Strategic Approach to Leadership with David Petraeus, Former U.S. Army General and Director of the CIA
Willy Walker: Welcome to the 200th Walker Webcast. I have been deeply honored and lucky to have had 200 amazing guests on the Walker Webcast who give us an hour of their time for me to dive into their lives, their leadership, and their success in changing the world we live in. And there are few, if anyone, that I would rather have as my 200th guest than General David Petraeus. I received a photograph this weekend from somebody in London who was at an event with the general. He sent it to me saying, “I met the general and found out that you're friends with him.” I wrote back to the person and said, “I am honored and privileged to call David a friend.” And I am deeply thankful, David, for you joining me today. Let me do a quick intro, which really isn't needed for you, but it's helpful to give some context to what we're going to talk about, and then I will dive into our discussion.
General David Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and public official who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2011 and 2012. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus served 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force and Commander U.S. Forces Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. His other four-star assignments included serving as the 10th commander U.S. Central Command, as commanding general of Multinational Force Iraq in 2007 and 2008, and as commander of MNF1 Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq. General Petraeus has been a partner at KKR since 2013 and is chairman of the KKR Global Institute. He is a graduate of West Point and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University, where his Ph.D. dissertation was titled The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam, A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the post-Vietnam Era, which is a very applicable Ph.D. thesis for many of the things that General Petraeus is both known for and also advising on today.
General, I refer to you as general, although I think you told me when we were last together that as director of the CIA, you actually outranked your old military title. Explain that for a second to listeners as it relates to the CIA versus the military.
David Petraeus: That's an arcane thing in the world of, I guess, D.C. protocol or something like that. But there's, of course, a list that is literally for protocol purposes. And as I recall, the director of the CIA actually did outrank, if you will, for protocol purposes, the senior military figure in the U.S. But again, that's one of those things that I want to note: I deliberately took the uniform off. There have been directors who stayed on active duty. There are some reasons why you might want to do that. You'd stay in military quarters, which provide security and other things. But I deliberately retired and asked that I be addressed as director, not as general. I think those are two important symbolic actions. And I actually discussed them with President Obama when we were discussing his nomination of me to be the director of the CIA.
Willy Walker: I've broken our discussion up into five chapters or sections. The first would be living a lucky life. I've heard you say many times that luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and I know no one who is prepared for opportunity is better than you. Second is lesson in leadership, and what you have said many times about getting the big ideas right. The third is plate spinning. I've heard you use the analogy of back in the days of circuses where the people would have the plates in the air and spin them all, and that the U.S. foreign policy today has a lot of plates in the air. And so I'd like your thoughts and ideas as they relate to how we keep all those plates up in the air and which one is the most significant to keep spinning, if you will. Fourth, Conflict, your book with Andrew Roberts on the Evolution of Warfare | How War Has Changed Over Time. And then finally bringing it home. How do you use your incredible background to help KKR make informed decisions today.
So, starting on Living a Lucky Life, there are so many awards you have won, David, 27 military and nonmilitary decorations. I pulled up a couple of pictures of you when you were in uniform. Your uniform is covered with award after award, distinguished Service Medal, Superior Service Medal, Bronze Star from a military standpoint, three international decorations of NATO, including the NATO Meritorious Service Medal, and 17 foreign state decorations, including the Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia. Is there any one that stands out amongst all of them that when you got it, it had a particular impact influence on you?
David Petraeus: Yeah, I think anything on the battlefield that is associated with valor is important. And I received the Bronze Star Medal for Valor during the fight to Baghdad. The leadership, if you will, and so forth that I exercised on the front lines and so on. As did, frankly, I think, all of our infantry brigade commanders and a number of our other leaders, whether they were noncommissioned commissioned officers and, of course, a lot of individual soldiers. I think that one is just different. It's not anywhere near as high ranking as the very top four defense distinguished service medals. And I don't want to sound lacking in humility, but I think I have around 100 or more actual decorations. I could only find space for 27 of them on the uniform. And if you look closely, many of them have all kinds of oak leaf clusters that note that you have, again, four of this and four that. And so again, as you noted, I think decorations. I forgot how many are from foreign countries as well. And you only have room for a few of those as well. But look, some of that just comes with the territory. If you stay 37 years, if you command two wars, again, something that I don't believe anyone has done since maybe World War II/Korea. And you're privileged to have these large coalition forces under your command, 200 or so thousand in Iraq, 250,000, just American men and women in uniform in the greater Middle East, the U.S. Central Command region, and the coalition in Afghanistan that may have actually totaled somewhere around 60 different countries. Again, some of this just goes with hanging around for a long enough period of time and then being in places where there are a lot of people that leaders, in particular of countries that I guess are a bit grateful for the leadership that you provided, not just to America's sons and daughters, but to the sons and daughters of their countries as well including the host country nations. I got high decorations from the Iraqi and Afghan governments as well.
Willy Walker: I've heard you talk about both, if you will, success. You were an incredible student. You graduated at the very top of your classes and at all the various places that you go to. By the way, as I was doing research on you, I didn't know that had you not gone to West Point, you were going to go to Colgate University to play soccer. My friend Toby Bozzuto is now becoming the chairman of the board of Colgate University. And I wrote him a note saying, “You just missed that opportunity to have someone as spectacular as David Petraeus.
David Petraeus: They offered a great scholarship actually competed for academics and soccer to school and would cost a fair amount of money, but at the end of the day, West Point, seven miles from my hometown, won out.
Willy Walker: I’ve biked with you. I've seen you be an athlete at all stages of your career. That is incredible. Where does the competitive drive come from, David?
David Petraeus: I think you have it as well. In fact, I should note to the audience what an incredible endurance athlete you are, an athlete in a number of different sports. And riding with you is nothing but awe-inspiring. I wish I could have done it about ten years earlier, where I might have wanted to see what you had.
Willy Walker: I love to hear that competitive piece of you come out because I know it's true. And I have to go back to tell everyone what you said to President Bush when he invited you to go mountain biking for the first time because I love that quote.
David Petraeus: I was going to say, you brought that to mind where I came back from the surge in Iraq. And he very graciously said that I'd been over there for 19.5 months on that tour. Four years total by that point is a two, three, and four-star in Iraq. He invited my family and me into the Oval Office and was very gracious. He showed us around great, gave these little mementos to our kids, my wife, and me, and so forth. But then he's a great trash-talker, and I can talk a little trash-talking as well. And so, at one point, he said, “Wow, General, when are you going to have the guts to do a mountain bike ride with me?” And I turned around and said, “Mr. President, you realize who you're challenging? Do you have any idea what this experience might be?” I said, “I'm going to give you something you can ride off on your income taxes education.” And so I went out to learn how to mountain bike. I was a good road biker. But as you know, the technical differences are fairly substantial. But figured that out, and I tapped you. I learned that you can't pass the president. I tried that one time, and the Secret Service Larry pushed me over, so I got back on and got back up right behind him. And I figured, well, what I'll do is gently tap on the rear wheel occasionally just to make sure he realizes that I'm still there.
But I think competition comes from within. It is actually fed by the fact that when you do well, you want to do better. One of the realizations that I had at West Point was that the three elements on which West Point and the military place a premium which are obviously brain, academic record, and physical ability. And I also played intercollegiate athletics. I was on the soccer team and the ski team, and then your leadership ability. I actually was pretty good at each of those, in fact, really quite good, and enjoyed each of them and enjoyed the combination of them. I also firmly believe and have for years and offer to those who always ask for advice or something like that at a young age that, first and foremost, life is a competitive endeavor. You don't get a trophy or reward for showing up in the real world like little kids in soccer. You have to earn it. And you should fiercely compete to be the very best and try to win if you can. If you don't, obviously recognize graciously the individuals or teams that do. But as you're doing it, try to be the best team player as well. One of the more gratifying experiences of my professional career was at Ranger School, where there were three awards. There was a number one overall, and I actually won. There was one where they gave only every few classes the Darby award and they gave it that cycle, and I got it. But then there was an award that's a combination of your land navigation scores and your peer ratings. In other words, what do your fellow Ranger students and your Ranger buddies think of you? And it's not that often that the individual who's number one isn't so significantly resented. You actually combine those. Again, I was quite gratified to receive that award as well. And that's I think, again, is illustrative of what you should try to do. It's not always possible. As you know, as you achieve success, there are going to be those who didn't achieve it and may have lost out in a competition with you. And there inevitably will be some resentment, some jealousy, what have you. And that's just all part of life's great adventure. And you try to deal with that as graciously and reasonably as you can.
But again, I really do believe that people don't want to be led by somebody who is proud to be average, who is satisfied with the gentlemen’s B. In fact, I made a point of going back to West Point after my combat tours. The commander of the Hundred First Airborne Division was a two-star general during the fight to Baghdad and then the first year in Iraq. And I said, I want to address the senior class, and I want them to understand just what I said just now is, you know, your soldiers, the greatest privilege and responsibility in the world is to lead America's sons and daughters in combat. And you're going to do that. You can see this. This should concentrate your mind. And if you are proud to be too cool for school or again proud to be average, that is not what your soldiers want. They want somebody who is fiercely competing to be the best that he or she can be, who is striving hard to be an expert to achieve all of the professional expertise and knowledge and qualities and attributes and be in shape to lead from the front. All of the qualities that will help them have the best chance of coming home alive. And you have to take that seriously because there has traditionally been in peacetime at West Point. A bit of this is too cool for school, and trying to push the envelope when it comes to rules or regulations or what have you. And some of it is a bit foolish, frankly, when you look at what the soldiers really want and expect from the leader who has coming and I tried to impart that to them. And I do think that the prospect of going from West Point then through the basic course, maybe a ranger and airborne school and some other, and then showing up. By the way, our son did this. He was in ROTC at MIT. He'd already been airborne in an air assault. He went to the infantry basic course Ranger School, his first unit. And right away to Afghanistan to be a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant. And by the way, then, who shows up as the commander but General Petraeus.
In any event, I think that the competition was also for my dad. I was involved in a lot of sporting activities in a wonderful community seven miles north of West Point. It is a great place to grow up with all kinds of community activities, athletic leagues, terrific public schools, and all the rest. And if I came home and the report card wasn't what it should have been or if we didn't perform as well as we should have on the soccer field or skiing or the other sports in which I was engaged, I was given an excuse. He was a crusty old Dutch sea captain who became an American citizen. They came to the U.S. when the Nazis overran Holland, and they were at sea with their ship, and they joined the U.S. Merchant Marine, just about all of them. But he'd look at me as a crusty old sea captain and just say, “Results, boy, results.” And that's pretty profound. And he's right. It's a bit harsh at times or seems that way. It's not the most understanding of responses, but it's pretty effective. And I think that was a big life lesson for me. But again, deep down, it's about this fierce desire to be the best that you can be, trying to be the best team player as you are doing it as well. A lot of that manifests itself in a variety of competitions. So, I was quite a good distance runner for a number of decades. I came in third in the CIA at 5 or 10 K, actually at the ages of 59 and 60.
Willy Walker: Are people who place in the CIA 5K allowed to tell people that they actually came in first, second, or third, or they have to keep that to themselves like everything else?
David Petraeus: Yeah. And probably keep it. But we did have an internal newspaper in those days, I think it was still hard copy, and it was unclassified, I think. And I thrived on competition. By the way, my units thrived on competition because I tried to foster a culture together with the commission and noncommissioned officer leaders in a company, a battalion brigade, and so on. And sought to foster a culture of competitiveness and striving to win everything that we could. When I was a battalion commander, in a two-year period, we had three times the number of noncommissioned officer ranger graduates of any battalion in the Hundred First Airborne Division. That's an extraordinary accomplishment. And in a lot of it was our fierce competitiveness to take advantage of this great. It was also a commitment that if you get a certain number of Ranger-qualified noncommissioned officers, the commission officers are expected to be rangers when they come in. And if they're not, they're going to go to Ranger school right away. But it changes a unit. But the same is true with the culture of competition. And we took physical fitness almost insanely seriously. I put gyms off limits because gyms are where people go to hide from the rain and the cold and what goes on there is a lot of weight watching, not a lot of weightlifting. Nobody really knows what they should be doing there anyway. And the days when you'd really like to be in there because it's cold and wet, it's overcrowded. So we just didn't go to a gym. I also said soldiering infantry is an outdoor sport. Let's practice that. In our physical fitness, we lengthen the time for physical fitness from 60 to 90 minutes. There's an incredible amount. We changed the mess hall hours. Owned our own vessel. Again, this was serious stuff. The results showed. We had won every cross-country race ever. We won the football championship each year. We actually did quite well in basketball. That was more challenging because of all the field time that we had, but virtually any event. But I think we had more association with the U.S. Army members than we had soldiers in the unit. It was sort of the Mayor Daley school of voting or something like that. I still rue the day that we came in second in the chili cook-off at the Hopkinsville, Kentucky, salutes Fort Campbell event. So again, you're the same way I know you are because we've discussed some of these.
Willy Walker: You just mentioned Fort Campbell. I want to jump to two incidents that you've told me about. I'm going to summarize them quickly because I want to get to the question behind them. But the two. Being shot in 1991 at Fort Campbell, actually owned by us, took a round right through your chest. And then when you had your parachuting accident in 2000 where you broke your pelvis.
David Petraeus: That was actually Fort Bragg.
Willy Walker: Which was Fort Bragg?
David Petraeus: The parachute accident.
Willy Walker: The parachute. But at Fort Campbell, when you got shot.
David Petraeus: Shot, it was at Fort Campbell is a battalion commander Parachute freefall. Parachuting accident was as a one-star at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the airborne special ops. At that time, Fort Bragg now Fort Freedom.
Willy Walker: There are incredible stories behind both, including after you got shot, having you tell me the most painful thing that ever happened in your life of having that surgeon come in with the scalpel, open the hole, put a tube in into your ribs and allow you actually to breathe again. And then you run into Bill Frist as your surgeon to put you back together. But the question I have, David, on this is whether those two incidents were both life-threatening and you could have lost your life. Did that change your leadership style in the sense of knowing physically what both those that we have lost and those that have been injured go through from having that type of very significant near-death experience?
David Petraeus: Very much so. A real insight, if you will, into what our soldiers experienced in peacetime injuries as well, actually. In fact, that same year at Fort Campbell, another battalion commander was killed in a live fore accident. Our senior noncommissioned officer in the special forces group there was killed as well. But on the battlefield, of course, as well. I have some sense of what they're going through and the mental challenges of this, and your life's changed. In my case, I was able to come back from each of these. There were some residual effects. I think my two-mile run time went down by 15 seconds or something like that. And there were some other challenges associated with that. And I've got a lot of metal in front and rear of my pelvis and so on. But it also gave me an incredible appreciation for combat medics, the medical service corps, now the doctors, the nurses, and so forth. First responders because in the case of the gunshot wound, they had to get me to the hospital very quickly. What the chest tube really does is it puts suction inside the lung where fluid is building up. And they have to make sure that you don't suffocate on your own fluids. And frankly, once they get that chest tube in, which, again, they just cut the scalpel and put a hole in and jam this plastic tube right into the lung. Once that's in there and the suctions working, you see a lot of fluid come out. By the way, they then say, “Okay, he's going to live.” But until that moment, it's a bit iffy. And actually, then they put me back in a medevac aircraft and sent me down to Vanderbilt Medical Center where, as you noted, then Dr. Bill Frist, one of the great thoracic surgeons of America, came in, and it was sure wonderful. He was the majority leader of the Senate years later. And I was frustrated with some of the things that were happening out there on the battlefield. And he could have sought some of those out. And then the pelvic fracture was very close to killing myself with that particular episode. And again, the appreciation for these surgeons who put you back together, take care of you, and provide the rehab. I was on crutches for months and months. I was really fortunate that I had a boss. I was on jump status. And this is actually a civilian skydiving accident. But I was on military jump status. And the chief of staff of the Army called up the corps commander, the Army's only airborne Corps, and said, “Hey, you want to have a chief of staff who can actually jump?” He said, “No. Petraeus is on crutches. We'll do just fine.” And we had an extraordinary experience together. And he'd been my boss in the 82nd Airborne Division as well. I followed him up to the war headquarters.
I think there's an appreciation of what individuals go through that you really don't understand unless you have gone through it. Now, noting that these were not, at the end of the day, truly life-changing. These were not amputations or something. And by and large, I was able to get back to doing what it was that I loved to do, which was, again, endurance sports of various different types, running, cycling, swimming, and so forth, at a pretty high level. And unlike, again, those on the battlefield who had really traumatic wounds. But still, you have a sense you do have insights. And you also have this extraordinary appreciation for those whose actions literally did save your life. By the way, when you have a sucking chest wound. There's a drill in your field manual, and you take battery plastic. Batteries come in plastic, and you take out the battery and use the plastic. They put it on the exit wound because, basically, there's no air going out of your lungs. And they tape it all up so that the air stays in your lungs, noting that one of them, of course, has collapsed. Then, there are the other actions that they take. You've got to get an I.V. going and all the rest of this. It was absolutely a textbook. And that also may have, first of all, stabilized me and saved my life initially. And then, of course, it was the chest tube that really did that. So, no, these are pretty important experiences. I don't recommend people go out and seek them to try to have that understanding. But it was pretty important to understand that. And then the love for years of our medevac crews and pilots and so forth and what they did for our men and women on the battlefield.
I used to brief Secretary of Defense Bob Gates every single month during these war years. I was a four-star, and I think it was for four and a half or five or whatever it was for years. All that time was under him. He came in, and immediately, we had the surge. I was promoted to four-star, as did Iraq, then the Central Command. Then did Afghanistan, and he left the Pentagon just before I left Afghanistan. So, we would brief him every single month on how long it was taking on average to get our soldiers from the point of injury to the first level of care that is necessary. So that's the golden hour. And we were doing that usually in roughly under 45 minutes in Afghanistan, which was more challenging than in Iraq. Bigger, more mountainous, challenging weather, tough enemy in your rural areas, but under 45 minutes on average. That's really extraordinary. And again, being able to get those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to that hospital means over a 90% survival rate, which is really quite extraordinary.
Willy Walker: You're talking about the 45 minutes in the golden hour, General. As I was doing research on this, and you and I talked extensively about the raid to take out Osama bin Laden when we were last together. But as I was reading through that yet again, after having spoken to Admiral McRaven about that night. There were two things about it that I thought were so interesting. One, the amount of prep that was done, which is very much like ours, but a lot of people forget that there was a perfect replica of the compound where Osama bin Laden was living, built in North Carolina, then one built in Nevada at the exact same altitude as where his compound was in Pakistan and then finally one at Bagram Air Force Base. We made three exact replicas of his compound so that the Navy Seal team could train both in North Carolina first, then in Nevada, and then back in Iraq before going and actually doing it. The second thing they had planned for it to take 40 minutes. And you all go in, and you do it successfully, and it ends up taking 38 minutes, not 40, but 38 minutes to get in and get out, including a helicopter being scuttled and having to bring in the Chinook to bring everyone out. As I read through it again, General, it reinforced so much of the incredible planning, the discipline, the precision with which our military acts. And then when you're talking about getting it under 45 minutes and tracking it and trying to condense it, it's I sat there and read that and just felt so prideful of the investment we make to ensure that we are acting at the very highest level all the time.
David Petraeus: You've captured it beautifully, and that one, of course, was so important. We often talk about tactical operations, which were, after all, small unit operations having strategic consequences. And that one had enormous strategic consequences. Obviously, getting the man to bring to justice the individual who oversaw the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks and so many other terrorist attacks that killed so many Americans and citizens of many other countries as well. The consequences were enormous. But what you also highlighted is that there were preparations in great detail for something going wrong. I should point out to the viewers that I was not the commander of Admiral McRaven that night for that one operation. We also had another 12 to 15 operations ongoing in Afghanistan, and I was overseeing him in those. But for this one. The authorities used Title 50 Covert action rather than Title 10 military because it was outside my area of responsibility in Afghanistan. We weren't authorized to go into Pakistan and for some other reasons as well. The CIA found them and had the expertise. That SEAL Team Six team, as is publicly known under Admiral McRaven, was directly reporting to the CIA director. But also had to keep me informed because if things went really bad, then I was going to own them. A lot of the responses were with assets that I control whether it's F-16s or a variety of other capabilities. If something actually really went south.
Willy Walker: I found it interesting general, if I can. Go ahead.
David Petraeus: 40 minutes was keyed to an assumption about how long it might take the Pakistani air force to scramble and respond because the concern was that at some point, they're going to realize something's going on, and they may well have alert aircraft or something like that. And you end up having to fight your way back out of the neighboring country. That was not the case. They were completely confused. They didn't realize, in fact, one of my contributions actually was to dial up all the Pakistani news media and track what they were doing. I also knew those media really well because, during my time at Central Command, we monitored them carefully. They were often critical of us, which was one of the reasons we did. And so you could see all of a sudden, a helicopter went down not far from the Pakistani military academy, which is just a mile or two from the bin Laden compound. So they think it's actually a Pakistani. Then, there's an awareness that something is different. But our aircraft were out of the airspace well before they figured out what had happened and did any organized response, thankfully.
Willy Walker: I thought it was fascinating that while you had responsibility, should anything have gone wrong, just you, alone with one side, watched the actual attack happen when you were at Bagram and that there wasn't a bigger group there just due to security and the need for confidentiality around the attack that it was you and one other who went into your command center in Bagram and watched it actually.
David Petraeus: Actually, I was in Kabul.
Willy Walker: So Kabul, excuse me.
David Petraeus: In Kabul, I was the NATO four-star, and my principal duty was to command NATO's International Security Assistance Force. But I also commanded U.S.-only forces, which included the special mission unit forces. So, these were not actually under NATO. I was dual-hatted as a NATO member and the U.S. In one of the hats with the U.S., we had this special headquarters where only special mission unit personnel could go into so-called black soft/black special operations. And it was there for me; it was to keep me posted on what was going on. Frankly, on most nights, it was all on autopilot. Admiral McRaven with his team was overseeing that. On this particular night, the other people who were actually in the room when I entered it weren't privy to it. And so there was a full colonel who had actually been a lieutenant for me. He ran the pre-ranger program in my battalion that produced three times the Ranger graduates and everything else. And by now, he was, I think, deputy commander of the Rangers or something like that. And he was the head of that element at my headquarters. And so he and I monitored it and stayed in touch with them. And then we're ready because it would have been the NATO Ops Center that would have scrambled, and that was just literally around the corner. So the compartmentalization of this, the concern over operational security, really trumped some of the preparations that we might have done for different scenarios. And we assessed that if something went seriously south, we had the capacity to react very quickly. We had a combined air operation center, for example, which could easily be vectored. We had full-time aircraft in orbits all around Afghanistan, especially in eastern Afghanistan. It was one of the more difficult places, and it was from there that the operation was actually launched. It was actually not from Bagram. It was from another base that had an airfield as well.
Willy Walker: A final thing on that, and then I want to jump to lessons in leadership. Which is that as I read that through the other thing, given you're both being in the military as well as running the CIA, there's one little detail to that night that I thought was fascinating that the CIA actually did, which was they cut off the power in the town where the bin Laden compound was. So that if they went to turn on the lights and fight back. They couldn't actually turn on the lights, and we were under night vision, which I thought you would sit there and think about the $65 million helicopters and all the force that we bring in and the incredible training of the SEALs. And yet there's one little clandestine thing that is done by the CIA to flip the switch that actually allows for… not that it couldn’t have happened. Lots of things would have still gone forward had they not been able to do that. But I thought it was amazing to be able to make it also our competitive advantage of having night vision, and them not having night vision made it so that it was really a much more effective raid.
David Petraeus: You want every edge you can get, Willy.
Willy Walker: Yeah, exactly.
David Petraeus: We don't want a fair fight. We want our men and women in uniform to have every possible advantage. Shutting down the power in that compound, that little area, was part of that effort. But again, then you have to respond to contact. And the old saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy. And in this case, of course, the helicopter essentially crashed landed. It really settled. It is a heavier helicopter than normal and has some special capabilities to it. That's why it was used for this mission. And as it settled in and at that altitude, instead of having a nice, controlled landing on the roof where it was going to land, all of a sudden, it settled and hit, and it made it not air worthy. So now you add the dimension that you have to destroy to take with you everything that you can that is really sensitive or destroy it. And then launch the alert bird, which is a much bigger aircraft, and it does not have some of the stealth characteristics that these had. That's where we were worried that the cross radar profile of a CH-47 could be problematic. But it turned out that the error detection, the early warning system, really wasn't functional or certainly didn't alert that night, thankfully.
I did have some vision. If you think back in history to the aborted rescue of the hostages from the U.S. embassy that were seized in Tehran, you may remember that that ended at Desert One, which was a refueling site where there was a collision and a fire and a loss of life and so forth. And I thought, goodness, this is a heck of a way to start this operation. But no drama, quick response, or immediate decision-making. And they went about the operation.
Willy Walker: We've talked about your incredible preparation and basically how luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You also talk a lot about contingency planning and about, if you will, being ready for surprises, and you've led your entire career that way. There's a story about you being in Italy and going up to England. And you were jumping in Italy, and you went up to spend a week with the English forces. You went to a military store, and you'd wanted to go find a Napoleonic marshal's baton. And they didn't have one, but they had a tiny swagger stick. General talk for a moment about what that swagger stick kept in your mind as you taped it to the side of your backpack, which you had carried for years.
David Petraeus: This is a little. You look back on this, and I say, “Seriously, dude what were you thinking?” But as a young lieutenant, we made a bunch of jumps. My British parachute regiment lieutenant said, “Hey, you want to go to the pub afterward?” I said, “Sure, but can we stop at that little military sale store right outside the front gate where we are located?” And so we went in. There was a retired regimental sergeant major there, and the lieutenant said, “What can I do for you?” And I said, “Excuse me, but do you by any chance have any used field marshal's batons?” Napoleon used to say that every corporal has a field marshal's baton in his rucksack. And I'd like to put one in mine. The idea is that anyone can be called on to perform something heroic or important, or whatever you have. And I actually wanted something in my rucksack when I was rummaging around. I'd feel it, and I'd be reminded that you have to be ready. The call could come but press for Field marshal at any moment. Again, tongue in cheek, a bit facetious, but also, at the end of the day, serious. And you said, “Fresh out of those a mate. But how about this little miniature swagger stick?” And so I bought it, and I tied it to the frame of my rucksack with this green 550 nylon cord, tying it off on the ends, and burned it. No fraying, and nobody really could see it. They can see that something was wrapped, and we had 550 cord all over our rucksacks. But I knew it was there. And every time I picked up that rucksack frame, it reminded me you got to be ready. You have to be serious about being prepared. And I really was. I really did try to take everything to the next level. In part, why did I get shot? Because we took live fire exercises to the next level very much so. Normally, we would perform these at night as well, under night vision goggles in trenches, and so forth. You've always got to be doing that. We were the only unit in the 82nd Airborne Division that conducted air assault operations in peacetime with the seats out of the helicopter, which is how you do it in wartime. We're the only division in the U.S. Army. When I was the division commander, but also when I was the lieutenant colonel, the ops officer for the entire division under General Jack Keane when he was a two-star. We took the seats out. There was an edge train the way you're going to fight. Well, we didn't, actually. People were too eager for safety's hugely important. And the ballistic qualities of these seats are very substantial. And you take them out, and you're just thrown around in there. You have a little rope or a lap belt or something like that. But that's how you're going to go in combat. We have pictures from going in the first air assault into Iraq during the invasion when I was a two-star commanding 101st Airborne Division with 254 helicopters. And there's people everywhere in there. But you can only do that because you took the seats out, and you can use all of the space that is available, and you can really load them up. But we were the only ones who took that risk in peacetime. It required a three-star general to sign off on it. Again, you really have to work on this stuff. You can't finger drill. And as we say, “You actually have to practice it.” We practiced everything and rehearsed it and thought it through. Had contingency plans and what are called branches and sequels and worked it out.
Another one was in the early days of the invasion of Iraq; we had to establish refuel and rearm points inside Iraq. These are massive. We pumped 500,000 gallons of JP-8 the universal fuel in two weeks from the first one. And it was a clean desert before we built it up. So you've got to bring in huge bags and bulldozers. You had to bulldoze a road, too. It is 150 miles inside Iraq. We had an entire infantry battalion surrounding it. There are generators; there are fire extinguishers. All of its really quite complex and very hard to do, especially at night. And no other unit could get their refuel point going, including the corps headquarters unit above us. Ironically, the very first helicopter that flies in was the three-star who had gone to his, which couldn't get going. And they had a hard stand. We're out in the middle of the desert. Why did it work for us? Because we practiced. I knew it was going to be one of the linchpins of the entire operation because if you can't refuel, you can't go as deep as we needed to go.
We had to establish the second one in which we pumped another 500,000 gallons of JP, roughly in weeks two and three, and so on up to the fight to Baghdad. But think about the number of 5000-gallon tankers and all the other aspects of this. And it's pretty significant. By the way, you can't put the bags on the ground and refuel, and they'll split. You have to build mounds of dirt around them. These are actually supported by those berms. And you have numerous of these. And roughly, this is a couple of kilometers long because of all the dust. They have to all be separated. And I think we had anywhere from 10 to 15 refueling points, each of which had a designated team with all kinds of expertise. Practice, practice, practice.
Willy Walker: It makes supply chain management post-COVID sound like a walk in the park.
Let's shift for a moment to the world we're living in, to the analogy that you used before the circus master spinning the plates in the air and making sure that they don't fall and crash in center stage. I've heard you say, David, that first of all, “that the world we live in today is very dangerous.” And I'm curious. Are we living in a more dangerous world today than we were in, say, 1984 or 2004, taking 20 years back? I'm not trying to talk about U.S. leadership at that time under President Bush or President Reagan. I'm just basically saying the world we live in today is more dangerous or less dangerous from ‘84 or 2004?
David Petraeus: Certainly more dangerous than since the end of the Cold War. And the way I characterize it is to say that there are more threats and challenges. So greater number of threats and challenges, and some they're vastly more complex than at any time absolutely since the end of the Cold War. You could argue that since the end of World War II. If you think about it, that is the metaphorical image of the guy in the circus who's keeping a lot of plates spinning simultaneously, so the U.S. is that guy. But there are others helping, the allies and partners on some of the different plates, many of them in the case of certain countries. But there are more plates in that tent. One of them, in particular, represents a much more complex challenge than anything we've had, again, certainly since the end of the Cold War. And that is, of course, the plate that represents China and the U.S. and Western relationship with China. That plate is bigger than all of the others in the tent combined. And we absolutely have to ensure that it spins and doesn't even wobble if we can ensure that that's the case. And I think we can. But I'd point out that, of course, there's also the North Korean nuclear program plate. The Russia plate is much larger, more menacing, and more challenging. There are probably three Iran plates there: missile and drone programs. There is support for malign actors in the region: Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas, Shia militia in Iraq, and others. And then their nuclear program as well.
There are individual plates for individual Islamist extremist groups that we have learned the hard way. We still have to keep an eye and pressure on or they can re-constitute. There are various very significant cyber actors who have their individual plates and are diabolically clever criminals. There are nation states that are carrying out various nefarious activities in cyberspace, whether it's stealing intellectual property, vacuuming up personal information, trying to inflame debates in our societies, putting a finger on the scales of elections, all the rest of those conduct criminal activity in the case of North Korea.
And then there's domestic populism in various locations in the world. There's a variety of other conflicts that we need to keep an eye on and try to help deal with or at least manage if you can't completely resolve them. There are manifestations of climate change, whether it's much more severe weather or much more frequently than ever before. The storm of the century is every year. It seems now the prevalence of very severe forest fires, earthquakes, and so on. All of this has to be dealt with.
I am a real believer that the U.S. has to lead in many of these situations and that if we don't lead and try to keep our allies and partners with us to the greatest extent possible, the so-called rules-based international order. That is what we have tried to preserve, to sustain, and bring into being in the wake of World War II. It has been advantageous for us. This is cold, and it is hard realism at work here. And if we don't sustain that, those who are trying to make the world safe from authoritarianism will chip away at that. And some of the advantages that we have enjoyed will erode.
Willy Walker: I've heard you talk about the transformation, if you will, from a few massive platforms. And the first challenge you put out there was the U.S. China. And so those are two massive platforms, if you will, Cold War, post-World War II. That is clearly a big challenge. But then the evolving of these smaller platforms that are unmanned, that have incredible technology behind them, and that to a little to some degree, the Ukraine war is the perfect example of this. I've heard you say it's where all quiet on the Western Front meets Blade Runner. Dive into that for a second, General, because I find that to be such an interesting analogy, and it plays into your book as it relates to the evolution of warfare and conflict and where we are going from here.
David Petraeus: In very simplistic terms, the war in Ukraine is the latest example of what we need to do, and that is to evolve the platforms. I'm really talking about our military platforms if you will. So it's major surface combatants, front-line fighter bombers, manned fighter bombers, main battle tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles. And we need to transition a fair amount of our military forces from what very simplistically can be described as a small number of large platforms. Some of them are incredibly capable, very heavily manned, exorbitantly expensive, and increasingly vulnerable because you can see everything on the surface of the water and up nowadays. And if you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it. Now, yes, we have improved defenses and all the rest of that. But we need to transition from that to a vast number of almost unimaginable number of unmanned systems that are much smaller, not manned, and increasingly will not even be remotely piloted. They'll be algorithmically piloted. And we're going to have these below the surface of the water, on the surface, in the air, in outer space, in cyberspace, etc. And that transition has to take place. And the battlefield in Ukraine is showing that we aren't in the U.S. doing this fast enough. But the Ukrainians very much are.
How do you explain that a country that has no navy could sink one-third of the Russian Black Sea fleet ships? Air aerial drones that find the Russian ships and the maritime drones that sink them, produced by Ukraine, by the way, and then basically force the Russian Black Sea fleet to completely withdraw from the western Black Sea, including the centuries-old port of Sevastopol in western Crimea and occupy just the eastern part. Now, the Ukrainians are even stretching their wings and going after them there.
By the way, it's hugely important to Ukraine and to North African countries because this enables Ukraine to export grain by ship much more efficiently, rapidly, and so forth, which is very important to their fiscal bottom line. But it's also important to food security because they represent 25% of the world's grain exports, not overall production but exports. Egypt and other North African countries depend completely on Ukrainian grain or, to a very large extent. So, food security for them rests on being able to import it from Ukraine. Again, it is all about technology, and it continues to evolve. On the ground, the Ukrainians are throwing thousands of drones at the Russians on a daily basis. Their goal is to produce 1 million drones every 12 months, and they're on track to do that. They're evolving rapidly on an almost weekly basis, making tweaks to the software to counter Russian electronic warfare and a variety of other developments on the battlefield. They now have a drone force with drone battalions and so forth. And the way they're employing these is really quite extraordinary. It's way beyond what we can actually do in the United States, where we still have quite large drones that are exquisite in their capabilities. But they're not the kind of drone that you need in this kind of circumstance where you want to throw thousands of them at the enemy they're throwing. They're suicide drones, basically. Many of them are first-person views: you're watching what you're directing it to take its action, and it's not coming back in most cases. It's got an explosive on it, and it's going to find a target somewhere and blow that target up really effective. And you have a situation in Ukraine, a country that has great IT skills and impressive design and manufacturing skills, where every basement and garage is making drones. And that's the total mobilization of their economy to support this kind of innovation, which is absolutely crucial. There are a lot of other innovative actions that are taking place, but they're also now taking the fight to Russian soil and the longer range drones that have been attacking the Russian refineries and oil storage, fuel storage locations, of course, even attack now into Kursk province, east of Ukraine, and hanging on to that territory so far, about 1000km². Kursk, of course, in history is famous for being the site of the largest tank battle in the world ever. And back in 1945 and the end of World War II.
So this is what needs to take place. But frankly, there is a lot of inertia, and there are very vested interests in the military, industrial, and congressional complexes that want to preserve legacy systems, legacy basing arrangements, and legacy concepts. And we have to evolve much more rapidly. We need much more agile and innovative manufacturing firms and guerrillas who walking point on this effort in comparison with a much more cumbersome process that we have, which one can describe as producing yesterday's technology for tomorrow's wars. And that's just not good enough.
Willy Walker: I'm about not even a quarter through my questions for you. You and I are at the top of the hour, and I want to be really mindful of you giving me an hour of your time. But I think I'm going to have to come back and ask you to do part two. We still haven't talked about Israel. We still haven't talked about China and Taiwan. And I think also equally as importantly, David, since you joined KKR in 2013, KKR has gone from somewhere around $83 billion in AUM to $532.
David Petraeus: Actually, $600 billion now.
Willy Walker: $600 billion. Are you guys? I think that data points to something you said back in February, and you added another $50 billion there.
David Petraeus: Quite a period.
Willy Walker: I want to talk about bringing all that back to your incredible experience and how you bring it back to KKR and the investments they're making. Then, there is also the work you do or don't do with the leaders of the hundred-plus companies that KKR owns as it relates to how they're leading their companies and how you take all of your incredible experience and then convey it to them. Because as someone who leads a company after I spend time with you, I always go back to my day job and say, “Wow, I heard him talk about that. How can I think about doing this?” One of the things that the battle rhythm that you set up in Iraq, I want to dive into the battle rhythm and have you talk about what the battle rhythm is and then use it to try and bring some thought back to how a CEO might think about a battle rhythm in leading their company. But there's much more here. But it's late in the evening in Paris, where you're joining me from. And I want to be mindful of our time. So let me close chapter one, and hopefully, you'll let me get a chapter two with you. But it's such an honor and such a pleasure. And for our 200th webcast, hearing you talk about everything we've talked about is every time I'm with you, David; it's a real honor. Thank you for our country and thank you deeply for your friendship.
David Petraeus: A privilege. Thanks. And again, look, every time I'm with you, it's a learning experience as well, especially on a bike, I might add.
Willy Walker: But I actually went ride Rebecca's private Idaho last weekend. I was hoping to do the top ten, and I came in ninth. So, for an old guy like me, it's not a bad day.
David Petraeus: Bravo, Zulu shipmate. Well done.
Willy Walker: It's great to see you, David. Have a great time. And we'll be in touch soon. Thanks. And take care. Bye bye.
