We have the largest ink library in the world at US Secret Service headquarters. Really? So we could test ink. As long as it's black, green. Yeah. Well, and if you think about it, we actually have black and green and, you know, typical, you know, go back to kindergarten In a copy machine. I think about ink cartridge. Yeah to make a green. It's yellow and blue, right? So if you look at green under a counterfeit, you're gonna see dots of yellow and blue. So I mean Well, I just a little kind of pixelation. Yeah. Yeah, and laser ink If you were looked under a counterfeit under a microscope, you it tells a whole picture. I mean, it's for me It's just it's easy But think about the 18 -year -old that Walmart, You know they don't know so when they grab their marker and they're like and they put a line on what's going on there? So without they're like yep, it's good. All those markers are is iodine. I don't has a certain reaction with a true currency paper Okay, so that's all it's just a chemical reaction chemical reaction based on iodine So what happens if it's so it's kind of yellow. Yeah, if it's if we're good because that's well, you know what the bad guys do now because they know all these knuckleheads use these Counterfeit detection pens, which I mean save the money call the secret service and they'll come out and tell you yeah, but they code it You could buy certain hair jails that Changed the reaction. It's all chemical reaction. So it's a sealed bill correct basically. Yeah I mean anyway, I could talk for hours just about that stuff I mean And are there are there security features that basically I couldn't find out about I care Are there are there anything that the Secret Service keeps secret secret about these? Yeah Yeah, and there's certain things that we call super notes that have been out there that you know We kind of keep close to the best and you know that sort of thing What's the biggest so in your career? Did you ever stumble in just giant stacks of counterfeit or is That's kind of more like movie stuff. No, but my very first case, you know, some people go a career without taking a case to federal trial, you know, because the prosecution rate with the U .S. Attorney's office is, you know, close to 90 percent. Like if you're going to take a case to the U .S. Attorney, you know, you do everything on the up and up. And, you know, indictment, you know, in tip no BS, people are going to plea out before my very first case went to a federal trial, actually, and it was-- - So it was just in like your first couple years kind of thing, or? - It was my first week on the job. - Bullshit. - Yeah, down at the Amtrak station, a guy was stopped, you know, basically, you know, stopped in Frisk and he had a bag full of stuff he shouldn't have had. But ultimately, the funny thing is, we got him convicted on, it ended up being close like 18 years in prison. But the funny thing was, he only got a year for the Secret Service Charge, but I was the case agent, but he had enough drugs where I, I as a Secret Service agent, the U .S. Attorney's Office prosecuted this guy with possession with intent to distribute drugs. - So he had a serious amount. - He had a serious amount of drugs. So we got him on the Secret Service Charge and he got animal time for that, but I was the case agent for this huge amount of drugs that he had in his possession. - What happens to all those drugs, by the way, that you got, I mean, how many millions of pounds annually does law enforcement confiscate? - Oh, I mean, we turned all that over to our friends with the DEA and certain times the FBI, but then they handle all that and - Dispose of it. - Okay. They're not having huge parties, really, right? No, so, okay, so you get through training and it sounds like that was not the toughest thing for you. Like, you were very prepared, let me put it that way. - Yeah, I mean, it wasn't hard. It was stressful because if you fail anything, you're out. Like, you fail academic tests, you fail PT, You felt control tactics like there's zero tolerance kind of like our mission zero fail mission like you're good enough to get hired like There's no there's no zero failure rate that are our Minimum standards which are higher than any other federal law enforcement agency. You had to get 80 % or higher Like on a shooting range Everybody else is 70 % but nope 80 % or higher and And if you're below 80%, you failed. Wow. So there was a daily stress of, like, I can't fail. I mean, that's going to take a toll on any human being. But also, I mean, like, this is pretty cool. It's kind of a time under tension. Yeah. Are you living, like, on a compound, or are you, like, going to, like, an apartment after the day? No. Down at Fletsy, it was an old military base down in Glencoge, Georgia, so we were, like, base housing. - So you didn't have to worry about any of that stuff. Like you just went to your room or whatever. - And I was young and I just kind of, I was so focused on, I mean, you, and also like they told us before you went down, don't be a knucklehead, don't do anything stupid, don't use any poor judgment. So like they scared you enough, like don't do anything stupid after hours. - Are there people do you sort of discard that advice and they roll, they don't get through? - Well, it's kind of like that military law enforcement mentality where you take care of your own and if somebody's going down that path, you're a good teammate and you know, everything relates back to sports. You're a good teammate. Like, hey man, like, no, you're coming. And it's that brotherhood that you slowly start creating. - Yeah. - And these guys and gals, Men and women that I were in the Academy with like there's some of my closest friends to this day Oh, I bet I talked to you know sometimes daily weekly So who's the best were you the best shot in the crew? I was actually you are so you have to shoot above 95 % And all all shooting ranges are of course is a fire and you're considered expert marks Expert marksman so what and what kind of firearm do you guys use for Well, so it changed, um, in Fletsy, they pretend like nobody's ever shot. So the best way to teach somebody that's never shot, even though we all did with the military or law enforcement, they brought out the old revolvers. So there's nothing better than a double action. Everything's double action. So you have to learn trigger, trigger control, sight, pattern, and breathing. That's what all shooting, shooting is easy, small, miss, small, you know, so trigger control, and if you have double action, you're going to be a better shot. So they started out, we should never use the revolver. But then based on the timeframe, I started, uh, you know, the, the first weapon I had all through training was a six hour two, two, um, eight, which is a nine millimeter. But when I graduated, we had a six hour two, two, nine, which was 357. But then that remained constant through the majority of my career. But then we had to be experts on standard police, standard police, Remington 870 shotgun, then the H &K MP5 submachine gun. Then later they added the SR16, which is, you know, could reach out and touch somebody, you know, accurately, like 700 yards. Jesus, that's a 5 -5 -6 round. So we had to be experts on all those weapons all the time. And when you're DC based personnel, you have to shoot every month. So I know a lot of people around here like, "Hey, let's go shoot." I hate shooting. I had to do it for a career. I had to do it every month. I've shot hundreds of thousands of rounds and loaded mags, and I have no interest in sending rounds downrange for fun, because I had to do it for work. I mean, I like hunting, but just to go shoot, I'm good, man. Yeah, I can see how you might be you over that. So you go through this this training process and you're you're getting exposure to like these these different disciplines under the umbrella of the Secret Service so I'm guessing some people elect or pursue specialties within there or do you or I mean it's kind of like med school like I get we're all doctors I'm gonna specialize in this so is that how that works that works as you kind of declare, "I want to be in counterfeit or I want to be in presidential detail," or, "How does that all work?" Well, and that's the thing that makes it, I think, the Secret Service, again, the best federal law enforcement agency in the world, where to use our friends with the FBI, like, you may be an FBI agent, but you're working drugs or sex trafficking for 20 years. That's great, but, like, you don't get don't get a full perspective of federal law enforcement. As Secret Service agents, you go to your first field office. We have 122 field offices throughout the country. There's roughly 96 judicial districts. So think about it, there's one or two per judicial district. So then we have 30 overseas. So you go to a field office, and you're typically assigned So your first squad typically are like, you know, back, they don't do it now, but it was like, uh, T checks, treasury checks, you know, people get their old treasury checks and, and forge them or whatever. So they start you're like in a T check squad, then you go to a counterfeit squad, then you go to, you know, maybe like a protective intelligence squad, then a, you know, protection squad. So they, they, they, in protective intelligence, protection, like you can't make mistakes. So typically you're you're gonna start a new agent, like, you know, you could make a mistake in a t -check or a counterfeit in for the most part lower stakes stuff. Yeah, nobody's gonna get hurt for the most part. There's always a chance of, but you can't mess up protection or protective intelligence because that, you know, somebody can die like literally by messing it up. So to answer your question, like, you would expose to everything. You become a master in everything. And that's typically like phase one of your career, then phase two is when you get selected to a permanent detail, then typically phase three is like, all right, I really want to do X, Y, or Z. And that's where I chose the cyber route after my full -time protection. - Okay, so you said they select you. So they're seeing that you have aptitude and a certain sort of discipline. And they're kind of saying, we think you should be over here and then you can specialize once you're in there. - And also, your first phase in your career, I mentioned earlier, if you're a good investigative agent and you have attention to detail and you had to talk to people, interview people, put a clear, concise report for the US Attorney's Office together, that's gonna make you a good protection agent. So there's 3 ,000 Secret Service agents at any given time, active Secret Service agents. Not everybody in the Secret Service goes to the President's Detail. I mean, it's just the way it is. I mean, that's why with my current company, M6, we're all presidential level people, agents. There's guys that spent 20, 25 years in the Secret Service never sniffed the President's Detail 'cause they didn't make the cut. So let me jump to president's detail because that's and I want to get to roll this up to m6 because I think this is this Representative of the core competencies that you guys bring to m6 and that what makes m6 a cut above the rest for what you guys do and so what president's detail seems like it's They're opposing agendas when you're doing this. Meaning, in a perfect world, a secret service agent, if you want to protect the president, you're like, "Please climb into this steel box and don't come out." Right? That's how you protect them. But there's the reality of it, which is, you know, this person needs to be seen. They need to be out having meetings. And so their daily agenda is in opposition to your task, and therein lies the challenge, which is in all of this chaos, I mean, from a security perspective, it is chaos. You have all of these variables and very little constants or things that you can plan around. The things you can plan around is probably like, what kind of building are we gonna be in, or where are these different constants? So talk to me is a massive subject, but what what does this mean to be in this protective detail? Like how do you even begin to keep somebody safe who's in broad daylight? Yeah, so you know you hit it on the head because what we say at the White House is you know Secret Service we would love to put the guy in the basement and not see the light of day keep it in a bunker safe White House staff they want to put them in Busch Stadium and shake 50 ,000 hands and kiss babies like what we have to meet in the middle You know and again for the sake of the country the country deserves and they need to see and hear The president and the people of the country need to talk to him and so we understand like we play a very important role of You know the staff and the Secret Service, you know meeting in the middle so they could deliver on what they agreed to do for the people of the greatest country on earth. From where you start though, like I mentioned at the beginning, everything starts with intelligence. Another way you could upset a Secret Service agent, like you call them a bodyguard. Now, that bodyguard is these people you see with these celebrities, and there's no thought. Where hired is hopefully people could understand, you know, from what I've explained, we're pretty intelligent people and we have to be able to formulate plans, clear, concise plans, investigation, high level operations, and that's where the investigations and protections, protection comes together. So everything starts with intelligence and developing intelligence, digesting intelligence, then taking that intelligence and realizing, all right, proactively, what can we do to this individual. Um, you know, then we have these, you know, peripheral squads, if you will, protective intelligence. So we get word coming in, Hey, somebody made a threat in St. Louis, Missouri, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days, weeks, 365 days a year. We're going out interviewing. So this is constant. It's around the clock. Like every day is a Wednesday. Every day, you know, it's days and months and time. I'm just wired that way, like, you know, it's a 24 -hour day. Like, when somebody says, hey, there's not enough time to do something like BS, like, you make the time. Like, I've been there, like, you set a priority, you do it, and there's, you know, the world's actually, you know, you could travel anywhere in the world in a matter of, you know, 12 to 16 hours, like, you get it done, you know, what we're talking out there, you know, GSD, you just do it, it's just ingrained in you. So, yeah, everybody has their function within the detail on the president's detail. Everybody knows their roles. And it's an amazing machine. Everybody's cogging a wheel, and it just turns around. And 24 /7, 365, there's always somebody doing what they need. It's like a team, a football team. Everybody's doing their job. But is the reality that death threats and these sorts of things. Are they constant? And you've got to sift through all of this as a team, qualify these, and you know, there's the great, like, well, we didn't take that one seriously problem. - Oh no, yeah, you take everything. - So are they all weighted the same? Or, I mean, if-- - For the most part, but like some, you know, hey, this is from Iran, like, oh, that's going to carry obviously a little bit more weight than, hey, this is coming from a local high school, you know. Then we go out and determine, like, the means mode of opportunity. But the interesting thing about the threats against the president in my time in the K -12 space was trying to combat the violence within schools and potential school shootings and everything. The human mind, regardless, is directed towards the president or fellow classmates. the human mind is the human mind. We're all from the same species. So knowing how that works, which is interesting, a lot of people don't know about the Secret Service. We, after Columbine, April 20, 1999-- - I'll never forget that, it was such a-- - I was eight days on the job and actually a month later, again, Clinton said, "Hey, we have a problem." Like, school shooting's been going on for 260 years, but anyway, the Secret service developed the National Threat Assessant Center back in '99, protecting schools. So that's another thing we do that nobody knows about. - You're right. - And we also are the lead investigative agency for the NICMIC, which is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, started by John Walsh. So we have our hands in all these things that we don't go around tooting our own horns like other federal agencies, we just GSD. We just-- - Yeah, get it done. - Get it done. - So, bringing in K -12 and the parallels that exist between presidential detail and K -12. So, you spent 22, how long were you in the Secret Service? - 22. - You were there for 22 years and there's probably, just a crazy amount of stories that are available there. And I wanna bring us into the K -12, but Is there a moment, maybe the first time you're in presidential detail, where the president's walking out and you also have this personal moment of like, "I'm here. I'm doing this now." You have like, "Wait, stop thinking about that. Focus on that." Did you have that moment of realization that this is really cool? Yeah, absolutely. For me, it was early on. It was even before I went full -time to the president's detail, back in 2000 when Governor Bush was running for president. He's a heck of an athlete in many regards, but he was, he, at the time in 2000, he was a runner, you know, running a lot. I mean, the guy could clip off easily a 630 mile for three miles, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And really, we have a lot of good athletes and, you know, guys, you know, all ranges of sports and college athletes, whatever, but this guy was moving. But think about when we run with him, we have radio, gun, equipment, whatever. So as a young agent, I got thrown on Governor Bush's detail during that whole 2000 campaign. So to answer your question, like it hit me early, like I'm brand new. I'm like, I had that moment early on. So like actually when I went to the president's detail, I already kind of - - You were jogging with him? - Yeah, yeah. - Like looking over like, hey, how's it going? I would run with him, you know, I think during the campaign, I think probably 26 states we ran with him, you know, throughout the course of a year, you know, we were at the ranch, he always liked to wait until it got to 100 degrees like this time of day. And then he, we had the 100 degree club, if you could complete a third 5k in a certain time, he would give you like this 100 hundred degrees. So he's got intensity about him that doesn't come across. - He is super intense, very competitive. 'Cause like, so he ran, I ran with him, but when I went full time to the presidency tell, he wasn't running anymore 'cause of his knees. So he was mountain biking. So I was a part of Peloton one. So the joke in the secret service was, I was on athletic scholarship for like my first 10 years 'cause I was the track guy, then I was the mountain bike guy. And we're a group of very small number of agents that were his guys. And it was great because like you didn't have to work midnight shifts and you know, you got a lot Oh, yeah, make sure Tim's here during the day exactly in the waking hours. Yeah, so you could ride That's crazy. That's really fun. So did you get to know the you get to know the presidents? So I got to know him very well and especially if you remember President Bush, she was all about nicknames And he gave me a nickname That you know, occasionally he's come to town and he knows my wife because she worked For him as a staffer and such. Uh -huh. Then yeah, so he gave me a nickname of Newt NEWT, Newt the young naive Nobody knew what it meant, but one of my shift leaders asked my hey, why do you call Tim newt? He's like Lonesome Dove. Oh, I don't know it. Yeah, Ricky Schroeder Played the young naive character named newt in the Lonesome Dove series back in like the late 70s early 80s. So that was your that was my all my photos are signed to new. So how many presidents did you span? Five sitting for former. So I protected nine total. Okay. Five of those were sitting though from Clinton to Biden. Then the former's were 41 Bush Carter Ford Reagan. Really? You know so what I was so much history. - I was assigned to the Washington field office and obviously everybody comes to WFO. So I had a lot of protection time where I was able to do details for those guys at certain times throughout my career. And you know, I'm 50 and I was a huge Reagan. You know, he's the first guy I remember as a kid, like as president, right? Like really remembered. - Like was. - And To meet him and his wife. It was that was probably my biggest kind of like aha. Wow. This is surreal Yeah, he was like the first president any of us saw on TV that are far vintage exactly and here you are I remember March 30th 1981 like it was yesterday. I was six years old. Mm -hmm I remember sitting in front of the big box TV. Yeah, the day he was shot by Hinckley Yeah, so all these things like subconsciously played into where I ended up sitting. That's remarkable. And so you have a 22 year career and that wraps up in what year? What year did you - 21. So you step out of the Secret Service in 21 and what's the next step after where you got into K through 12? No, initially I worked because when I moved back to this office and retired out of this office. You're always doing protection. You know, even though I came off the detail in 2011, they don't let that institutional knowledge and experience go away. So you're always getting drawn back into certain details. And so, you know, not full -time, you know, going to the White House, but, you know, I did certain things for Trump and Biden along the way. Kind of a reserve type of thing. - Yeah, and then we didn't even talk about it like, but my MOS like you would have in the military, my MOS or specialty on the president's detail, - Yeah. - You could go, you know, counter assault at the time, you could go counter assault the guys, you know, with the BDUs, big guns and, you know, they neutralize the threat when we're, you know, going towards the problem. - By overwhelming it. - Yeah, just, you know, big guns, you know, big muscles, you know, go take care of the threat. Transportation, first lady detail and counter surveillance. I was a transportation guy. So, and the TS guys, you know, TS, probably, I'm just, you know, throwing it out here. Like the TS guys and the cat guys are probably even within the presence detail or the the most elite within the detail. - Okay. - There's only a handful of guys get to drive and you get trained at high levels, how to train, drive all the vehicles, you know. - That training must be, maybe stressful, but very fun. - It's very fun, yeah. We call it PODC protective operations driving course and you learn how to, you know, ram vehicles, J -turns. You know, they put you in stressful situations. - What's a J -turn? - J -turns where you're going to high rate of speed in reverse and you flip it and you go that way. - I love that move. - Yeah. - That's the Hollywood move. - Yeah, I'm pretty good at doing it with rental cars. So, and part of our mental mentality was drive it like you stole it. Like, you know. - Great song, by the way. - Okay, drive it like you stole it. But like learning how to protect of operations, you know, shooting from a moving vehicle and taking incoming rounds. And like we trained at the highest levels to learn all these things. And that's why I tell my family now, like, "Dad, slow it down." I'm like, "Man, I'm the most trained individual. Like, I've driven presidents and folks." - You're lucky to be in the car with them. - Yeah, and that's what I tell them. - I'll sign something if you'd like. - My kids always, my wife especially, she's like, "Slow it down." I'm like, "I'm the most trained person here. Like, I know what I'm doing." - Yeah, you know. - Well, the thing about the J -turn, it seems, is that you've got to be committed to that move. Like, you can't sort of do a J -turn. - Oh, yeah. No, And it actually, realistically, like in a presidential motorcade, it really doesn't make any sense 'cause, you know, the biggest motorcade I did in China, we had 56 cars, you know, typical motorcade, you're gonna have like 28 to 32. You're J -turning into-- - Other cars. - 14 other cars. So it doesn't make sense from a presidential level. - So that's to be a choreographed J -turn for all 28 go once. - Yeah. But I did a lot of small detail things. And Initially when I was on the presidency tell I was this I was assigned to one of his daughters in Panama So I lived in Panama ultimately for a year So what's the trick to the J -turn like like what do you do? You basically floor it in reverse And how do you get the so yeah? No, so you're in reverse and a good rate of speed is probably 20 to 25 miles an hour And it's it's in reverse is one gears now like you can go 70 miles an hour in reverse, right? - Yeah, you're gonna lose some of your mobility if you go too fast. - A little squirrelly. - Yeah, you need to kind of loose. - Yeah. - But ultimately, you take, there's a wheel position, and I don't want people to go home and try it. - Yeah, don't do this, but like-- - When you hit reverse, and you're looking in the rear view mirror the whole time, 'cause we were trained, like you never look over the always, you know, rookie stuff, rookie stuff. But you take your, you know, because they always talk about, you know, 10 and two, nine and three hand positions on, you know, shuffle steering. But you take basically the two o 'clock position and a very violent motion. Right. You go from two to eight. So, okay, so sorry, you go to two to eight, yeah, which is here and back, like in a split second, Then think about it from how the car operates in the axles Mm -hmm if you're going in reverse and you're going from to the wheels what you're doing to the wheels You're turning them then turning them back. So you're going in reverse and you flip But then you got to remember to put it in drive once you're completely around Right, that's the trick. That's the trick and it's harder to do with some of these cars now that we drive with all the electronics. The electronics. We were dealing it like on the old Mustangs and Chargers where they have the gearbox down here, which some of the cars do, or even the old gearbox here. Yeah, where those are easiest. Yeah, because everything's right there. But even overseas, I've learned how to do it. You know, because like overseas, like you say, you're driving a BMW or Mercedes, there's ways to do it at a low rate of speed with these high tech cars. And so the trick is, once you're turned, 'cause at some point, those wheels have to flip from going in reverse to going forward. - Then you're burning rubber. - 'Cause that must screech at that moment. - Oh yeah, yeah, one of the biggest training costs we had at our PODC pad, Protective Operations Trainings, we had to change out tires. - It's a huge stack of tires. - We burned through tires like you wouldn't believe. - Is there a risk of popping a tire? - Not necessarily. I mean, it all has to do also with, you know, how dry it is and the level of surface. It gets to be kind of a math equation at some point. Is there a car that you have found that lends itself to that move more than others? Any four -door rental sedan. It's a good party trick. It is a good party trick. So anyway, where I'm headed with that is that so you, let me re -gather, so you're retired from and you're sort of in a reserve of sorts where you can be tapped to do certain details after you've officially retired, you're still sort of available to a degree. - Yeah, I mean, you still some period of time, you know, to get that, you know, top secret SCI clearance. But I, ultimately, I want to work for a cyber counterintelligence company. And it was my first entry into the private sector. And that must have been an eye -opener. Yeah, well, it's because like, I worked with a bunch of men and women that, you know, are high strong type A people like me that, you know, we just all work for 48, two hours, whatever it takes to get the job done, like literally, um, you know, no food, no water, whatever it takes, you know, uh, for God and country, the constitution and the flag, the private sector is a little bit different. And I just didn't have that, you don't have that bond that you did and the work. And it was just, it was just completely different. It's not what I expected. And, uh, I think I told the story before we came before we came though, I just needed something mission oriented. And that's ultimately how I got into the K -12 space. You know, what greater asset in this country that we have than our nation's children? No, that's just 52 million children or kids K through 12 in this country. So I mean, that's our greatest asset. I mean, that's our future. So and they're not being protected like they should. Well, can I pull that apart a little bit, which is I think you found yourself now in a position similar to presidential detail, which is you have opposing forces, right, which is same thing sort of exists, which is you're looking at a school, you're looking at a bunch of people, you understand the objective of the school. So best case scenario is we can put everyone in a metal box, but that, you know, we were kids once and that's a tough experience to grow up in. So you've got to make these security compromises, both optically, you know, no one was to drive by the neighborhood school. And, you know, people stand outside with, you know, heavy weaponry and stuff like that. And all these different things that we've all heard about. So how do you even begin to and what a lightning rod by the way of you know these are our schools and that and just saying it that way already sort of charges it so yeah two things I mean honestly and people overthink it this this isn't rocket science and it's pretty easy so I treated and I articulated this when I went through the process but in the district that I worked for, I treated each of the buildings like it was the White House. So if you think about it, the White House, one of the most protected places in the world. But once you're in, you have ease of access to do your job and freedom of thought and you're not constricted. So that was my mentality, like, you know, I've done it for the White House and I've done it for other, you know, places throughout the world for, you know, that had and deemed like you read at the beginning, NSSE, National Special Security Events deemed by Congress. I'm like, it's a little work, but it's not hard. So I treated each of the schools like it was the White House where you had the security measures in place, but those security measures are churning and burning 24 /7 behind the scenes. Like eventually if you do it right, people aren't even recognizing that those things were there to technology and honestly, forget about technology, but a lot of it comes down to the human element, training, education and culture. And if you train the people and it all relates back to behavioral risk. So what I was doing at the district I came from, I focused a lot on behavioral risk assessment. So knowing how to interact with kids, knowing what the warning signs were, a 10 -year -old kid could be like a potential assassin for the president. It's the same mentality, same mindset. So if you know what the warning signs look for with a school shooter or a mass shooter, you're going to proactively prevent it. So that's why every day I watch the news and they talk about a mass shooting here, a mass shooting there, 85 % of mass shooters or school shooters articulate to somebody else before they carry out the attack. They did it actually. - Wait, what was the percentage? - 85%. - Holy shit. - They articulate, 'cause think about it. They did the study, a suicidal thought and a homicidal thought are the same thing. So they did a study of 100 people that jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and that survived. And they asked him, like, "Hey man, like, "what were you thinking?" Like, "Well, I didn't wanna do it." And I told myself, "I'm gonna stand at the edge of the bridge. "The first person that pays me attention or says, Hey man, are you okay? I'm not going to do it. School shooters, mass shooters are the same way. Typically now with social media, they're probing and they're like, Hey, I'm going to go, you know, do this or, um, you know, threatening maybe the violence, obviously, or something subtly around it. Cause they want somebody to say, are you okay? Can I help you? You know, what can we do? And that's what schools aren't doing. They're not seeing what the threats are. They're not developing a baseline with their kids to know when people are above or below that baseline that eventually will become violent. You know, I did a study or a survey in the school district I came from and I knew the answer and I did it to kind of prove a point. But everybody talks about school shootings. But the analogy I use is It would be like taking your family to the beach and all you talk about is shark attacks. - Right. - That's less than 1 % of, less than 1%. But you know what's gonna happen at the beach? You're gonna get sand in your drawers, you're gonna get splinters, you're gonna get sunburn. But nobody talks about that. Same with schools. The survey, the biggest concern of the school district I came from in order was bullying, suicide, vaping and drug use, then school shooting. So, you know, if we could eradicate bullying, we're taking kids off the pathway to violence and that's gonna prevent suicide, drug use, vaping and school shooting. So my point was like, let's fight bullying, then we're gonna create a better environment for these kids from K through 12. - Is the bullying these days in -person bullying primarily or is it more of like my kids got a phone I don't even know what's going on on that both so what what I did is we brought in two things no place for hate then also we brought in teaching our kids at an early age to be good digital citizens mm -hmm so if they see something say something I mean all this is free I mean and none of this is earth -shattering stuff but you got to do the work but what I've learned in the K -12 space is they don't want to do the work. I'm too busy or I have lesson plans or I've been a teacher for 25 years, this is my routine, I don't want to deviate. You got to do the work, man. I mean, I'm telling you, again, there's not 100 % certainty, but these are solutions that will work and take kids off the pathway You know, because everything starts with a grievance, you know, grievance turns into ideation, ideation turns to planning, research, to probing, to execution. - Right, okay. - So if you take somebody off the pathway to violence and you, a grievance, you're bullying me, that's a grievance. I'm gonna kill Shep. - Yeah. - Then I start planning. If we intervene along that pathway to violence, which by the way, the US Secret Service created after Columbine is the pathway to violence. If we take kids off the pathway to violence-- - Is that what you just described there? - Yeah, and I'm using it 'cause in my mind, I see-- - The graph or whatever. - The grievance, and they have this straight, linear line that goes from a grievance to ideation, planning, research, probing, execution, up the line. - Is there a known time period where that will occur? - Well, so-- - Statistically speaking. - A lot of people have to understand too. So from A kid, the frontal cortex isn't fully developed till your mid to late 20s, right? So a lot of kids don't have rational thoughts and they think very emotionally and you may hit me in the face with a dodgeball and you may be like, "I'm gonna kill you." And so they're moving up the pathway but then you have to look at, do they have the means mode of our opportunity? 'Cause the school district I came from, We had 30 screener threat assessments last year over eight schools And half of those were from K through four kids, which is six through 10 or 11 years old So a lot of the kids on the playground say I'm gonna kill you But then after you know conducting the proper interview that you know, we we I brought forth to them Yeah, they don't have the means opportunity. I you know, you said whatever, I'm going to use a bazooka. Okay, well, that's a transient threat. So anyway, there's there's a whole way to do that. But again, you got to do the work, you got to train the people, you got to, you know, but I say it's easy. It's relatively easy to do. Well, it takes time, though. It does take time. And it's hard to do things when it's met with, well, I've been doing it this way for 25 years. Well, the landscapes change guys. Yeah. And so I don't know, I know enough about it to be offensive, probably, but like, you know, that what I would respond to do is like that the two most dangerous words, the most dangerous words in our English vocabulary, and this comes from a real admiral is this is the way we always done it. Yeah, that's going to get people killed. This is always, no, you need to always rethink, revisit, re -plan, assess. And that's what we do, you know, going back to being a secret service agent. That's just how we're trained. And it would, even now thinking about it makes me-- - Yeah, makes you sweat, yeah. So how long were you doing that? - Two years. - Two years. And the, and then you've come on to M6, Which is you talked about the team and can you dive into some of the detail though of what you guys are? Specifically trying to you know, you're growing something and I know that you're established, but there are things that you guys From like a cyber perspective or you envision your side guys your team doing certain things and say what you want You know obviously would just want to give people more of an idea of like This is what we'd like to be doing as m6. Yeah, so we have two main verticals and You know my friend colleague and CEO of the company started, you know about five years ago and He made a big name for himself nationally in the K -12 space. So we're not Completely abandoning that but we have two main verticals one being the K -12 space with space, which is part of M6 Global Defense, but it's called SafePath, Educational Services, or SPEC. So SafePath, and it talks about a lot of what I talked about behavioral risk assessment, side assessments of buildings, because you have to have a strategic plan on how to protect a school, like I mentioned with the White House. So that's one vertical, and the other vertical, like if you were to go to M6 Global Defense proper website. It talks more about, you know, from a high level executive protection, you know, after the United healthcare CEO was assassinated in December, like that industry is booming. I said about $300 billion industry for executive protection alone. - Really? - Yeah. High net worth individuals, critical infrastructure assessments, like say you have an oil and gas company or a manufacturing company, you need to protect, what are your crown jewels? How are you gonna physically protect it? Then a part of that we've talked about, you know, you could disrupt from a cyber perspective too. So that's where my background is very unique 'cause I spent all those years in cyber too, assigned to a Ural Pole and Joint Saber Action Task Force and all this type of stuff. So from a cyber perspective, where the physical world meets, so we do the critical infrastructure protection, then what sets us apart as well, we have a chief medical officer within our company that came from the White House. So tactical medicine and that, you know. - What does that mean? Well, tactical medicine, we've learned a lot from, you know, the wars we fought in the Middle East, where there's certain things you can do, like United Health Care. A lot of people don't realize, he had a guy with him. He just said, "Hey, man, I don't need you to go." He got shot in the calf before he got shot in the back, you know, that, that coward, you know, shot a guy in the back to kill him. But he was shot in the calf. So say he had somebody with him, he would have survived that wound if you had the proper tactical met with them or you know, we're trained as well. - Yeah. - You put the proper tourniquet on, you know, preventing the guy from bleeding now, you know. So that's what tactical medicine is, like we've learned a lot from the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq over the years of, you know, I remember like growing up like, don't put a tourniquet in on somebody, you're gonna, you know, cut their circulation off. Well, tourniquets save lives. - Yeah. - And there's all sorts of tourniquets that I brought to the schools, you know, different sizes for, you know, different sizes of kids. So that's the tactical medicine we're talking about. But then also we offer, you know, like a concierge medicine. Think about like a high level exec or a network, a high net worth individual. They want to keep their footprint low in the community, right? - Yeah. - Should they go to the ER? Should they go to the doctor's office? A lot of these folks have concierge medicine available 24 four hours today. So we have the ability to provide that as well. But again, the biggest thing, I mean, they're all big, but we offer that digital threat assessment. So we're not going to just go out and say, Hey, you're a high level and, you know, you should have this many agents and it's going to cost you this much. No, I mean, that, that's just not fair. And we're, you know, worthy of trust and confidence as the, the motto of the secret service, you know, and we have ethics and morals, But we're going to develop that threat intelligence to determine what this individual needs for proper protection. So, and that's besides the threat intelligence that we're able to provide, the level of experience on our team we're able to provide is bar none to, you know, anybody else. I think we added up the number of experience years from a presidential and high level elite military. We have over 600 years of, you know, getting your hands dirty type of experience. That's a lot of experience. Enormous amount of experience. So this is a big topic I'm about to open up here, but you're all too aware of AI and what sort of wild west condition does that create for cybersecurity? Well, AI could be used could be used good and bad. So obviously we know like the typical things were bad, you know, creating deep fakes and voices and pictures and everything. But if you know what to look for and again, training education and changing the culture and having situational awareness. So many people in this world have zero situational awareness in life. You know, I try to teach my kids, you know, just basic situational It's like, it's not six inches from your face on the, like, you know what? When you're like, get off your, you know, GD phone. - Yeah. - You know, and just like experience life and look at the world, know your surroundings. Same thing goes for like the AI. Like you could look at deep fakes. You could, if you take the time and, you know, as we say, tactical pause, take a deep breath, take a look. Hey, that's BS. That's not real or whatever. But also AI could be used on on the counteroffensive too. We always talk, you know, on the offensive, but like we, you have to think about the counteroffensive, especially on a high net worth individual or something. You could put a whole AI campaign out there from social media, like if somebody puts a negative fault story on AI, why not use it for its good and put a opposing story, you know? It's just common sense, which isn't a common virtue. You just have to leverage technology to your advantage and make it work. Yeah, yeah, there's always gonna be nefarious actors, whatever, from the dawn of time there has been, but just use common sense and be smarter than them. It's not that, I mean, nothing I'm saying is earth shattering. - Yeah, I think that the best thing is just the idea, like you said, was it a tactical pause or? - Tactical pause. - Yeah, that's such an important thing to do in a general sense, which is allow time. - Yeah. - You know? - Well, in the way, a lot of what, and I'm not giving away trade secrets, but the way they train, you know, military and secret service and most law enforcement, there was a colonel during Vietnam, he was a fighter pilot, and he came up with this concept that we're taught. It's like, you're in any stressful situation, or I use it for life, I teach my kids Yeah, it's called the OODA loop. Yeah. Okay. What's that? So the OODA loop, like you're in a situation, say, uh, I'll use like one of my life, say you're taking it incoming rounds, right? So, right. All right. This isn't good. I want to survive. I'm going to get behind cover. So you get behind cover. So you observe, right? It's coast is clear. You orientate, you decide and act. So at that particular moment, just for basic survival, I'm going to go from one terrain feature, which is cover to the next. And I just OODA looped observe oriented decide act. Okay. Then I'm going to OODA loop to the next thing. Then, you know, and it gets you out of stressful situations. Cause that's what we, we talked about before we came on is that fight, flat or freeze in your brain. You don't use your frontal cortex. So when we were training and going in, like even search warrants, raids, whatever, you get caught up with the emotion and you have a gun round down range and you're say your bolts are whizzing by, you stop thinking with your frontal cortex. So they train you like, all right, you got to think and do something logical to get you out of that tunnel vision, you know? 'Cause typical human nature-- - Like keeps your wits. - Yeah, the human body, you know, the blood, we're just overgrown mammals. the blood's gonna go to your core, so therefore you get tunnel vision, the blood from your capillary is from your ears, goes to your internal organs, therefore you get auditory hearing. - Yeah. - You lose your fine motor skills 'cause your blood goes from your hands to your internal, everything's protecting your body from the saber -toothed tiger trying to eat you. - Sure. - I mean, ultimately. But if you oodaloupe these things, then you could oodaloupe life. Every day, I would loop, you know, a problem I have, like, all right. - Yeah. - Take a tactile pause, observe. - Chill, for a sec. - I'm gonna orientate myself. Then you decide. Don't make an emotional decision based on emotion. Like, so if you observe, orientate, then you decide you're not making a rash emotional decision. And this could apply to business, finance, anything in life. - Yeah. - It's just, I don't know. - Well, I think there's a lot to that. And I think people around But hopefully you say that yeah, there's you think about it and then and then you make your move on what you're gonna do and Sometimes it's more than a pause like things can get complex. You know, and you really have to just sort of say, okay I need to go I need to go heads down on this for a bit and go figure this out. Yeah, and I Think it's really important and it's it can be really uncomfortable Even in just a business set and you don't have of all its whizzing by your head, but the stakes can still be extremely high. And you have people depending on you, in some cases you have opposing forces for what you're trying to do and what is success, whether it's in a bullets flying environment or a business environment, it's this series of right decisions. There are ebbs and flows of luck and fortune, but there are ultimately the thing you control mostly is what decisions are you making at any given moment? Are you taking the time to let things kind of the coalescence of information to occur so you can make an informed decision? - Yeah, and I think a lot of people nowadays, especially technology is great, I'm not, you know, but you gotta be careful, people rely too much on the technology. The human element it's always going to be there. I mean, there's opportunities, you know, with protection of data centers, where, you know, as you would imagine, a lot of these companies, like they have robots protecting data centers. The human element is always going to be there. This isn't like, you know, space Odyssey 2000, where, you know, the computer's going to take over, or, you know, Skynet or something, you know, the human element's always going to be there. And you need to make that decision, from a logical sense, remove the emotion. - Yeah, and that's something that comes with time. As you said, I mean, it's when you're young, it's that front cortex, it's just not totally on yet. - Yeah, yeah. - So you move quickly, swiftly. But I'm gonna bring us, conclude what we're talking about today 'cause I think I I could talk to you for, there's so much I wanted to unpack in your experiences, but I want to say thank you for coming in today. It's been a lot of fun learning about your journey and what you're doing at M6 Global Defense. So thanks for coming in. Yeah, thanks for having me, and I appreciate it. And it's always good to talk to you about any topic, whatever it may be. Yeah, thanks, Tim. Yeah, thanks.