 Bill, welcome back. Well, thank you, Mark. Good to be back. It's been six years. And let me thank JR for that very kind, nice introduction. I appreciate it. Thanks, JR. Well, JR talked about the wisdom of the bullfrog and alluded to the fact that you became the bullfrog, much to I think your surprise. Talk about the bullfrog and his significance in seal culture. Yeah. So the bullfrog, as the dean mentioned, is the title given to the longest serving Navy SEAL on active duty. And I received it when I was at the 34-year mark. Because remember, as Navy SEALs, we are first and foremost Navy frogmen. So when you are the senior frogman, you are the bullfrog. But just to make sure that your head doesn't get too big, they give you this trophy for being the bullfrog. And it looks like it was made at the five and dime store. And on top of it is a toad, a very ugly, short, squatty toad. And I think the point of the trophy when they give it to you is, OK, you're the longest serving Navy SEAL on active duty, but don't let it go to your head. But also, the reason the title is the wisdom of the bullfrog is it is about 37 years of having the honor to lead remarkable young men and women throughout my time in the service. And then again, as the dean said, in my time as the chancellor. So you, as JR mentioned, you got a degree of journalism here at UT. What did you expect to do with your career when you graduated from the University of Texas? Yeah, so back in 1977, you really didn't have a career as a Navy SEAL. There were two Navy captains, so think about Army colonels. And that was it. In the entire SEAL community, there was one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast. So the idea that anybody could become a Navy captain and a Navy SEAL captain was so remote, you just wanted to be a platoon commander. And that's kind of the fighting unit of a SEAL element. And I thought once I got to be a SEAL platoon commander, well, I am at the peak of my career here. And that's, again, the time you spend with the young guys in the field the most. But there was no chance to be anything beyond a Navy captain. We didn't have admirals at the time, and we didn't begin to get admirals until really late in the 90s. Let me talk about your book. The book is comprised of 18 mottos that, as you write in the book, have storied histories that drove leaders at the time to make certain profound decisions. And I know they've guided your career in the Navy and beyond as a leader. And one of those mottos is when in command, command. And that's something you heard when you were here, not when you were in the Navy, but when you were here at UT. What's the significance of that phrase, Bill? Yeah, in fact, I was a midshipman here going through the Naval ROTC program. And in the very first semester of Naval ROTC, you get Navy history. And so we talk about all the great naval battles out there. But the young lieutenant, who was teaching the class at the time, talked to us about Chester Nimitz. And of course, Nimitz, born and raised in Fredericksburg. So there was a connection immediately with UT. But he told us about the time in 1942. So the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. In 1942, now Nimitz is debating whether he is going to engage the Japanese fleet at this tiny little island in the Pacific called Midway. Well, most of his staff thought it was a bad idea. Thought it was a trap. And oh, by the way, if we lost any more ships after Pearl Harbor, it could be disastrous. And frankly, the Pentagon at the time did not think it was a good idea either. So Nimitz is really grappling with this. Should I try to engage the Japanese fleet in Midway? And he goes to see one of his closest friends, Admiral Bull Halsey. And Halsey at the time had shingles. And he was in the hospital in Pearl Harbor. So Nimitz goes to see him and he tells him about his dilemma. And he says, I just don't know what to do. And Halsey was this kind of gruff old Admiral. And he says, well, Admiral, you used to tell me when in command, command. And the point was, you're in charge. Take charge. Take the hard decisions, because that's what people expect when you are the commander. If I can fast forward just for a minute. So fast forward about 040 plus years from that point in time. I am now the commander. I'm a four-star Admiral. I'm the commander of US Special Operations Command. And it had historically been an Army command. I am on my way out for about a three-week trip. And again, there's a lot of Army paraphernalia. Although the guy before me was an Admiral, predominantly Army paraphernalia around. So on my way out of the office, I kind of dismissively said to my chief mess sergeant there, I said, get me something, I don't know, naval. I need something naval in here. I'm a Navy guy. Give me something naval. And she just kind of nodded. And I took off on a three-week trip. Well, I come back after three weeks and I walk back into my office. And there's this big desk in here and there's a conference table. And I said, walk back out. I said, Dana, what is this? She said, well, you told me to get you something naval. It's Nimitz's desk. I said, what? And she smiled and she goes, yeah, the Naval Archives gave us his desk and his conference table. And the reason that was important to me, for three years, I sat behind that desk. And whenever I thought about the difficult decisions that I had to make, I thought how they paled in comparison to the decisions that Nimitz had to make. And it always came back to me, they went in command, command. And you write in this chapter, and you had to make some pretty tough decisions yourself, but you write, as a leader, you must always be in command. Even on those days when you struggle with the pressures of the job, you can't have a bad day. You must never look beaten no matter what the circumstances. So as you say in the subtitle of this, the subtitle is leadership made simple, but not easy. That is a simple statement, but not easy to follow. How do you adhere to that on the most difficult days, particularly when you're under the kind of pressure you are under in your command? Yeah, I think as we were talking beforehand, Mark, I mean, when you are in a leadership position, and I don't care whether you're leading two people at Starbucks, or whether you're leading a giant corporation, whether you're leading Navy SEALs, you get a certain energy in command. And we used to talk about it in the military, there is the energy of command. And people a lot of times think that that energy comes from the clouds or from the, it comes from the people you're leading. You know that as a leader, you have a responsibility to the men and women that you are leading. And when things are, they're toughest, that's when they need you the most. That's when you have to show up, and if you show up and your heads hung and your shoulders are slumped and you don't look like you have a plan for getting through the tough times, that will spread through an organization like Wildfire. And so your responsibility as a person in a leadership position is when things are their worst, that's when you have to step up and you can't have a bad day on those days. No, we all have bad days. I mean, we all have bad days, but you take those bad days and you keep them in your office, or you, as I talked about with your swim buddy, you talk to somebody about it, but when you have to address the people that are serving you, that you are serving, that are responsible for getting the work done, you better make sure you are clear-eyed, shoulders back, head up, look confident and make sure you've got a plan to move forward through the tough times. You talked about swim buddies. Yeah. And that's one of the other lessons here is always have a swim buddy is another chapter here. And as you just talked about with Nimitz and Holst, the swim buddy, what does that mean in, again, in the culture of the Navy SEALs? What does a swim buddy mean? But the broader meaning too of swim buddy. Yeah, so when you go through SEAL training, for safety purposes, you are never by yourself. And frankly, when I went through, they were all Vietnam veterans that were my instructors. And they made sure you understood, look, I don't care where you are, you always have a partner. You always have a swim buddy. And when you are actually going through training and you are diving, scuba diving, you are actually attached by a line, a short line to your swim buddy. And so you have to work together, but your swim buddy is also there to make sure if you're underneath a ship that you don't get tangled in lines, that if you run out of air, he's gonna take his regulator, share his air with you. And this idea of a swim buddy in the SEAL teams, it starts with your swim buddy underwater. But it's also when you're parachuting in the middle of the night, it's your swim buddy who kind of parachutes beside you and lands in enemy territory together. It's, oh, by the way, it's your swim buddy that checks your parachute before you jump. When you are kind of patrolling and you're out on the ground, you know who your swim buddy is. They're the ones that are checking your six to make sure the enemy doesn't come. And it is this idea that I don't care who you are. You need a swim buddy in life. Whether it is your spouse, whether it is your close colleague, no matter who it is, you have to have somebody you can trust implicitly. And oh, by the way, you've got to be prepared to take the criticism. I talk about in this chapter, I had this command sergeant major, very senior enlisted, the senior enlisted in my organization named Chris Ferris. And Chris fought at Mogadishu during Black Hawk Down. He chased Pablo Escobar in South America. He fought in Bosnia. He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, probably one of the most experienced enlisted men in the special operations community. He was my right hand man. I didn't make a major decision without talking to Ferris. But there were times when, you know, I needed somebody I was having a bad day. Most of the time it was tough love. It was like, hey, suck it up Admiral, you know, there are guys out there that are dying on the battlefield. We don't care about your, you know, your little problems. And sometimes you needed that. And then every once in a while, it was the man hugged by the fire. It'll be all right boss. You know, that didn't go well, but it'll be all right. You need those guys. Another chapter is titled Run Toward the Sound of the Guns. And to illustrate this, you talk about a main professor, a professor from Bowdoin College, named Joshua Chamberlain, who played a vital role at the Battle of Gettysburg. Tell us a little bit about Joshua Chamberlain and his significance. Yeah, so the point of the chapter of Run of the Sound of Guns really, I think is exemplified by Joshua Chamberlain. So as Mark said, you know, college professor gets called up to lead the 20th Maine during the Civil War. And Chamberlain, not a career soldier, but he gets put in charge of the 20th Maine, kind of pulls them together as a fighting unit. But in early July of 1863, the Union forces arrive at this small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. And within the next day, the Confederate forces show up in Gettysburg as well. And the Union forces have arrayed their men, their soldiers along what's called Cemetery Ridge. It's a little bit of the high ground in Gettysburg. And the Confederate forces under John B. Hood show up at Robert E. Lee and Hood, really where Cemetery Ridge is. And tactically from the military standpoint, you know, if you can break the center, then you can split the forces and your chances of defeating the enemy are much larger. So John Gary realizes that Hood wants to break the center so he takes the folks from the flanks, particularly from the left flank where the 20th Maine is, and he moves them to the center. But in doing that, he exposes the left flank of Cemetery Ridge, deeply exposes the left flank. Well, Hood sees an opportunity because the only thing worse than breaking the center is turning the line. Again, tactical terms, if you can get to one side of the enemy or the other and you turn them where your forces are sweeping down and they're in a line perpendicular to you, you're gonna win. And so Hood realizes, here's the chance, he gets three or four times the force necessary and he charges up what's called little round top at the left flank of Cemetery Ridge. And Joshua Chamberlain is there. He has already been wounded by shrapnel once, maybe twice at that point in time. And now the rebel forces are making their way up the hill. They are about to take little round top and turn the line. Chamberlain realizes he has got to lead his forces into the teeth of the Confederate forces. He draws his sword, yells to the men to fix bayonet and he leads the charge down the hill against the rebel forces and pushes back the rebel forces that day and saves little round top. Now you think about that for just one minute. So Joshua Chamberlain, one man, because he ran to the sound of guns, because he attacked the problem head on, didn't retreat, he knew he had to go right into the teeth of the problem. He saves little round top. In saving little round top, he saves Cemetery Ridge. In saving Cemetery Ridge, he saved the Battle of Gettysburg. In saving the Battle of Gettysburg, he probably saved the Union. And in saving the Union, he saved America and saved the world. Think about that, one man, one man's decision. So the lesson from this particular chapter is, look as a leader, you have to run to the sound of guns. When you see a problem, you can't decide that, you know what, if I start to try to solve that problem, then people are gonna blame me on it. Sorry about that, you're the person in charge. Move to where the problem is, because sometimes only the leader can solve the problem. Yes, you're gonna get dirty, yes, you're gonna get tainted, yes, you're gonna paint it with the same brush, but sorry, that's your responsibility. Move to where the problem is and do the best you can to solve it. Only about a quarter of those who go through Navy SEAL training actually make it. It's an astoundingly low percentage. What's the difference between those who succeed and those who fail? Yeah, there's only one thing that we all have in common, and it is in our physical fitness. It's the fact that we didn't quit. That's the only thing we have in common, because when you take a look at the young men that graduate from SEAL training, I mean, I'm six foot two and I was six foot two, about 195 when I went through training, I was actually big for SEAL. Most SEALs are between about five, eight and five, 10, they're kind of medium bill wiry guys, but we had, of course, the Munchkin crew, the little guys, five foot four, five foot five, which were a terrific boat crew. And in my class, we had an American Indian, we had African Americans, we had Polish, French, we had a lot of first generation kids, and the only thing that we had in common when it was all done was we didn't quit. And the reason that's so important, I think, for SEAL, is not about the concern are you gonna quit on the mission, because the mission sometimes fills you full of adrenaline and you just keep going. But you're gonna have a thousand opportunities to quit in your career. In the military, you move every couple of years, it's hard on your family, you can always find reasons why you're just not gonna move another time. It's hard on your family, it's hard on your friends, it's hard on everything. And so there's a lot of opportunities to quit on your family, to quit on your friends, to quit on the mission. But if you have learned early on that the one thing that sets you apart is that you don't quit, then you can make it through those tough times. And those are the men we need to continue to lead the SEAL community. That training has to be excruciating at times, it has to be really, really difficult. What do you summon in order to get through, in the toughest times? Because it's one thing to have a tough job. It's another thing to go through, SEAL training. That's gotta be the most rigorous imaginable. What gets you through? Yeah, I think it is, at least for me, I can't speak to everyone. But for me, it was as simple as it sounds, I didn't wanna be a quitter. I didn't want someone to think that I wasn't tough enough to make it through. And so I think for a lot of these young men, it is, to them, it's a validation of, in this day and age, it sounds cliche, maybe, or maybe it doesn't sound inappropriate, but it's a validation of their manhood in terms of their toughness. Are they tough enough to make it through? But they summons it from everywhere. I mean, I'm a man of faith, you summons it from God, you summons it from your family. A lot of them summons it from the men around them. I mean, the thing that we call ourselves the SEAL teams for a reason, because it takes a team to get the job done. And when you go through SEAL training, that day that you're stumbling, your swim buddy will pick you up and go, come on, brother, we need to keep moving. And then when he stumbles, you pick him up. And so it all kinda comes together. But I don't think there's any one thing that you can say, this is what everybody has in common that allows them to make it through training, except that they were convinced when they came in that they weren't gonna quit. Can you teach somebody to be courageous? Can you train somebody to summon courage and overcome fear? I don't know that you can train somebody. What you can train somebody to do is to do their job. And there are so many times when you are, you know, you're doing an after-action report and you're talking to a young soldier who charged a machine gun nest or saved his buddies or whatever it was. And invariably when you talk to them, they say, look, I was just doing my job. I was doing what I was trained to do. And I would offer that that's a large part of it. You know when you're being trained that, okay, my job is to do this and I'm gonna stay here, you know, fighting the enemy in my field of fire, whatever it happens to be. But then there's a point where it is the fight or flight. And that's when you see the real courage come out. If there is a way out of the problem set, those that don't have the courage will run. Those that do will stay and fight. And it is always, you know, again, this may not come out quite right. But a lot of people think it is about, you know, the values we hold dear, you know, the flag. And yes, that is part of it. But it is more about this connection. It's about the man or the woman on your left and right. How much do you care about them? Are you willing to sacrifice your life so that they can live? And it is in the quieter times where you reflect on why you did that and you realize it is about America. It is about our values. It is about the fact that we grew up with similar values, which is why I wanna save your life. But it is more the connection. I had a general I used to work for talked about kind of the four stages. They said, look, we all go through this stage when we're young men in particular, you know, and I went through it with SEAL Training. You have this challenge. Okay, there's a challenge before me. I'm gonna overcome that challenge. And then the challenge becomes an adventure. And for me, I'm sailing around the world. I'm jumping out of airplanes, locking out of submarines. I'm doing the sorts of things that I always wanted to do. And then it becomes a profession. And when I was about 15 years in, I became a commanding officer and it's a profession. It is the profession of arms and you value that profession of arms and you learn everything you can. But at some point in time, it becomes a calling. And it is when it becomes a calling that it has this effect on you that is hard to explain to people. And you used to see it, the young men and women that came in after 9-11. For me, it probably took me 20 years to get to that point where it was a calling. For those that signed up after 9-11, let me tell you, they went from challenge adventure profession to calling pretty quick. Because they're in combat, they see the importance of the work they're doing and it quickly becomes a calling for them. But it's clear that team building is an essential part of what you do and team building necessitates leadership. Many have been inspired by your leadership. Who inspired you during your most difficult times? Yeah, it's not one person. For me, I mean, again, it was always the troops. It was always the troops. And George Ann and I used to say all the time, here we were, particularly as I got more senior. I mean, when I was a commander, a Navy captain or particularly an admiral, I mean, I was getting a decent paycheck from the military. My kids are doing well and here I am in charge. And yet I'm leading young men and women that are E-1s, semen recruits or privates. And they're married with a couple of kids back at Fort Bragg or Fort Campbell or Naval Station Coronado. And they're forward in a wartime environment sacrificing for the country. And their families are sacrificing back home. Boy, if that doesn't inspire you, then nothing will. So whenever I had those days when I was down, when things weren't good, I'd just go talk to the soldiers. You go talk to the soldiers, man, it's hard not to be inspired. Yeah, I'm gonna say three words which you're all gonna know immediately and associate with the admiral. Make your bet. Nine years ago, you made the commencement address here at the University of Texas and that commencement address went viral. It's become iconic. Everybody can summon those words. That's an admonition almost. How did that speech come to you, Bill? Yeah, so Bill Powers, when he was the president here, had invited me to be the commencement speaker I don't know, three or four months before May. And obviously, anytime you're invited to be a commencement speaker, it's quite an honor. But I had a day job, so I was running the special operations command, so I started writing the speech about maybe two weeks before I was supposed to give it. I had kind of been mulled some ideas over in my head. So I started writing it on the weekends, a little bit here, a little bit there. And I had this great theme and I thought I was gonna pull it all together. And then the Wednesday before the Saturday that I was supposed to give the speech, I realized the speech didn't work. I mean, it wasn't a good speech. And I went downstairs, I've been writing upstairs, I went downstairs, I see George Ann, I went, oh my God, it doesn't work. It's not a good speech. I said, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I mean, I'm giving the speech in a couple of days. And she says to me, she said, well, why don't you write about something you know? And I thought, well, it's an interesting concept. And I told her, I said, yeah, but the only thing I know is how to be a Navy SEAL. And she said, well, write about that. But at the time, you may recall, there had been a number of administration officials that had been scheduled to give commencement addresses and then the student population kind of voted them down and they didn't end up doing it. And I thought, if I talk about being a Navy SEAL to university students here and 8,000 students were graduating, I think that year and 25,000 family members, I thought, I'm gonna be in uniform, I don't know how this is gonna go. But I decided to go ahead and do it that way. And the reason I did was it occurred to me that SEAL training, which is six months long, really was a microcosm of life. I mean, it was about the challenges that you had every day in SEAL training were the same sort of challenges you were gonna face in life. You were gonna fail. You had to build relationships. There were gonna be bullies out there. There were bad things that happened in that six months that to me, after now almost 37 years after I had gone through SEAL training, I realized that it really was a reflection of life at large. So I started drawing on the lessons from SEAL training to write the speech. And then of course I had to put it in kind of chronological order. People always ask me, why did I make your bed first? And the answer was, because that's the first thing we did every day. I mean, you had to get up every morning in SEAL training to make your bed because it was gonna be inspected. And as I've told folks before, the value of that, of the idea that you're gonna get up, you're gonna take a little pride in it, and it encourages you to do another task in another. And also about the little things in life. And that was what one of the instructors said, look, if you can't even make your bed to exacting standards, how are we ever gonna trust you to lead a complex SEAL mission? Learn to do the little things right, and you'll learn to do the big things right. But what I didn't say in the speech, and I reflected on it later, was really later in my life, and of course I made my bed every day in the military. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, it actually took on a little bit of a different meaning, particularly when I was in Afghanistan. So I was a three star admiral in Afghanistan. I was a second ranking guy in Afghanistan. And I lived in what we referred to as a bee hut made by the Navy Sea Bees. And it was just a plywood room, about half the size, oh shoot, about a fourth the size of the stage. And in my plywood room was a bed. That was it. The latrines, the heads were outside, there was no shelf, it was just a bed. A rack in Navy parlance. And every morning I would get up, I'd go do my PT, I'd come back, and I'd make the bed. Because outside my bee hut was a wartime environment. Unfortunately, every week we lost kids in combat. Civilians were inadvertently killed. Some admiral, some general, some president, some prime minister, somebody was yelling at me about something outside that door. And my days were long. I mean, my average day was probably 20 hours a day. And some days you'd go days before getting back to that room. But when I got back to the room and I opened my plywood door, the bed was made. And it gave me some sense of control of my life. And again, hard to kind of square the circle on why that's the case. But when you open the room and the bed is made, there's a sense of order. And I've told folks, look, it's a simple task, but I really do think it makes a difference. It certainly makes a difference for me. So we owe you for the speech, but we owe George Ann McRaven for the inspiration. George Ann McRaven is here tonight, a hand for George Ann McRaven. Also here tonight is Lucy Johnson. And backstage, she asked the same question that I'm gonna ask you now. Had you any idea when you gave that speech that it would become as iconic as it has become? It is considered, as you all know, one of the great commencement addresses of all time and consider how many commencement addresses are delivered every year. So that's remarkable. Did you have any idea? It would become as big as it has. Of course not, but not only didn't I have any idea, I didn't understand how these things work. So remember, I'm in the military. I'm in a secret organization. We had no social media. I'd never heard of Twitter. I wasn't on Facebook or any of that sort of stuff. So after the speech, I have a security detachment that was kind of protecting me. And these young kids, they know the stuff and we're heading back to the hotel. And one of my young soldiers comes up to me and he says, hey, sir, your speech is going viral. Well, I didn't know what the hell that was. I'm thinking, is that a bad thing? I mean, if virus is spreading, what's going on? He said, no, no, no, it's a good thing. I said, okay. And I didn't think much of it, but it has obviously gotten a lot of traction and I'm always flattered by that. People, and I've made this, it's a little philosophical maybe. But I made the point at one point in time. I thought, as you look back on your life and you try to see, why are you here and where has destiny led you? And I remember thinking for years when the Bin Laden raid came. And at that point in my career, I mean, I'd been in 34 years. I'd done more than any seal around. I knew how to lead the Bin Laden raid and I thought, this is my moment. This is why I was put here on earth was to get Bin Laden. And the Bin Laden raid happens and everything goes well and I thought, I mean, I have met my destiny, you know? Okay, maybe a little full of myself. I have met my destiny, there it is. I got Bin Laden and I realized that wasn't it at all. That I got Bin Laden, but because I got Bin Laden, Bill Powers asked me to be the commencement speaker. And that commencement address has been viewed over 100 million times. I get people writing me every day about it and a lot of people, particularly even here in Texas, have no idea I was even in the military. And I say, you do know I was in uniform when I did the, you saw that speech, right? Oh yeah, you were in the Coast Guard, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. But I've told folks, you know what? I'm okay with that. If my legacy is telling people to make their bed, I'm perfectly okay with that. I am perfectly okay with that. My wife, Amy, is here too, and we can tell you it didn't stick with our kids. But the message just didn't resonate with the kids. I want to come back to Bin Laden who you mentioned a moment ago, but before I do, I want to quote you from our conversation six years ago. You said at that time, I will tell you unequivocally, unequivocally, the greatest threat to our national security is how poorly we are educating our kids pre-K through 12th grade. We need to figure out how to fix this system. Do you still think that's our greatest security threat? Absolutely. You know, when I was chancellor, and I know a number of friends from the chancellor's council from my time at UT, I would do meetings with the alumni and kind of town halls, and invariably, because of my background as a Navy SEAL, somebody would always ask me, what do you think the number one national security threat is to the country? And they always thought that I would answer, you know, Iran, North Korea. And my answer was always the same, K through 12th education. And they would say, no, no, no. I mean, it's the number one national security threat. And I would repeat K through 12th education. And the reason I think that's important is because if we are not teaching our young men and women how to think critically, having the right STEM skills, understanding civics, understanding how to behave well in a tough, contentious environment. If we're not teaching in the basics of math and science and reading and these sorts of things, then they're not gonna be good decision makers when it comes time to make decisions on national security. So it is very important to me that we invest in the education of the youth of America in a way that we've probably haven't done in a long time. And I know every administration comes in, they want to do that. It becomes challenging for a whole lot of reasons, but we can't give up on that. I mean, it is, it's our legacy or our children and grandchildren. And we have to do right by them. Are we doing better today than we were six years ago? Are we doing better today? If it's a systemic issue, are we fixing the system? No, I don't think so. And it's not that there aren't great people out there trying, we have a lot of friends that are educators and a lot of them at the high school, junior high, elementary school level. And I mean, I don't understand why we are not investing more in teachers. I don't understand why we are not holding teachers up. I mean, and again, every organization has got areas that need improvement. The teachers are no different, but at the end of the day, the teachers are teaching the youth of America. We should invest in them. We should invest in our schools. We should invest in school safety. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a young kid going to school and worried that you're gonna have an active shooter. I just, I can't get my head wrapped around it. So this all, and obviously with COVID and being out of school, so I think we've got a lot of catch-up work to do. And again, just like the book says, some of these things are easy. Let's invest in teachers. Let's make our schools safe. Let's do this. You can put it up on a whiteboard. It's just hard to do. But we have to invest our time and our energy and our resources to make that happen. If you were a chancellor of our national public school system, are there quick wins that you would put into place if you could? I don't think there are quick wins. And I think this is the problem. People are always looking for quick wins. I really do think we have to, the first thing, again, I guess, I have a kind of a parallel path. One, you have to invest in the teachers. You've got to make sure that we have quality teachers in the classrooms, again, that are raising to some degree when you think about six, eight hours a day, raising our children. So that is one path that we've got to figure out how to take better care of teachers and put teachers in a better position. The other thing, again, today I think is just school safety. And I don't just mean active shooters. I mean just the nature of schools in certain areas where it is just challenging for kids to go to school and to learn. And it's everything from, are the young men and women coming in? Are they, are the young boys and girls coming in? Are they well fed? Do they feel safe in the environment? Are they in an environment where they can learn? Because if they're not in an environment where they can learn, it doesn't do a lot of good. Again, our kids were all in public schools. And when we would move someplace new, there was always this bright shiny object out there which was the brand new school. And of course, it's like, wow, a brand new school. And the school looked beautiful and all that. But you always had to be careful about the bright shiny object because that didn't necessarily mean that the faculty were gonna be the right faculty for the kids. Invariably when you found an established school that had a great principal. And one of the things I found actually when I was chancellor, the things that make the difference are the principals. If you have a great principal, you are probably gonna have a great school. The leader. A great leader. Invest in the principals. So I will go back. You asked what would be a quick win? Invest in the principals. Invest in the superintendents of the independent school districts. Invest there and I think you will begin to make a difference. But what were your thoughts on January 6th, 2021? Yeah, I mean, I think like most of America, I hope I was stunned. I remember I was on a phone call with somebody, a friend of mine, he says, hey, you need to turn on TV, see what's happening. And he says, something's happening at the Capitol. And frankly, a little bit dismissed at first, okay. So now there's some people protesting out in front of the Capitol. I said, okay. And then of course I turned it on and I didn't even know what to make of it. I was kind of transfixed and could not believe that this was our Capitol and that this was happening. And frankly, I've spent a lot of time at the Capitol as I know you have, Mark. And the Capitol police are some of the finest we've got there. And when I would see kind of after the fact, the pressure these policemen and women were under and the threat from the people that were storming the Capitol, that was a tough day for America. And I think it should rightfully force us to think about a whole lot of things. What is the state of democracy today in this country, in your view? I'm actually an optimist for a lot of reasons. I mean, part of it is I put things in a little bit of perspective. So, and I can't quite see the audience here, but I think there are a lot of folks out in the audience that are about my vintage or a little older. And we remember the time in the 60s and the 70s when JFK was killed, when Robert Kennedy was killed, when Martin Luther King was killed, when four students at Kent State were killed, when there were anti-war riots and protests, civil rights protests and riots. I remember those times, and I was young, but I remember them. So, yeah, we have problems today, but here's why I am optimistic. I have great faith in this young generation. Take it from the millennials to the Gen Z to whatever's below the Gen Z, the Gen X. I think people are always surprised by that when I say that, because there's this narrative out there that the millennials are these soft little entitled snowflakes, and of course I've said it a thousand times, but then you've never seen them in a firefight in Afghanistan, or go into the University of Texas to make a better life for themselves and their families. It's a great generation of young men and women. And I'm with, one of the funnest things I do is teach at the LBJ school, because I generally have 22, 25 of these young men and women in my class. I learn from them every single class. People always ask me about leadership. Every time I go in, I learn something new. I learn something new about leadership, but I also learn that they are just as patriotic, just as committed, just as hardworking as their parents and grandparents before them. We just don't give them enough credit for that. I started to tell you the story, but I held off on it earlier today. When I was a chancellor, I finished up my time as chancellor, I'm getting ready to leave, I'm moving out of the Bauer house, which is where the chancellor lives, and we're packing up boxes, and in this box I find a letter, and it's a letter from my mother, who died back in 1986, but I look at the date on the letter, and it is the date that I went off to SEAL training. It's August 1977, and I realize that she wrote this letter the day that she dropped me off at my aunt's house because she wanted to drive me to SEAL training. I said, mother, you're not going to drive me to SEAL training. So she drove me to my aunt's house in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I convinced her to stay there, and then I continued on. But she had written this letter when she was at Scottsdale, and now I'm seeing it for the first time. Again, she died in 1986, and of course I see the letter, it's got her handwriting, and no kidding, and I think my sisters are here in the audience, I could still smell the scent of kind of cold cream and whatever women use back then. And so I'm opening this letter, and I'm getting kind of emotional, and I go again, I open the letter, and my mother would always start the letter Dearest Bill. She had a beautiful cursive writing, Dearest Bill, you're heading off to, she didn't know what SEALs were, but she was heading off to this training, and I'm thinking, my mother thought the world of me, she knew I was just the most competent, most capable young man in the world. And she starts off, she says, I really worry about you. I don't know that you're tough enough for this military training. So I'm reading this, she goes, this is, I think her words were, this is harsh military training, and you've lived a country club life. We lived on a nine hole municipal golf course. Actually, we didn't live on the golf course, but we were close to it, right? And but somehow we live the country club life. And so as I'm reading this, I'm going on, what? And then I get to the, you know, the punchline, she goes, and oh, by the way, you're spoiled, underlined, like, what? I thought my mother thought I was the toughest, most competent capable guy, and she thought I was a little snowflake. Because she and my father and a lot of folks were part of the greatest generation. And to those men and women that served in World War II and Korea and Vietnam, those of us in the 70s, we were soft, little, like I said, little snowflakes. And thank God I didn't read that letter before I went to SEAL training. So I'm not sure I would have made it through. But what it did was it reinforced with me the fact that every generation thinks the next generation isn't good enough because they didn't walk three miles in the snow to get to school or whatever. Well, I'm telling you, this generation is absolutely good enough to get us out of whatever problems we're in. And I think they will. And so I always remain optimistic. You have to. And all you got to do, back to why was I able to lead so well? I said I was inspired by the soldiers. Same reason I've got faith that we'll be fine because I'm inspired by the young folks that I meet at LBJ school. I'm inspired by the kids I meet, whenever I'm traveling. So we're going to be fine. We're going to be just fine. That is certainly the hope. Bill, let me go back to the subject of democracy. We've had challenges here at home. January 6th was an example of that. But there are also challenges abroad. Turkey just re-elected regime, exactly, to another five-year term as their president. Despite his clear authoritarian bent, why does democracy seem to be failing at certain places abroad? Because it's messy. And so you see there are, whether it is China or Turkey or anywhere where there's an authoritarian government, I think there's the belief that, hey, this is, it's clean. It's efficient. It doesn't have the ugliness of democracy. But democracies always tend to outlast, I think, the authoritarian governments. And I think we will see that again. It is one of the reasons why I am so passionate about the war in Ukraine. I do believe the war in Ukraine is a little bit of an existential fight for the free nations of the world. Now, Ukraine's got a lot of, Ukraine's got a lot of problems. There ain't no mistake about it. Like a lot of burgeoning democracies, they've got a lot of problems. But they are a democracy, and they want to be a better democracy. And so now you have the sense that it is this a little bit of a surrogate fight between the Western ideals and values against the authoritarian governments. And my concern is if Ukraine loses this fight, whatever that might look like, and I have some thoughts on that, but if they lose that fight, then you will begin to see a block begin to develop. China will become more aligned with Russia and more aligned with Iran and more aligned with North Korea. And that's not something that will serve the world well. If Russia fails to win this fight, and I think they are failing to win it right now, if they fail to win the fight, then China reels back a little bit and says, maybe not so fast. And I think you will begin to find others that might have sided with Russia are gonna back away a little bit. And that will be better for the world. So I think we need to continue to support Ukraine with whatever it takes for them to defeat Russia and what does victory look like? So if you think about Putin when he first invaded, February, year and a half ago, almost. His initial plan was, we're gonna move to Kiev, the capital, we'll be there in about three or four days. So they came in through Belarus to Kiev, Harkiv, they came up from Crimea, came from the Donbass area in the east and it was gonna be about a two or three week war. Well, that didn't work out quite like they'd planned. And initially, Putin said, we are gonna overthrow the Nazi government in Kiev and we're gonna replace it with a Russian government. And that didn't happen. And then as the war is drug on, now he's moved the goalposts. And the goalposts now are, well, we just need to build a land bridge as we call it from the Donbass area down to Crimea, basically a land avenue so that Russia can move all the way down to Crimea to get to the Black Sea. So right now they have a tenuous hold on that. But the Ukrainians are every day trying to make sure that that's not a solid line. As long as the Russians are unable to build that land bridge and hold it, then I think Ukraine wins. And Putin after a while, you think about the number of people that they have lost. So we lost, I think 58,000 men in the Vietnam War. They have already lost that many in a year and a half. 10 years of Vietnam War. Is that right? I've heard estimates of 100,000, is that correct? So well, 100 could be up to 200,000 killed and wounded. So a lot of them are wounded. I don't know that we know the exact figures of killed in action, but it is north of 60,000 killed in action and then so many more wounded. So, and frankly, the Ukrainians probably have maybe a little bit lower number, but they have sacrificed a lot for this as well. But it's still gonna be a tough long fight. Let me just drill down for a moment. Despite a major standoff between Ukrainian and Russian forces, Ukraine lost Batmoud just last week. And now it seems like Ukraine is going to mount a major counter offensive. What does that look like over the next several months? Yeah, so let me take Batmoud because that's an important topic. So about two months ago, Zelensky's generals came to him and said, look, we need to do an orderly withdrawal from Batmoud. It has no strategic value. There's a little bit of a crossroads of some railroads and some roads there, but it really has no strategic value. Let's just let the Russians take it. We'll do an orderly withdrawal so we don't lose so many guys. And Zelensky, I think, did the right thing, which he said, nope, we're gonna hold Batmoud as long as we can. And I think it was the right signal to send. It cost a lot of lives, but it wore down the Russians. They lost, again, 100,000 killed or wounded in a five month period of time, five month period of time. It created this division between Prugoshin, who runs the Wagner Group and Putin, right? And oh, by the way, it convinced the allies of the seriousness of this because I think if they'd withdrawn, the Europeans might have thought, well, do I really send them the Leopolds? Do I send them F-16s? But because they held on for so long, and actually they still hold a small part on the outside, I think it really reinforced the fact that they're good fighters and they can do a lot. So now where do we go? Shaping actions, whenever you're doing an offensive or a counter offensive, you're gonna shape the battlefield. That means they're gonna be looking at communication sites, so they're gonna try to take out communication sites, they're gonna try to take out bridges, they're gonna try to take out areas where the Russians can begin to maneuver to engage them, right? That's how you shape the battlefield. Once they have shaped the battlefield, then they will find their kind of point of entry and it'll be obviously in the softest part of where the Russians are. And then you've begun to see, I don't think we know whether or not they are Ukrainians or whether they are Ukrainian sympathizers. There was an attack on the Kremlin, of course, yesterday, drone attack. There have been a number of attacks actually inside Russia by Ukrainian sympathizers. That will also be part of the shaping operation. But remember, we have just given the Ukrainians, well, the Europeans and us, but Leopold tanks, M1 Abrams, which is the most capable tank in the world, that's American tanks, they're gonna be getting F-16s, they've got Heimars, which is a very sophisticated rocket system. So they've got some pretty good lethal aid that's been supporting. Talked about Solomon Ladin a moment ago. I wanna go back to him for a moment and the raid that you successfully organized around his death. The audience saw on the montage before the program that famous photograph of the White House Situation Room that includes Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Tony Blinken, Bob Gates, and several other very prominent individuals. It's almost, it's a tableau of democratic politics in the past two decades. You're on that speaker telling those people, including the President of the United States, what's going on with the raid? What's going on in your mind as you're doing that? Yeah, so a little backstory. In fact, Lucy had asked me before we came in here a little backstory that a lot of people don't know. So here's a little backstory on that. So the picture you see there, the iconic picture taken by Pete Susan, is not actually the Situation Room. So no, that's all right, because it's a common thought that that's the Situation Room. The gentleman in the middle there is General Brad Webb, Air Force Officer. So you see the Air Force Officer in the blue uniform sitting there. And General Webb was my liaison to the White House. And, but Admiral Mullen, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had told me, said, look Bill, I'm gonna keep the President and the National Security Team in the Situation Room. And General Webb will just update me as the mission's going on, and then I'll update the President. That way, the President's not kind of looking over your shoulder. I said, okay, I didn't really care, but that's what the Admiral wanted to do. So as we launched the mission, I'm on a chat with General Webb, and you know, we've launched the mission. General Webb goes, tells Admiral Mullen, sir, we've launched the mission. Admiral tells the President, Mr. President, we've launched the mission. A few minutes later, you know, Mr. President, we're a quarter of the way there. Mr. President, we're halfway there. Mr. President, finally the President goes, I'm sorry, Admiral, where are you getting this information from? And Admiral Mullen says, well, you know, there's a guy here. And the President says, there's a guy here? What guy? Well, and the President says, is he talking to McRaven? And Admiral Mullen says, yes, sir? He says, is he seeing what McRaven's seeing? Yes, sir. So, well, where is this guy? Right next door. So Brad Webb was literally in a little anti-room right next to the Situation Room. So as we are about two minutes out from hitting the target, I get this text from General Webb, sir, the Vice President just walked in the room, said, Brad, I'm a little busy, brother. You're gonna have to kind of handle it. Sir, the President just walked in the room. Brad, sir, they're all in the room. And so I said, Brad, you gotta handle this, and he did a magnificent job. He's just a fabulous officer and just retired here recently. But that was when they all came into the little Situation Room, or the little side room there. And of course, that's right at the time where the helicopter went down. So you see the look of concern on everybody's face. I think Secretary Clinton's got her hands up here and nobody looks particularly happy. And so now they are looking on a screen at the same thing, essentially, that I'm seeing. And then that's when I started communicating with the President at that point in time. But the helicopter goes down. I wasn't overly concerned because we had planned of that potential that could potentially happen. We thought it might get shot. As it turned out, when the helicopter came by, when we had done the rehearsal, the CIA had built us a mock-up, but the mock-up had a chain-link fence because we had to rush through this. The same dimensions as the compound, but a chain-link fence. So in the practices when the helicopter came through, the down blast from the helicopter went right through the chain-link fence. But on the day of the mission, the helicopter comes over, the down blast hit this 18-foot-high concrete wall and created a vortex, a vacuum, over the helicopter blades. And so it had no lift. So as I'm sitting kind of watching on my big screens, I'm watching the helicopter and it's kind of doing this. I'm thinking, oh, that does not look good. And I'm listening on my headset to the pilot trying to get control. And then all of a sudden, he careens off into what we referred to as the animal pen. But I knew pretty quickly that the guys were safe. It was a hard landing, but I could hear on the radio, guys were not too happy, obviously, but I knew everybody was alive. And then they just kind of carried on with the plan. Shift plan B. Clearly, the mission succeeded. Thank you for that. But it's not the last time you heard from the President of the United States who shortly thereafter, since you, a tape measure, affixed to a plaque. Can you tell the story of that present from the President of the United States? Yeah, so as the mission is concluding, now I'm on a video teleconference of the present, President's in that little room. And I'm talking to him and he says, well, Bill, do you know whether it's been laden? I said, sir, I don't. I need to go physically. I'm in Afghanistan. I said, I need to go physically see the remains before I'm gonna tell the President of the United States that this has been laden. So the runway was just about five minutes from my little command center. So I drive over to the runway. The seals are just landing in the helicopter. They bring out the body bag and into the hangar bay. And I get down, I unzip its rubberized body bag and I won't get too graphic here. And I looked at him and obviously doesn't look too good. He's got a couple holes in his head. And the beard is a little shorter than what you normally, but it was pretty clearly him. But I realized, look, I'm about to tell the President of the United States this has been laden or not. So I pulled the remains out of the body bag. And I knew the bin laden was six foot four. So I kind of stretch out the remains. Well, I'm six foot two. And I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll lie down next to the remains and see how tall he is. But I thought, you know, I am a three star admiral. Maybe that's a little undignified. So I saw some young seal stand nearby. I said, hey son, how tall are you? He said, sir, I'm six two. I said, good, come here. I said, lie down. He's like, what? I said, lie down. And he actually immediately knew what I was doing. So he laid down next to the remains. The remains were a couple inches longer. It was okay. I didn't think much of it. So I go back to my little command headquarters and I'm on with the President. The President says, well, Bill, what do you think? I said, well, sir, I need to, I can't be a hundred percent sure. I got DNA and this sort of thing. I said, but, you know, it looks like him. And I said, no, by the way, I had a young seal who was six foot two lying down next to him and the remains were about two inches longer. And there's this long pause on the other end of the video. And he says, okay, Bill, let me get this straight. You had $60 million for a helicopter and you didn't have $10 for a tape measure. And I've told folks, look, it was a serious night with serious implications, but it was absolutely the right thing to say at the time to kind of lower the temperature, if you will, in terms of the anxiety. Well, the next day I head back to Washington, D.C. I get there about a day or so later and I have to go Capitol Hill to brief all the committees and my aide gets calls as that's sort of the White House called. President liked to say hi to you, so we zip over to the White House and get into the Oval Office and when we come in, the President says, Bill, thanks, thanks, well, thank you guys. He says, I got something for you. So he goes behind the President's desk and he pulls out a plaque and on the plaque is a brass plate that says, you know, from President Barack Obama to Vice-President Bill McRaven. If we have $60 million for a helicopter, we ought to have $10 for a tape measure and there's a Home Depot tape measure on this plaque. So it is, I always appreciated that. I'm just gonna give you a quick addendum. It speaks volumes about Bill McRaven that President Obama didn't give him that plaque once but twice because he gave it to Bill and Bill in turn gave it to his unit to give them due credit for the mission. The President finds out that Bill's given it away and gives him another one for his family for posterity. So it speaks, again, this is one who talks to, not only talks to talk but walks the walk when it comes to team building. It's a remarkable reflection of your leadership, Bill. What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? You know, as with all parents, it's your kids. You know, it's, I mean, George Ann and I celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary two weeks ago. And, you know, we've been fortunate to raise three great kids. They're all doing well there and my daughter got married the week before that so they're all off the dole, you know? Well, maybe that's not true but they're all married. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is, nobody will care about the bin Laden raid. That will be history, you know, the make your bed will stick around a little bit longer but at some point in time, that goes away too. I mean, the only thing that's worthwhile is, you know, did you do the best you could by your spouse and your kids? And it's hard, back to that, it's hard. You know, I mean, we've been lucky that, I think we did a lot to raise our kids but our kids were just good kids too and we were very fortunate in that regard. After we had our conversation six years ago and the vice president supplanted you on that chair, before we got into our conversation, he acknowledged you with these words. He said, this is a man of enormous, enormous capacity and judgment in all the things I've done in my career and I've met every major head of state in the last 42 years because of the nature of my job. I've met an awful lot of impressive people but I've never met anyone with the courage, the gumption, the values that Admiral McRaven possesses. It's been an honor to have worked with him. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking Bill McRaven, thank you. Thank you very much.