John Ʌ Konrad V
@johnkonrad • 154,859 subscribers
CEO @gCaptain | US Merchant Marine | Ship Captain | Pentagon Press | Author: Fire on the Horizon | Shipbuilder | Blacklisted by Wikipedia | K5HIP 🇺🇸
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BREAKING: US Navy will not open the Strait of Hormuz Trump gives nations who import oil from the Middle East three options: 1) Buy your oil from US and Venezuela instead 2) Secure the Strait themselves with limited US support Or 3) Wait for Hormuz to reopen naturally
John Ʌ Konrad V2,186,786 次观看 • 3 个月前
“He did something jaw-dropping to me. He read a statement from his phone.” That is the issue right there. Scott Pelley was not making an argument. He was applying emotional blackmail to CBS. It is the same tactic that works so well in corporate HR today: frame composure as coldness, preparation as cowardice, and discipline as moral failure. But serious people write things down when the words matter. Priests read from notes at funerals. Presidents read prepared statements. Officers read casualty notifications. Judges read verdicts. They do it because mistakes are unacceptable. That has been true since the beginning of parchment. The disciples took notes after the death of Jesus and carried those words around the world. Reading carefully is not weakness. It is reverence you imbecile.
John Ʌ Konrad V276,609 次观看 • 1 个月前
“Unprepared for drones,” Meet Admiral Cooper, THE guy running the Iran war Former CO of the Navy’s 1st Drone & AI Task Force. Commander of Red Sea ops where drones attacked 170 soft targets. How do I know? Because I WATCHED HIM SAY IT ON 60 minutes 2y ago you bafoons 👇👇
John Ʌ Konrad V563,452 次观看 • 4 个月前
Wow. Hillary’s former running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, accused Navy Secretary Hung Cao of lying and got publicly stuffed into a locker by CNO Adm. Caudle. Cao said legacy media inflated reports of food shortages and broken toilets into fake news. Kaine called Cao a liar and suggested he was sweeping problems under the toilet mat. Then Caudle stepped in and explained that one head going down equals about 1% of roughly 6 million turd flushes — which, at sea, is not a scandal. It’s an engineering miracle. My suggestion? Let’s get Timmy a gold-plated porta-potty, strap him to it for safety, and put the thing on a roller coaster so he can experience 90 seconds of shipboard reality while he’s taking a sh!t. I don’t mean to be crude but Tim Kaine deserves it. Nothing. NOTHING. Pisses off sailors more than when they are working to keep sewage systems working and some puke in a suit and tie who’s never stood under a leaking sh!tter valve calls to give the ship a hard time. Seriously, toilet systems aboard ship were the bane of my existence as Chief Mate. I’ve been completely covered in human waste multiple times and would have traded my left nut for a 1% failure rate. The Admiral’s right. Hung Cao is telling the truth. It’s fake news and the truth is a miracle. And if I was Hung I’d give every single engineer on that ship who turned a toilet wrench on the USS Ford a medal for a job well done! BZ to Admiral Caudle for shutting this nonsense down.
John Ʌ Konrad V278,761 次观看 • 2 个月前
Driving home from Thanksgiving, I was listening to this with my son & had to pull the car over. It hit that hard. Jocko Willink said that being prior enlisted meant he learned to “speak E-5.” Then he became an officer and had to learn to “speak officer.” Later, as an admiral’s aide, he learned to “speak GOFO.” He became trilingual. That’s his unfair advantage. It hit me: that’s the single greatest factor behind every success I’ve had in my life. Early in my career I learned this the hard way. The hardest way possible. My father was dying. My grades at USNA weren’t great but above the line. My roommate, a young Black mid with a 0.8 GPA, got summoned to the Admiral. His congressman had prepped him taught him exactly what to say, how to frame his struggle, how to speak “FOGO” He walked out with an emergency summer tutoring plan. A week later it was my turn. The Chaplain told the Superintendent about my dad & he wanted a meeting. “Family is most important,” he said. “Go home and be with him.” I got angry. I told him the best thing for my dad’s health was me graduating. He didn’t budge. I thought he didn’t care. I didn’t understand the language he was speaking. Years later I learned Adm Larson was quietly pushing certain groups out & keeping others in. But I’ve never blamed him or DEI or anything but my inability to speak flag officer. I took ownership. The truth was simple: coming from an enlisted family, I could barely speak ‘officer,’ never mind ‘admiral.’ I got a Presidential nomination & didn’t have a congressman to teach me the FO dialect. Bill Clinton sure as hell wasn’t calling to coach me. So I left for Maritime College, with a much lower reputation but a higher attrition rate & more difficult course load. In the Merchant Marine my career exploded. Captain. Youngest Distinguished Alumnus. Guinness World Records. Bestselling book. Built the most visited maritime website in the world. Now I’m worth millions and have a life I couldn’t have imagined, a beautiful family, my work makes an impact on the maritime world. I’m blessed but I still think about that horrible day in the Admirals office every day (which is why my haters always bring it up). I motivates me. My secret? I became a student of languages. All of them Most captains avoid the engine room I practically lived in it. Learned how engineers think & talk. Earned favors. I sat in union halls just to absorb how unions talk. Spent nights in drilling shacks offshore listening to that culture. Took ships with international crews Moved to Silicon Valley to embed myself with early Facebook employees. Embedded with NYT and NPR reporters—NOT enjoyable— because I wanted to learn the language of the people who shape narratives. More recently, I’ve been in DC learning how the top civilian leaders talk. And now my son is studying aeronautics and space. My advice to him is simple: Join the rocket club. Join the startup club. Sit in on nuclear engineering classes. Hang out at the ATC simulator. You don’t have to be the top 1% in any of these fields. You need to speak just enough of their language to call one of the top 1% and make them want to help you. That’s the real secret Communication is a perishable skill. I write long posts and editorials every day because I never want to stand in front of a GOFO again and lose an opportunity to simply be understood. So here’s the lesson: Be at least trilingual. Learn the enlisted language. Learn the officer language. Learn the executive language. Don’t get trapped inside your comfort zone. People say, “I’ll never be CEO. I’m not ruthless or connected enough.” Fine. You don’t need the job. You just need to be able to stop the CEO as the elevator doors close & explain, clearly in HIS language, why your idea matters. You do that by volunteering to serve coffee in the board room. That’s it. That’s all you need. And Jocko’s right the SECNAV does notice. His office called me Tuesday to “discuss” my frigate post 😜
John Ʌ Konrad V991,381 次观看 • 7 个月前
op-ed: I’ve spoken with multiple senior Pentagon officials and others indirectly involved in the Maduro raid. Two things stand out. First: the operation was far more impressive than the public realizes. Second: in my assessment as an observer, the decisive factor behind its speed and success was set months earlier at Quantico when Trump and Hegseth delivered a blunt message directly to ALL the generals and admirals: “You can take more risk because we have your back.” I see no hard, on-the-record evidence that the Rules of Engagement were formally loosened in the Maduro raid (maybe they were, maybe they weren’t). What I do see is overwhelming evidence that the units involved internalized that message. Historically, ROEs are drafted by senior JAGs, tightened by senior administrators, then tightened again at every level down the chain until, in some cases, platoon commanders can barely return fire while under attack. This time, more trust was placed in officers closer to the fight. This administration trusts warfighters. It trusts that well-trained men and women on the front lines have the judgment and ethical compass to make real-time decisions to protect themselves and civilians in complex combat environments. Ironically, that trust reduces civilian casualties and the risk of war crimes because enemy fighters are stopped before they can use civilians, including children, as shields. This isn’t a new problem. My father, a medic in Vietnam, talked about it often. Civilians brought to him with horrific wounds by soldiers who saw the enemy coming but weren’t allowed to fire. Angry, frustrated troops. An enemy soldier burned alive because base security was authorized only to fire warning flares as he crossed the wire. This is one reason we’ve struggled in wars since Korea, a conflict that ended in a draw largely because every time we gained overwhelming advantage, negotiations followed and ROEs were tightened. Tightened by our own generals pursuing peace without learning that you can’t negotiate in good faith with communists. How many have suffered in North Korea because our forces were restrained while they were winning? We have struggled in wars since Korea except the Gulf War where Powell and Schwarzkopf told the American public they wanted an unfair fight. To be clear: I don’t have hard, on-the-record proof. But after covering many failed missions where overly rigid ROEs were the most common complaint, slowing operations and endangering both warfighters and civilians, this is one complaint I’m simply not hearing from anyone today. The Maduro raid is what the American military is capable of when Admirals and Generals let the warfighter do their job.
John Ʌ Konrad V726,223 次观看 • 6 个月前
If this doesn’t spike your blood pressure… If it doesn’t make you want to kick a door off its hinges… If you’re not on your feet right now chanting USA USA USA You’re either dead inside or Canadian. Probably both. Forget all that Navy SEAL nonsense. Go join the US MERCHANT MARINE!
John Ʌ Konrad V195,088 次观看 • 2 个月前
The Navy has no National Guard. No reserve unit with a ship. They even stab the Sea Scouts in the back. BUT Secretary Sean Duffy controls the Ready Reserve Fleet, yes it’s a rusty, broken mess, but Congress could fund it & actually buy ships that matter AND these
John Ʌ Konrad V539,285 次观看 • 5 个月前