Kris Coleman - On Resiliency, Awareness, and Navigating Misinformation

Foreign.

Welcome to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and joining me today is Chris Coleman. Working in both the private public sectors throughout his 20 year career he has served with the CIA, the FBI and as a former principal with Good Harbor Consulting as as a cybersecurity risk management firm. Chris founded Red 5 Security in 2004 to provide world class state of the art security and protective intelligence services. During his time with the CIA he conducted threat and vulnerability assessments and developed programmatic approaches to counterterrorism in law enforcement for Italy, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Jordan. Deployed with the CIA's Protective Operations cadre, he was a senior instructor, team leader and operator for low and high profile operations. He served four years as a special agent with the FBI with a focus on criminal investigation of international organized crime and international terrorism. He was a member of the FBI's enhanced SWAT team and is an FBI certified instructor in firearms protection, surveillance and counter surveillance. Over the course of his career he has been involved in numerous major security events both overseas and domestic with the national special security events. Almost didn't say that. Providing assessments, tactical response and protective services. Okay, so Chris has a resume. He's done some, some really, really incredible work. He was part of the FBI's response team in 911 and in this interview one of the reasons why I wanted to have him on the show was to talk about the current climate and the disinformation onslaught that we seem to be in and how we as individuals can claim a deeper sense of resiliency and how we can deploy a sharper quality and kind of critical thinking. So, so we talk about a few different examples and experiences that he's had in the field. We talk about some of his time in the CIA and in the FBI and we discuss some of the current events, the current climate that we find ourselves in psychologically and get into how you as an individual, you as a family, you as a community can develop that resiliency within, develop that critical thinking. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review. Thank you so much for the people that jumped on last week and left us a few reviews. I really, really, really appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode. If you know somebody that would enjoy this kind of conversation, definitely man it forward and share it with just one person. And without any further delay, please welcome Chris Coleman.

Thank you very much. Appreciate you having me.

Yeah, likewise, likewise. Looking forward to this conversation. You've got such an interesting background and one of the reasons Why I wanted to have you on the show. But we'll get more to that in a second. I have to. To kick things off. Tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that's made you who you are today.

You know, I think as we all do, we go through different phases and, and as we, we come out of school or whatever schooling we had and we enter the adult sort of professional life, you think you're going to, you go down a certain path and you have visions of you being there 10 years, 20 years, 30 years perhaps. I know that changes for generations, but, but, you know, I had this vision that I was going to be a public servant and I was going to drive down this path for my 30 year career at CIA when I started. And I could see myself, you know, working at the highest levels. And I was all excited and very, you know, into that and I think several years into it, I got, I got the whole bureaucracy put right in my face and I thought, all right, I'll jump and I'll go to the FBI. So did that came back on the end. It's like bureaucracy is bureaucracy in the end. And with all the best intentions of being a public servant for 30 years, the reality is now I'm a recovering bureaucrat from the federal government, but I worked with two of the best agencies out there. So my pivotal moment, I think, or defining moment, was leaving government service and deciding that I was going to go out on my own and start my own business and really make my own path going forward. Make sure that the, the path going forward was for me and that it was going to be a path that I could set the pace, I could set the challenges, I could turn clients down, but I could also take on more challenging clients if I so desired. So that was a defining moment in that I'm now my own boss and I can work with the people I want to work with and have the employees I want to have and really use my skills in a very practical manner. My tactical skills, my intelligence skills, my investigative skills for practical means to ensure that bad things don't happen to good people. That's really what it comes back down to. So leaving government, going to private, really big deal for me.

Nice. Yeah, I can, I can imagine that that transition is definitely a formative one and confronting in its own, you know, in its own ways, especially considering, you know, I would imagine how much structure and sort of order and routine is embedded into the institutions that you worked with. And so taking some of those pieces but also having, having Those parts leave. I think that's, you know, having to create your own structure, which, you know, I've, I've been fortunate enough to interview and work with some Navy SEALs, and that's one of the things that they always talk about is like leaving that very regimented order and structure can be very challenging. Now you are on a different side, this bureaucracy side. But I'm hoping that you can give the listeners a little bit more context for the role that you sort of played within the CIA, because I think, you know, you had conducted threat and vulnerability assessments, you developed programs and approaches for counterterrorism. We hear that word a lot, but I don't think the average person really has a context for what that is. And so if you could just sort of describe your role in that space, I think that'd be very helpful to sort of demystify.

And sort of de shadow what that actually looks like and sounds like on a day to day basis.

Yeah, I mean, to the extent, you know, we can share, obviously, I'll articulate it. We, you know, the best job we came into the organization, we went through training, you know, we always talk about going down to the training site and that was always a big deal. And that's all been, you know, characterized in public entertainment as going to the farm and we come down and you get deployed. Right. So now you're going to be overseas doing things. And I spent a lot of time in Norway working, and that was very much in a support role. But I had different things I was able to do on an operational side and having been through the certification process, and that was probably the best job I've ever had, frankly. The first job overseas doing that kind of stuff. And you have your hands and everything, it was fantastic. We had the Winter Olympics in Littlehammer. We had all kinds of crazy stuff going on, and it really was probably one of the best jobs. And then, you know, as any organization does, it's like, you got to come back. You've got to come back to the fold and get back into the swing of the normal career path. And so I did that and I was dropped right into security. And so from a management perspective, then switching over to more security focused was very, very interesting. I'd worked on a couple of protection details at the, at the Olympics and supported White House level visitors and congressional delegations. And that kind of got me interested in that. But I jumped headlong in security and I was heavily involved in the protection operations for the remainder of that window of time. And that was really focused on protecting agency people as they traveled and then training a lot of those people. I think I ran dozens of classes through with agents over and over and over again. So I had this great cadre of coworkers that I had trained and had worked with. And then there was the typical challenge there where they say.

We need you to go do this next to develop your career. And I really wasn't. I was so much so far beyond what the typical, I think, officer had done by that time in their career. And I'm like, I don't want to go do what you're telling me I need to do, and I want to go do bigger and better things. And I was ready to go do more operational things. And reality was the organization couldn't get their head around it. So bureaucracy steps in. So I decided, I'm going to go work for the FBI. So I applied for the FBI and they're like, yep, we will take you. You're a special agent. Go to Quantico. So I went down to Quantico and in all their wisdom, after graduating in Top Gun and in the academy class, the top shooter and having all the experience I had had, they were like, you need to go to San Francisco. And I'm like, why am I going to San Francisco? The reality is going to San Francisco so that I can work on international type cases. So we're dealing with cases around Russian organized crime, Italian organized crime, and all these variable things that were international in nature, but they had a nexus right there in San Francisco. And then we pivoted and said, okay, now I'm going to work international terrorism. And that's when 911 hit. So I was in the middle of working international terrorism when 911 hit in San Francisco. And over the course of the next, I think it was 14, 18 months. It was just nonstop 9 11. And we worked cases and cases and following leads and closing off pathways of investigation that we thought would lead to something. And a tremendous experience. I had every opportunity in the world to do different things right there. And I had tried to get into a couple other jobs out in D.C. to get back towards my roots, right back into the protection, the intelligence, and found that to be very frustrating. Back to the bureaucracy again. Can't say enough about the Bureau, can't say enough about the CIA, but there is a lot of bureaucracy. Their missions are fantastic. Their people are really. There's no one better. But when I got back to DC, I actually went back to work for CIA. So I got back to CIA and I'm going to travel the world. And I was so fortunate to travel the world and then work with these counterterrorism programs. You talked about, you know, building out, you know, threat vulnerability assessments, working with liaison partners, helping them deal with counterterrorism issues, which was really the focus at that time. Everything was post 9 11, everything was worked with our partners, everything was helped take down these groups. And that was really tremendous fun. And I had a great time doing it and was able to work some, some counter proliferation things in there as well. So not just all terrorism, but some proliferation items. But in the end, the bureaucracy reared its ugly head again and was like, we're going to make this painful for you as a federal employee to achieve what you want to achieve. And I just said, listen, let's see what else is out there, right? Let's open up the aperture. Let's see what opportunities present themselves for other things, if not public service. And so when that came about, I was hired out, I set up my own company, but I was hired out by a private family to really run their protective operations. And so I stepped out, I rebuilt their entire protective operations for about a year. And then I'm like, you know what? Fixing these protective operations for high net worth families and for corporations is really what Red 5 should be doing. And Red 5 then kind of got its mission statement after I left the government and had done some time on the outside and using that mission statement. It's evolved over the last. Now this is our 17th year, so our mission statements evolved a couple times, but it's not that far off. In the beginning, which was solving problems, but now we're not just solving problems. We're making sure that bad things don't happen to good people. And so I'm staying focused on who I protect and who we take care of, on being good people. We're not supporting drug lords or oligarchs or people of a criminal nature, but we are still using those skills to make sure that those people don't run afoul of adversaries or criminal rings or hackers or whatever it might be. It's been quite an interesting circuitous run.

It's quite the, I mean it's quite the sort of like cv, you know, in many ways to sort of see how your career expanded to leading you into starting your organization. I would love for you to say more about those skills because I think, you know, the, the skills that in the, and the lessons that you were like, what did the training look like? Not necessarily what you are, what the training was Specifically, but more so around. What do they train you on? Like, what are some of the skill sets outside of like sharpshooting? What kind of information development is there? And how have you seen that evolve over the, over the years between, between the CIA and FBI?

Yeah, I think the. Probably, there's. There's two. Two things that, that are core in both organizations. So one is definitely critical thinking, and the other one, I think is very much situational awareness. So, you know, in both organizations, you're going to be out and about, you're going to be in an overseas environment, you're going to be in a criminal environment, you're going to be working US or overseas. So you have to be completely aware of what's going on around you. Situationally aware. Like, what is that person doing on the street corner? You know, I'm walking into a store, I'm going to go walk into it, do a, you know, arrest warrant. I mean, get with our group, move to the target, do the arrest warrant, do the search warrant. And you really have to be aware of what's going to go on. Right? So not just of yourself and what your abilities are, but what's going on with those around you whom you may not have any information on. But, you know, we lost two agents, tragically, FBI agents, tragically last week, and I can't tell you how that feels. You know, we haven't lost agents, I think, since 2008. And that situational awareness as they move towards the target is huge. It's really important, and we'll find out in time how that investigation reveals how things went. But you got to know what's going on behind that door to the best of your ability before you kick it in and do the arrest warrant. Same thing with going overseas. You've got to really kind of know to the best of your ability what's going on in that situation. You need to have awareness around that. But moving through town, moving to new environments, or even around your own home, you need to have the awareness that was a key piece. The second key piece is really around critical thinking, and that is.

Words matter and reading what you're reading for a case or reading what you're reading for intelligence reasons, you got to pay attention to what is going on, and you really have to think critically about it. What is this person really saying? What does this report really trying to convey and picking apart that piece of information, whether it's a letter, whether it's an intel report, whether it's a criminal prosecution case, a memo, evidence, whatever it might Be what are they really trying to say? What does this really mean? Who, what, why, where, when and how, and boiling it down so that you really understand it. So many people nowadays just sort of skip that step, right? They take things on its face. They take social media for what it says on its face. They don't really think about does it make sense? And we truly train that inside my company. So when people apply and they come in, we try to see if they have those skills. And then secondarily, if they need to improve upon them or they haven't had the opportunity to have them, we do want them to add those to their toolbox as they move to the Red 5 career. So definitely situational awareness and critical thinking. Because if you have both of those, you can kind of figure things out. You know, you're aware of what's going on, you have the information coming in, but then you apply critical thinking to all that information. And that frankly, gives you an edge on everything going on in your life, whether it's friends, family, neighborhood, country, state, you know, personal or business. Situational awareness is a really big piece of it. And then critical thinking, if you're not really taking apart and understanding it, you're missing half a picture. So I think those are two. Now, on top of that, you've got all the Marshall skills, right? So you've got the shooting, you've got the driving, you've got the protective operations, you've got the investigation skills, you've got arrest techniques, you've got surveillance techniques and counter surveillance techniques. You've got all the different techniques and skills you learn at Quantico, you learn at the agency training. And frankly, many other organizations have that, whether it's a, a state, you know, a state police organization. It might be a local law enforcement academy, it might be another federal academy, Secret Service, atf, dea, whatever it might be, they're all teaching similar things, but in their own sort of cultural style. But I was very fortunate to have worked for both the FBI and the CIA. The skills I walked away with, the shooting, the driving, the protective operations, the resiliency skills, the personal security skills that operate in the world, especially in dangerous environments, were absolutely worth their weight in gold. I feel really comfortable moving around almost anywhere in the world. And I think all of my colleagues, both on the military and on the intelligence side and law enforcement side, would all say that we're using those skills we learned in those disciplines now to hopefully further our careers and further the safety around our clients as we move out of our public safety careers. And into public service careers and really into the private sector. So it's been. It's been a fascinating ride. And it's a. It's not a natural transition from those skills to private sector. And I've spent some time with my colleagues who are coming out and like, I did investigations for 25 years. I'm like, I understand that, but the job you're going to do now when you retire is probably not going to be investigations. So what were Those elements of 25 years of investigations can. You can now apply into the private sector? And that's a big deal. And I like giving back to my former colleagues as they come out of their private public service environments and trying to help them make the transition. I do enjoy that part of what we do every day.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that that is rewarding work in many, many ways. Right. Where sort of utilizing some of those former skills into reapplying them for a public service attribute, which I think is, you know, important in many ways, because when people leave the service, there's often this sort of, like, meaning void, you know, purpose void. It's like, well, what do I do now? And how do I apply the skills that I learned in that. In that sector elsewhere?

Tell me more about situational awareness and some of the components that go into that, because I feel like there's a good correlation between our capacity to have situational awareness and to develop a deeper sense of resiliency and presence to the moment and an awareness within our relationships or our environments, our workplace. So what are some of the key attributes or components to developing that situational awareness?

Yeah, so awareness, one of the things we talk about in the book are the five pillars of resiliency. And awareness is one of them. And so to touch on that and maybe step you through that. So on the awareness side, it is. It's self awareness, it's awareness of others, it's awareness of your family, it's awareness of your current set of conditions within which you have to operate. Could be financial, it could be professional, it could be where you are in the neighborhood, in the socioeconomic world you live in. It might be where you are in your career. Are you running a company or are you just starting out? So there's a lot of awareness around self and family and your profession, but then there's a whole lot of awareness going on around what's going on in the world. And I think that's what gets people in trouble today. Whereas they. They have no sense of really what the risks are. A lot of a lot of our clients are like, hey, I've never left the U.S. i've started this company, I'm going to fly to South America and we're going to get this business deal and it's going to be great. And I'm really excited about it. I'm like, have you ever left the United States? Well, no. Do you have any idea what it's going to be like when you get there? Well, I don't have any idea. It's probably going to be a lot like it is here. Like, no, it's not. It's not going to be anything like it. I mean, I've traveled to 66 or 67 countries, I think, you know, in the course of my career. And one of the greatest gifts I was given for my public sector time was, you know, this ability to see so many things, you know, on salary. And that was fantastic. So when I talk to people like, what do you expect when you land in Beijing to do business or you land in Caracas? And their expectations are wildly off. So what is this awareness about? You really need to be educated about what it's like to operate in a foreign environment, whether it's just landing and going on a vacation in the Caribbean, or is it landing and go do business? And what does that government think about an American coming into town and doing business? What do your competitors think about you coming into town and doing business? What do the criminals think about a great target like a wealthy American landing in Caracas? So I think there's a lot of different things that people don't think about if they haven't traveled in those environments. So when I'm talking about awareness, it's what are the criminal elements? What are the legal aspects you need to think about? What are the medical aspects you're going to think about? Safety aspects, health, communications, intellectual property, your own personal privacy around everything you do on these devices we carry with us everywhere. So there's a ton of things we talk about and then we really get into, you know, do you have awareness of who you're about to meet? So on a business side, are you walking into a meeting with a criminal or are you walking into a meeting with a business leader? Are they well thought of in their neighborhood? Are they known to have issues and perhaps be bringing threats to your meeting that you're not even aware of? So that's the awareness piece. So it's everything from criminal to safety to health to intellectual property, privacy. So that's where we get on the awareness side. And I think that's a really critical piece that we, we put forward in the book. And then that also informs the other four pillars. And the other four pillars. Just briefly, you know, we're talking about awareness, we're talking about mindset, your positive growth, survival mindset. We're talking about fitness. So it's your personal fitness, it's your physical fitness, your emotional fitness, your financial business fitness. We get into skills. So those are all the things we talk about. Martial shooting, driving survival, all the things you would do on a skill perspective. And then lastly we talk about the fifth pillar is relationships. Because no one can survive alone. You almost always in law enforcement, when work with a partner and then on tactical teams, you have a team.

You'Re talking about your family, your spouse, you're talking about your neighborhood. Whatever the relationships are that you rely on to get through the day are your real relationships that will be one of the pillars of your resilience.

Yeah, I'm curious just to like sort of take that and, and, and riff on that in a certain direction. I'm curious to get your take on things like echo chambers that seem to be really.

Popular in mainstream culture, on social media.

Yeah.

What's the impact of, of these sort of information pockets where people are living in this, inside of this sort of bubble on whatever side of the, of the spectrum or belief system. What is the impact on, of those components, those types of spaces, on things like resiliency, on, you know, things like creating situational awareness, being able to critically think about some of these topics and conversations. What's your, what's your take on that? Because, I mean, you've been in the business for a long time, so I'm curious.

Yeah, well, I think they're very destructive. They're not helpful. Right. So they're, they're, they are an echo chamber. They are, they are really just reinforcing what may be bad information. Some of it may be true. It may have started out to be true, but once it bounces around that room 150,000 times in a tweet or in a, in a social media post, you're not sure what's true and what's not. And I think that's the challenge we have, right, is, is if we're not, if that isn't challenged by outside groups, then it's just going to echo around in that room and just get worse and worse and it's going to turn into a game of really telephone where 15 people down the line, it's a completely different story. And it may not be true at All. And with regards to resiliency, the analogy I have there is if we always trained in the FBI to always arrest people in their car, to do a felony car stop and arrest everybody in their car, and that was the only thing we ever did, was the same sort of discussion, the same training, the same iterations, the same repetitions, we're not going to be ready for when it comes to at us from the side because we have to go arrest somebody in the building, right? We're not going to be ready for that. So to draw that into resiliency, you have to have different perspectives. And you really need different perspectives so you can be ready and more informed for whatever it is the world throws at you. If you only expose yourself to the same conversations over and over and over again with people who believe exactly the same thing, you're not going to get different perspectives. And what we need in this country is a healthy dialogue. We need some decorum, we need discussion. And yes, we're going to disagree. And there's a lot of argument around that. And I am all for a healthy argument, but to just repeat what the sound bite was on the 150th iteration of a tweet, it's not healthy dialogue. It may not even be true. There's absolutely bad actors on both sides of this. So if we can find a middle ground, if we can, we can open up the dialogue. So it's a two way conversation and we can actually listen and have critical thinking skills. With our awareness of the other person, we can really go a long way to figuring out what the reality is. Because what I want awareness to do in my system of five pillars is I want the reality to be what you make your decisions on, right? So when people are making decisions based on that echo chamber in social media, it may or may not be reality. And so now you're making a decision based on bad information. So it, and it is a downward spiral, right, that keeps going. You jump from platform to platform. And it's all the same people, they're not getting other views and you're not getting a good healthy dialogue and discussion about what their side thinks and what their side thinks. It's really got to be, to be resilient. You really have to have the healthy dialogue and take in all different information points from all over the place. And I think that's when I talk to other people that I think are in a healthy state of mind, they're not all the way in the right or all the way on the left, they are Somewhere in the middle, and they're taking in inputs from all sides because that's how you make the best decisions, is when you have the most information from a variety of different inputs.

It's interesting because it seems like. I'm curious again, to get your thoughts on. On just the idea of, like, information warfare and how pervasive that is or seems to be within our culture. But it was as you were talking there about, you know, being in these echo chambers where information is sort of perpetuating and, you know, going from one person to another and sort of getting diluted and lose. Losing certain details that are important, I was just like, chuckling a little bit because it was. It reminded me of this episode of the Simpsons. This is, you know, ridiculous in some ways, but. But, you know, one of. One of the characters told something to one of the other characters, and it kind of goes through the crowd, and by the time it reaches the end, it, you know, it's turned into some completely arbitrary. It's like purple monkey dishwasher or some arbitrary statement like that. And it's just such a funny take on how quickly, you know, information can. Can not only be diluted, but can be shifted and changed to. To such a degree that we sort of miss the essence of what it's trying to communicate. So how much of your work revolved in and around information gathering versus disseminating informational truths? How have you seen the rise of information warfare? Or do you think that there is a rise in information warfare within our culture globally?

Oh, 100%. I mean, having seen it firsthand internally, you know the details to stay there. But the reality is everyone knows now that there's several different major players in the disinformation or information warfare scene. Chinese, the Russians, Iranians are taking action, and I'm sure we are too. The reality is that it is a battlefront, right? That is where we have to take it to the enemies as well. And. And so cyber warfare has been going on now for decades. And the reality is it's now reached a pinnacle of information warfare where it's disinformation and real life and credible media feeds are being duped with information that's not true, and they also can put their spin on it, right? So it's not all bad actors. There's our own mainstream media has its own issues, and it's on both sides. But I think, you know, it is in foreign government's interest to insert false information and to create the echo chambers and to get us all thinking down a certain path. That a person is good or another person is bad or, you know, it's, it's. It's psychology and marketing, but they're using it in a human intelligence and in a information warfare manner to achieve their government goals and objectives of creating unrest in the United States.

Racial divisiveness inside the United States. I think we're in a place now where we have to find a way to combat that as a country. And in my book, what I talk about is the individual is the first part of that. They are the keystone of all resiliency. Because if the individual can't be resilient and you can't see that for what it is and make decisions based on reality, the whole system starts to fall apart. Because now your family is all thinking incorrectly or now your neighborhood is all. Have all been spun up on a different line of thought. That may or may not be true, but it may be exactly what the foreign government wants us to think about. And so you can see this disinformation coming in from foreign groups. They're invading all the social media platforms. They're trying to keep it down or to weed it out, but it's very difficult. These are professional intelligence organizations that do this for a living. And we've got to do a better job as a country and as a private sector of keeping the disinformation down and protecting what is kind of our American psyche. The American psyche has got to be protected from. And I would like to think that the private sector has a role and the government has a role of weeding out what is true and what is not true. Not to the point of censorship. That's not what we want in this country. We want freedom of speech, but we got to make sure that.

Whoever said they said that is actually the person that said it, and it wasn't some.

Company or bot that was set up by a foreign government. 100% totally agree.

Yeah, I mean, it's such an interesting thing because you have the private sector, you know, you have companies like Facebook that are not, you know, they're not government controlled and, and just shouldn't be. You know, that'd be. That'd be a whole other. That'd be a whole other ball of wax, which, you know, I don't think that we need to get into. But.

But you have companies like Facebook and Twitter and whatnot, where this information is going around. And these, these are private companies. And I think the interesting part is I can imagine that they've had to grow in, in so many directions of having to learn how to deal with, deal with and navigate the amount of volume of disinformation. I'm, I would love to get your thoughts on how. I'm just trying to think about how to ask this question, like, how do you feel like we can protect ourselves from dis. Disinformation, like what are the qualities that go into that? Obviously critical thinking is, is a huge aspect of that and, and maybe sort of breaking that down into, you know, more bite sized components for people to sort of be able to deal with this. Because I think the interesting thing is that we have become so much more susceptible to reactivity, to moving into stress response, somatic states and you know, having people just completely reactive, you know, and as soon as they read something or see something. And so I'm hoping that you can just give some insight on, you know, like, does the FBI and CIA, do they help to train people on how to sort of weed through disinformation and are there components that we as individuals can sort of take on to protect ourselves from just this sort of mass confusion that seems to be emerging and has been emerging for quite a while?

Well, at the core of any information economy, whether it's law enforcement, whether it's information or in the press, or whether it's intelligence operations, at the core of those are what are the sources.

If the public simply ask themselves who wrote this post, who wrote this article and where did they get the information? That is the first step towards figuring out if this is going to be a credible document or not a credible post or not a credible, you know, audience. I'm sorry, incredible. Broadcast or not. Just like, you know, you've asked who you know, where I worked and what I've done and what my credentials are, we should be asking that of every post on social media, but we don't, right? So as human beings we're moving fast. And that's one of the scary parts about social media is it's, it's that self gratification, right? It's hit the button, you see something else you want to see and if it's, if it's something you like, you'll hit the button again and get more of that. And that's what's dangerous about social media is it's not feeding you necessarily what's true, it's feeding you what you want to see. And therefore you psychologically keep hitting the button because you want to see more of that. And that starts just down the path of the echo chamber. But if you really read the first post and if you really read where it came from and if you really critically looked at it and said there's no way this is true and then you debunked it yourself through critical thinking and said I'm not reading more of that and you kick it to the side, you stop, you've broken that cycle, right? So now you're going to go, I'm going to go find something else that's got credibility. Not something necessarily I like, but you're going to go find something that's got credible sources, that's going to then give you good information, helpful information. That doesn't mean information is going to be maybe good news, it may be bad news, right? Oh, the, you know, the stock market didn't do what it do what it was supposed to do today. It went down. Well, you just keep looking for more sources for a source that says that the stock market went up because if the Dow Jones said it dropped 500 points, you're going to be hard pressed to find another source that says it went up 500 points. So the reality is if you can check your sources on posts, check your sources on articles, check your sources on your, for those that still read newspapers and those that watch mainstream media, you've got to check those sources. And now if you've got a bunch of muddled sources and you got a bunch of different groups saying the same thing, I always get asked just how do you get to the truth? And that's, that's really the hardest thing, right? So in the end, your truth may be an average of the 15 different things that came in. Because there may not be a hard and fast, a smoking gun, a definitive source that said I was there, I saw this, this is what happened. And that's what we're looking for in law enforcement, right? And that's what we're looking for in intelligence is that solid source that was on the ground and saw that happening, or saw that person moving through this city or gathered this very specific information. We always ask, how do you know this information? How did you come across it? Did you hear it from your son? It was at school, did you hear it from your cousin who worked at that store or were you there and did you get it firsthand? So if you can apply the same kind of filter and it's hard to social media and mainstream media and articles that you read out there, then that'll go a long way to really helping the individual figure out if this information is valid or not.

Yeah, I think that's such just straightforward and grounded advice. And I think it sort of requires us to take a step back and say, what am I getting out of the content that I consume and how I pass it on and am I a part of this disinformation campaign or network or however you want to label that? Am I actively being a part of that? And if not, then I'm going to take time actively to commit to looking at things that actually interest me. I actually have started to do this because I found myself, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was just so much information coming out about everything and just getting caught up in this sort of news cycle and media cycle and the content and there's so much of it that just one concept about, you know, a vaccine or, you know, something that's happened in, in, you know, the presidential seat can that, I mean, that in itself can take a tremendous amount of time to just sort of look into and say like, what has happened? Is this actually true? What, you know, you mentioned the sort of like collective psyche of, of America, which is such an interesting. I mean that's like, that's sort of my jam is the psyche. But I'm curious to get your take on what do you feel or what do you think based on what you know and what you've observed has started to erode the collective resiliency within America? Because, and I'm sort of making an assertion, I'm making an assumption there that it has been eroded. So maybe, you know, if you, if you disagree, then please do. But you know, if you, if you agree, what do you think has contributed to that and how do we start to develop a deeper quality of that resilience within ourselves, whether we live in America or abroad?

Well, I think one of the biggest challenges we have right now is the politicization of what are really scientific facts. And I think that's where, you know, that's why Australia is doing so well in the pandemic, right? They've got so few cases and they're following the science and they're following the best guidelines and they're just rallying around that as a country where the unfortunate thing that happened here is that the pandemic was politicized from the get go. And frankly, both sides, right? So it's bad government, it's bad politicization. And if you have facts. So look at 9 11, right? So 911 happened. You know, did those airplanes fly into those buildings? Did those people perish? Were there terrorists involved? Was it a terrible, tragic thing? Absolutely right. We have tons of witnesses we have video footage, we have all this information that is verifiable and it has been true. And the country rallied around that. And we found the people that were responsible and we moved to achieve justice in a 911 tragedy. The.1 of the worst things that's ever happened in this country. And I worked that case and I can tell you that, you know, the FBI tracked down millions and millions of tens of millions of leads. Okay, stop. You switch over to the pandemic, right? So it's a natural, in one theory, right? It's a natural disaster, right? This outbreak happened and another theory, it was something that was more perpetrated. But the reality is, what we're finding as we get the fact is that this is something that's happened and it is a pandemic. And people are dying from this now, from that. And there's no question that people are dying from it, from that. It gets politicized 100%. You're politicized from the cause, you're politicized from the spread. The statistics were terrible. When they're collecting data, the messaging has been bad on all fronts. And now we have vaccination sort of blurriness around that. We don't have a collective veracity around the facts and the science, and we haven't rallied around that. So what we didn't see on the pandemic is, hey, this country is going to rally and we're going to put this pandemic back and we're done, right? We're going to overcome this thing. You didn't see that. And I was stunned when that happened. And I think that was a blow to the American psyche. We were so distracted by the politicization of it that we didn't rally. Right. We didn't put this thing away. We didn't win the fight early. Right. We. It turned into a slog and it's awful, it's tragic. So many people have lost their lives and there are arguments around there about where. What was, you know, the cause and what was, what was the end result. And how do you, how do you collect all that info and you characterize that information? That's. That's going to be argued for years. But can we now rally around that, say, let's get the vaccinations out, let's get everybody vaccinated? Because that's the punch in the face of the American psyche, right? Are we going to rally around this and come through it and we're always going to be resilient country? I am dead set on that. I am American patriot to the core. We are going to be resilient. We will get through whatever comes our way. But the reality is that this has been a little bit of a reality check on social media and the politicization of science. And we're going to have to. On both sides, and we're going to have to get through that and find a better way the next time around so that we are more resilient. We do bounce back better the next time around because there will be another thing, there will be another hurricane, there will be another wildfire. And so we are going to be a resilient country. We are going to deal with the next one better. But this is a definite learning curve around resiliency, challenge, around disinformation and our trust in science.

Yeah, I mean, it was such a. Interesting as I'm Canadian, so like being a Canadian, being like a foreigner in the country, just out myself right there, but being a foreigner in the country. My wife's American and she grew up in Jersey. Really interesting to just watch the whole system sort of shake and buckle as, as it does, and I think as it did in many other countries as well. What do you feel is. Is the individual's not responsibility, but capacity? Do you feel like now in our current age, it is more challenging for the individual to stay in a resilient place with all of this sort of disinformation floating around? Because it seems like, you know, when I look at the data, because I'm in the mental health space, when I look at the data of divorce rates and depressions, anxieties, suicides, domestic violences, overdoses, addictions, we seem to be inundated. And I know that the, you know, the pandemic hasn't, you know, hasn't helped any of those areas. I mean, they've all spiked across the board. But do you feel like it's more taxing and challenging? Do you feel like we're living in through a time right now where it is not that this is an excuse, but rather an acknowledgment that, you know, it is a little bit more challenging to be resilient through these times? I'm curious to get your thoughts on that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think one of, one of my thoughts in the book is that the cornerstone perhaps of national security going forward is resiliency. Right. So, you know, we have a strategic petroleum reserve. We have strategic, you know, pharmaceutical reserve. We have strategic reserves for military supplies. We have all of this, but we've not spent the time to get our individual citizens resilient in and of themselves, right? So, you know, a hurricane hits and everybody sits back and waits for FEMA to show up. But those resilient individuals, whether they're former agency, former bureau, former military, former law enforcement, former first responder, whatever that had that built into their psyche by training, the average human being is maybe not resilient, right? So as far as dealing with a hurricane hitting their hometown, what we are trying to do with raise your resiliency is get people as individuals to be resilient. You know, have your own supplies, have your own plan, right? Have your own training, have your own skills, have your own relations, support, relationships. If each individual or each family had their own resiliency plan, which is what we are putting out in our book and in our services, then they then could be resilient through the natural disaster. And that's the easiest one to talk about, right? Earthquake, flood, wildfire, tornado, hurricane. How do you as a family get through that? And do you have that go bag in your truck and do you have the go box in your vehicle that will support your family for the next two weeks? And where are you going to go and how are you going to get there? Are you going to stay in place and just take care of yourself? So if the individual or the family is resilient, then the neighborhood is better off. And then if the neighborhood is resilient, then the community is better off. And then you get into taking care of the outliers, right? The special needs, the elderly.

The less empowered, the lower socioeconomic class that can't do this. So I think we have to, as a country come together and say we're going to make ourselves more resilient. It's back to the American west, right? The pioneers that went west and set themselves up, those people, that mindset have to be brought back, right? We've been sitting fat and happy for way too long. We need to sit down and make sure that we can get through stuff that's thrown at us as Americans. And if we can do that, I mean, we can get through anything. Because what we've got to do is decentralize that resilience, right? We're not all reliant on FEMA to roll in with the semis and bring the bottles of water. No, that's not needed. Our community, our neighborhood, we've already got. We've already collecting our own drinking water. We've already got batteries and power, backup and alternative sources of fuel and defense and first aid. And we are good in this neighborhood. So if we can have resilient neighborhoods, then we'll be that much better off as a country. And that, to me, is a core. Right. So you want everybody to survive and thrive. That's the goal of our living in our planet today. But then you've got to have the individual, the family, and the business all be critical units that are resilient. And if you can apply those five pillars to those three units, you achieve what you're talking about. You achieve that resilience as a country, but it starts with the individual. And I think that's really key.

Yeah, I just. I love the idea of decentralizing resiliency. I think that, you know, that there's something, you know, in the men's groups that we run, we talk a lot about cultivating self leadership, you know, not sort of waiting for the handouts or for the, you know, somebody to do it for you, but actually learning the skill sets that maybe you've never been taught. Right. You know, maybe you didn't grow up, you know, on a farm sometimes like I did, you know, shooting gophers and whatnot and learning how to use a gun. Maybe you didn't grow up learning how to, you know, create a lean to or whatever the case may be if you're stuck out in the. In the wilderness. So. So maybe these are skill sets that you need to develop. But I like the idea of decentralizing it and not putting so much weight and duress on sort of public forums and governments for you as the individual, to then be reliant on them. Because it's. I mean, yeah, governments, you know, they're. They're mediocre at best. I mean, there's just. There's so much bureaucracy in red tape that can only do so much, and when you have so many people with differing opinions on what society should look like, I think what you're really saying is, is. Is valid and important that we can return to a sense of reclaiming that. That quality of resiliency within ourselves, our. Our homes and our communities. So listen, Chris, this was a great conversation, really enjoyed it, and appreciate your time. The book that you were. That you wrote, that you were referring to before, for the listeners that are out there, is called raise your resiliency. We'll have the links for that in the show notes. Just one last question on mindset. I was curious around what your time at Quantico taught you about mindset, because I think that that's a large component of what they really teach down there. And so if you could just impart some final words of wisdom for. For those looking to get some FBI mindset into them.

Yeah, well, that's. That is so timely with. With the tragic accident, you know, the incident that happened down in Sunrise, Florida. And when we went through Quantico, they taught street survival for agents. And it was. It was a mindset. It was something you had to go through. And we had, you know, medical and we had arrest training. We had all the different training. But the thought process always was based on the Miami shootout, which preceded all of this today by two decades or more. And the Miami shootout was where two agents really fought all the way through the shootout, and it ended tragically. But the reality was they didn't give up. And despite them being over, you know, outgunned and outmanned, they fought through the fight. They did not give up. And they stopped the bad guy because they didn't give up. They were shot multiple times, they were wounded, they were still fighting. They were still reloading antiquated firearms to deal with bad guys that were, well, outgunned, our agents. That still applies today. That survival mindset that I was taught at Quantico, that I was taught at CIA to get through an incident applies today. And everybody can apply that. Right. Don't give up when the first shot comes at you. You can't. You can't freeze in place or you're going to die in place. You know, they expect you to be in a certain place. You have to have a survival mindset when the bad guy presents himself. Move. Get out of the way. Stop. Get off the X. That's what we always tell everybody. Right. They want you in a certain place, but it can hurt you in a certain way. If you can get off the X and you can fight through the incident with a positive mindset, with a survival mindset, you can get through anything. That's a bankruptcy, that's an illness, that's a criminal attack on you. That is a pandemic. Get off the X, Have a positive survival mindset, and that's what everyone needs today.

Yeah. Yeah. Well said. I love that idea of getting off the X, especially if the ex is within you. That inner critic, that shitty inner dialogue is like the X and start moving and take action. That's right. Or, you know, freeze it out with a cold shower or something like that.

100%. Get off the couch, go do something.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So good. All right, well, thanks very much, Chris, for. For joining. For everyone that's out there listening, don't forget to leave a Rating and review. Share this podcast episode, man it forward and share with just one person that you know would enjoy this conversation. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Join me next week for another inspiring conversation with another inspiring individual.