 and welcome to Figments the Power of Imagination. I'm Dan Leaf. I go by Fig and thus the name and I've got a great guest today. We'll get to that in a minute but first of course I have to do my opening rant. What will I rant about the Ukraine situation? Looking pretty dicey in the east and our guest will be able to give us a from the front lines update but if if Russian forces don't withdraw we lose so stalemate that leaves some Russian presence in my mind is absolutely a defeat for the world order not just for Ukraine not just for NATO but for the world order. Secondly I have my Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum shirt on today because it's 80 for 80 day 80th anniversary for the 80 brave men who got into B-25 some aircraft carrier hornets deck and flew to Japan and bombed Japanese islands in a stunning shocking turn of events just five and a half months after the war started the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack by the Dula raid I think changed the course of the war and affected things profoundly on both sides of the Pacific and you should remember those brave men. We ought to ask ourselves how come we were so good at surprises then and we're so bad at surprises not that irritation we need to do better we should be as imaginative as they are and my guests pretty imaginative about how he supports American troops and State Department people around the world and doing their missions. I'd ask you to go back speaking to the Ukraine and look on the ThinkTech website or the YouTube ThinkTech playlist for the military in Hawaii standing with the Ukraine episode I did an interview with Jay Fidel and I think you'll find some thoughts of interest to you but that's not why we're here today let's talk about why we're here we're here to talk about patriotism without politics and to do that I've got a very special guest the man who I met through my daughter we all met her on figments and she introduced me to his non-profit Spirit of America and Jim Hake aloha and welcome to figments power of imagination you're a pretty imaginative guy how you doing Jim aloha great to be with you you're just back from Ukraine got back Saturday yes and you shared a briefing with many of us who are interested in the work of Spirit of America we'll get to that some I've got to give the viewers a caveat though in this my 28th episode of figments the power of imagination Jim's done a gazillion interviews with people far more important and polished than I am with the Wall Street Journal on major broadcast outlets watch all those if you want to get the rest of the story I really want to find out how this figment happened this unique cherry uh Jim I'd say Spirit of America pretty darn unique isn't it yeah we are one of a kind we're the only privately funded non-profit that's approved by the Department of Defense to work alongside US military personnel or around the world to provide private assistance and support of their missions we have pioneered a very entrepreneurial approach to I'll say national security and humanitarian issues that is a great compliment for what government can do and it's yeah we're we're one of a kind big yes we are one of a kind and the tagline and patriotism without politics in my mind has two elements one is you're not red or blue you might be inside you might be in the bell box but but in your actions they're not politically leaning or constrained and the other is you get beyond what the government can do because it is a political process I've got some old pictures over here well not not all of you but where does that patriot come from that's your dad on the left is a navy cb did you say yeah he was a young 22 year old young man in that photograph he joined the navy to join the fight in world war two he was a cb he was in the european theater he was d-day plus two at utah beach you know and so the cbs laid down all the infrastructure so heavy artillery troops can move it and you know massive numbers and so after the beachhead was established upon d-day the cbs came in laid down all the pontoons so everything else could roll in well is that the source of your patriotism of your sense of service to the country or is there more to the story well i i think there's a lot more to the story because my dad like most members of our greatest generation never really talked a lot about a service and you know it was he did his part he was not you know not honored in any special way but he was just one of the americans that did did his part did their part and that's why we always remember him as the greatest generation um so you know i'm not sure quite what it is i have always felt as long as i can remember that the ideas and ideals for which america stands are the best ideas in the world that every person has the inalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness i don't think you get any better than that and uh maybe part of that was growing up by when he was born and grew up in the philadelphia area our nation's birthplace you know in philadelphia you're always trying to take you know credit for as much as you can but you don't you don't get you know there you're always uh feel like you're maybe at the middle or bottom of the list and one of the things that we had growing up was a copy of the declaration of independence on the stairway going from you know downstairs to upstairs to where the kids all had our rooms and i i walked by that declaration every day growing up and i can't say i stopped and reflected on each time but ran up or down but that was part of the uh part of the ethos of growing up being connected to our nation's birth so my daughter yateng whom you've met and you know she's an amazing human being and leader about more than anything else she talks a lot about the importance of symbols and rituals and informing your beliefs and and and pursuing organizational goals which is an aside to say i had a similar thing in our household my dad served in the navy at end world war two his father had served in in europe as a marine in world war one right at the end and uh he passed away when i was five but my grandfather's service cap with the globin anchor sat on the same table you're talking about in our in our house of the year and you're right i didn't stop and genuflect to it or necessarily ponder consciously but it was always there just like your declaration of independence which is truly one of the most remarkable documents ever but that's not why we're here and you have had a pretty big family four siblings if i remember yeah there were there were five of us kids uh you know i'm sure at times an unruly really bunch i was the youngest of the five oh you're the youngest but were you the best football player because i gotta show this picture because it is a pretty cool picture yeah that's uh that's my seat hero hero hero hero hero hero the old video on uh 1970s year uh hair helmet and uh yeah that's that's from high school football i was the captain of our team i think my brother was a better football player than i was but uh i were the same number as he did you know in playing high school ball what position did you play i was an offensive guard and a linebacker i played outside linebacker in our small town at 103 pounds so i played mostly on my butt after getting knocked on my butt uh but the family you kind of reinforce your sense of service because i had six siblings uh five of homes survive and you know you have roles and responsibilities that you can't wait to be asked to feel you just do it okay for my siblings i was not always perfect about that so i don't want nasty emails so then you went to school went to dartmouth and stanford and studied business and and had a pretty good career here's a good life picture watching it i think you said it was a clicker's game but it's right after 9 11 right and that those are my two sons they were four and seven at the time and we were at a basketball game in los angeles where i lived at the time and it was 9 11 that prompted me to start spirit of america so i'm reading your face there um that because i was in pentagon on 9 11 we have a shared experience just like every other american that you're uh and it's you know there is a real sense even though i was already in the military as a one star in the pentagon but what can i do but what can i do to confront this situation but you weren't in the military you were venture capitals i'm going to assume that you're doing pretty well pretty well well at the time i was i started a an internet software company called big buttons which was a predecessor to the apps on iphones and tablets today and the same idea you know you press them that's why it was called big buttons you press a big button to get the information you want rather than having to search around the web to find it and uh i started that i actually closed the first round of funding for that on the exact day that the nasdaq peaked in march of 2000 and which was both good news and bad news because the good news was you could get a frothy market to raise money in the bad news was everything went downhill from there and it made it difficult to make it through what i referred to as the internet extrusion process at the time so when the attacks of 9 11 occurred i was looking for a buyer for the the software that we had built and my immediate thought when those attacks occurred was i wanted to do something to help and but i didn't have any idea what i could do that would be useful and it was and i didn't have any government and military background whatsoever i didn't i never met an active duty member of the military at all no kidding yeah no no no kidding and uh wow so that i didn't uh have any background was a good thing for two reasons one is i was open minded and you know didn't know what couldn't be done that's a little bit of the obvious one but the the other part was that i knew i didn't know so i wasn't going to be the so-called smart guy who could figure out what needed to be done in iraq or afghanistan or anyone else so the very you know we'll talk more about it but the premise of the organization was based on listening to people closest to the problem and listening to what they say is needed rather than come in from a top down customer what's that the customer kind of well yeah right exactly what a concept no kidding and you know one of the things in international the world of international aid and assistance is one kind of how the country operates around the world is the just about the exact opposite of what we know in our own economy has given us the most dynamic and innovative economy in the history of the world but what we use as a nation mainly driven by our government institutions uh you know great in many ways as they are is a top down approach which doesn't it just doesn't work as well as more bottom up entrepreneurial approaches and it's heavily constrained there are i think you're right there are pluses and minuses to it speaking to the leader of government coming out of a long period of isolation complained about dealing with the us for arms sales so why should we do that i said well there are two things you get better stuff because we make better stuff and secondly you get all these constraints and these rules and they reinforce a legitimate ethical approach business but sometimes you have to be faster than that and that's where your business approach really delivered and i have the baseball that's with the spirit of america logo on that you sent to some of us on the board of advisors there but that's that's was your initial idea came from what somebody a soldier in afghanistan was doing with with local people to connect with them yeah it was a really remarkable story and a genuine light bulb moment so it took me a lot of figure out what i could do that would actually be useful and especially as an entrepreneur you learn pretty quickly that you can't confuse motion with progress that you actually have to produce results or you're dead you know there's figuratively speaking of course and so i stumbled upon this was in 2003 at this point where people still channel surfed right now if everything's on demand you don't really channel surf as much if at all channel surfed i came upon this national jay grapica that was telling the story of the special forces team in afghanistan and the scene that caught my eye was these special forces soldiers playing baseball with afghan boys and girls and you have this sergeant first class j smith telling a story about how this came to be that you know he and one of his teammates on the you know special forces a team you know brought over their midst to play catch the kids working for them in their kitchen started to use it to play catch themselves and the sergeant called his wife back home and said honey can you send over to bats balls and mitts so these kids can play a real game and one thing led to another and here's this whole wild scene on on national geographic and so everything crystallized to me at that point in time and i thought this is just great this sergeant his name is j smith he did this on his own initiative you know the idea that anyone would bring baseball to afghanistan would be absurd in a way and he was fired up when he was talking about it and i thought okay there have to be other men and women serving around the world serving our country around the world who want to do something to help the local population and build relationships and better express who we are as americans and they just need some help to do it because they can't do it through government channels you know quickly enough or what have you and i was sure that there would be other people back home like me that would be happy to help if only they knew what was needed and that i could use the internet to connect the two essentially to build a platform that connects supply with demand and what was that was a central idea and so after that i tracked down sergeant smith through the producer of the show we were in touch through email i you know wanted to see him in person to talk about this idea because anything else wouldn't give me a true read on whether it was a good idea so he said okay meet me at fort bragg on uh june 1st and i said great where's fort bragg and uh anyway i found out it was in north carolina and i went there we met and i laid out the idea just what i said which is you know you or people like you need something to help the local population wherever you're serving instead of asking your families you ask me in my organization and i'll use the internet to get people to help and uh jay kept saying this is going to save lives and the third time he said it first this was the first active duty member of the military i'd never met and i had no idea that you know special forces guys are not you know welcoming and eager to meet outsiders and all that sort of thing and i just thought well he has enthusiasm it's natural so uh he explained that because of the relationship that he had built well he and his team built with the villagers by doing things that helped build trust and goodwill with them that the villagers formed the night watch patrol to protect our guys from al-qaeda with them crossing the pakistan border at night and so he he actually explained how this was going to save lives and at that point i thought oh man now i really have to do this i mean i can't hear that and i would never forgive myself if i didn't give it a shot uh understanding that so that's when i started the organization so i do have chicken skin as we sit stay in hawaii say in hawaii um and i wish we had hours to talk about this you and i've talked about it before but you you are representing the best of america um through the spirit thus the name of of being altruistic wherever we are and it's not because we're a better country we were blessed for these incredible circumstances of geography and and everything that led to founding a life liberty in the pursuit of happiness foundation to our our country but also business because america does good business but the government does not do good business and you're bringing that responsive customer focused approach mixed with the altruism of military and diplomatic service overseas it's it's a it's a secret sauce in my mind it really is yeah well and you need both it's not yeah and and so what we bring is a critical and what has been missing piece of the ecosystem to bear which is private entrepreneurial capability that is fast and flexible um has certain kinds of know-how it's not about the money it's about all kinds of things and how you think about doing things more bottom-up approaches but what we do would be impossible without the collaboration with our troops and diplomats so it's it's not that one is better than the other you just need that kind of ecosystem and to get that kind of ecosystem required basically an act of congress and an agreement that only took agreement with the department of defense that only took 15 years to get to get uh in place but that's all solid new yeah and you had the perseverance to do it i'm going to take my brief break now so we can um get to the the rest of the story then talk specifically about ukraine on may second i'll have another great guest i'm blessed with great friends uh to talk about imagining history you can feel uh clint churchville is one of the founders of the pearl arbor aviation museum here on fort island it's an incredible place clint's an incredible guy he's also uh got a unique initiative going on here in hawaii that i'll tell you about but let's get back to jim and spirit of america so you did this you got it started yay you you can go back to business and then leave think deck running but you only did that for a bit and you came back and it's become your life right yes i i did it and why did you come back because you did go back to business for it for i i i did and i should note that the first two officers i met after starting the organization were then colonel joe dunford who was the chief staff to major general jim mattis was the first marine division in camp penalty yeah we have a picture view with general mattis i think yeah yeah you do and uh so that they would well and the shot the other shot is uh at the marines evening parade here in washington dc so uh we did a lot with the marines in iraq and then later in afghanistan and so in 2009 uh then uh you know colonel dunford uh was lieutenant general joe dunford three star marine officer and he invited me to be the guest of honor at the marines evening parade down here you know in washington dc which i had never heard of but it was well and the funny thing is when when he called me up uh to invite me said i'd like to invite you to be the guest of honor at the marines evening parade and i had no idea what he was talking about and i was i said well thank you joe i'll i'll work on my wave you know like like this and jim it's not that unfortunately didn't hang up the phone i said jim it's not that kind of a parade anyway so uh it was you know it's with the uh marine corps band the silent drill team the the just an incredible honor and a deeply deeply moving experience and i thought that if what spirit america had done up to that point in time meant that much to uh general dunford and the marines that they would you know give me and give the organization that honor that i owed it to them to do everything i could especially to help the marines and their deployments to afghanistan because i knew there are our decentralized model of assistance would be a really good match for afghanistan so i came back to the organization and here we are yeah so folks go to their website take a look at the work they do more broadly than ukraine and who's endorsed that their board of advisors myself notwithstanding is an incredible list of leaders who believe in this unique one-of-a-kind model that's worthy of your support and i'll provide that uh link so you can consider donating later you're we have to get to ukraine in the remaining seven minutes so you're just back i know that spirit of america is providing all non-lethal assistance no bullets found missiles so like your helmets body armor um food first aid kits right that's in large in large numbers to the people of ukraine yes i mean so for americans who want to save lives and help ukraine win spirit of america is truly the the best option and what we're doing is taking ukraine side and this is very consistent with what us troops and diplomats are all geared to do which is how do we help ukraine prevail in this genuine battle of good versus evil so most humanitarian assistance organizations that you know we've all heard of will are neutral which means they will not support right uh any side in a conflict well we're taking the side of ukraine in this conflict and i understand we understand that it's not only about ukraine and the terrible human suffering that's taking place there at the hands of russia but it's about the the really the fight to defend the free world that's happening and the front lines right now are in ukraine and it is good versus evil and i've been in a good versus evil fight might be imperfect against imperfect as well but the world order will suffer if the russians are allowed to be victorious in any source so win is almost a dirty word do you get much pushback from donors when you say we're not neutral we're a not neutral charity slash non-government organization or is that something people find attractive well in this particular case i think it's pretty attractive because it's so clear and you know i think people are uncomfortable a little bit with the idea of winning you know it's it's you know it's a little hard to explain and it's you know the world is a complicated place war is you know messy terrible complicated as well and the idea that you would try to affect something to win is just outside of most people's frame of reference but when you talk to people about it they go well of course we want to help ukraine win there's so much at stake you know and and for us you i look at the situation and say well we can help the victims of war all day long but shouldn't we try to stop the suffering at its source you know that's what we need to do and that's what we're doing with the non-lethal assistance to ukrainian armed forces and the civilian volunteers you know people like well you served big so you're not a great example what i'm saying but the other people who just from any walk of life who were taking up arms to defend their country and defend the innocence that are being attacked and killed by the russians every day and if there's any beauty in this ugliness of war it's been i think and you've been there i haven't the response of the common citizens of ukraine who picked up arms and are defending their own lives by their homeland and their freedom yeah it's inspirational and so what i think we see is or some of the benefits of a free society you know as in america where right nobody told nobody told me to start spirit of america i just did it and nobody told these ukrainian civilians who were volunteering to go you know fight as part of what's called the territorial defense forces nobody told them they had to do that and people were you know you have grandmothers who were throwing molotov cocktails at russian tanks not because somebody told her to do it or a side or the job it's it is an expression of a free society which is one of the reasons why it's so important for americans to to help the ukrainians in this fight and um it's a lesson to others who may be oppressed attacked invaded i can think of a few countries locations that face that you're actually providing spirit of america is actually providing some training um to those who decide to uh man up woman up whatever join the militia but that's based on a long-standing relationship how long has spirit of america been engaged in ukraine because you can't do this instantly you need relationships no and it's true and a lot a lot of people look at the situation kind of try to rush in and it's much more complicated than it seems you know you think okay well to send some body armor and helmets or first aid kits over to ukraine to a soldier easy day and it's not but uh we have been active in ukraine since 2014 since the i'll say the most recent original russian invasion and you know there have been i think before this war started somewhere close to 20 000 ukrainians who've been killed at russian hands in in that country and uh one of the first projects that we did was help to stand up ukraine's first armed forces radio station to meet the information needs of the ukrainian soldiers on the front lines between 2015 and and well up well up until now uh the station is still still broadcasting and it's an answer to you know the mass of russian propaganda and misinformation which is polluting that uh that region and it seems that the ukraine is winning the information war which is shocking shocking um so you've got relationships we we only have a tenth of the time i'd love to talk maybe you'll come back get an update as things progress in ukraine but i know because i've assisted minorly in minor ways with some of your efforts in asia but you're in africa you're in the middle east you've been in syria afghanistan iraq the african continent laus bungolia vietnam uh pacific islands i think uh does that work go on even though you clearly jim haix focused on ukraine as the boss does does that work continue yeah our operations uh all around the world are continuing and you know we are supporting the efforts of u.s military and state department personnel in all the places that you you mentioned and you know a good way to think about it is for anyone serving this country abroad spirit america is the best friend they could possibly have because our only agenda is to help them succeed in what they're trying to do and to advance both uh you know our interests in national security objectives but also bring people to choose our side and to choose a side of freedom democracy you know what we stand for as a country and uh you represent the very best i think jim of what we stand for and you know it's it's hard not to get choked up to see it in such an important time uh when the country seems so divided uh you you unite the efforts of civilians government diplomats in the military we talked a little bit about this because united we win divided we don't win and the bad folks win and there's a lot of symbolism we talked about in in what america is and what america needs to be we're not perfect no country is but we bring a lot of hope to the world and you expand the impact of that hope through spirit of american i'm proud to be associated with the organization and to know you uh folks i'm going to ask you to donate to think tech why too because they make this possible but before i do let me give you our youtube playlists for both the old pigments on reality and this show uh so scan those bad boys and please click like because it makes me feel good remember that this is truly a not-for-profit endeavor go to spirit of america's uh website take a look and donate if you can if you just want to feel good go there if not if you got a headache go there you'll feel better um jim thanks so much uh for all you do for being a friend and for your leadership how many folks are there around the spirit of america team we have 27 now we've been doing a lot of work and getting the kind of donation support you should but you need more and they need it uh friends to save lives and to support freedom so uh let's stay in touch jim i'm sure we will we always do and uh i hope to have you back on uh maybe in a few months when we know more about the outcome in the ukraine well pig thank you for having me it's been a both a pleasure and an honor to be with you and uh thanks everyone for watching and listening in today all right god bless jim thanks folks thank you for joining us for pigments the power of imagination i'll be back as you know in a couple of weeks to have clint churchill and talk about history uh think tec hawaii is a great non-profit also needs your support to bring you citizen journalists like me sharing their ideas on a really wide array of topics that otherwise would make here so thanks for watching and aloha thank you so much for watching think tec hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linkedin and donate to us at thinktec hawaii dot com mahalo