The Forecast

Keegan Goudiss (00:19)
Hey friends, welcome back to the forecast. Keegan here and it's July 4th and I'm celebrating with a very special episode. We're living in a world that feels off kilter. Wars that threaten to expand quickly and swiftly. Protests in our cities and a growing sense of the old ways of doing things just aren't working anymore. And yet people keep showing up. They keep building and we all keep believing. So I started thinking what kind of wisdom cuts through all this noise.

What kind of advice actually holds up, not just on the battlefield or in the boardrooms, but at the dinner table in our communities and our everyday lives? That's where today's guest comes in. Daniel Cosgrove is a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, a lawyer, and a longtime public servant. He's advised presidents and built housing for veterans. He's helped write the rules, and more importantly, he's lived by a code. He's also a father and a grandfather.

and someone who spent decades navigating the tensions between ideals and institutions. Today we're going to talk about war, peace, immigration, misinformation, possibly drones, what it means to serve and what kind of country hopes his grandchildren inherit. That's the thing I think is most important.

If you're looking for something grounded, something generous and something just make might make you feel and breathe a little bit deeper, this one's for you all. Welcome to the forecast, Dan.

Dan Cosgrove (01:45)
Thank you. Nice to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Keegan Goudiss (01:48)
So there's lot going on, obviously. I'm curious to start with my initial question. What parallels do you see between today's immigration tensions and past moments of internal division in American history?

Dan Cosgrove (02:04)
I've had a sign in my office for decades and it says, no Irish need plot.

Keegan Goudiss (02:11)
I know that sign, yeah.

Dan Cosgrove (02:12)
Yes,

and my grandfather faced that when he came in in 1890 from Ireland. Now, I'm also related to somebody who came in in 1630 and there were just trees here and a lot of other stuff and they went up and cut the trees and did other things. So there's a great difference. But it's people from

1630 eventually didn't want the Irish to come in in 1890. So there are plenty of parallels there. On the West Coast, we had Chinese, we needed them to build the railroads, but we really didn't want them to stay. Then we didn't know what to do with them. And during World War II,

some of the Japanese were interred, not that they were dangerous, they were different. And what people don't understand about that is, hey, when they set up the 442 regiment, which is the most highly decorated army unit at the time, they were all Japanese and they fought in Italy, they fought in Europe. And they did great. They took a lot of casualties.

They were fantastic. So the people that they're trying to get rid of, some of them are veterans. Some of them are people who are the fathers of veterans, the parents of veterans, the brothers and sisters of veterans, people who have died in combat, people who have been wounded, people who have really been there. Unlike some other people who say, ⁓ a there's an old volunteer force now.

So we don't have to go. And that's the division that will always be there. And, you know, we had segregation. We had the civil rights movement. had the hippie movement. had the drug culture for a while. We have, we always have divisions. We have the East Coast, West Coast division. You know, we used to say, it was really funny. We used to say,

Keegan Goudiss (04:19)
Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove (04:30)
The guys who went through boot camp in San Diego were Hollywood Marines. The guys who went through Paris Island were real Marines. ⁓ When you mix them together, that's not the case. They're Marines. That happens with the Army and everybody else. World War II and World War I brought them together.

Keegan Goudiss (04:44)
Which one did you go through? ⁓

Dan Cosgrove (04:59)
We've had an example of that recently. COVID brought everybody together. You couldn't say, well, you know, hey, we're sitting here in New York, we're having problems, but the guys in LA are doing okay. That doesn't happen. Everybody had it and it spread around the world. Just like the Spanish flu, the pandemic of 1918 to 1920. We're all one.

world now. I can talk to you even though I'm not with you because we have video phones. I can make phone calls off my smartphone to Auckland, New Zealand to talk to friends. I can send packages overnight anywhere in the world, just about. And it's that kind of a world. So we have divisions. Go ahead, sir.

Keegan Goudiss (05:51)
Yeah, no, in the in the millions,

you know, listen, this podcast, I might be exaggerating a little bit can listen to all of us. ⁓ You know, we're recording this, you know, July 3, we're going to release it July 4. And I was just amazed to me, I can have conversations with people, fascinating backgrounds like yourself. I want to I just want to like zoom in a little bit on something you said. Around a common enemy during World War One and World War Two and COVID, like I feel I feel as though

You know, there's this great tension around like, who do we blame in this moment? Right. Like America is very geared towards like we need to rally around a common scapegoat. And obviously people like Stephen Miller, who seems to hold a lot of power in the in the White House with the president, like he's immigrants are the problem. Right. Like there that's from their perspective, it seems almost they're like.

Immigrants are the Nazis that we're fighting, right? You know, and and like they're trying to rally their side around that. You've worked in, you know, advising presidents before you've worked in government for a long time. What would you say? Like if you were brought in as an advisor on like what is our our common enemy that we need to unite again, unite together against right now?

Dan Cosgrove (07:09)
Stupidity, know, people. People who sit down and don't understand that unless you're a Native American.

Keegan Goudiss (07:10)
I like it.

Dan Cosgrove (07:21)
you came from somewhere else. And even the people who crossed the Bering Sea on the ice bridge were immigrants. Everybody's an immigrant. And yeah, there are problems with people who are immigrants, but it's not all of them. Just like you're not gonna have all immigrants become scientists. And that's the problem.

I live in Loudoun County, Virginia, and we had an incident with an emergency room patient here recently where the guy didn't want to be handled by a... ⁓

A doctor from India. He wanted to be handled by a white doctor from America. Hey. Senior doctor came over. Said hey look, you're going to wait. We'll get you what you want, but you're going to sit here in pain. Until we you know we handle other people. And. The guy had to sit there. He was upset, but he had to sit there. Hey.

You don't always get what you want. We have these wonderful people from all over the world.

and they do great things. Albert Einstein wasn't born in Chicago. He was born overseas and he came here. We had people who have become movie stars, people who have become generals, people who have become just about everything except president because you have to be born here. But these people contribute to the world. So let's do this.

Let's focus on the ones that can actually contribute. And there are a few of them who will create problems. And when my father was a police lieutenant and he was gone to law school when I was a kid, and one day, smart as I was at about six or seven, said, dad, why don't you just go out and arrest all the bad guys and you can stay home here with us? And he said,

Nah, it's not quite that easy. There are people who are professional criminals, people who have a bent towards committing crimes and they're doing time for committing a crime. They're planning a crime or they're executing a crime. I've that in my life. I've seen a lot of kids turn into criminals, but they were criminal. They were bending the law. And my dad also said,

Some people commit crimes one time and it's a problem. Other people are professional criminals. And when I was practicing law, I met a bunch of those. where you can't change the spots on a leopard or you can't change the stripes on a zebra.

Keegan Goudiss (10:30)
So do you inherently believe most people are good?

Dan Cosgrove (10:34)
I believe most people are good. Most people are go out here and drive around. Most people follow the traffic laws. And in my neighborhood, yeah, you go five miles, hey, you you're not a criminal. They don't pick you up. But if you're out here doing a hundred miles an hour in a parkway, you got a problem. ⁓

Keegan Goudiss (10:47)
Maybe they go five miles over the speed limit.

Hahaha

Dan Cosgrove (11:03)
police are there to keep everybody basically within bounds. And a lot of people just want to go out out of some people want to go out of bounds. So the bounds are, I want to go five miles an hour over or do I want to take my Porsche turbo, whatever, and do 105 miles an hour in an area where I shouldn't? And every day,

courts try to get that straight. They talk to people, they find them. Police are out there. Police are out, they're the cutting edge. They're right there. They're looking across the fence. It's people who have committed crimes, who've done bad things. And the police are trying to bring these people back inside their lanes. And as the son of a police officer, brother of a police officer and a lot of other things.

⁓ My cousins, several of them are police officers. But they're trying to keep the society together. If there were no speed limits, it'd be really interesting around my neighborhood. People would be driving like crazy.

Keegan Goudiss (12:19)
Well, I want to get back to the military and some other questions. But I can't resist just double clicking a little bit, given your family heritage and the conversation around immigration and scapegoating and all of this just begs to ask, what about people who grew up here who are fearful of the police?

Dan Cosgrove (12:21)
Sorry. Okay.

Keegan Goudiss (12:43)
This isn't the main focus right now, but the previous Trump administration, Black Lives Matter, became a very contentious issue. I personally did not grow up. I consider myself privileged to be afraid of police. I grew up feeling like they were there to protect me, right? I've talked to plenty of people, lots of friends, colleagues I've worked with. like,

I grew up in constant fear of the police. It's a very different perspective. And I'm curious what you'd say to them, especially given like not so long ago to your point, it was like the Irish that were the enemy. And part of what happened was I'm oversimplifying a little bit as a lot of them became police, right? Like that was, they were driven towards that because they were scapegoated and then they became in charge in some places. So I want to get your thoughts on that.

Dan Cosgrove (13:34)
Well, that what you had was people came here and they lived in poverty or just lived in squalor. And the police were there to try to stop them from doing certain things because the people on the other side of the street had more money and more status. And they were trying to keep them apart. Now, the people, the good people,

Keegan Goudiss (14:04)
This is why Georgetown doesn't have a metro stop, by the way.

Dan Cosgrove (14:06)
That's right. That's exactly it. And people get up and they say, I don't want it in my backyard. I don't want it doing this. And they push the police out and say, hey, don't let them come across that line.

Keegan Goudiss (14:08)
Yes.

Dan Cosgrove (14:21)
And it's not the cops. It's the people who are saying, we don't want to address this today. We just want you to calm things down and keep us protected. We don't want to mix with them. And that's a big problem. And sometimes it's racial, sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's just, you know, they got here and don't know what to do and they're trying to work their way up.

But ⁓ hey, in a generation or two, if we stop all this craziness, we could pretty much meld most of the people in the country. And we'd still have a prison system. We'd still have the police. We'd still have the courts. We'd still have all this stuff. But they get together. If you want to see it, join the military. The military...

is not colorblind, but it's working on it. Well, it was working on it until the election recently. And ⁓ it's really something to watch people who are drill instructors—I've seen this a bunch—drill instructors treat everybody in the platoon the same, because they know that they're going off into units, they're going to be mixed. And

They're all going to have to work together or they're going to die. So the same thing with pilots. If you look at a pilot getting into a plane, that pilot doesn't care.

The race, the gender, the place of birth of the guy who fixed the engine.

He just cares about it getting up in the air and getting him back. And that's a big deal. The same thing with an infantry unit. You don't really care about the guy's political background or what he wants for this. And I've seen a bunch of people who had very strong feelings. But when they're in training or they're in combat or they're...

going through their daily life in the military. You can't do that. For decades, we've had to get rid of guys who were absolutely insane. mean, they would just be racist or homophobic and they'd be all kinds of... But hey, we can live. It's like it used to be the military had a very high...

number of people who were combat arms, infantry, artillery, they were going into combat. And now that's dropped significantly. We have a very high number of people who are into cyber security, people who are into analysis, people who are into satellite analysis. ⁓

All in communications.

It's not 1939 anymore. And it's not going to be. I mean, look at the people who fix all of these satellites. Look at the people who run the drone programs. You can run a drone from the West Coast if it's in Afghanistan. You can run a drone in a, not Iran, in...

Keegan Goudiss (17:35)
wish it was.

Dan Cosgrove (17:58)
I guess Saudi Arabia, wherever, I'll go through that in a second. Communications are worldwide. Satellites are up there. Whole bunch of people have to get together to launch satellites. We've got a covering over the earth of satellites. And there are people who work in the military who are very good engineers and good scientists. They try to make sure that they don't run into each other and that they constantly give the information that you need.

because you can communicate all over the world. And that's something really important.

Keegan Goudiss (18:36)
Dan, are you a Star Trek fan? don't know this Are you a Star Trek fan or were you a Star Trek fan? Okay, like, a lot of my friends have heard me say this a lot, you the rise of AI and like the world changing and everybody's like, AI is gonna kill us or make us their pets. And I was, I'm always like, they might. Also we could live in the Star Trek future where technology gets rid of scarcity. have, you know,

Dan Cosgrove (18:41)
⁓ yeah it was.

Well.

Keegan Goudiss (19:03)
free energy, unlimited goods, and we just explore the galaxy and discover and create. And one of my friends, you when I went on this rant the other day, was like, yeah, but you know, in Star Trek, they're just showing you the military. That's the military that's having a great life. They don't really talk about what's happening to the non-military on the planet. So I'm like, well, maybe, yeah, you know, because they're like, it works really well in the military.

But it was a good point and I do think about this a lot as you're as you're talking through all all of the complexities that has to happen and it works so well in the military from my perspective as a as a civilian. ⁓ With not as much knowledge of you, but like you mentioned drones like the stuff that they're doing is incredible and it feels like non military life. We're way behind.

And I'm curious if you have that same perspective.

Dan Cosgrove (19:59)
No, no,

I wouldn't. I wouldn't agree with that at all. There's a thing down in Texas called a defense innovation unit for the military. And it's a place where the military can receive information about new projects, new capabilities that will help the military, but they're coming from the civilian.

Keegan Goudiss (20:04)
Okay.

Dan Cosgrove (20:28)
side. There are people who are civilians who are walking in saying, I've invented this or this works or we have this as a company. And about 25 years ago, the CIA created a thing called In-Q-Tel. Did you know about In-Q-Tel? Yeah, In-Q-Tel is the venture capital arm of the CIA. It's been very successful.

Keegan Goudiss (20:49)
heard the name.

Dan Cosgrove (20:59)
People from civilian life come in Encoute and they pitch like they would to a private equity company.

Well, the agency gets to see, for a very small amount of money, the agency gets to see new technologies. But they're coming from the civilian side. And the military has their own research units around the country. Go to Lincoln Labs. Lincoln Labs is part of MIT. They do really high-end research. But it's MIT.

That's who it is. you know, there's Draper Labs, there's a whole bunch of others. the civilian economy is supporting the military.

And look at the people who are coming in now.

We have a bunch of companies who are partnering with the military for all kinds of stuff. And the military does get things started, internet, the Eisenhower interstate highway system, stuff like that. But the civilian world benefits from that. So we are woven together.

We try to improve each other's lives and help. And one thing you look at is in medical.

Keegan Goudiss (22:30)
Yeah, who has better health care, military or civilians?

Dan Cosgrove (22:33)
Well, it depends. you go to one of the big, if you go to Walter Reed, it's huge. If you go to Balboa in California, it's huge. If you go down into San Antonio, it's a whole city worth of military. There's no difference. mean, some places are good and if you're in Adak Island, Alaska, which I understand they're reopening, it's gonna be a little sketchy.

Keegan Goudiss (22:38)
Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove (23:00)
Other places, it's sketchy, but hey, I can tell you, personal experience, you have a problem in Iraq during the battle. They do some good stuff to you and they'd fly you to Germany, Landstuhl, and then they fly you back to the States, where you really, if you're burned, you go to Texas.

The local people have the same stuff. Doctors for the military get trained in inner city hospitals to fix gunshot wounds, to try out different medications.

Keegan Goudiss (23:35)
Yes, sadly we have

no shortage of good experience to provide.

Dan Cosgrove (23:40)
Right, and I've gone overseas on vacation and I had to get shots. And I went over to the infectious disease. Clinic at Walter Reed. And they had a doctor there. Very nice lady. She's a commander. And she said, yeah, I just got back from six months in Ecuador. Right in the area you're going to.

Keegan Goudiss (24:07)
Wow.

Dan Cosgrove (24:07)
And she had all of this stuff that she said, you know, I got other people around there doing things and. Then the military needs that. To protect their own troops if they're going into those general areas and people don't know the other things people don't know that. ⁓ Some of the vaccines. That are put out like for malaria. I developed by the military.

And Bill Gates is foundation. And then they just give the patents to people who can, you know, recreate it and sell it. But. That saves lives. And then they come up with things, civilian side. Quick clot. Well, quick, quick clot. Is a chemical that you put on wounds that are bleeding. Now you can have. Gunshot wounds.

blast wounds or you could accidentally if you're in a construction situation you could cut yourself with a chainsaw.

A clot doesn't know how you did it. All it knows is you're bleeding and you put the stuff on it and it helps coagulation. Fantastic. It's not military. It's not civilian. You might have gunshot wounds, guys out hunting and they accidentally shoot each other, but you could have just a guy with a chainsaw or a guy with an axe. So that works. The other thing is

Medevac helicopters, they got pioneered by the military because they knew in the military, the doctors kept saying, if you can get in to a doctor within an hour of your injury, you stand a much better chance of survival, depending on what the injury is. Well, now we have helicopters that land on highways and car accidents. have, you know, and they're pioneering this stuff and they're using night vision goggles.

that yeah, started out for the military. But.

and go into Dick's Hardware and buy them. So it's really, we're not two different worlds. And people, some people do think it's two different worlds, we're not, where do you get troops? You get them from the civilian community, you know?

Keegan Goudiss (26:30)
Of of course. No, know. I

Well, I want to I want to actually go back a little bit and zoom in the future. We'll go back to the future in a little bit, but I'm curious. Just given your background, you you spent a lot of your early career preparing for Cold War. Threats. You know and. The world is is different on the international stage. Obviously rushes to someone that we're dealing with, maybe a little bit different than the Cold War.

Dan Cosgrove (26:36)
Okay.

Keegan Goudiss (26:59)
But from your perspective, how do you view the asymmetrical conflicts that are happening today across the world versus your work during the Cold War?

Dan Cosgrove (27:05)
WAH

When I was growing up and I was in the service. We had one major enemy. It was Russia. And as somebody put it. We had one big snake to deal with. And the and that snake kept everybody else in line. Now there was also China there, but they would. They weren't as bad. But when Soviet Union.

fell, we ended up with, as one person put it, a garden of snakes. So instead of one that we could deal with, that we could about, we had guys everywhere that went off on their own. And asymmetrical warfare is just that. It's anybody who wants to do anything. Do you want to do something on the internet?

Do you want to carry a suitcase bomb? Do you want to use a small group to push military activities? ⁓ That's been going on for thousands of years. Remember, the Trojan Horse.

It was asymmetric warfare. You know, why would you want to attack the walls traditionally with a bunch of spear carrying guys if you could just ride the horse in? And that's the same thing that happens today. Everybody is doing things the most efficient way they can. And you don't want to see all your guys get killed because you're

You do the dumb old thing. And so now. You have people who are bombing, trying to bomb airplanes that having germ warfare. They're doing all kinds of other stuff. It's just. The guy who doesn't have all the tanks. And the ships and the missiles. Is going to try other ways. And the bigger and better you are.

the more open you are to that kind of an attack. So that's how commanders in the field, whether they be a revolutionary in some small country in Africa or South America, or a big country like China, they're gonna try to sneak in the best way they can. And we've seen that. 9-11 was that way.

They figured a way around the system. And I'm sure people thought about using airplanes as missiles, but it didn't occur to all the people who needed to get the information. And as it was said by a number of people afterwards, it was a lack of imagination. And that's not new.

there was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marines back during the First World War. ⁓

He was a character. His name was Pete Ellis. There's a book about him written by, do you know about Pete? Well, Pete had some issues. He's the only guy I know of that ever received the Navy Cross for planning. He would plan all the major battles during World War I for the Marines. He got out of, they got out of that war. He still stayed in the Marine Corps, did planning, got the headquarters Marine Corps.

Keegan Goudiss (30:19)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cosgrove (30:40)
And he left. He left a plan. He said that the Japanese, and this is late 1920s, he said the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor by air. Now back then, planes were made out of wood and dope fabric.

Everybody thought he was crazy. And he had the imagination to say they're going to do that. He died in the Pacific and they did it. So there must have been people who believed that could happen on 9-11. They could fly planes into the tall buildings.

Keegan Goudiss (31:08)
it.

Dan Cosgrove (31:28)
The lack of imagination, I'm sure there was somebody out there who thought that, and that's why in a lot of places, they look at published stories, scripts, things like that, because somebody with imagination is gonna come up with a way of doing it. Same thing with, if you look back at Mumbai.

when the attack on Mumbai came.

Those guys came into town on boats. They had seized boats, small boats, fishing boats. And they pulled up at the beach, jumped out, and they got cabs to their targets. And they were getting instructions by phone, cell phone.

from commanders in another country who are watching the activities on CNN. Think about that. The commander doesn't even have to show up in the same country. Transportation is provided by the local commercial taxi company unknowingly. And also your surveillance and all your reconnaissance is provided by CNN or

Significance. That's a real difference. However, it's not the first time it's happened and it'll happen again. That's why even the police now try to cut off television access because they don't want to give the perpetrators an advantage. Same thing happens in the military.

Keegan Goudiss (33:00)
give them oxygen.

It's bringing back memories for me of 9-11. was here in DC, and I was actually in Arlington. You could see the smoke from the Pentagon. everybody had to walk. All the bridges were closed. I'm from New York originally, so watching all that in real time was pretty traumatic, as it was for a lot of people. ⁓

Dan Cosgrove (33:19)
Right.

Keegan Goudiss (33:29)
And there was a really good friend of mine who I lived with then. And I called him that morning because we're still I was working but in college and they were in college. And obviously it happened early in the morning. And for most college students they weren't awake when it happened. So I just started calling people like turn on the TV turn on TV especially friends from New York seeing how they were. And this friend known forever who's best man my wedding like he he and I

for the longest time, just like our anxiety driven minds were always like, what are terrorists gonna try next? Like, why hasn't anybody tried like a mall shooting? You know, like we would come up with like crazy scenarios because we were just so, you know, there was a period of time, remember, like when there was the, I laugh because I'm comfortable with they'd have the colors, right? Like what's the forecast for terrorists today, right? Like they would have the different color alerts and.

Dan Cosgrove (34:17)
Yeah, well.

Well,

Keegan Goudiss (34:27)
Like our mail

Dan Cosgrove (34:27)
yeah, guess.

Keegan Goudiss (34:27)
we would like not open at our house for like months because there was anthrax coming through the mail. Just you know, I haven't thought about that in a long time. It makes me wonder now like the thing that comes to mind is drones like that's like actually what scares me the most is there's always amazing things being done with asymmetrical warfare with drones and I feel like it is could be easily used against us here to for terror or other places. I'm curious your thoughts on that and what can be done.

Dan Cosgrove (34:51)
Okay.

Keegan Goudiss (34:56)
to help deter those kind of threats.

Dan Cosgrove (34:56)
Well, if

you look at the imaginative things that are being done in Ukraine, they've just pulled off something very spectacular.

they sent truckloads of drones into Russia. And one of them went 1500 miles, pulled up next to a bomber base, a strategic bomber base, opened the top and the drones flew out. And they took video of them destroying Russian bombers, hundreds of miles beyond the range of any drone at the time. You know, we have

Keegan Goudiss (35:26)
Like a movie.

Dan Cosgrove (35:36)
high level jet drones, but these are smaller attack drones. Hey, that particular program was thought about not for attacking attack drones, but for...

⁓ Amazon package delivery a number of years ago. When I was sitting in a drone conference, I got invited and I was sitting there and a guy came in, give his piece and he was a retired Navy pilot. He was top gun qualified. And what he wanted, what he was pitching was a truck that would, Amazon truck that would show up in a neighborhood.

Top it open or sides open. All the drones that fly out, deliver 50 or 100 packages in the neighborhood. Then they would fly back to the truck, nest in the truck, and either pick up another package from the truck or be brought back to a warehouse.

Well, that's the same plan that the Ukrainians used except the distances were smaller and they were delivering packages. They were delivering aspirins and things. the Iranians weren't, excuse me.

the Ukrainians were delivering Christmas packages. They were delivering destruction and they videoed the whole thing, which is totally amazing. People are getting to the point now where they want to see the video of all of these things. Remember Norman Schwarzkopf and old Norman, Stormin Norman? Well, he had a briefing one time.

Keegan Goudiss (37:16)
Yes.

Dan Cosgrove (37:21)
during the Iraq situation. And it's a reconnaissance aircraft flying over a bridge in Iraq, and a guy drives his truck across the bridge just as they're releasing the bombs. And Stormin Norman said, this is the luckiest guy in Iraq in history.

They had released the bombs, the guys on the bridge, they got a crosshair on it, and he's just driving out of the danger zone, just a second before the bombs hit. That's what we got now. The Ukrainians went out, they videoed the whole thing. And now people want that. People want to sit in their houses and watch the military.

Destroy targets somewhere else.

Keegan Goudiss (38:15)
Well, and it's notable that the US did not release video, unless I missed it, did not release video over our missile strike on Iran.

Dan Cosgrove (38:24)
No, it that probably is sitting out in Whiteman Air Force Base and. The command is sitting there just going, yeah, that really did work. You know we hit this, we hit that. But they're not going to release it now. That's one of the problems we're going to have. People are going to say, well, maybe it worked. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was a total obliteration. Maybe it was 20%. Maybe they'll put this thing back in three months. I don't know we've.

Keegan Goudiss (38:36)
but they're not gonna release it in public.

Dan Cosgrove (38:53)
The Israelis have bombed nuclear sites before. They've got a pretty good idea of what happens, but...

Keegan Goudiss (38:58)
Israelis have bombed a lot of things.

Dan Cosgrove (38:58)
I'd like to see the video too,

you know, before we go do that.

Keegan Goudiss (39:01)
Sorry, a edge, one real side comment.

I'm curious, because tomorrow is America's 249th birthday. I've been thinking a lot about whether we're going to make it to our 215th birthday. I think we will, maybe. don't know, just to see if there's so much going on. And obviously, I'm an anxious person, if not clear from talking to you about all this. I wonder, from your perspective, are

The threats to America greater from foreign or domestic right now? Both.

Dan Cosgrove (39:33)
Both.

Yeah, we've, we are coming up on 250.

Now, what I really get from that is I, about 15 years ago, I went to a CIA luncheon and the guy who sat across from me was older than me.

He was about 80. So he had been a young officer during the initial part of the Cold War and he served in Moscow. But he was now, he had retired and become a contractor. He said something very interesting. said, you know, in all our analysis of dictatorships and republics and all the rest of this stuff, we figured out republics last about 250 years. And he said,

We're coming up on that. And that, I've been reminded of that over and over and over again. Hey, wait a minute. We're almost there. Are we really breaking up? And we are. We've done this once before. We had a thing called the Civil War and 400, 500,000 guys were killed.

But there was somebody in charge who wanted to keep the union together. He could have said, ⁓ hey, you want to go rather than us shooting each other. We'll just take this and you take that. You get to do it. I don't know that's going to happen this time. I don't know that there's anybody there who says.

No matter what happens, we're going to keep this together.

Keegan Goudiss (41:16)
California, Washington, Oregon, and Sasside, they make their own little country. I Trump will be like, peace.

Dan Cosgrove (41:20)
I don't know what he's going to do. I wake up every morning saying, well, I'll turn the TV on to find out what he did today.

I say to my wife, I didn't learn any of this in law school. I didn't learn any of this in the military. They're a different crowd and it really is bad. People should know that we don't have firm rules about anything anymore.

Keegan Goudiss (41:51)
Yeah, very right.

Dan Cosgrove (41:51)
J6 was something,

the pardons were something. All of this spending and the big, beautiful bill and all the rest of that stuff, I don't remember, that doesn't give me great confidence.

And that's why I worry about my kids. But we have split the country. Into red and blue. And.

You know, I have relatives who are red and I have relatives that are blue. And I'm hoping that somewhere along the line. This can come together now it didn't. It's not the first time we've been here. We had the Civil War. We had all kinds of small rebellions. ⁓ We had. America firsters before World War 2.

Charles Lindbergh was one of them. And ⁓ then when we were attacked...

Keegan Goudiss (42:47)
We Nazis here to rally.

Dan Cosgrove (42:48)
They can, yeah,

see? So, you know, we've come together to fight attacks on us. We tend not to look beyond our shores for things that are coming at us right now. And there certainly are people out there who don't like us and wanna do us damage.

And we seem to be chewing up the people in this country who want to stop that or who want to deal with it differently. And it's, don't know, I've said to a couple of people, it's performance art in politics now. It used to be that way in a very small manner, but now it's everything. Everything is performance art.

⁓ you know, we had a big parade here in town.

I've been in parades, I've seen the military, and I know the guys hate those.

Keegan Goudiss (43:52)
Well, a of them seemed to be quietly protesting and they were not really marching in in in sync.

Dan Cosgrove (43:59)
Yeah.

Hey, let me tell you something. No, no, I know. But you get out of step and you do all kinds of other things. Tanks aren't like what they showed, OK? Tanks are big and noisy and dirty. They had renovated these things, painted them beautifully.

Keegan Goudiss (44:24)
destructive.

Dan Cosgrove (44:29)
hauled them up here from Texas on trains. There were striker vehicles. I've seen those things in the field.

They scare me to death, especially if they move around at night. They're noisy. You can't always see them up. It just bothers me. But people love them in parades. And ⁓ that's the way it is. I'd rather have the money go to families in the military or troops in the military.

improving the living standards. But that's me.

Keegan Goudiss (45:08)
I'm with you there. I also, I sometimes get a lot of entertainment off of like conspiracy theories on the internet, just, you know, having worked on the internet, on the internet, within the internet culture for so long, you conspiracy theories are a big part of it. And the one was really, the most fascinating one that was sort of growing because of the parade and also what was happening in LA with deploying very unnecessarily troops to LA for very small protests.

Dan Cosgrove (45:35)
Right.

Keegan Goudiss (45:38)
Trump was trying to trump up, know, pun intended, like, you know, to, but there were, was a group of folks online that I was reading this stuff and they're convinced the aliens were about to invade and that the parade and the troop deployment in LA was a quiet way of getting like, ⁓ our, our troops to really critical areas without raising a panic because

Dan Cosgrove (45:40)
Right.

I hadn't heard that one.

Keegan Goudiss (46:03)
the like aliens that created us and the pyramids were coming back and we were getting ready for war. And that Trump can't tell anybody, but he's going to lead us to victory against this alien civilization.

Dan Cosgrove (46:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, I keep hearing

that he's going to do this and I it, but there were also things during, just before the election conspiracy theories that John F. Kennedy is alive and yes, and he's coming back and he and Trump are going to work. That's a little much.

Keegan Goudiss (46:20)
It's always Trump is the hero, God hero, basically when conspiracy theories.

Yes, that was a wild one too.

Or JFK

Dan Cosgrove (46:41)
Well, I don't know where you get those. I do remember working in a military and they would get letters all the time. All the military units.

from people who thought they were in command. They wanted to tell us about conspiracies. It was all crazy stuff. However, there were people who really believed it and they were very serious about it.

Keegan Goudiss (47:09)
And now they can easily meet other people who believe it. Yeah, I would say generally being connected is a good thing on that side. It's not so good. so, yeah, where you said where I get social media, there's like, I like to monitor a lot of of sort of the, you know, used to be called QAnon, right? Like people don't talk about it, but, you know, there's just like, there are certain groups and accounts you can follow and you can see what's like what sort of theories are becoming more pervasive because like a lot of it is PsyOps, right? Like people don't realize that it's a bunch of

Dan Cosgrove (47:25)
All right. Yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (47:39)
Russian military in a room somewhere in Moscow, you know, like typing. Why, yes, I also think Biden is the devil, you know, like trying to purposely mess with people to create division.

Dan Cosgrove (47:52)
Well, that's one of

the things that we now have propaganda 24 hours a day, every day. And it can emanate from anywhere. It can emanate from some little village in the mountains in Europe. could be Ecuador, any place. I'm not picking on Ecuador. I like Ecuador. But it could happen anywhere.

A person can strike out from a little village that nobody's ever been to and they can strike a worldwide panic by saying things that are just crazy. you you got to be able to ⁓ fight back and we're not putting enough time and effort into being able to fight back to that kind of stuff.

Keegan Goudiss (48:49)
I need some hope here because it's lot of things that are scaring me frankly. A really fascinating conversation, but I want to know like you tell your kids, your grandkids like what what like what can you hope for right in this new world that we're quickly running into.

Dan Cosgrove (48:53)
Whoa, he...

Okay.

Well, the only thing

I can hope for is that they get good educations, good health care, and they understand that they have to be loyal to the Constitution of the United States because that lives on. And we've had all kinds of problems over the years with people who tried to take over the country or tried to divide the country.

And what they have to do is think, is this real? It's not. It's temporary. We need people to stand up. I knew John McCain. I met him a number of times. He stood up and said things. Said, this is crazy. And we don't get many people doing that. If you look at the vote on the big, beautiful bill, there are people caving in all over the place.

Is it worth it to get what they're giving you? know, is it 30 pieces of silver? And I want my kids to stand up and say, I'm here for the country. I'm not here to just make money or, you push my own position. And I've worked for guys who, mostly guys, a couple of women.

who have done that, stood up to power and said, hey, this isn't right. And they usually get hammered a little bit, but they're proven right in the long run. And I want my kids to be on the right side of those things, not to just fade when the pressure gets big.

Keegan Goudiss (50:45)
Yeah.

Do

you think more are going to stand up as ⁓ it becomes clear who's fighting for the Constitution and who's trying to wreck it?

Dan Cosgrove (51:04)
I'm kind of, well, got to remember the last time we went through this, we had a civil war and it took some real courage, but it also took a lot

Keegan Goudiss (51:10)
Yeah. But Lincoln wasn't trying to destroy the Union.

I mean, guess it depends on your perspective.

Dan Cosgrove (51:16)
Well, can

sit and try to keep everything together. But that's what's happening now. It's always divide and conquer. We need to have people discuss things and to go through them and be able to teach their kids that they have to stand up and do things. We're going to go through a period with AI and Aristotel

jobs will be lost, there'll be some tough times for some people, but there'll be billions made by other people. We need to make sure that we're recruiting kids, or recruiting people that can serve the country, serve what our country is made of, and look at the Constitution and say, okay, I'll go along with that.

It's like the birthright citizenship bill. in 150 years we haven't questioned it. I never thought about questioning it.

Keegan Goudiss (52:15)
Yeah.

it's what we use inherently American. We all just came here and became citizens.

Dan Cosgrove (52:25)
Yeah.

Yeah. mean, you know, my grandfather became an American citizen, the Irish grandfather, but his sons were all American. They were born here, four of them. And when World War II came up, his thing was, you're Americans. What are you going to do? And they went in the service. One of them couldn't.

medically, but he served his community. Hey, that's what we need. My dad wasn't happy about going. He didn't go singing into the army, but he went. My uncles went in. They didn't go singing into the army, but they went and none of them, well, one of them went in the Navy, but hey, they were there. No, no, no, no. mean, you know, that was.

Keegan Goudiss (53:16)
You don't talk about them as much. ⁓

Dan Cosgrove (53:20)
They don't sing, they fought and luckily a couple of them got banged up. they were there. And that was it. We had 16 million people in the service. Think about that. There's a book called...

The arsenal of America, and it's about how we got ready for World War II.

Our people didn't want to go to war. They didn't want to be involved. But Franklin Roosevelt saw the war coming and he got a guy who was an immigrant, William Knutson, or Knutson, depending on who And he had come from Scandinavia, came over here when he was a kid, became an engineer, worked his life in Detroit. And he was the president of General Motors.

And Roosevelt called him up and said, hey, Bill, I want you to come here and help me get ready for the war.

and he put together a war preparedness board and a little political and it had problems and they were fighting all the time among themselves. But Knudsen went out and told the military, hey, we've got the greatest production systems in the world. We need to turn those towards getting ready for the war. And eventually, eventually...

Chief of Staff of the Army went to Roosevelt and said, hey, this guy is great, but he needs some rank behind him. So he's the only known modern era promoted three-star general from civilian life and handle production. We manufactured thousands of planes, thousands of ships, millions of guns, all of this stuff. And he converted

all of our industries into war production.

And we built gazillions of things. And we took 16 million people in, we trained them, we sent them overseas, we fed them, we gave them weapons. Hey, they won. It worked.

Keegan Goudiss (55:41)
They came back, those who survived

had lots of babies.

Dan Cosgrove (55:45)
Yeah, yeah. And Knudsen just went back to Minnesota and Michigan and retired. So I would have retired to a warmer place, but you know, that's his thing. And that's an American hero. People ought to look at him. And he did it because he was an immigrant. He felt that he owed it to the country. And I worked with a wonderful guy who's still alive.

⁓ who was a Harvard graduate, Harvard Law School, and was in the Marine Corps, eventually became a Brigadier General. And I said to him, hey, when you got out of Harvard, why did you not go into law firm? He said, it's simple. said, Russian heritage. My parents...

and grandparents was saved from the Russian pogroms by an American nonprofit group.

So I felt that I owed the country my service for some time. He said, so I signed up for 20 years, basically. And he said, then I was a colonel and got promoted to brigadier general. But there was a guy who came in.

to pay a debt to the country. We need more of that. And I know another guy who is a 30-year Army veteran serving in some other activities right now, but he's from the Dominican Republic. And what happened? He said, well, you know, my family moved to New York and...

I like the military and I really owe them a lot because my kids are going to school, my kids are doing this, and my family has moved here and they got great medical care, which they couldn't have gotten in Dominican Republic. So there are people like that and we need to foster that.

Keegan Goudiss (57:49)
Do you think that compulsory service can work like Obama had, you know, when he first ran president, he had a platform I liked and I was would be really hard to pass, but it was everybody has a gap year in between high school and college. They either choose the military, AmeriCorps or Peace Corps. I always thought it was really interesting because I felt like it would help give people perspective and you don't have to necessarily go into the military like Israel does. Yet, like you still have a better sense of.

of service and purpose as you evolve into adulthood. Do you think that or is it because compulsory like it doesn't it doesn't leave the same effect as these stories that you're sharing?

Dan Cosgrove (58:28)
Well, when I graduated from high school, my mother said to her two sons, when you graduate, you either go to college and then to the military, or you go right into the military and then to college.

⁓ That was pretty strict. And there are people that do it.

Keegan Goudiss (58:47)
I had friends who were, you know, were a little bit trouble when they were teenagers and judges told them you either go to jail or the military. Yes.

Dan Cosgrove (58:54)
Yeah, but that eventually got outlawed. Catlo

Russo with the cases that outlawed that you cannot force a kid to go into the military instead of going to jail. But there are a lot of kids who did get straightened out.

Keegan Goudiss (59:03)
instead of jail. ⁓

Dan Cosgrove (59:09)
You know, lot of people would say, yeah, well, like I went in and gave me a great opportunity and I did this and this and this. And I came out, look at all, look at Ernest Borgman. He went in, went in twice and ⁓ became a movie star. Right? Steve McQueen went in.

That used to be, when I was a kid, Elvis Presley went into the army. So there was an appreciation for you going into the military. Well, we've turned the military into a job.

It's an all volunteer army that can't force you in. So, you know, there are those people like me who volunteer and then there are other people who say, no, let somebody else volunteer. And that's one of the issues. I like the idea of people serving in some capacity.

after high school or college. And it may not be the army, it may not be the military, but there are things that we need to have done in this country that are not being done. And, you know.

We get some things done, but right now most kids don't leave the area where they grew up, especially poor kids. So you gotta give poor kids a chance to see the rest of the country and be involved with people. It's awfully hard to hate somebody that you sit down and talk with and you live with.

In a world like this, if you insulate people that...

they don't get a full understanding of the rest of the world. That's why I like the military as far as getting people together. You you might join the Air Force and you might end up at Atsugi in Japan, where you're with people from Georgia and people from New Mexico and people from Alaska, people from around the country. You might be with Black people. You might be with

Indian people, might be with them. Used to be the great mixing bowl. And now we're trying to take all the olives out of the salad. And ⁓ that hurts us. How's that?

Keegan Goudiss (1:01:46)
I think it's a way to end our episode. Dan, I really appreciate your time today. It's been a great perspective. Love your stories, and I hope that we can talk more soon.

Dan Cosgrove (1:01:49)
Bye bye.

We will. I had great notes, but I just got going. He wound me up and I just let everything go. So I'll be happy to do it anytime. All right, great. Great. You have a great day. I appreciate it. Happy Fourth of July and be safe. OK, just be safe. All right. And the kids are the future.

Keegan Goudiss (1:02:03)
We'll do it. We'll do a second take. I will do a second version of our conversation. Happy Fourth of July.

All of us be safe.

Dan Cosgrove (1:02:18)
It's not us, it's them.