00:05:18.940I mean, that's the interesting thing is that the only other book that I am aware of that goes into the psychology of killing is David Grossman's book on killing.
00:05:29.840But for the most part, people don't like to talk about this aspect of war.
00:05:36.380I mean, that's why we go to war, right?
00:05:38.420I mean, that's sort of like we try to avoid conflict, and we want to avoid it.
00:05:41.100But in the end, you're there to inflict harm on the enemy so they stop inflicting harm on you.
00:05:46.660What's with the reluctance, particularly in modern times, of talking about that?
00:05:51.800I think it's – psychologically, it's a very dark subject.
00:05:55.900I mean, it's not the easiest thing to look at.
00:05:58.560And I know that my wife could tell you over the time I was really deep into this stuff, I wasn't in the greatest mood, and it certainly affected me.
00:06:08.420I think as political leaders, they're not going to talk about it because they don't really want that piece of it being considered if the public's trying to decide, are they for this or against this?
00:06:18.000Even in the military, they don't talk about it all that much because – at least the psychological piece of it and the potential for its lingering afterwards because they might lose some people.
00:06:31.520And it just kind of gets in the way of doing the job in certain ways.
00:06:35.560So all of that combines, but in some other factors as well, it's just something that gets left out.
00:06:43.540And I think also a country is probably not terribly anxious to look at the killing it's doing because you can say it's this soldier or this Marine or this Navy SEAL.
00:06:55.880But in a way, they're fighting for us.
00:07:49.280I didn't really get into – I mentioned that there's controversy about his numbers, but I didn't really want to get into it all that much because I'm not really qualified to judge his work.
00:07:57.100But I did say that even if half of that number was true in a war against Adolf Hitler's Nazi soldiers, that's pretty remarkable.
00:08:06.020And it would suggest a very strong reluctance to take life, especially if you can see someone who's right in front of you.
00:08:11.960At the same time, though, you look at World War II, tens of millions of people were killed.
00:08:16.580In World War I, tens of millions of people were killed.
00:08:18.600I don't know that we – I certainly hope we won't ever have a war like that again, but I doubt it.
00:08:24.540I mean, now we're talking thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and it's a huge, huge number.
00:08:30.040But you're not having cities that get carpet – maybe outside – maybe in Syria you are, but you're not largely having cities getting carpet bombed as a matter of course, as a tactic of – as an accepted tactic of military strategy.
00:08:44.960But overall, there's just not a whole lot of studies on this sort of thing.
00:08:51.460I mean, killing in general, not that I could find or locate it.
00:08:53.960There were a handful that – the military, when I contacted them, they said they didn't track how many soldiers kill other people.
00:08:59.700They didn't track how it affects them afterwards.
00:09:02.700And there's a chance that's not true and that they don't talk about that stuff because of the body count stuff that happened in Vietnam, during Vietnam.
00:09:11.200But it's pretty surprising to me because, I mean, even if – like you say, it's part of their job.
00:09:22.480More recently, a woman named Shira Magoon, I think is how you say her name, at the San Francisco VA.
00:09:29.280One of the San Francisco VAs has done some studies showing that soldiers who kill are twice as likely to deal with PTSD and other mental health issues as those who don't.
00:09:37.760And, you know, it's not that everyone is going to be deeply affected by it.
00:09:43.060But I had a West Point instructor tell me that – the phrase it as killing being the biggest moral decision one can make and the biggest moral taboo one can break.
00:09:53.760So it stands to reason that those who killed other people will be carrying something that those who did not are free of.
00:10:01.480You know, they may have their own catalog of traumatic incidents that they've encountered, but that wouldn't be one of them.
00:10:06.020So in this past war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the nature of the enemy and the nature of the fight, you also have a lot of people who aren't really sure if they killed somebody or not.
00:10:14.940You know, you would come back and they would say, well, I think I got somebody, but they couldn't really see them.
00:10:21.720And, you know, an IED would go off and some gunfire would come out of an alley or something like that.
00:10:26.980They'd shoot towards it, but they might never see anyone there.
00:10:29.280So you have a lot of people who may come home and even when they get asked, if they're ever asked about it, they may not be sure what the answer is.
00:10:39.660So we may not know the exact number of, you know, how reluctant, you know, what percentage of people in combat, you know, actually don't fire at the enemy.
00:10:47.680But the military understands that there is a reluctance to kill other humans.
00:10:52.700And you talk about what the military has done over the years to train soldiers to prepare themselves to kill.
00:11:00.160Can you talk about a bit of that training that has developed since World War II?
00:11:05.120I mean, this being their job and part of the job, I think they've put a lot of effort in the designing programs that will help their charges carried out.
00:11:18.580One way to put it is that they want people getting to combat, getting into combat, feeling almost as if they've been there before, like it had happened before.
00:11:26.880So whatever they have to do is a series of, you know, learned memories and habits more than trying to figure something out for the first time.
00:11:33.860So back in the training, when that starts, almost from day one, there's a process where the military is creating a context in which killing and dying will make sense.
00:11:43.680And then also training and the mechanisms need to carry it out.
00:11:46.760So you might have or you do have language being a big part of it where, you know, even in boot camp, an order will be given.
00:11:55.220And, you know, instead of saying yes, they'll say kill, like, you know, run that hill, you know, kill, run that, you know, that's the response.
00:12:06.280And that sort of stuff sort of becomes everyday language.
00:12:10.840And it normalizes something that would have, I think, been very abnormal prior to that.
00:12:16.480You know, there's jokes that kind of devalue life a little bit and, again, make it almost like a softer sell.
00:12:23.200And then you have chaplains and superior officers who are on hand to talk about some of the philosophical or even religious aspects of it.
00:12:31.800You know, the distinction between thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not murder.
00:12:35.900You know, how that – if it's thou shalt not murder, then there's some space to kill in the right context.
00:12:42.120And to say that killing can be protecting an act of protection whereby you protect the guys you're with but also perhaps even, you know, you kill more, you end the war sooner, fewer people die, things like that.
00:12:56.220And that it all fits into this warrior ethos where it's part of the duty, part of looking after each other, part of upholding the oath they've taken.
00:13:04.920And then at the same time, you've got the physical aspects, learning to handle weapons, learning to fire those weapons, clean those weapons, become very familiar with them, then firing them in certain conditions under stress, then specific scenarios, and moving up from paper targets to human-shaped targets to ever more lifelike facsimiles of actual people, and then even some drills that involve other people playing insurgents.
00:13:33.260And as the war went on, you had more and more commanders realizing, I need to do more than just the basic training.
00:13:39.020So they would call in specialists who could create villages with fake insurgents, and they would – you know, special effects and bombings and sort of things like that to, again, make it feel like they've been there before.
00:13:50.500And one of the units that I looked at in the story – or one of the main guys was in the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which fought in Fallujah in 2004.
00:14:03.260And they, before they deployed for that battle, worked with a Hollywood studio guy who made this kind of village, and they had a Vietnam veteran and a guy who had worked with the New York Police Department for a long time come out as well and talked to them about urban combat in particular and how to conduct themselves in that specific environment.
00:14:20.120And he had this mantra that he gave them, which was slow as smooth, smooth as fast, never make an uncover move, and see the motherfucker and kill the motherfucker and quit thinking about it.
00:14:30.020And all of that was designed to say, you know, don't panic.
00:14:36.400If it comes to that, just take care of business and carry on.
00:14:40.860And I've heard – and, you know, I know Grossman has said that hunters have a leg up on this because they maybe have had an experience of having killed another being before.
00:14:48.460And that makes some sense, but I think it's kind of limited or, you know, only applicable to a point when you're in these actual places and there's actual people in front of you.
00:14:58.900I thought it was interesting you highlight one of the soldiers who killed an insurgent, and he talked about it like it was a training exercise.
00:15:05.980He saw the target, and he just sort of like habit, reflex came in, and he just followed through.
00:15:11.220Like he was back in the States training for this, and that's what it was like.
00:15:15.960Yeah, he said he raised the rifle, took the shot, then lowered the rifle, looked for the next target.
00:15:20.500And I think his exact words was it was like a 25-meter target at that moment.
00:15:23.960And then it was only later on when he was looking back at it did he think like, oh, that was actually a person.
00:15:30.220So throughout the book you talk to several soldiers and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan war about their experience on killing.
00:15:38.920My first question, how do you bring a topic up like that?
00:15:41.800Like how do you broach the subject with a soldier on that?
00:15:45.900You know, in this case, I think it made a huge difference that I had been over there and that I had met these guys before.
00:15:55.380You know, I'm not going to claim we were friends or that I knew them well or it's been, you know, there's a lot of people who spent more time over there than I did
00:16:01.460and a lot of people who were in many, many more firefights than I was.
00:16:04.240But just even having some experience and them knowing they saw you there, like in a way I'd gone to their place of work to learn about what they did,
00:16:13.640I think that engendered a level of understanding that was very helpful.
00:16:18.780And then, you know, really I just asked them.
00:16:20.280I was very upfront about what I was trying to do.
00:16:22.180I wasn't trying to, you know, pretend I was talking about one thing and then ask them about this.
00:16:26.140I was very unclear that I understood it was not a small thing to be asking them to discuss publicly.
00:16:31.440And then, you know, I said that I just wanted to look at this squarely and soberly.
00:16:38.920I didn't want to make too, you know, I didn't want to sensationalize anything.
00:16:42.540I didn't want to say, oh, this is crazy.
00:16:44.220People are killing, they're bloodthirsty, whatever.
00:16:46.100I just wanted to understand how this was playing out for them when they were deployed and then afterwards.
00:16:52.340And I think something about that, you know, existing trust was, I guess, made them feel somewhat comfortable or at least willing to try to do this.
00:17:03.020And then I would go do the interviews and do long interviews and often in many cases.
00:17:07.080And there wasn't really any one kind of answer that would come out when I would ask them about this specific stuff.
00:17:12.220But they were frank and they were forthcoming and in certain instances it almost felt like they wanted to talk about it.
00:17:20.140You know, like they were glad to have the chance because there had been so little opportunity before other than, you know, maybe they're on an airplane and someone says, hey, did you kill anyone?
00:17:28.300You know, that kind of stuff that is really reductive and that a lot of guys really hate.
00:17:32.620Yeah. Was there a story that you heard from one of the soldiers you interviewed that was particularly jarring?
00:17:41.940Well, I mean, there were a lot of stories and I think there were, you know, a few things that I recalled from my experience that I'd maybe packed away and hadn't thought, you know, consciously tried not to think about for a while.
00:17:53.620And I think that, you know, at one point, a former battalion commander says that when war is declared, guys will inevitably be put in impossible positions where they have to make choices that are extremely difficult.
00:18:10.020There's one guy in the story who, during the initial invasion, his unit, you know, they were fighting Iraqi soldiers in southern Iraq and they killed one and then everyone turned away except for him.
00:18:27.060He had to sort of watch that spot and then a kid ran up and picked his gun up and pointed at the Marines and so he shot him and that was his job.
00:18:34.900That was within the rules of engagement. But it's shocking, you know, I mean, there's just no way that's kind of right in any moral sense.
00:18:43.980And everyone knows that. It's not as if, you know, and for some of those reasons, he had trouble even telling anyone about it for a long time.
00:18:54.220You know, he didn't tell the other guys that day. He didn't tell them, you know, because it just felt wrong.
00:18:58.140And when guys were all excited and they felt like they were making progress towards Baghdad and they were carrying out their mission as they were supposed to, even some guys would say, yeah, I took out a, you know, a nester.
00:19:08.000I took out a sniper. I took out this or that or the other. He wasn't. He said, I'm not going to say, like, I just took out a seven-year-old.
00:19:12.720And so, you know, and it also became clear over time, like how much that weighed on him too.
00:19:18.740So, you know, stories like that are, I think, implicitly going to be the most jarring, but there were quite a few others that are shocking in different ways as well.
00:19:29.360Yeah. You talk about in the book how one philosopher calls those sorts of decisions and the effects of them a moral wound and not necessarily a psychological wound.
00:19:43.300Some of these guys, they don't have any really PTSD, but there's something that's bothering them.
00:19:48.160I mean, how do you, I mean, what is, how has their experience in Afghanistan or Iraq affected them in their post-military life and how are they dealing with what they did there?
00:20:04.820You know, I tried to resist the, I knew I couldn't, I couldn't answer those questions in terms of the military or in terms of veterans.
00:20:14.780You know, I, in part, tried to focus on a couple of specific people because I knew that it was, it's going to be different depending on who you're talking to.
00:20:21.300And it's going to be different depending on their circumstances, how they came back, when they came back, what they did afterwards.
00:20:29.560You know, when you talk about moral injury, the term that was coined by Jonathan Shea, who wrote a book called Achilles in Vietnam,
00:20:36.560which is a terrific book about what happens when, when the process of coming home, of being in war and then coming home.
00:20:44.220And that's when you have a situation where something you did so thoroughly and deeply transgresses your sense of right and wrong that it is akin to an injury, a psychological injury that can be in some cases debilitating
00:20:57.700because you sort of walk around thinking, wanting to think you are this sort of person or that sort of person, but somewhere in your head you think, oh, I did that thing though.
00:21:04.960And I, I will always be the person who did that thing.
00:21:07.180How can I pretend I'm, I'm this or that?
00:21:12.460And like I say, you know, another, another psychiatrist called said that a lot of guys, it's almost, they treat killings as like a personal trial.
00:21:20.760And they put themselves on trial in their mind and they have to figure out, was it just, was it right?
00:22:05.440He, you know, his best friends and his commander, his company commander had just been killed and he blamed himself for that.
00:22:10.280And his commander told him not to shoot at the bomber.
00:22:12.660Explicit said, do not shoot at that car.
00:22:14.640But he still felt that it was his fault in part.
00:22:17.760And so just his own surviving was, was an affront in a way.
00:22:24.320So he was, he was a bit adrift and he struggled a lot.
00:22:27.460And he, he's, it's taken years for him to get right with certain things.
00:22:30.380And then only finally did he get some help from, from a, you know, very attentive and, from what I can tell, quite insightful counsel through the VA.
00:22:38.120But this was just a couple of years ago.
00:22:40.280So, um, meanwhile, the other guy, Brian Chontosh, he, he, he was, he'd been scheduled to rotate out of Iraq for the battle of Fallujah in late 2004.
00:22:50.440But he talked his way into staying with his guys because he wanted to lead them into that battle.
00:22:54.760But towards the end of it, he, he, he, he was actually sent home according to his orders.
00:22:59.920And it was, you know, two days maybe of plane rides and car rides before he was back in an, in the Baltimore airport with the same boots he was wearing.
00:23:09.020You know, you know, in Fallujah just days earlier, um, with some of that same dirt and some of that same blood on them.
00:23:15.840But he went, he stayed in the military.
00:23:18.400He went, he had, uh, an instruction role, a role as an instructor at the basic school.
00:23:22.580He had other roles, um, in the, in the following years and then eventually worked at the Naval Academy as a, as a company commander and almost like a mentor in a lot of ways to midshipmen.
00:23:34.480And the, the, the, the cadets there, not the cadets, sorry, the midshipmen at the Naval Academy who in all likelihood were going to be going to war at some point and be leading other men.
00:23:42.560So he had a structure around him that I think was extremely helpful.
00:23:47.020And then eventually these midshipmen started asking him questions about his own experience, which provided a form in which he could talk about these things and look at them himself and consider them at the same time.
00:23:56.420You know, he, he also was going a hundred miles an hour all the time as, as he admits, um, his marriage fell apart.
00:24:05.080He kind of neglected his family to a certain extent.
00:24:07.920Uh, he, he, and later he said he was affected by, he didn't want to say he had, he, he didn't say he had PTSD or something like that, but he said he was affected by what came out of his combat experience in a way that he needed to get a little bit of help.
00:24:20.760And he did get some help, but it was all within the military structure, which I think was extremely important and very beneficial for him.
00:24:26.720Yeah. So I guess a lesson from there, I guess, would be that don't let these soldiers be by themselves, keep them in some sort of structure when they get back.
00:24:37.560Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's, uh, a lot of, you know, a lot of these guys are, like, Chantash is a career soldier.
00:24:44.080He was in 20 years. He only recently retired last year. Um, he's, he was, he was older when he went to battle. So he had a bit more of a maturity about him, a bit more ability to put things in a broader perspective.
00:24:56.820And some of these guys who are 19 or 20, but then, you know, many of them do their service and they're out and then they have to go find other things when they're in their early twenties, uh, mid twenties, maybe.
00:25:07.680And doing these things in isolation is really difficult. Um, doing things where, because you're already in a situation where what happened, what you were just doing over there makes little sense over here.
00:25:19.400And the contexts are so different. Like that alone can be jarring yet. You're, you're walking around this, this world, wherever you are, you know, you're in your car, you're at the mall, you're at the, in the, the, at your job.
00:25:30.540And people are talking about other things. So that thing that was most important to you, that that was really life and death, literally to you days earlier is, is inconsequential or seems inconsequential to the people around you.
00:25:40.840So even on that social context, exactly like, you know, that isolation can be damaging. Some people like it. I mean, some people really don't want to talk about it and they're, they've got a way to make sense of it on their own.
00:25:52.980But, but the guys who need help, um, you know, having them adrift and, and here's another aspect of the whole VA problem, which is that having them wait for months for an appointment or just being handed some pills or whatever it might be, just these limited bandaid type approaches to, to, um, counseling or treatment, or even just listening, uh, can be even further isolating.
00:26:16.840So, yeah, I guess it goes to my next question. I mean, we know the military does a lot to help a soldier actually kill, but I mean, it sounds like they don't do too much to help these guys deal with it afterwards.
00:26:29.360No, not, not explicitly. And I, and I heard that from a lot of people, soldiers, um, psychiatrists, counselors, you know, various sorts of people who study the military. Um, and it's, it's hard. Yeah. I, it's, it's, it just seems like it's not very well.
00:26:46.100And I don't know if it's just not very well understood or they don't have the money or the time to pay attention to these sorts of things, or they don't really want guys thinking about them ahead of time.
00:26:53.820Because again, you, you would have a situation where, you know, I think from what I understand, I think it'd be really hard to go into a place and be killing other people when you're thinking like, Hey, I wonder if that guy has a family, you know, or I wonder if this is going to bother me later.
00:27:08.060I wonder if I'm going to have a, I'm going to see that guy's face in a couple of years when I have a dream or when I, you know, smell something similar or hear, hear a truck backfire and there's a similar sound.
00:27:17.760Um, all those things can make someone hesitate. And if they hesitate, then they might not achieve their objective and someone else could get hurt.
00:27:24.880You know, uh, things could go wrong in one way or another. Um, and, and they are, as Chanto says, you know, we are a tool of a tool of the government in the violent realm.
00:27:35.780And that's what they have to be readied for. That's the job they're supposed to do that they signed up for. Um, and, and that they, they take pride in doing well.
00:27:45.460At the same time though, um, you know, you have this sense of moral injury where how to, you know, something that, that, that just did something that, that is hard to feel good about over the longterm.
00:27:55.740Um, Ben Nelson says that, that, you know, dealing with people he killed, he wishes there had been some lessons about it ahead of time, like some warning that this might happen because for years he said he was just angry.
00:28:09.960He had this rage inside him. He was anxious and frustrated every time he thought about it and he didn't have any way to contextualize what was going on with him.
00:28:18.240And so he was just dealing with it on his own. And, and, you know, he was lucky in that he has a kind of incredibly mature and, and steadfast wife who, who fought through it all with him. Um, but you know, some have not, have not been so lucky.
00:28:35.800And, and, and the other thing is as it goes on, it can get harder. You know, you, you might want to think that, that this gets easier to deal with, like, cause you carry, you know, over time you get used to it.
00:28:45.980And, and, and it starts, uh, it becomes clear, like what it was all about and why, you know, you can contextualize.
00:28:53.940And the guy like Chantash has a, has a very, um, effective and impressive in a way ability to compartmentalize things.
00:29:02.800Like that's what happened there and then. And that's why we did it. And this is today. And so I'm doing this other thing. And, but not everyone can do that. Um, if they could teach shelters that, then that might be better for them.
00:29:13.800I don't know if it'd be better for everyone else, but, but, uh, later on in life, um, you're thinking some of those thoughts, like, I wonder if that guy had a family.
00:29:21.780I wonder if, if, if, you know, what could have been in his life or what happened there or was it worth it?
00:29:27.420And, and, and especially with the question of, of wars like this one or Vietnam, where the outcome is, you know, equivocal at best, where you can't say, yeah, we did that so we could beat back the Nazis.
00:29:40.160But there's some, some real questions about, uh, whether it was a success or not. That factors in as well. And already now you had, you know, I saw these guys on consecutive days in January and it was days after insurgents had retaken Fallujah and Ramadi.
00:29:54.560And a whole host of questions came up around that with veterans. And when I asked these guys about it, and again, this speaks to the different kinds of personalities involved in the different perspectives.
00:30:05.420Chantaj said, well, you know, that was then and there and we did our best. And, and it, that's as unfortunate as it turned out this way, but it's not going to make me think differently about my service.
00:30:13.540And Ben Nelson said, well, then what did those guys die for?
00:30:17.280Yeah. I think that you mentioned a statistic about how it gets harder the longer to go, that most of the suicides from veterans are veterans over 50 years old. So these are men who fought in Vietnam.
00:30:32.520Yeah. And I guess they're sort of dealing with their mortality.
00:30:36.780Yeah. I think it comes up. I mean, you start thinking, what have I accomplished? What do I have to, what may I have to answer for, you know, based on whatever,
00:30:42.940whatever your faith is, and then however you, you know, think you may pass through this life to the next.
00:30:50.860What was all that for? And is this good? And does the, does the disenchantment, does the isolation or that, that feeling of, of whatever it might be, does it just increase or does it ever get better?
00:31:00.140So, and, and I think that, that in a way now, this is pure supposition, but I think in a way now it's, you know, the Vietnam war has been supplanted by these wars.
00:31:11.060So those guys are almost afterthoughts in a way that, that I would imagine be troubling for them and feel quite, quite distancing.
00:31:21.280So why do you think it's important for civilians to understand what it's like for a soldier to kill?
00:31:28.620You know, I think on a few different levels, I think there's a political level in which they should understand that when war is discussed or declared, this will happen, that, that people will be sent to go do these things and find themselves in these situations.
00:31:44.520But then, and then they'll have to deal with it afterwards and that they should not, you know, we all have to take some responsibility for this because it's our country.
00:31:53.280I think also there's such a casual use of war metaphors and imagery and video games and all the rest and popular culture that, that having people take a real square look at what war actually is and what it actually does and what it actually involves is important.
00:32:12.980And I think that, you know, even on just a very personal level, understanding that there are guys like this out there now and that it's really not enough to just say, you know, thanks for your service or I support the troops or all the rest.
00:32:25.920I mean, that's, I mean, that's, that's shorthand for, for addressing them and addressing these things and that if there really is going to be support, it should be based in a, in a real understanding of, of the actual experience.
00:32:41.860And I think also it's, it's, it's good to understand what the training that is done and the kind of focus and, and kind of lethal energy and, and that's required to carry out this job.
00:32:53.960I mean, this was one of the things I actually liked about American sniper, that, that, that is useful in a tactical sense for commanders trying to carry out their objectives, but at the same time, those commanders have to control it.
00:33:07.000You know, they have to figure out how do we as leaders direct that so it doesn't get out of hand in the worst case scenarios.
00:33:14.340And there've been a few where, where it's turned into actual murder and just getting, you know, completely goes outside the boundaries of what's even acceptable in wartime.
00:33:24.580And that, that responsibility is not just on the battlefield.
00:33:30.200I mean, it goes back to whoever declares the war, who plans the war, who says, this is a good idea, we should do this.
00:33:35.800You know, all that stuff is, is, is part of it.
00:33:42.080And I was just talking to a friend about this regarding American sniper with, with, you know, some of the criticisms that, oh, Chris Kyle is a, he's barbaric and blah, blah, blah.
00:33:49.280You know, you know, yes, but that was his job.
00:33:53.720And so what does that make the person who sent him there?
00:33:56.460I mean, I just, to me, these are, these are questions that are worth looking at.
00:34:01.360And if someone wants to understand what war really is, it's, I think the onus is on them to look at these sorts of questions.
00:34:10.940Well, Phil, where can readers learn more about your work?
00:34:13.380Uh, well, I, you know, this is the big thing I've been working on over, of late, the, the kill switch.
00:34:20.120It's on Amazon and, um, it's a, it's a Kindle single, but you don't need a Kindle to read it.
00:34:24.460You can, there's a Kindle app and you can download that and you can read it on anything.
00:34:27.520So I would hope, uh, or, you know, hope anyone who wants to know more about this would, would have a look.
00:34:33.360I did a review of American sniper for foreign policy, you know, older things.
00:34:37.100There's some stories on time or national geographic and that could be tracked down and then I'll, you know, have to figure out what I, what I do next.
00:35:03.260It's a very fascinating and jarring read.
00:35:05.400You can follow Phil on Twitter at kill switch story, and you'll find links and references that supplement what he wrote about in the kill switch.