S4:E118 🎙️ LIVE with General David H. Petraeus, US Army (Ret.)

¡Hola!

I'm John Maxwell. When the top companies in the world are looking for trainers, speakers, and coaches, there's one name that stands above the rest, and that's Maxwell Leadership. Our certified team members have gotten proven results for companies all over the globe, and our reputation, I'm proud to say, is second to none. Some of our members have risen to the top of their profession, including the one you're going to meet today. I proudly introduce you to my friend Bob Fabien Zinga.

Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ, where we help you lead with purpose and succeed with impact. If you're ready to grow into the kind of leader others want to follow, this podcast is for you. If you're determined to elevate your success and leave a lasting legacy, this podcast is for you. As my mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, reminds us, everything rises and falls on leadership. Our goal is simple, to inspire you, challenge you, and equip you with insights that can transform the trajectory of your leadership journey. Welcome aboard to Welcome to another episode of the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ.

Oui, everyone, we have a very, very special show for you today. So, quickly, we're gonna do as is our custom on this podcast, we're gonna take just a moment to be grateful. And as you know, we do this because in the US military, about 21 veterans commit suicide every single day. And I believe it's impossible to be suicidal and be grateful at the very same time. So, if you would maybe close your eyes and put yourself in your happy place and think about one thing that you are grateful for right now. And for me, really, I am grateful for the people who have gone before us, right? I believe I stand on the shoulders of giants. I've really been blessed in my life. I've been mentored by some of the best in the industry, legends really, including the one we're going to be talking to today. And I'm so grateful for people like General Colin Powell and General Petraeus, people who have really gone there and done it and really set the way for people like myself and people who come after me to kind of follow in their footsteps. Great, great role models. That's really what I'm grateful for today. So let me know in the comments what you are grateful for. And also let us know where you are coming from, what city, what region, which country. And also, if you have a question for the General, please type it in the comment. The General really doesn't need any introduction, but what I will do, I will play a minute, a couple minutes long, and after that, the next voice you will hear will be General David Petraeus.

The life and career of General David H. Petraeus is just such a story. He was born and raised in the historic village of Cornwall, New York, a classic Norman Rockwell small town overlooking the Hudson River and prophetically a mere 10 miles upriver from the US Military Academy at West Point. Young David grew up with the guidance and support of a loving, involved mother balanced by a strong and disciplined father. A Dutch-born former sea captain, an individual who would later become one of the most storied military leaders of our time. And in 1970, at the age of 18, David Petraeus did just that. He quietly marched into the hallowed halls of the U.S. Military Academy as a member of the Class of 1974, a march that would ultimately write him into the annals of of American military history. A young cadet graduated among the top of his class at West Point, General Petraeus's remarkable career has spanned the gamut of military and national security assignments. Each of those assignments and the men and women he worked with made significant contributions militarily and intellectually to his personal and professional growth and to developing the man who would someday help America face the unprecedented challenges and threats of the 21st century. From Ranger School to a multitude of key staff and command positions throughout the United States and Europe, from Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti to Operation Desert Spring in Kuwait and Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Petraeus was being forged and refined for a major role in Operation Iraqi Freedom. And the ongoing War on Terror. His decades of diverse military experience, coupled with his extensive intellectual and academic pursuits, from Command and General Staff College to Princeton to the Foreign Service School at Georgetown, all uniquely equipped General Petraeus in the post-9/11 era to become deeply involved in all aspects of counterintelligence, counterinsurgency, and ultimately nation-building. In 2003, after 10 months with the NATO Stabilization Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina, General Petraeus resumed his association with and took command of the 101st Airborne Division, leading the division through fierce fighting south of Baghdad and finally leading them on the longest heliborne assault in history to the city of Mosul and the northern provinces of Iraq. It was there, after long, war-weary months of mixed and inconclusive results in Iraq, that Petraeus and the 101st began to redefine America's counterinsurgency strategy and proactively incorporate nation-building as a central military mission. —And given the effects of the war and the diverse ethnic mix in the region, the results were remarkable. Building trust with the people, working with and empowering local leaders, emphasizing the judicious and selective use of force, expanding the stakeholders in success, reconstructing the infrastructure and the local economy. As General Petraeus gave over his command in Iraq, Secretary of Defense Gates presented him with the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and stated that the general had, quote, played an historic role and created the translation of a great strategy into a great success in very difficult circumstances. Secretary Gates went on to say, History will regard you, General Petraeus, as one of our nation's greatest battle captains.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, uh, now I'm going to introduce you to the man who needs absolutely no introduction. Please help me welcome the one and only, the legendary General David H. Petraeus. Good morning, General. How are you doing today, sir? Doing great, Bob.

Thanks for the kind introduction. Glad you cut it short.

Yeah, I guess this— yeah, it's very, very difficult to introduce you. It would take like hours and hours and hours and hours. You have done so much for this country. But I am so excited. Today is Thanksgiving Eve, so Thanksgiving Day tomorrow in the United States. And I guess the first question I'm going to ask, sir, is can you maybe tell us, looking back, right, at all of the as we head into Thanksgiving, the leadership lesson or moment of gratitude stands out most from your 37 years of service?

Well, first, since we're on the eve of Thanksgiving, let me just add my thanks, very similar to yours, but for friends and family over the years, but especially for the privilege of serving with and leading America's sons and daughters and, those of coalition and host nation countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and then all the others who are with us. I don't think anyone was more privileged than I was to do just that in the wars of the post-9/11 period, and it's something for which I'll always remain grateful, as I'll remain grateful for the extraordinary service and sacrifice of those who were in the ranks during that time. And thanks as well for your own service, Shipmate. Yes, sir. Wow. So when it comes to, you know, what do you look back, what do you take away from all of this, I mean, usually these are pretty trite observations, and that's what mine will be as well. But I think in essence, what I learned fairly early on, certainly by my first or second year at West Point, if not already in high school, was that Life is a competitive endeavor. Uh, you might as well recognize that, embrace it. Uh, and those who progress, those who are given the most important opportunities and so forth, are those who show that they are the best or among the best. So you've got to absolutely strive to be the best. Nobody is impressed or wants to be led by someone who's proud to be average, as they say. So do your very, very best, compete to be the very best, but at the same time, compete to be the best team player as well. You don't want to stand on top of the podium with all the others below you feeling that you climbed over their backs to get there. So I think these are pretty profound. They're also, again, pretty obvious, even trite, if you will, except they are reality. In fact, when I came home from my first full year in Iraq combat as the commander of the great 101st Airborne Division, as the video noted, during the fight to Baghdad, and then the remainder of the year in northern Iraq in Nineveh Province, capital of which is Mosul, I asked the commandant at West Point if I could come speak to the first-class cadets, the seniors about to graduate. He said, by all means, and he got them together after dinner one night. In a big auditorium, and I told them just what I've told you, and that is that no one wants to be led by somebody who's proud to be average, but recognize that this time is different. It's always true. I could always say that, but this time, for the first time since Vietnam, every member of this class is going to sooner or later end up leading America's sons and daughters in combat. And you need to be ready for it. And they want somebody who is deadly serious about mastering his or her profession because that's what gives them the highest chance of coming home alive. And again, they're not impressed by a gentleman's B or someone who is satisfied with achieving that. They want somebody who's going to do everything he possibly can, uh, to be the very best for them, not just for him or herself., and so, uh, they took that pretty seriously actually, um, at a campus where candidly the culture can be among, you know, 50% or more of a class, uh, of being too cool for school, uh, and now you've got to get ready to lead in combat.

Yes, wow, really my hats off to everybody who volunteers to serve in our military. I know in many other countries, like in France, they have a military service. It's obligatory for everyone who's 18 years or older. But, you know, it— I am really, really, really touched by the sacrifices, the courage, the bravery of our American kids who go out there and really support the Constitution and defend us. So looking back, sir, at your extraordinary career from Ranger School to CENTCOM to the CIA, what early leadership habit or mindset would you credit for shaping everything that followed?

Well, there's a number, obviously, from leading from the front, providing example, energy, inspiration, being there all the time for them, and so on. But I think the most important concept is that of getting the big ideas right at whatever level. You are privileged to lead, noting that at the very top, it is absolutely crucial because the strategic leader, the person who is commanding, say, the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan, uh, has to get that right, or all the other great qualities of leadership almost don't matter. In fact, we haven't— a rather spotty record in this regard. I would contend that it took us 13 years in Vietnam to get the big ideas right, to recognize that we could not win a war of attrition against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong insurgents in the South, that they could outlast us, and that thrashing around the jungle or the rice paddies looking for an elusive enemy to bring to bear— and yes, when we did, we killed 10 of them for every one of us— that was not going to be enough. Instead, what we should have done from the beginning is what we ultimately just started to do by late 1968, which was to craft and execute a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign with all of our forces, our Vietnamese counterparts, other coalition members, CIA development experts from the embassy, and others, all working together to protect the people where they actually lived, which is mostly along the coastline, and then ensure that when the enemy tried to infiltrate there, either with insurgents or with mainline forces, that we defeated them. That would have been something much more doable. We did shift it, it made demonstrable difference. The problem was by the time we finally got the big ideas right, when General Abrams took over in late 1968, it was really too late when it came to support on the American home front, which had given up on the war after profession— that we had seen, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel and so forth. And then came the Tet Offensive of 1968, early 1968, which showed that clearly the Viet Cong and the North were by no means finished. It took us 8 years in Afghanistan to get the big ideas right, to craft the right strategy, and then another year to get the inputs right— the right, almost the right level of forces, diplomats, spies, development experts, legal expertise and all the rest of this, and we only kept it right for 6 or 8 months, by which time we began a drawdown that we had already said we wanted to conduct, telling the enemy that our will is not absolutely steadfast, and then drawing down subsequently at a pace that was determined more by conditions on the ground in Washington than by conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. So getting the big ideas right, which is absolutely— it's paramount importance at the very top But it's also critically important at every level below that, noting that, of course, everybody below the strategic leader at the end of the day is going to be doing this within the direction, the constraints, the confines of the decisions made by the strategic leader. In other words, you can't conduct a counterinsurgency campaign if the strategic leader is calling you to conduct search and destroy operations. So again, this is everything really. It's always all about getting the big ideas right up front. And this, for a strategic leader, whether it's a founder of a startup or the CEO of a major corporation or the commander of a war, again, if you don't get that right, all else is for naught. You can have the greatest communication skills, the greatest inspiration, energy, and oversight of the execution and so forth, but if you don't get it right up front, you're just not going to be successful. So, you've really got to focus on that issue and ensure that you are doing that properly, or else, again, you just cannot succeed. In the book that you and I discussed earlier, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, the second edition, with Andrew Roberts, the great British historian, we actually lay out this construct for strategic leadership that I've sort of overviewed here, and that's the prism through which we examine each of the wars that we discuss in the book, because strategic leadership is the most important quality when it comes to determining success or failure.

Wow, that is definitely Extremely insightful. And I remember when you took over in Iraq, my unit, the morale was extremely low because it looks like we kept losing people every single day and this war was going nowhere. But during the surge in Iraq, the world watched as the US military really executed one of the boldest operational shifts in modern warfare. What leadership principle allowed you to steer such a complex turnaround?

Well, basically, this is a case of recognizing that we did not have the big ideas right at that point. We had intermittently over time, but the big ideas were invalidated in early 2006, February 22nd, in fact, I remember that date, when the al-Qaeda in Iraq Sunni extremists blew up the third most sacred Shia shrine in an area north of Baghdad controlled by Sunnis, and the Sunnis were supposed to keep this secure. And this set off a cycle of sectarian violence, Sunni-Shia, that became a real civil war by the end of 2006, really even by the fall of 2006, and it invalidated the big ideas at that time, which were essentially to clear an area with our Iraqi counterparts and then either to hand it off to them and leave, or just leave and hope that it would remain secure. But as the year went on, the Iraqis were no longer able to hold those areas and to keep the bad guys from returning. They were really beaten up, rendered in many cases combat ineffective or intimidated, or in some cases even corrupted, and we had to reverse that. We had to change the big ideas by 180 degrees. Change management can't get any bigger than that, by the way, to go to clear-hold build and use population control measures— walls, entry control points, biometric ID cards, etc.— so that when we cleared an area, it could be held, and we would hold it along with our Iraqi counterparts, but we had to pull them off the line and reconstitute them, then bring them back into the fight because the level of violence had just gotten beyond what they were able to control. So, clear, hold, build. You have to rebuild all the damaged infrastructure and everything else, which is very considerable because this is a really brutal civil war. Especially in places like Baghdad, 7 million people, Fallujah, Ramadi, Baqubah, Mosul, all these names that we remember so well, and then only gradually could you transition the control to the Iraqi security forces, but this resulted in driving down violence by nearly 90% in an 18-month period, the period during which we had additional forces, and you're right, actually a lot of people remark that morale picked up as the soldiers realized they knew what we needed to do. We also had written a counterinsurgency field manual during my— you know, I had 6 consecutive commands as a general officer were the final assignments of my career. 5 of those were in combat. There was one during which I was back in the States, and that's when we did the counterinsurgency field manual. It's also, frankly, when I sorted out this intellectual construct for strategic leadership that I've been talking about a bit here. But in, in terms of structure, it's get the big ideas right, craft the right strategy, communicate them effectively through the breadth and depth of the organization and to all who have a stake in the outcome of the conflict— includes America's mothers and fathers, by the way— then oversee the implementation of the big ideas, provide energy, example, inspiration, hire the best and brightest, keep them as long as you can, allow those not measuring up to move on to something else. It's get the organizational architecture right, employ the right metrics to determine if you're making progress or experiencing setbacks. And then how you spend your time personally is a very big issue for a strategic leader. We spend a lot of time determining how I could most efficiently, effectively, and productively use my time. And then fourth, to formally sit down with others in various fora and determine how you need to refine the big ideas as the situation evolves so that you can repeat the process again and again and again, and we actually employed this personally, we didn't broadcast it that widely, but my team and I knew this is what I was seeking to do, and we used that to guide us in what I personally did on a daily, several times a week, weekly, monthly, etc. basis, So that was a pretty critical component of this. Again, this is a statement of the obvious. I've talked with Netflix, for example, Reed Hastings. He has a model. I mean, you— they all know you have to get the big ideas right and keep them right. By the way, if you don't keep them right, you end up like Kodak, which had 2,000 patents on digital photography when it was the king of film and film photography services, but failed to transition to digital photography early enough. Others got there. They have never been the same. Since then. So again, this construct is hugely important, and frankly, again, we have an imperfect record when it comes to getting the big ideas right, and then also sometimes executing them, but if you don't get the big ideas right, you cannot succeed in an endeavor. So if we had added, you know, people think of the surge as the additional forces, which were announced to be something like 20,000, they ended up being closer to 30,000, that's we identified additional requirements and additional sources of forces. The real surge was the surge of ideas. It was the change in strategy, because without that, we might have had some marginal improvements, but not driving violence down by 90%, and then keeping it down for the next 3.5 years as our forces withdrew based on conditions on the ground there, not in Washington. Ultimately, our withdrawal, when tragically the Prime Minister undid so much of what we'd sacrificed to achieve by pursuing some very highly sectarian actions that enraged the Sunni population once again and set us down the road again to ultimately the Islamic State being able to reconstitute and so forth. But by the way, I was just back in Baghdad for the first time in something like 14 years. I was last there as CIA Director, There are security issues there, as you might imagine. There are some elements from nearby there that would, uh, and have designs for me and so forth. But it was extraordinary. I really could not believe the infrastructure progress in particular. Politics are still changing. There's still Iranian influence without question right now. In fact, they're all working to see which element can control the next government, how much will Iranian influence matter in that, etc. So, there's no end of challenges, and the same is true in the northern area, the Kurdish Regional Government, where I went to deliver the graduation address for the American University of Iraq, Sulaymaniyah. But in so many ways, the country has really been transformed, and the infrastructure improvements, including companies from outside that are building new hotels, new accommodations, condo buildings, and all the rest of this. It's really something that I wish all those who served in Iraq could see, because it would give them a sense of what was achievable once all these challenges were finally dealt with.

Wow, that is really amazing. When we talk about strategy, Getting the big idea, right? You're definitely known for that. But another phrase you are very well known for, sir, is, "Tell me how this ends." How should leaders today apply that mindset to their decision-making?

Well, I mean, you always ought to be trying to figure out how it's going to end. And it's generally based on big ideas. That really was a quote that came from the fight to Baghdad. As you may recall, all the commanders had these embedded journalists, and my embedded journalist was actually a friend for many years, Rick Atkinson, exactly the same age, had encountered him many times before during when he was covering the Gulf War and I was the aide to the Chief of Staff of the Army and so forth, and real kindred spirits in certain ways. His father was military, he had served, he had lived in military communities around the world when he was growing up, and he'd written some terrific books and already at that time had two Pulitzer Prizes and The third one was announced while we were in the desert during the dust storm. So as we were fighting our way north, I realized that many of the assumptions that had been given to us on which our approach was based were proving to be invalid. And it started me wondering, how in the world is this thing going to end? You know, what we were told was going to happen, these guys are going to join us, those other guys won't fight. You know, that will topple the regime but put other people in place and go home to a victory parade. I could just see already this was not going to transpire, and in a moment of candor, I said, Rick, tell me how this ends. And we had— we're both— he's a true historian, I'm a military history buff, as you might imagine. And I harken back to General Ridgway, who, when General Eisenhower asked the Joint Chiefs actually President Eisenhower asked the Joint Chiefs, could we intervene in Dien Bien Phu to save the French? This is in '54. Ridgway said, sure, Mr. President, all it will take is 8 divisions for 8 years. Needlessly priced that out of possibility, and I turned to Rick and said, you know, what do you think, 8 divisions for 8 years? Actually, it took about that if you add in the coalition units, and it took longer. So, uh, in any event, I didn't— I forgot that you're always on the record with him unless you say you're not. And, um, that became a question that I was asked repeatedly during Senate confirmation hearings, uh, and then even became the title of a book and something that was repeated many, many times. But Tell Me How This Ends just, just represented, or it was my expression of, uh, doubt about how truly it was going to end as the optimistic scenario that had been provided to us was appearing to be less likely.

Well, if we fast forward a few years now, watching again your bestselling book, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945— so that's right after World War II— to the first edition to Ukraine, but the second edition, which I don't have yet, which I'm going to get today, to Gaza. So by looking at the evolution of warfare, what do you think is the most misunderstood lesson about modern conflict today?

Well, I think we're still learning, we should be trying to learn, that the future of conflict is clearly very different from what we've seen in the past. Now, this doesn't apply to all conflicts. I'm talking about major combat operations such as we see in Ukraine in particular. Because there still are counterinsurgency operations around the world which may not feature all of these, but the bottom line is that the future is going to feature vastly more unmanned systems. Right now, they're generally remotely piloted, but increasingly they are going to be algorithmically piloted, so the person in the loop, the person right now driving or flying or navigating, because there are maritime, air, and ground unmanned systems now, an enormous number in Ukraine on both sides. What is currently, again, remotely piloted will increasingly become algorithmically piloted. The man in the loop will become the man on the loop, the person who identifies what the machine is supposed to do, and the criteria it has to meet itself, it will determine if they are met through a variety of different means to take a kinetic or non-kinetic action, and so forth and so on, as if it has other purposes, depending whether it's a suicide drone or out-and-back drone, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, whatever it may be. And, and this is happening before our eyes in Ukraine. The problem is we don't have that many people We have virtually no boots on the ground near the front lines in Ukraine. We have others, other government organizations are there, but because of, I think, over-caution, frankly, and risk aversion, we don't have individuals with the frontline units trying to glean lessons from them, and also with the innovative startups in Ukraine that are so impressive. There are hundreds of companies that are designing and building unmanned systems of all types, uh, and the partnership between those who design the drones, those who manufacture them, and those who operate them is like that. It's not the system we have. In fact, it's great to see that the leadership in the Pentagon recognizes that the current procurement system is one that is just not fit for purpose. It does not provide us, as the system does in Ukraine where they've thrown out all the rules and everything else. Yes, they are producing tomorrow's technology for today's war. Our very cumbersome industrial-age system, which is heavily influenced by those in the military-industrial-congressional complex, that have vested interests in producing more of what we already have, oftentimes keeping basing arrangements the way they are. Again, wanting to do more of what we've already done, it tends to produce yesterday's technology for tomorrow's war. It's a bit of an overstatement. There are areas of entrepreneurship and innovation, to be sure. Every service is pushing that, every secretary whether overall or service secretary, recognizes that we need to change the procurement paradigm, but it's very, very difficult to change. There are laws, there are policies, there are practices, there are norms, um, and so forth that have got to be thrown out, and we need to start over. If I'd had my way, at the very, very beginning of the administration, DOJ should have been targeted at the military procurement system until it was essentially, in effect, blown up and started over. So again, there is recognition about this. In fact, Dmitri Alperovitch, a good friend, CrowdStrike, one of the founders of CrowdStrike early on, just published an op-ed in the Washington Post with a colleague of his that lays this out and says that this is not providing us what we need. It's a very, very lengthy, laborious, back and forth, litigious, and risk-averse process, as opposed to what you see in Ukraine, or frankly, what we were able to do during the surge in Iraq with the great support of Secretary of Defense at that time, Bob Gates, who was a great— in addition to a great strategic leader, he was a wonderful bureaucratic infighter, There he is, in fact, and also Admiral Mullen, who became the chairman about 6 months into— 7 months into the surge. That's a great photo of us together there. And they— but the country recognized, the administration recognized that we were losing in Iraq, and they were really quite committed to reversing that, to turning that war around. It was a legacy item for the president at the time., and that provided us the impetus with great leadership on Capitol Hill. Senator McCain is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for part of the time, Senator Levin for another part, and so all of them together enabled us to do what we did, but the big idea during that time, I told Secretary Gates, look, just get us the stuff in our hands, don't test it endlessly, Haverty Improving Ground. Just send it to us. Let our soldiers— as long as it won't kill somebody if it doesn't work, just send it out. Uh, we'll try it out. Our soldiers will. And if they like it, we'll get more of them. If they don't, we'll park it in the back of a combat outpost and let it rust. But that's the attitude you have to have. Now, to be fair, these were not aircraft carriers or major platforms, um, although some were very, very significant, uh, but So again, we really don't see the future of war as clearly as we should. What we should be doing is learning more assiduously from what is going on in Iraq, then figuring out how to apply to other theaters, in particular, of course, the Indo-Pacific. Yes. Develop concepts for the likely missions there, and then make procurement decisions based on that. And of course, you go from concept to actual formal doctrine, as we did the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. During this restart tour back in the States, which became the intellectual foundation for the surge in Iraq. It's, you know, it's really quite extraordinary that we did not actually have a current manual on counterinsurgency 3 or 4 years into the war in Iraq and 5 years into the war in Afghanistan. It wasn't until late 2006 that that was published. Of course, we went into Iraq in early 2003, and we went into Afghanistan in late 2001. So, uh, in any event, it always comes back to getting the big ideas right. I don't think we have sufficiently identified what the new big ideas should be conceptually for wars of the future, depending on the geographic circumstances. Is it more air and— air and sea than ground, or all three, all the rest of this? But We need to recognize that and look at what the Ukrainians are doing. They're producing 3.5 million drones this year alone, maybe 4 million. They could double that if they get the money from the Europeans or the frozen Russian reserves in European banks. I hope that will finally be sorted out, uh, at their next meeting in mid-December. They could produce twice that if that was the case. We, by the way, are producing somewhere around 300,000 or 400,000 drones a year, which obviously wholly inadequate, and they're not as good as the Ukrainians in many cases, nor are they remotely as cheap as they are either. So we need to go to school on what's going on there much more assiduously so that we can craft the new big ideas for the future of war.

Well, especially Ukraine, I guess, really is a model, almost like a lab for modern warfare in the information—

Very much so, a deadly lab. So what, what does Ukraine really— 20 kilometers on either side of the front lines, such as they are, because they're no longer clearly defined trenches and everything else. Drones can fly into those and, and kill them. So it's a lot of combat outposts are usually underground because that's the only way they can survive. And by the way, the traffic that goes to and from on the Ukrainian side in particular is not driven. There's nobody in the in the— behind the wheel. They're actually remotely driven because it's so dangerous to go up and back. Again, this is the most lethal area of any war on the front lines and arguably the most lethal place in the entire world right now.

I can't imagine. So what can America really learn? What can Ukraine teach us about resilience? Innovation and asymmetric leadership?

Well, it can teach us a great deal. Again, resilience is remarkable there despite war weariness, despite the privations of living in a war zone, essentially, and this past week has been particularly grim. I think 7 individuals killed in the capital Kyiv and dozens more wounded, many residential buildings hit. The Russians are essentially trying to turn off the lights and turn off the heat. Of course, Ukraine's doing the same thing to the refineries in Russia, and they have themselves developed— you know, we've been talking about a cruise missile provided by the United States, the Tomahawk. Well, they have a better one. It's called the Flamingo. It has nearly twice the range, 3,000 kilometers. And a much larger warhead than the Tomahawk has. They just need to go into a higher production level, and they're doing— working on that right now. And what we should be doing is helping them in every way we possibly can to stop the Russians on the front lines, improve their defense against missiles, drones, and so forth, and then also doing more to crush the Russian war economy with sanctions— and we have done a good bit of this lately. Rosneft and Lukoil both sanctioned. EU did its 19th round of sanctions, recognizing the Russian economy is much more fragile than many people think. It will run out of its national welfare fund next year, which has been diverted for their military-industrial complex. And if we then go after the countries buying gas and oil, which we're doing now— yes, largely India and China— reduce the revenue Russia gets from that, and then go after those who are providing all the components and parts and everything else for the Russian war machine, largely China, you could actually increase pressure enormously on Russia and get to the kind of agreement, a cessation of hostilities, that would be quite durable. We'll see what the current negotiations can achieve. I'd like to see them strengthened to be negotiating from a greater position of strength by doing what it is that I've advocated here. Yes, I guess I'm very, very hopeful.

This war has gone on for too long, but really impressed by the Ukraine— Ukrainian. And also, sir, thank you so much for all of your, uh, daily status update from the Institute for the Study of War.

They deserve the credit. All I do is take excerpts from it, cut and paste, and put it out. I am a member of the board. We have a Petraeus Center there and so forth, and I'm a huge I'm a supporter of and believer in the analysis, which is absolutely as forthright and objective as we can make it. Keep in mind, I don't even register to vote, much less vote or advocate candidates.

Because I was going to respond to it this morning, but then I had to get ready for this meeting. But you talk about diplomacy matters, right? Russia's November 24th, 25th strikes on the civilian arm remain central to Moscow's playbook, which is really sad. But the Pokrovsk axis and the Kotyarnivka corridor highlight Russia's evolving offensive template. And then the last thing I got out of it was freedom, sovereignty, and the rules-based order remain at stake. So hopefully there's going to be peace in that area of the world. But let me ask you this, sir. How should America's next generation of commanders think about emerging technology, artificial intelligence, autonomy, and on the battlefield?

Well, they need to recognize that they are the future of war. They need to understand how they can enable humans, noting that humans may not fully be in the loop in the future, that if you stay in the loop, your machine is going to lose to the machine that doesn't have a human in the loop, which can figure it out on its own more rapidly and take action. That poses all kinds of ethical issues, to be sure, and they need to be addressed, But what the future is, is increasingly algorithmically piloted and swarms. And again, you don't have enough pilots to pilot all these swarms, so they're going to have to again be programmed to do what they need to do. And that will include programming of certain criteria that the machine meets to take its, its action and then either conduct an attack, a suicide attack or a bombing attack or what have you, in which case it may not return or it does return depending on that mission. So again, we— and I can assure you that commanders in uniform today recognize this. AI is being used by all commanders and staffs around the world. It's already got innumerable applications based on various AI large language models that speed traditional tasks dramatically, in some cases take out of the whole system the laborious, repetitive analytical work. So this is advancing very rapidly. The real question is, can we provide the materiel that is a, a direct result from what we should be learning in Ukraine, and that is vastly greater numbers of unmanned systems of all types. And again, we have to go essentially transition from a small number of large platforms that are heavily manned, incredibly capable, exorbitantly expensive, and increasingly vulnerable in an era of ubiquitous observation, uh, and surveillance, at least if it's on the surface of the water and above, uh, to an almost incalculable number, uh, very difficult to appreciate number of unmanned systems that are much cheaper, still quite effective, but again, there's nobody on there that you're going to lose. You don't have to send a letter of condolence to the relative of a drone. Yes. And that is what is going to replace, again, the small number of large platforms. So we need to do that, by the way, in all domains. On the maritime domain, in the air, on ground, undersea, outer space, the equivalent cyberspace, even the cognitive space, which is another domain of warfare nowadays with the addition of the internet and the various social media and other— yes— developments of recent years. So this is something we need to do much more rapidly It starts again with concepts. There is a concept announced publicly by the Indo-Pacific commander when it comes to that theater of turning the Taiwan Strait into a hellscape for anyone that might try to cross it. And then— but we need to operationalize that more rapidly than we have been so that deterrence is rock solid. We don't want to fight that war. Um, you know, I was recently at a conference in London. It was titled The Price of War, and I mentioned at the outset of my session The price of war, I can assure you, is exorbitantly high, having commanded two wars and spent many, many years there, and therefore you should— you have to avoid war, but you don't do it by appeasing the enemy, you do it by deterring the enemy. We know what happened when Chamberlain went to Munich and tried to appease Hitler, and the result still was further war and further aggression. Until the UK, the other Allied nations, and eventually the US defeated the Nazis and did the same with the Japanese in the Pacific theater. Yes. Wow.

All right, so we have about maybe 10, 8 minutes left. Let me ask you this, sir. What do you think is the greatest lesson you have ever learned in life, in leadership, in general?

Again, it's get the big ideas right. Again, at whatever level you are in whatever endeavor, by the way, it's not just professionally, it's personally. And I haven't, you know, again, also would be one if, you know, life is not how you respond to success. It's how you respond to failures, to setbacks. And the idea there, the big idea is you gotta, life has to go on. You need to acknowledge what happened, determine why, how, and then figure out what you do to learn the lessons from an episode, a setback. And again, you can't command a coalition at war without there being mistakes in the formations you're privileged to lead or yourself, and so the lesson is you got to figure out what you need to take from it, and then get up, dust yourself off, and get back into the ring, you know, put one foot in front of the other and repeat the process again and again. Man in the arena.

But really, sir, for most of us, from where we stand, you look like a superhero, like a superhuman being or something. But it's true that success and failure are really two sides of the same coin. So you've led through some of the toughest moments in U.S. military history. How do you personally process setback or pressure while keeping the mission and your people first? How do you balance that?

Well, you know, when you're doing something non-stop, and as you well know from your own deployment in Iraq, this is a 7-day-a-week endeavor. You know, you're not sleeping in on Sunday morning or something like that, or Saturday, and catching up. So you've got to actually determine what are your limits, and what do you do personally to ensure you can sleep each night, for example. And we sorted out that if I got less than 6 hours of sleep a night, then, you know, I'd start to struggle to stay awake during important meetings on subsequent days. And we were very conscious of this. It was fairly rare that I got a call in the middle of the night. It had to be an extraordinary situation that demanded immediate action. You know, it's literally calling the Iraqi Prime Minister and telling them what happened, or sometimes even the White House or the Pentagon, and saying, this took place, you need to hear it from me, not from CNN. That was fairly rare. Again, we tried to make all decisions and then our forces would execute them. And it was very, very much by exception. I don't need updates in the middle of the night, even if you got the most incredible bad guy, unless it's so significant that we're going to, again, alert folks above in the chain of command above me. But also that we had to get workouts in every day. And so, you know, every morning we'd start at 5:30, a cup of coffee, come in the door, I'd do 15 minutes on secure internet, then I'd go out, hop on a stationary bike where I had an intelligence book already on there, the towels already on, all this stuff, you know, it's efficient as you can make it. I'd pedal for 45 minutes, sometimes longer, sometimes less, then do calisthenics and weights and so forth. Very quick shower, very quick breakfast, and in the vehicle to be in the command center for the morning update, the battlefield update and analysis, which started at 7:30 promptly. Another cup of coffee while walking into that meeting room, and then on from there. And but, but so you had one workout in the morning already, and then on 3 days a week in the afternoon, we scheduled runs Yeah. And these are 6.2 miles. They weren't trivial. It was 10 kilometers around that big lake out there at Camp Victory. And we would actually bring in the younger officers. It was a huge base, as you may recall, and there were a number of battalion brigade headquarters. So we'd bring in captains and majors from these that could run well. And I could get— it could be multitasking. I could hear from them for the first 3 or 4 miles, and then we'd turn it loose. See what everybody had, allow everybody to reach their level of excellence and compete. But in those first 3 or 4 miles, again, listening to somebody, what's the situation, uh, in his area. So, um, that was really helpful in being able to sleep because it's all about how can you get sufficient sleep because again, you're doing it 7 days a week. There's no letup. You're not going to, again, get to sleep late on Saturday or Sunday morning as you might do in, you know, civilian role. So, you know, what I learned, you got to look after yourself and know your limits and ensure that you take the actions that can enable you to sustain what you're doing over a long period of time and to deal with the pressure, the stress, the, you know, I've said on a number of occasions, the most grinding experience of my life was commanding the surge in Iraq because the level of violence was just so high and all of the issues were just so significant. You know, it was a good day if we flew to the palace, the embassy in the morning, and there was only one smoke plume coming up in Baghdad. On a bad day, there were many. You know, these were all representing car bombs or infrastructure bombing or what have you. So I think it's a huge lesson. You got to know your own limits. You have to keep within them. Make sure the team is enabling you to be as efficient, effective, and productive as is absolutely possible.

Sure, and I definitely appreciate how you prioritize your own health too. Until we were running, you know, there used to be a joke that, uh, 12 noon, you run 12 miles, 500 push-ups, and then you win a war or two.

Well, this is on the plexiglass of an F/A-18. I was the backseater getting thrown off an aircraft carrier, catapulted off. And that some helpful Navy wag with a good sense of humor wrote those on there. So I would see that before I took off.

But anyway, it's, I guess, like they say, hindsight, right? It's kind of 20/20. So as a leader right now, sir, what are you learning?

Oh, look, I've never stopped learning. The reason I love what I do and have done it now for 12 and a half years is because it's so incredibly intellectually stimulating. Yes. To be a partner in one of the world's greatest investment firms, which has grown from $83 billion under management to over $720 while I've been there, which reflects constantly new big ideas. And then actually, when they're bad ideas, you take action to end them. And, but to do the geopolitical risk analysis during the diligence process for such a firm is incredibly stimulating. To help companies when they run into challenges, again, it's hugely important to do this, by the way. I traveled more than I did even as a CIA director. I've been in 30 countries this year alone. And every major city in the US. But that's necessary to do the job, to keep your intellectual capital fresh. I also am the Kissinger Fellow at Yale and guide a graduate seminar in the spring on great power competition. On a handful of boards or senior advisor of companies and then number of nonprofits. Wow. Books and so forth. So it's a very, very stimulating existence and still get home on the weekend for family and so forth.

And so grateful you were able to make the time for this podcast. For the junior officers who are listening right now, what would you tell them is the secret for your success?

What I said at the outset, recognize that life is a competitive endeavor. Compete to be the very, very best you can be, ideally the best. At the very least, do all you can to achieve that, but do it while still being the best team player that you can be as well. Again, life does not reward people who are proud to be average. It rewards those who show and achieve excellence and work together with others in doing that. Absolutely. All right.

You probably don't have any mentors at the level you are at, but who are some of your role model people Who have kind of helped you get to where you are?

Oh, I've had mentors repeatedly throughout life, incredible ones. You know, I was privileged to serve as the exec for a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a great one, General Hugh Shelton. Yeah. Aide to General Carl Vanno when he was Chief of Staff of the Army, another extraordinary leader. Speechwriter for General Jack Galvin, the biggest mentor in my life. Father-in-law was a great mentor. All of these. Parents. And then people. If you will, who were below me in a way, you know, Command Sergeant Major Marvin Hill. 4 times we led organizations together, and his objective was not to ride around in the back seat of the Humvee or helicopter with me. It was to go out on his own because that's the way he could most effectively expand my influence. That was our big idea. And again, plenty of people around the world, which is why I do so much mentoring now still, in return because people helped me along at various critical junctures. Gosh, I mean, there's one, there's a retired Colonel Keith Nightingale, many years we served together in an airborne unit in Italy when I was a lieutenant, and for the rest of my life still has been a lifelong friend and mentor. Wow. Even as he was commanding Rangers and 82nd Airborne and the rest of that. So no, look, I think mentors are crucial in life. You have to be a good mentee to keep them, if you will. I had the same at Princeton Graduate School, Professor Dick Allman and others there. So anyway, Bob, I've probably got to drop here and hop on another one at the top of the hour. Thanks for the privilege of being with you. Thank you so much. Stimulating questions. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Thank you for the time. And this was definitely a mentorship with the general. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. Wow. Outstanding. All right, everybody, you've got it. That was the one and only General David Petraeus. And thank you so much for watching. But keep on typing your question in the comment. And to end today, I think I'm going to be back here tomorrow. I will have a 10-minute AI recap for, uh, the leadership discussion I had with Commander Seddon, US Navy retired. That's going to be tomorrow. So again, uh, happy Thanksgiving, happy holidays to everyone, uh, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year 2026. All right, thank you so much for watching the Leadership and Success Podcast today. Bye for now.

Thank you for tuning in to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach Bisi. If today's episode added value to your leadership journey, be sure to subscribe, share, and join us again for more wisdom nuggets on how to lead better and achieve greater success. Remember, leadership is the most critical skill of our time. The world will always need leaders to inspire others, drive innovation, and execute meaningful strategy. So why not count yourself among the bold leaders shaping the 21st century? Century. Until next time, stay inspired, stay committed, and keep leading with excellence.