The Steady State Sentinel is produced by The Steady State, a community of former national security professionals who spent their careers safeguarding the United States, at home and abroad. Today, we continue that mission by staying true to our oaths to defend the Constitution, uphold our democracy, and protect our nation's security. Join our expert hosts as they interview field-tested guests whose unique experiences shed light on the crises and challenges facing our nation. Good day. This is Margaret Hennock from The Steady State. I'm a 25-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency's Clandestine Service, and I'm now working with the Steady State, a political advocacy group. And my guest tonight is Jack Hopkins. Jack is a Navy veteran, a behavioral consultant with a substack called Jack Hopkins Now. I recommend it to everybody. It's terrific. And Jack, if you are ready to go, I would like to know how did you get into the political world event writing? business? And when did you decide to do it? Was it a major change for you when you changed? It was a major change. I kind of entered into that without realizing what I was doing in 2018. Wow. That was a real hard pivot for me, as I think I might have mentioned on our previous podcast episode, I had been a Republican largely for many years, although I did vote for Obama in 2008. So I was kind of a strange cat in that way. I was raised a Republican. I kind of thought of myself as a Republican, but I didn't have any real hard line issues with voting for somebody who I thought was the better pick in any given election. The COVID debacle, more than anything else, I was a former Navy hospital corpsman, EMT, nurse, with multiple family members in nursing. and somebody, although I haven't worked in that field for years, over 20 years to be exact, it's still a real passion of mine. I still subscribe to nursing journals. I do stay up on medical trends and changes that are happening. So it's something I pay a lot of attention to. And when I watched this thing start to unfold and the trashing of some of our nations, and in some cases, some of the world's top epidemiologists, you know, you're just, You're rocked back on your heels. You're not necessarily watching what they're saying be refuted, although you were. But you, more significant than that to me, you were watching their credibility and their personalities, the people themselves being trashed. At a moment where it was being predicted that a lot of people were going to die, perhaps millions, and that prediction, unfortunately, is one that came true. That lit a fire inside of me that I couldn't have put out if I would have wanted to. And it's a fire that has only gotten hotter with each passing month since that time. So there was never a decision, hey, I'm going to write about. I just started doing it. The next thing I knew, I had a little following and I thought, okay, well, at least there's some people who want to read what I'm writing. And I just went from there. And you've been doing it ever since? I have. Interesting. What do you think are the three most important, scary, whatever national security challenges we as a country face today? And if you have four, that's okay with me. Okay. Number one, and it's one we didn't even used to talk about. We didn't even used to think about it. It just, I guess I wouldn't say, and you would know better than I, having been with the CIA, but in general, it might have been on the radar of some people, but it wasn't something on the radar of the general public, and that is domestic threats. So I think, number one, the enforcement domestically with the combination of no public trust, okay, that is, that's number one. which kind of, I guess, a subcategory of that is the escalation of ICE, which almost anybody listening is all too familiar with what's gone on in recent days and weeks, actually, months for that matter. Then we have one that I think is probably not talked about as much as it should be, and that is the rising level of threats on our federal judges. You know, we don't have to agree with a decision that a judge makes, but to have a functioning republic, we absolutely have to make it okay for judges to be able to render a decision without fear of threat to themselves or their family or death. we cannot function in a healthy way with that that situation increasing i think it was senator dick durbin who recently uh talked about some research uh that had come out that looked into this and and had i don't know if it was uh it almost certainly wasn't causation but there was definitely a correlation between the rhetoric coming from the right and the increased threats on judges. And then number three, right now, the triangle, I call it, of Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, and Iran. Give me more words on that, please. Yes. You know, right now, I think to the average person who's gone to work and comes home tired, they've been to the grocery store and they just flip on the television for, you know, 30 minutes, but they kind of watch it, watch the news while they're doing something else. or they just kind of scroll through their social media and see what headlines are there. I think a lot of people look at this right now as a regional issue. And maybe one could argue that that is a regional issue at the moment. The problem with this as it currently stands, Benjamin Netanyahu has recently indicated he's willing to use military force in certain situations against Iran. Donald Trump is making that clearer every day that he's willing to. In a situation like this, one misstep, one misstep can take this from regional to global. Because outside of that triangle of Iran, Netanyahu, and Trump, there are other people closely associated to what might happen there. But as of now, there's still enough of a gap that I think we can focus on Iran, or the average person can focus on Iran. When you combine this Trump Netanyahu Iran the rising domestic enforcement without the trust of the American people we sitting on a powder keg you know Can you walk back just for a second to the Netanyahu-Trump-Iran nexus, I guess? Yeah. And give me a couple more words on how you might see it blowing up. Pardon that, you know, expanding, expanding. Right, right. Oh, I think blowing up was probably appropriate for this particular. Me too, but I just didn't want to say it. There's always this, I guess I would call it a specific, specifically ambiguous relationship between Netanyahu and Trump. On the one hand, you might say that it was very transparent and very obvious. But on the other hand, I sometimes catch myself thinking, you know what? It seems so obvious that it's very easy to miss something here. To what degree those two work in tandem for a common cause or, and it's not an either or, I guess I should clarify that. I don't believe it's an either or, you know, they're either working together for a common cause or or for. No, I think they could very much be working for their own outcomes and motives and goals. But also, I think most people would agree they have they have a shared interest. we've watched in the last couple of years benjamin netanyahu take a very trump-like position on things when you have those two men operating from the power base that they do i i think my my answer comes down to what other players are involved that are not on the stage with them right now. Does that make sense? It does. There are people, there are leaders who have a vested interest in what happens here. Netanyahu and Trump, we can watch. Both of them, they love the spotlight. They love to talk. They love to show that... that show of strength, right? They don't worry me quite as much as the people who don't love the spotlight, as the players who are very much a part of it, perhaps, but not showing their hand or even that they are in the poker game, right? Mm-hmm. So to pin down exactly, you know, what it is that would happen or who, I think the fact that at least I can't clearly answer that is what causes me the most concern. You know, as I was kind of catching up on that today, I left with more, for myself, I left with more questions than I did answers. If we were to stick to the narrative that is in mainstream media or in most public reporting, it seems pretty cut and dry, right? that, okay, we've got Israel that said, hey, you do this, we do this. We've got Trump that says, you do this, or you don't do this, we do this. It's pretty clear. I don't think it's that clear, though. I don't. That's the troubling thing. I think the domestic issues here at home are much clearer. than the Trump-Netanyahu-Iran triangle, right? The domestic issue is one that I think we are so clear on because with this topic in particular, the president is holding nothing back at this point. In fact, he takes pride in defiantly describing what is happening, what his next steps are, and then defending the not defendable acts of, right, Renee Nicole Good, for example. And in a way, you know, she's really captured the spotlight in terms of mainstream media, which in one respect it should. The only detriment to that is there are, I guess, lesser in terms of violence stories in that they didn't culminate with a death that are happening all day long in regards to ICE and in many cases now American citizens, right? We're no longer just talking about immigrants, people who came here under other than legal setup in terms of immigration. Now I think the American people are saying, wait a minute. I was okay with this when it was about them, right? Yeah, totally. Because I don't identify with them. So I might have made a remark to a coworker or to my husband or my daughter that, oh, that's terrible. But I didn't think about it beyond there. Now, in my own state or in my own town or the town next to me, American citizens have been ripped out of their cars, beaten, injured, and in some cases, killed. That's a real pivotal shift. Mm-hmm. And in the way we, the population, is reacting at this time, what are you thinking, and I read you at least three times a day, what are you thinking your influence can be on that particular conversation, issue, however you want to define it? I love that question. I love that question. I have started focusing more on that question and the answer because right now, from an emotional perspective, many people are coming to a conclusion that we're so far deep into this now. and have watched the last months and years of resistance not really getting the kind of effect that they've wanted, I think a lot of people have at least internally concluded that I guess violence is ultimately going to be the only answer. Now, I understand that, but the problem with that is that violence almost never has, historically, it almost never has the desired effect, right? Just if we take it to the extreme, violence usually kills the wrong people, right? Yeah. At the end of the day, the news story, more often than not, is about people in an uprising being mass slaughtered. So my focus is on, look, I don't think we're anywhere near that point. I think we are at a point where people are ready to move beyond the boring things, I call them. And I know you've seen me call it that many times. I think the danger we are in right now is that the things that have the most leverage are also many of the things that are the most boring, the most mundane. They don't leave you energized. You know calling your representative emailing talking to them in person communicating with them in a professional way. And it's not that emotions can't be part of this. I think they should, as long as they can still operate in that framework of professionally contained emotions so that you're taken seriously. You know, because once they get outside of that, people quickly start getting categorized as nut jobs. And that doesn't move lawmakers. Right. Nut jobs don't move lawmakers. So I guess do your best to remain a non-nut job appearing person in your communication. But see, that's not the stuff. And I'm naming this so that people can identify it and be aware of it. That's not the stuff that makes you wake up in the morning with a gut full of fire going, hell yes, I'm attacking the day. You know, writing a letter, sending an email. It's not. And that's why I think the uglier stuff, right, that a lot of people seem to be champing at the bit to engage in, the problem with that is that does have a lot of fire. And that does have a lot of energy. And it's very emotionally intense. And so it feels, even before it's been done, it feels a lot like doing something really important. And do you have a sense through what you're doing that you can sort of channel the boring but possibly more effective and certainly less dangerous emailing and calling and that kind of thing? How do you think you might be able to influence that? Good question. And the only real— And do you want to? Yeah, I do. And the only feedback that I have, but it's an ample amount of feedback. I guess let's put that in perspective. It's ample for—I'm right at like 60,000 subscribers for my newsletter. So, okay, not incredibly massive, like a million-plus newsletter. But within that, a significant number of those people do provide feedback to me and let me know the action steps they have been engaging in or the groups they have formed or the committees they've become a part of and how they are taking what they've read in a newsletter. and able to reframe those things from the boring to the mundane, from the mundane and the almost laughable, right? Because think about it, Margaret. If you just step into the shoes of just your common day laborer, right, who's really feeling emotionally intense. They get off at the factory. They're pissed off. They're tired. Their attention span is not really one that's set up for a 3,000-word newsletter or a 30-minute newscast. And you just say to them, look, here are three things I would like you to do. I would like you to email your state representative. I would like you to go to City Hall and XYZ. And XYZ is a protest calmly, not throwing Molotov cocktails. Yeah, okay, just checking. Right, right. And you give them, I just named two, but you give them two or three really simple but historically effective action steps when enough people are doing them with enough pressure and relentlessly enough, they're going, if they don't slap you, they probably are going to have something really smart-ass to say to you, right? And I understand that because those things do not match emotionally. And they almost seem offensive. They almost seem like an insult. And one reason I'm leaning into that so heavily, and this is nothing groundbreaking or earth-shaking I'm about to share, everybody knows this, but I just focus on it a little bit more, perhaps. What people are feeling like doing right now is exactly what Donald Trump hopes and prays people do right now. It will play into the hands of the very people who are causing those intense emotions that millions of people are feeling. If it gets to that point, I don't think anybody can say for sure whether we ever claw our way back. Mm-hmm. What do you see him doing in response to that sort of reaction from the public? Interesting that you ask that, because I've been thinking about that in a slightly different way, given how he's handled immigration deportations with ICE. I think it's pretty clear to most people now that he loves to target blue states, right? He has no problem just targeting blue states. Now, I have no idea from a legal framework how you would enact this, how you would do it, although if there is a way, I'm sure Donald Trump and his people would figure it out. I think usually when we have thought about martial law or, you know, the Insurrection Act, for example, for most people that conjures images of this nationwide crackdown, right? Okay, so nobody can be out in the streets after 8 p.m. Or nobody can do this or go there or have that. But if we look to what's happening now with ICE, I don't think it would be like that at all. I think it would be very segmented. I think it would target blue states, perhaps only blue states, while red states kind of went on as they always have. Now, within those red states, which I live in a red state of Missouri, I think in that situation we would see small pockets of targeted attacks on known Democrats. Not necessarily just because they're Democrat, but because maybe they are a more vocal Democrat or they have a very anti-Trump position, either in government or out as a private citizen. But in terms of the red state itself, I think we'd see kind of, yeah, just go on about your lives. Now, is that the way it will unfold? I guess we all hope we don't come to find the answer to that. But based on how he's handling immigration and deportation, he knows the states, the governors, that he can't stand. And it's just easier for him rather than trying to parse through and say, OK, how do we do this nationwide, but not crack down on the people who vote for me or voted for me? Because I'm not I'm not too sure at this point how concerned he is with who would vote for him again. And that's a completely different topic. So it's just easier to say, oh, it's a blue state, blue governor, or somebody in leadership in that state that I've butted heads with. Yeah, definitely apply this harshly there. That seems very Donald Trump-like to me. Yeah, sounds like it. Just because we running a teeny bit slow on time Yeah I was completely taken today with your worry prevention system Oh, cool. And I'm curious as to that was, if that was how you are thinking about it, the kind of reaction to what's going on now. Yeah. You know, that's a, that's a topic that just for decades now has excited me to no end. And that is teaching people that worrying, it's a verb, it's a process. And here's the cool thing about any process. It has a beginning, an end, and multiple points of intervention between the beginning and end. Now, we often hear people say things like, oh, I'm a worrier. Now, if I identify as that's what I am, that's who I am, it's part of my DNA, then it's never even going to be a thought to me to try to intervene in a process because I don't think of it as a process. I think of it as a static, very noun-like thing, right? So the first thing I like to do is take it out of that kind of mythological urban legend form of, okay, well, this person, she or he, they're just a worrier. And put it into, you know, you've been worrying like this for decades, which means you've had a lot of practice in that process. You've perfected it. You can run it fluidly and smoothly without any conscious effort at all. And therefore, it feels very much like something happening to you rather than something you are engaging in. Now, Margaret, I will tell you this over a 30 year period. the people that I could take from thinking of it as something like static that they have no control over to realizing that it's a process knowingly or not that they've been engaging in before any actual intervention at all just that awakening I've seen create behavioral changes not the full Yes, whole deal, right? Yeah. It's kind of like, and there are multiple studies in different arenas with this type of thing. But, for example, there are studies that show that when people get up in the morning, if they are a coffee drinker, that before they've even turned on the coffee pot, just the thought of that first cup of coffee will pick off some physiological changes. at the biochemical level in that person. Their alertness will begin to shift just from that Pavlovian, right, association between the thought of coffee and what state it takes them to. So think about having your whole life, right? Felt like I was born this way. The doctor grabbed me by the feet, raised me up, gave me a swat on the hind end and said, oh, looks like we've got another worrier here, right? When you've walked around like that, but then one day, and the key is that when it's presented to you, it's presented in a way that something clicks and you believe it and you believe it because now you finally see it. You understand it and you go, it's not in my DNA. It's something, regardless of why or how I came to do that, it's a process at some point I started engaging in, and I just got better and better and did it more often and more often until it felt very much like I was born this way. And once they get that, it's like you've handed them the key to their self-imposed prison cell and they reach out through the bars, they turn the key and the door swings open and they're already feeling shifts in their confidence before they've done a damn thing because now they know it's possible. well it was fascinating to read and all i could think of was that i wish my mother were still around because she was the world champion worrier and i can't i'm going to send it to my siblings and say does this sound like anybody you guys know um but it was just a super interesting you know here's how to maybe deal with that uh so i wanted to thank you personally from me and hope that other people get something out of it. Like I felt you were reaching to me and I really, really thought it was good. Sure. And if you don't, my one more thing I want to say on that. Go for it. It is, worrying feels very much like doing something, right? It does. If somebody is the mother or father of a teenager, right? and they just got their license. They've had their license two days and they're supposed to be home at 10 o'clock and it's 1020 and they're not home yet. Worrying feels like what you are supposed to do. And because it feels like what it's supposed to do, it feels like it must be something useful. And yet, here's the thing, and we all know this, if we just reflect on our own personal lives, when we are deeply entrenched in the process of worrying, we are paralyzed. We're not acting. We're not doing effective or potentially useful things. And that's because we've been seduced by that feeling and that thought that I'm already doing something important. So as it applies to democracy, anything that paralyzes us, especially at this juncture in our country, cannot be good for democracy. It cannot lead to steps that will contribute to the preservation of democracy. So in that regard, particularly when it comes to anxiety and worry, I see that as being fundamental to the preservation of democracy. Because if that anxiety and worry reaches an intense enough level, guess what? On election day, it might just be enough for somebody to say, I think I'm going to sit this one out. There's just, there's a lot at risk here. But if you've got your, how will I say this? If you've got your mind and your emotions in check. And your worry prevention system. You'll vote. Yeah. It's great, Jack. I really, I wasn't going to talk as much to you about it, but I thought it was so good. Well, thank you. And I appreciate your hitting it now. and I hate to say this, but I think we are actually out of time. I have, as I always do when I talk to you, really enjoyed this. As have I. I'm going to request or demand that when we need you again, you will be there. I will be there. Absolutely, Margaret. Super. Thank you so much, Jack. Really great to see you and to hear you. Likewise, and thank you. It was a pleasure. This is Margaret Hennock for The Steady State, still standing watch. Thank you for listening to the Steady State Sentinel podcast. Don't miss out on more insights and exposés from America's premier global security experts. Also, subscribe to our Substack at substack.com slash at SteadyState1 and follow our social media. And join us right here next week for another exciting edition. The Steady State is a non-profit organization working to sustain our democracy and national security. Join us and support our mission by visiting www.thesteadistate.org. Thank you.
