No One is Ready for This Coming War - Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf - #1089

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
I'm going to play a little trick for the first time ever in this studio.

**Andy Stumpf** (0:03)
Okay.

**Chris Williamson** (0:03)
To make you feel a little bit more at home. So, you're a man who operated largely in the dark.
When you are doing raids, when you would have been operating, I imagine, some stuff would have been by day, but other stuff would have been by night.

**Andy Stumpf** (0:16)
Unless there was an extremely compelling reason to do so exclusively at night. Oh, nice.

**Chris Williamson** (0:22)
Here we go.

**Andy Stumpf** (0:22)
Transitioning, evening.

**Chris Williamson** (0:25)
And now we're in a blood moon.

**Andy Stumpf** (0:26)
We usually didn't go out at full moon.

**Chris Williamson** (0:29)
Okay. Because there's too much visibility.

**Andy Stumpf** (0:30)
Illumination. So, you know, even though you can see at night with night vision goggles, we constantly were looking at the illumination, the external illumination, because at some point, people can almost see you as well as you can see them with the technological advantage. So we would avoid the high illumination nights and obviously aviators and things that fly that could be backlit against those, they try to avoid it as well.

**Chris Williamson** (0:51)
What are you surprised by with what's happening with warfare over the last few years? I can't work out whether technology is making things more humane or more dangerous.

**Andy Stumpf** (1:02)
I think an equal measure of both. I've had a lot of conversations about this with guys during the time period that I served. I'd never for a single second thought about the danger of drone warfare. I don't mean drones to us was predators or reapers or overhead surveillance platforms that had great sensor pause, and they could pipe stuff down and you can have the ability to look at what they can see. It was great for situational awareness. I never once was concerned about somebody essentially ordering a drone on the internet. Not that that's how it's being built in or made in Ukraine, specifically in Iran has some smaller ones as well. But having that be a kinetic option on the battlefield, didn't think about it a single time. And I am glad that I am not a part of that because I mean, I have an internet connection just like anybody else. And I don't go searching for those videos, but sometimes they find you and people running away from basically a DJI drone that detonates.
The hard pass, the hardest of passes being involved in that.

**Chris Williamson** (2:03)
I read that field medics are not getting the same sort of trauma training that they used to, because the kind of injuries that soldiers are getting on the battlefield are totally different now.

**Andy Stumpf** (2:15)
Well, towards the tail end of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was very IED heavy. So, it would be explosive wounds, which are really gnarly. Not that any kind of wound is particularly great, but it just tears things to pieces. And most of the stuff I'm seeing with the drone warfare is kind of the same. It's explosive base. So, maybe.
I don't know.

**Chris Williamson** (2:39)
I'm not sure. It might be more aggressive. It might be able to be more powerful. I don't know. But, yeah. What have you been surprised by? Would you have been able to predict the direction that warfare was going to go in?

**Andy Stumpf** (2:51)
No, because at the same time, let's take Ukraine as an example. At the same time that they're at the cutting edge of what's going on with electronics, there are videos of guys running through trenches, fighting at distances between you and I, like just putting AKs around a corner, which by the way, kind of a fan of clearing a corner that way. Like, hello, is anybody here? God, not advisable, honestly. I mean, maybe like Pika. No.

**Chris Williamson** (3:15)
It's a high-risk strategy.

**Andy Stumpf** (3:16)
It is controversial. I'm not here to tell anybody how to party, so you do you. But I mean, so we're talking back to World War I and World War II, but at the same time, the leading edge of electronics in the same battle space.
What? So it's this blend of innovation and evolution, and then humans getting it on, like, eye to eye.

**Chris Williamson** (3:37)
Do you think we're overhyping AI in warfare? Because each technological development is basically touted as the end of one era and the beginning of something different.

**Andy Stumpf** (3:46)
I don't know. The way it's been described to me is that there's phases that AI is coming in.
Right now, there's a human in the loop, meaning a human in making the final decision may be assisted by AI. Then there's human on the loop, meaning kind of just overwatching the AI. And then the phase that I think terrifies everybody is human out of the loop.