Speaker 1: It's great to welcome to the program today, Stanley McChrystal,
retired United States Army general and also author of the very interesting book Risk A User's Guide.
I really appreciate your time today. It's great to have you on.
Speaker 5: Well, it's my pleasure, David. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So you talk in the book about how we all have a sort of immune system to deal with
risk that evaluates risk and is is sort of in an iterative way analyzing what are acceptable
and unacceptable levels of risk in life. Can you talk a little bit about how the system operates,
how it's developed, where it comes from? Speaker 5: Absolutely. As we started studying
for the book, we first came to the conclusion that the greatest risk to us is in fact us.
And we came upon the analogy to the human immune system and the human immune system is a miracle.
It basically detects threats that are ingested by our bodies, analyzes each one for their threat to
us, responds normally, destroys them if necessary, and then learns from that process. And that's the
principle behind vaccination, and it does that about 10000 times a day. They estimate on things
that could make us sick or kill us. And yet we don't have to spend much time thinking about it
unless the immune system doesn't work well. Organizations and actually individuals have what
we call a risk immune system, and that's a series of 10 risk control factors like communication,
narrative action, timing, leadership, things that form a holistic ability to respond. And what this
really says is we can't predict every risk or threat that's going to approach us. We're just
not that good at in a complex world. It's a it's a fool's errand to try. But what we can do is make
ourself more resilient, make our organizations better able to respond to those things that come
at us from every direction and of unexpected form. Speaker 1: I want to kind of build up to big
organizations like the military and large corporations, but maybe we could start just
with an example at the individual level. I remember when I was 18, I got a motorcycle
and my parents didn't like it. But I think they thought if they tell me, get rid of it,
it'll make me want the motorcycle more. So I think it was sort of like a let them get it out of his
system thing. And I had an experience where I hit a little bump. The front wheel came down and the
handlebars started getting a little squirrely. And at that point, I, it was a fraction of a second
where I said, this is beyond my risk tolerance. I realized it's too dangerous and I got rid of it.
Now that one instant decision, I'm guessing, is coming cumulatively at the end of a whole bunch
of different inputs over the course of my life, up to that point that allows me to intuitively assess
that the risk here now exceeds the reward. How does that system get built up over time?
Speaker 5: Well, over time, you first learn the ability to know what's important to you.
Typically when you're about 18, when I had a motorcycle as well,
I was interested in being cool and going places and not spending a lot of money to do that. And
so that became a very high priority for me, and I was able to sort of compartment away the idea that
I would set the bike down and get scraped up, which I did and other things like that. And so
you start with prioritizing what's important. And then as experience comes, you also learn
that things can happen in the military. People talk about new soldiers being scared in combat.
Well, the reality is, every brand new soldier thinks they're bulletproof
until they realize they are not. So it is older, more experienced soldiers, in fact, that have a
better appreciation for what the dangers of combat can bring. And they tend to be more
cautious. They they tend to to do more things, to prepare effectively, to wear body armor,
to do all those things. So we will learn through a lifetime. What's important to us, what we've got
to protect. And then we also learn what are the things we have to do to put in place protections?
In some cases, it's modify our behavior. In other cases, it's use different equipment,
have a car, not a motorcycle, things like that. Speaker 1: When it comes to the military,
it seems that there's this additional component that that has to fit into the risk calculation,
which is that elected officials who are outside of the military make decisions about what they want
the military to be doing. So, I mean, thinking about Iraq as an example, we could we could do an
assessment of the kind of risks of that mission from from a strategic and tactical standpoint
that doesn't really seem to account for the political motivations that
exist in even thinking of doing that in the first place. So how does an organization
like the military where risk assessment is so important? Deal with the fact that much of what
is being done is politically oriented? Speaker 5: Well, you hit a good one
here because they be because these things are often tension.
You may have policymakers who want to accomplish something in there. They're prepared to accept
great risk to the force so they can do that because they think that the overarching
objective is important. And as long as everybody is informed and aligned on that, then you can
operate pretty well. The problem is when you have them intentions, like in Mogadishu in 1993,
there was this mission creep and the force on the ground thought that their mission was to get Farah
headed. They did a number of operations. The risks grew higher. And then when it ended up on the
night of three four October 1993 with the big firefight, which 18 Americans were killed,
policymakers recoiled because suddenly that level of loss was a mystic political risk
that they weren't prepared to accept. And so what had happened is you can find people can
wander away from being focused and aligned on the real risks to something and then unexpected
outcomes produce really difficult circumstances. Speaker 1: Did you have situations where you
were analyzing a situation or a mission from a risk standpoint in the way that the
military does it? And then when you present it to an elected official, you realize that
you guys just are not on the same page that the risk assessment, the way you're doing it
is disconnected from their political priorities. Speaker 5: Well, in fact, and often their
political priorities aren't perfectly aligned in their own minds because they just haven't thought
through it enough. So, for example, during the war in Afghanistan, there was a great concern over
American casualties, and I absolutely get that the people that you're serving with, you don't
want them injured or killed at the same time, a policymaker be maybe saying the important thing
is to prevent any American casualties. Well, you can't accomplish the mission if you don't accept
some level of risk. I go to the loss of Ambassador Chris Stevens in North Africa a few years ago,
and there was this call that Chris Stevens should not have been in Benghazi, should not have been
in a location where he could be at risk. What I would argue, if you don't want him at risk,
put him in Ohio. The problem is there's a different risk. He won't accomplish any diplomatic
objectives. So you've got to understand what the overall requirement is and then temper
your risks according to that. And too often we have policymakers, people on the ground
in different players not aligned with a common understanding of what the actual
mission is and what the risks involved are. Speaker 1: How could those things be better
aligned? Because it seems fundamental to the way that the military operates, which is the military
operates in one way, whereas their missions are often guided by different considerations and it
creates this conflict that you're talking about or this in. Congruence, you may be.
Is there some way that it could be organized differently so that those are better aligned?
Speaker 5: Well, first is communication. And of course, a clear narrative provided by leadership
and the military is not clean on this. It's not like the military's got it right and other people
don't. Sure. If you give military people a requirement, often they will say, Well,
the the thing that is least risky to us is to use massive fire support, pummeling the area,
go in and occupy, and that reduces the risk to our soldiers that we will accomplish the
overall mission. But if in doing so, you alienate the population or you create popular resentment
around the world to what you do, then what you've done is you've actually lost the big objective.
By trying to reduce risks at the local level in Afghanistan, we had a period going into
an area in Helmand where the local commander used a term called courageous restraint. We are going
to have our soldiers operate in a way that is actually riskier for them, their personal safety.
But it's more aligned with what we have to do to win the support of the Afghan people.
And that's where this communication has to occur because policymakers can see soldiers at accepting
risk and they go, No, I don't want them to accept risk when in reality you got to be focused on
what's going to produce the most important outcome, the overall mission that you're therefore
Speaker 1: in in the midst of these missions. You know, sometimes we hear that not that it's easy,
but that it's typical that individual service members will say, you know, I'm not here because
I decided that this is the mission we should be doing. I'm here, I'm a cog in the wheel or
I'm doing my part and there's, you know, a chain of command, et cetera. And the political
considerations are not important. But then in the later years of the Iraq War in particular,
as I remember it vividly, we started to hear more stories from people coming back and saying when
we were there, we were talking about if this was their opinion, why are we even here? Iraq didn't
do 911. I don't understand what we're doing, and that started to become a factor for some. Not for
all. Obviously, many, many believe that that we should have been there. Can you talk a little
bit about how common that is and how it impacts service members to be on a mission that they may
think is not one that should be even on the table? Speaker 5: I think it's very common in almost
every war war, and it comes partly from a misalignment on what the actual mission is.
And there's also comes when the frustration if you don't think you're accomplishing it,
many people don't understand that. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln thought that he was
going to lose reelection and he thought he was going to lose reelection because
people in the North had soured on the war and particularly in the eastern theater. They had
not seen a tremendous amount of success and so fresh frustration soldiers were saying,
I am fighting in a war that we are not winning and therefore I'm not accomplishing anything. And so
that happened in Afghanistan, that happened in Iraq. You also see things that you know with your
Iraqi partners or Afghans. You see corruption or a lack of effectiveness, and you become cynical.
You go, Why am I here doing my best and risking my life when in fact, the people who
we are theoretically helping aren't doing an equal amount? That's that's Age-Old. You'll
never do away with that. Hmm. You do try to address it so that soldiers understand.
But then you also try to make sure soldiers understand the overall purpose of their mission.
It's really important for commanders and political leaders to constantly explain to soldiers, why
are they doing this? If I think of soldiers in the Philippines in 19 early 1942, as the Japanese were
moving to conquer it, which resulted in the Bataan Death March, many of them felt that those
they'd been abandoned and there was no point in trying to defend something that was indefensible.
And it gets down to communication and leadership Speaker 1: when it came to Afghanistan, because
this is an area that you know well and the recent withdrawal that President Joe Biden carried out.
My perspective was when Donald Trump proposed it. I liked the idea. And when Joe Biden did it,
I liked the idea. And my belief is that the problems that took place would have
taken place no matter when it was done and that fundamentally, as you talk about the big picture
versus the nitty gritty, it was the right thing to do. Do you have thoughts about how it went,
given that you spent so much time there? Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm probably more forgiving
on the actual problems at the end, and some people might be, and the first reason is when
President Trump did the Doha Accords and agreed that Americans would leave by one May 2021. He
was ending the forever war, and that was what the consensus of the American people really wanted to
have happen. Yes. And so the next 18 months, the Taliban didn't attack Americans because
it wasn't in their interest. They just wanted us to leave. The danger was from Al Qaeda and ISIS,
who had a reason to want to attack us on the way out. So as this small American force, it was
down about 2500 people when it came time to reduce that force and begin the actual withdrawal. You're
going to have increasing risk as it gets smaller because less ability to defend yourself. Now,
of course, that the question is why can't the government? Why couldn't the government
of Afghanistan maintain legitimacy and its military maintain coherence during that process?
Well, what I would say is the Afghan government struggled with legitimacy from the beginning.
Partly, but their own fault and partly for factors, but also the Taliban did a really
good information warfare campaign so that right after the Doha Accords were signed for 18 months,
they went around the country and they said as soon as the Americans leave, we're going to flip power
here. And so no, no rational Afghan official or military wants to be the last person killed
in a losing cause. So the Taliban didn't conquer Afghanistan, they occupied it. You know, when when
the air went out of the balloon, I know that we we say it's an intelligence failure by American
intelligence, community or military not to know that what's going to happen.
And I would say this is more art and science. It was hard. So I don't think it was
went like we wanted it to. I don't think the overall outcome certainly doesn't make
anybody happy. But but I don't think it was the fiasco that is sometimes described. There were
risks involved and people knew that. Speaker 1: Do you think it would
have been just as chaotic had Donald Trump stuck to his original timeline?
Speaker 5: I think the risk of it would have would have been there, I don't think that would have
changed the risk of that. You can't guarantee it would have happened, but I don't see any
reason to believe it would have been different. Speaker 1: Fair, fair. I guess we should talk a
little bit about organizations and corporations when we talk about risk. Just to go back to the
start of our conversation, we've talked about individuals in the military. It seems one of
the unique things about the idea of a corporation is that the corporation is a legal entity. It's an
idea, but it's made up of individuals. And because of the size of some very large corporations, as
well as a kind of imbalanced risk reward for the individuals where they could make a decision that
has the potential to make them a lot of money, but has relatively little downside because at the end
of the day, there is this apparatus called an S corporation or a C corporation that that exists
there. Does that skew risk calculation for large corporations? And could it be a factor in these
situations where you hear about big corporations doing bad things, whether they are environmentally
or legally or whatever the case may be? Speaker 5: I think it can. I don't think
it always does that, but if we forget that corporations have a responsibility as an entity,
think of them as a huge person, they still have a responsibility for their conduct and for things
that they do. But there is this idea that if you're in the herd and you're doing something,
you know, it's wrong. It's like being at a big social event and everybody starts acting stupid.
You know, they're drinking too much and they're rushing the stage or whatever they're doing.
There's this ability to think you are anonymous in the crowd, and sometimes you are incentivized
to make a lot of money. I think during the roll up to the real estate crisis 2008. There were a
lot of people who knew things were not good, but yet they are making a lot of money at the moment
and they go, Well, I'm just a small entity and a big thing. And what's the chance that the big
thing is going to collapse? And of course, the reality is the big thing is made up a
lot of small things so it can collapse. So I think there's a moral licensing, there's a moral hazard
that you can think you don't have the same level of responsibility because of that sense,
you're just a cog in the in the large wheel. Speaker 1: The book is fascinating. It's called
Risk a user's guide. We've been speaking with the author, Stanley McChrystal,
retired United States Army general. I so appreciate your time today. I really do.
Speaker 5: David, thanks very much for the conversation.