a trophy.

I've always said, they bought trophies.

There's thirty two trophies to own in the NFL.

And these guys, you know, they're just another Bill Simmons has this, He's like, you know, if Woody Johnson doesn't.

Own a sports team, nobody knows who Whatdy Johnson is.

Well, there's that also, any one of them have different levels of success and failure.

They're not on display every Sunday, so they're now stepping into the arena where the where their success.

So that's number one.

I never met somebody who was appetetic about winning and didn't.

Really know, right because they're already rich guys, so they want something to get as much money as they got, right, now they want to Now they're get to play in the rich guys circle, and they want to beat the other rich guys.

Right.

I think what makes a good owner for owner, probably makes what makes a good CEO or business owner anywhere else, is you have very strong values and you telegraph them and apply them consistently throughout the entire organization.

Like you really you believe in what you believe you are Consistent values can form around that.

Consistent because an owner is an asset too, because it means it's not changing every every two years.

Right, we're not president the United States got eight years, right, an owner could have thirty years.

And so I think consistent values that spread through willingness to invest and play the long game, maybe not respond to headlines and make changes, you know, on a win.

Number one bad quality would be placating the press you know, or or or or an uprising of sorts by making a short term move, because then you're then you're under You're undermining the very benefit of the fact that no one could displace you.

You're an owner, no one could fire you.

So you should be able to make long term decisions, even more so than a but we traded CEO right, Yeah, Yeah, at the end of the day, it's.

It's I mean, do you think in some ways there's it's it's look, you're you're part of this larger organism that's the NFL, where there's thirty two equal partners, and there's just you actually don't have enough leeway where in baseball, for instance, the Dodgers could actually have a more unique way of building because they can spend money in ways that you actually can't spend money in the NFL.

Well, that's imagine.

So they're the the the the the advantage you can gain is so marginal that one, no one advantage is going to be outcome to determinative.

I've seen that on the sports science space all these years I was involved.

There were different ebbs and flows depending on the coach.

Eventually everybody gets the same data.

So then what are you gonna do?

Yeah, but then you search for some kind of advantage and you realize the end of the day, it's not making that much of a difference.

I just think that it's really truly a you know, game of inches.

And so I'm sorry to give you a diplomatic answer.

I just think fondly of both of them, and I don't, and I would not the right answer as to what would make the difference.

Well, it's funny, it is.

It is.

It's a head scratcher to me that the Giants and the Jets don't win as much as they should.

It's a head squirrel.

So again, you have to give us the formula to what they need to do.

And it's not obvious.

No, it's not.

Well it is.

It is obvious, but it's not easy.

Which is you just you know you need the right quarterback and it is it really.

Is around the most important issue.

Yeah.

No, And the more you realize, I don't think even today's really smart football fan understands that quarterback is ten times harder to be, no matter whether it's a bad quarterback or not, than it is to be a running back.

Like I'm all for Jonathan Taylor being the NFL MVP, but I promise you all thirty two starting quarterbacks job is much harder than Jonathan Taylor's, and it's hard to convey that.

I think the Manning broadcast does a good job of conveying the difficulty of being the coach on the field, but it's the only place you get that cough.

It's the other hard job to hire as the coach.

I've been involved multiple coaching searches.

One thing consistency.

I've seen that the pendulum always swings violently from one direction of the other.

Players coach think a disciplinarian and yeah.

Well the joke is like, you know, the first thing a new coach does is decides what to do with a ping pong table.

If there's a ping pong table in the locker room, they take it out.

Oh, this is a serious coach.

If there wasn't a ping pong table in the in the locker room, they put one in.

Oh, this is a different But it's like.

The second thing they do they paint.

They paint the walls and they put up new slogans.

I always look sobody good.

Now some of them are good, Rex Ryan Gamy one, you appreciate you play through the whistle, play through the way, her her herm ed where's you played?

You play to win the game?

You know Eric Mangini, who is you know, very smart, the man genius.

Yeah, he had all his own things like what found.

There is always a consistent attempt on the coach level to bring a control and try to isolate some variables that can make the difference, you know.

But yeah, it is true.

But what whatever the culture was, you just change it to the other culture.

Right, So back to what you wanted.

Would you a good owner?

You want to go owner as a culture that can transcend coaching changes.

Matt, this was great.

I am out of I think we're both running up against time.

I appreciate the uh so is the drone world your full time job?

Is?

That?

Is that where?

This is what I was meant to be working on.

It's from a degree of destiny.

It's that brings me.

It's the most important work I've ever done in my life.

I get to be around the military all the time, and it is mostly what I focus on now peacefully.

You how much of your business is commercial and how much of it is all defense contracting?

These days?

Oh so hard.

We only own a lot of brands and a lot of businesses.

But in terms of where I put my time, over half a half of my time is spent on this.

We have other businesses, but this is where my heart, my energy goes because the mission is so important, That's where I spent my time.

Well, this is something that I have a feeling I want to be checking in with you a lot more because I do.

I don't think Washington official Washington is fully aware of how dramatically warfare is changing right now, and we are we we just are.

It explains why they you know, why there's so much effort in the in the tech community.

And I know it's at times I'm uncomfortable with how much government and tech are fusing.

But it is because of this panic of the nature of the change in warfare is.

A danger We're so part is and only leave you with this.

It's so easy to dismiss the efforts based upon which side of the Ali you're on.

But the one thing I can deliver you from the other side a dispatch, which is the response is because there's exiting crisis happening that we need, we need to stand up this industry and you.

Lastly, the seventy percent of all you know kills or casualties in Ukraine are caused by a flying object the size of a dinner plate that you can make for eight hundred dollars.

You can't make it here for eight hundred dollars, But that what does that tell you?

So the second question is our adversaries North Korea, all our different enemies are getting a PhD and how to make these at scale and listen very quickly.

So what you're reading about is because of that threat, and that we're not no.

I think we just generally all need a better education in what is happening at the moment.

I mean, this is unfortunate.

We cover the war in Ukraine now through the prism of how it ends.

We don't actually cover the war in Ukraine collectively anymore through what's happening in the moment, and that that's probably actually is hindering your ability to communicate the urgency of this and frankly mine as well.

We need more pictures of what's happening in the moment.

I agree, Thanks for.

That was exactly.

Other than that, enjoy the end of the year holiday.

That was the plan.

Exactly.

Good to meet with you like that.

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