šKagan Dunlap is an open-source intelligence analyst and digital commentator. Rut and Kagan dive deep into the explosion of drone warfare, the evolving tactics of modern combat, and the invisible war being waged through social media narratives and information ops. They break down the most documented and surveilled war in human history: Russia vs. Ukraine. They dive deep into the explosion of drone warfare, the evolving tactics of modern combat, and the invisible war being waged through social media narratives and information ops. Kagan explains how the future of warfare is being shaped in real-timeāand why we all need to be paying attention. This is a powerful, fact-driven conversation about truth, responsibility, and the dangerous new age of autonomous conflict.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Ukraine War Is The Biggest Intel Gathering Op. of All Time
10:25 - The State of Drone Warfare
13:04 - Which Countries Are Producing Weapons For The War?
21:46 - How Kagan Researches War
27:09 - Finding Truth In A World Of Propaganda
31:32 - Bias & The Political Divide
41:34 - How To Help Our Vets
So often when you are scrolling through X, or you're scrolling through Instagram, or you're scrolling through YouTube, there are often times where you get people that are delivering information but always have this sense that they need to add whatever they have to add to it. Today's guest is a person that literally stopped me in my tracks when I found him about a year ago and started following him when I got back on social media, in particular back on X or Twitter. Then X is Kagan Dunlop, and so what I love so much about what he does is that he delivers information in real time. He delivers it with a sense of this is the facts and allows you to decipher what you want to do. So what I thought we'd do today is, first off, Kagan, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you joining me.
Yeah, of course, I appreciate you inviting me on. You know, I'm happy to be here. You know, I apologize it took so long for you to try to plan this out. I know it's kind of a pain in the butt dealing with scheduling and everything I've been I've been slammed, and then I've also recently moved, so I'm trying to I was trying to like sort my life out. So I appreciate you being patient with me while I was working through all that stuff.
Oh man, I would have waited for ten years to get you on Man.
I just there's certain people that I've just come across that it just it hits me.
I was like, Man, the way that person is doing it is the way that it just it connects. And I just have so much appreciation for how you do what you do, man.
I appreciate that. That means a lot. It means a lot.
Okay, So the most recent things that you've been putting out, and I think actually you've been doing this for a long time.
Is is.
The information that's coming out about Russia and Ukraine in particular, the various new weapons systems in terms of drone warfare, anti drone warfare. You know, as you've been watching closely on this, the tactics that are emerging on both sides, whether you're talking, you know, it's it's utilizing drones to a different autonomous vehicles, or my favorite was you posted a video the other day of some guy getting in and one of his tires were off, and you know, and it was just I think there's just if you could give your assessment of what that conflict really looks like and where do you think it's evolving to next, and then you know over all that, you know, maybe we can once we'd established that, we'll talk about what you think about the negotiations and how the ratcheting up is going in terms of the drone warfare inside Russia. Russia's response the other day, what is your impression.
Of where we're at and all those.
Yeah, well, first, I would say first and foremost, I wouldn't consider myself an expert on probably anything really. I just kind of like observe stuff, and like I like to know what's going on, and I like seeing like the evolution of technology, especially when it pertains to conflict, because I mean, obviously the military is heavily involved in stuff around the world, and I like to be informed on what kind of technology is being used out there. I'd like to be in I like to be able to share that information with other people who may find it interesting, who may encounter it based on whatever their job is, whether that be contractors that are independent of the military, or active duty service members that may come in contact with it, and I think that this whole thing has been I would say if I had to summarize this whole event, and this is just like completely divorced of like your opinions on the war and like how it started, and like who's at fall. Obviously, Russian invaded Ukraine in twenty twenty two. It's pretty cut and dry, pretty clear that Russia's the aggressor and this one the Ukraine was invaded by a foreign nation. That's pretty just plain and simple. That's the way it is. But as far as like your opinions on it, like separate from that, this has been one of the biggest intelligence gathering events of probably my lifetime for sure. As far as just like this is the probably the most observed, most recorded, and most documented war in the history of the world, probably, I would say just from like the the sheer volume of ISR feeds that people have been able to watch, drone feeds that people have been able to watch actual combat footage from go pros that have been recording footage either from the Russian perspective or the Ukrainian perspective, or you know, the foreign volunteers that were part of the Ukrainian Foreign legions perspective, and there has been more videos and content and photos and documentation of just combat operations throughout the entire duration it's war since twenty twenty two's invasion than anything before.
And so I think that while the war itself may.
Be an absolute tragedy because there's been countless life lost on both sides, and that should be something that everybody should be like, Hey, maybe this isn't good.
We probably should find a way to, you know, come to peace.
And there's no prosperity being gained for the people of Russia or the people of Ukraine from constant death like this. But at the same time, like it has been a massive intelligence gathering event because people from all over the planet have been gathering intelligence from this, like massive, massive amounts of intelligence not only on Russian operations and Russian tactics and Russian techniques and the way that they conduct themselves in battle, and like what their kind of battle rhythm is, and like what they like to do as far as like how things go from the beginning of an invasion to like kind of like where we're at right now. The type of tactics that have changed with drone warfare, the type of tactics that have changed with unmanned surface vessels like the boats on the Black Sea and stuff like that taking things out. There's been a lot of a lot of information that's been gathered from this, and then obviously like the information war with social media and everything else that's happening, like Telegram and you know, TikTok and Twitter or x and everything else. Like there's been videos and footage of this post it all over the place, and there's all kinds of narratives being pushed. You can have the same video and like fifteen different narratives being pushed with that one video because it was getting shared by different accounts that are trying to share it from a different angle and all this other stuff. So I think, if nothing else, this has definitely been a big information gathering thing for people on all sides, whether that be the United States or Russia or Ukraine or anyone else that's just sitting back on the sidelines watching this thing. And I think right now we're kind of obviously in a tenuous situation because I know that President Donald Trump has been trying to negotiate peace, and so it's like his cabinet they've been trying to get the you know, the Russian president Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire and a peace agreement with Ukraine, and Ukraine's been trying to do a peace agreement.
It's been all over the place.
And then I even just today, like I haven't even made a video about it, but apparently Vladimir Putin's helicopter was somewhere near the front at one point and it came under massive drone attack and now they're they're using that event as a they're framing it as a potential assassination attempt.
And this just came out today.
I've seen this trending already, and like that's obviously going to have an impact on Negotia now, you know, like they already seem like the like Russia already seems like they're they don't really care, whether they don't really seem really like apathetic towards having peace, Like it almost seems like an apathy towards peace, which is weird. And I don't know if that's the Russian people. I think that's just the Russian leadership seems to be apathetic towards peace. And I don't know if that's because like their economy is dependent on the war economy, and if they stop that, they're gonna like their economy is going to collapse. Or or if maybe they don't trust the United States and the negotiation process, or if they don't trust Ukraine enough to follow through on their word. Like, I don't know what's happening that's causing this to take so long to resolve. I do know that it's going to be obviously very complicated brokering peace between two people, two nations who've been fighting for you know, we're going on three years now, you know, a little over three years. Obviously a hard thing to do. I don't even know where you would start, Like, I'm not a geopolitical expert. I'm not sure how they would even broker this stuff, but obviously there's a lot of, you know, animosity between the two nations, and it's only it just keeps getting kicked down the roads. I don't know how they're going to do it, but I mean, I hope they can manage it. I would like to see peace for all the people of both those countries. I think I think we should get to a place where war is no longer well, I mean the unfortunate thing is war is very lucrative for a lot of right until it gets to a point where it's no longer as lucrative for those nations, Like it's going to keep happening, you know. So I don't know, I think maybe we need to figure out a way to like maybe we just like make robots fight and use that as a means to generate wealth, like the coliseum, but this way you're not losing at like it's not at the expense of human life. Maybe that's a way that the defense industrial complex could still make their money and then like it'd be like an entertainment thing, but nobody would actually be perishing, like and it wouldn't you know, hurt anybody.
I don't know, I mean, there's this is genius. I don't know.
I mean, I'm somebody somebody's gonna hear this be like I could make a lot of money doing it. You know, it'd be like uh, you know, battle bots or something like that.
But but for adults, for the military, that's a no. I I'm I you know as a person that that's you know, was involved from the g WID from you know, my first cobbat point was O two summer O two.
My last was with the agency in twenty eleven.
You know, there there was a massive evolution of technology, for sure, but it seemed to be very one sided.
Like it was it was us making the advancements.
It was us that were really I mean, obviously I was never in Iraq, and all my buddies that were over there they started facing, you know, the the v bids that were a lot more technically proficient with how they crafted them in terms of their ability to penetrate through their M wraps and just the sophistication advance.
But now you know, you've.
Got you know there, I saw a report, I think you posted it that that they're going to build something like four million drones over the next you know, year or so. They're going to ramp up their production, right and then and then on top of that, you also have uh, you know, China feeding their drone manufacturing, Iran's drone manufacturing.
They're feeding the hooties. They're free.
So it almost feels like, you know, because of this lower end technology that delivers even a more capable of capability. I I also saw the herd in the number that that's you said, that's seventy percent of all casualties we're a result of drone warfare in some capacity.
Yeah.
Now, and that's just from like using open source, Like I don't personally know if that's the case, but I've been seeing a lot of open sources and a lot of like reporting that saying that it could be upwards of seventy percent of casualties or destroyed vehicles where as a result of drones, which is nuts, because you know that was I mean, it's relatively it's not like new new because I mean, you know, we had you know, Jihadis and stuff like that using drones back in you know, when we were still in Afghanistan and Syria and Iraq and stuff like that. I think around twenty sixteen seventeen, they were starting to do that stuff. But this it's like blown way way up since this conflict started, you know.
I and for me it because obviously, I mean even after ben Ghazi's when I really you know, kind of understood the mass of in terms of American arm sales, how we do those arm sales.
Whether they're overt covert.
You know, you start to realize, all right, there's this whole undercurrent of technology and then distribution across channels.
Now that they're all the.
Players that our military art has to face around the world, have it seems like they've exponentially gotten bigger. So in what you're seeing in this reporting, this open source stuff that you're always on top of, how many different nations do you think are producing quality munitions and weapons systems that are contributing not just to Ukraine and Russia, but to Syria, to Lebanon, to Israel. The Hoothy's out of Yemen? I mean, is it just exploding on a way that that becomes uncontrollable?
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Is it just exploding on a way that that becomes uncontrollable? You know?
I think that.
It's tough because there's so many different nations that are producing armaments, and then of course we're selling armaments through like uh you know, foreign military sales and stuff like that to different nations. Like for example, I think on May twenty second, the State Department released a an approval of possible possible foreign military sale of like two hundred and ninety six million dollars in Javelin missile systems and related equipment to Estonia, which is obviously a former Soviet block nation, and Sonia is our ally let's.
Be clear about that.
Like I've worked, I've worked like.
With the Estonians before, Oh wow, not.
Directly, but like they were I so I was, I was in sent comm in twenty twenty three and they were part of the defense force for the base that I was on at the time, and I met a bunch of those guys. They were all super nice and they're just they were all standing posts like they're doing their job like everybody else. But they're like one of our allies for sure. They're big partner partner for us.
And we had them all through Afghanistan back in the day. They would always be like on these little bases that the Estonians would do, like gate guard detail and all that. They just get off they doing it all. And I'll never forget they showed up one time and they were wearing like rubber like hunting boots, like rubber duck boots, you know. Man, oh indud it was I felt we felt so bad. And it was the Brits. The British says. They said, hey, man, hey, you know, here's some boots, and they gave them like badass boots and stuff, and they were like they they couldn't have been cool, like they the level of commitment from them just went through the roof because they're like, oh that's cool.
So yeah, yeah, they've all they were always I mean, I had nothing but good interactions with all the Estonians and you know, but again, it's like you've got a lot of a lot of different nations that some of them manufacture weapons, some of them don't, and they're like everybody's trading with each other and trying to sell each other stuff, and like people are wanting to buy stuff, like you know, you see nations that have you know, F sixteens and like F fifteens and F eighteens and F thirty fives that they purchased from the United States that may have had certain key technology removed from it before they purchased it, and then they added their own proprietary stuff.
They just have like the basic airframe.
It's like, hey, I'd like to buy your souped up Honda Civic and then they they buy it. We take all the souped up stuff out and then they take it and then they soup it up themselves because they're like, I really like that frame and the things that does. But you know, it's it is a weird Uh. It is a weird thing because it's not something I really knew much about. For the longest time, I didn't realize that we sold like our older equipment or sold like our frames to people, or sold our tanks to people, or sold our like you know, hum v's or whatever other vehicles. Like I mean, I've never seen combat footage of Bradley's before before this came out. And then like the war in Ukraine, you've seen like Bradley's taken on T ninety tanks and stuff like that. Like I remember that was one of the most viral videos ever. I think back in twenty twe I might have been twenty two or twenty thirty. Yeah, and there was like two Bradley's facing off against one T ninety and it was getting hit so hot hard by the Bushmaster Shaine guns that it just couldn't do anything. I mean, it was just like the older systems got fried from this thing. I can't even imagine, like how terrifying that would be to be getting attacked by two Bradley's inside of that thing. Wild to see, but yeah, it's I think, you know, really at this point when it comes to like arms sales and you know, things like that, the world is so intertwined with just how connected we all are, like militarily and GDP and like all this other stuff, because like you know, I don't know.
I'm not an economics guy.
I don't really know a lot about like global economics or global currencies or things like that, or sales across the ocean. But there's definitely a lot of you know, give and take going on between nations, whether you know, whether they need it for themselves or if they're just trying to buy it and sell it off to somebody else at at a higher rate. I don't know, you know, I mean, like probably a lot of that going on to just like just like how a lot of scalpers like to buy things and then sell them for a higher rate. I would imagine the same thing happens with weapons, you know. I mean, it's just humans trying to make a buck, you know what I mean.
And it all just kind of goes back to that, does it it?
Right?
I Mean, there are people that pray on conflicts no matter what to make those that make those dollars. For sure.
One of the funniest things that you you posted at I shouldn't never funny, but I think remarkable aspects of the basic human condition was the video you posted about, uh that the Ladies of the Night video in Ukraine and how how much they're making on the front lines, and and how that's come about. And I think that's more indicative as to these you know, these black economies that evolve right these black market economies that seem to emerge through combat engagements and and and I found that fascinating. What as you're assessing your open source the places that you're pulling information from, is there a process of of of how you filter all this or or are you simply just looking for something that really is kind kind of unique and fascinating about the grander context of conflict that that's what kind of will inspire you to make a video about it.
Typically, it's just like, you know, if I find something that I think is interesting and I was like, oh wow, I didn't realize that was something that was happening, and I find it interesting and it doesn't seem like extreme. I try to stay away from stuff that seems really clickbaity or extreme, like extreme fringe statements. Like if it's like something that's super outlandish and wild and crazy, like unless I see a video of it or something like that, I'm I. I try not to just post it right off the bat without knowing anything about it, unless I'm unless it's just like, hey, you know, I had a few other friends talking to me about it or something like that. Because there's a lot of guys out there doing the same thing I'm doing, I'm not like unique in that sense. There's a lot of folks out there that do very similar to you know, videos and content. They might just not have their face in it or talking about it or giving commentary on it or discussing it. They might just like post the video and then post I guess sometimes they post they'll credit like the person that came from, or sometimes they won't write yeah, you know, I just I like, if there's something I think is interesting, I you know, I try to find out as much as I can about it.
And you know, see if I can.
Vet if it's legit, and or also if it's like, you know, something that seems feasible that's not just like wild and outlandish. I try to be careful when it comes to certain topics and subjects, just because you know, obviously, like there's especially like the war that's the conflict that's kind of ongoing with Gaza and Israel and stuff like that. There's so much information it's like not necessarily credible coming out of that whole thing that I you know, unless it's like, hey, this is something that happened. Here's a statement about that thing that happened. Here's the video. That's one thing. But there's so much information coming out from both sides, sometimes it gets really muddied and I can't tell like what actually happened, and so I just won't even talk about it because it's like, well, I don't want to propagate really bad information if I don't know for sure, definitively that anything like that happened, you know, And I try to keep my opinions out of.
A lot of that stuff if I can.
We're all gonna have inherent bias, you know, Like I'm gonna have inherent bias. Everyone's gonna have inherent bias. Like I have friends in the Israeli Defense Force, you know that watch my videos and watch my content. I've interviewed an Israeli Defense Force officer that was back here during Shot show before. A friend of mine, Orton Julie's her name Big like gun content creator and stuff like big into firearms and mental health and stuff. So I was able to interview her for my first Shot show back in twenty twenty four. I think it was four very cool. So there's there's always gonna be inherent bias, and like I try to be careful as I can, and some if something's jacked up and it comes out later that hey, that's like that was manufactured or that was like nonsense then and some and I'm and I see it like oh okay, cool, Well I'll take that one down or I'll delete it or something like that. I don't want to like push bad information out there, but I try to put stuff that if if there's at least like a fair amount of credible sources talking about it, you know, then I'll I'll usually try to talk about some stuff. The only thing that's hard is like if it's breaking, usually more than likely when it's breaking, the only people that are talking about that stuff at that particular time are like local news sources. Like that's all the small, small ones, all the way down at the bottom, because like you're not gonna have all the big mainstream media ones talking about something if it just happened, because they're pulling that information from way the way down at the bottom too, or local sources that are feeding it to them, you know. So but yeah, really, what it comes down to is like if I find it interesting or fascinating, like hey, here's some new technology that's coming out, or hey, uh, some pro Russian channels posted a video of a guy using an ammunition cart that that has a quick release latch so that he can hop off and hop into a security position or something like, you know that kind of stuff.
I think it's interesting.
I try not to make it controversial by saying, you know, any outline of statements about it one way or another, just like, hey, here's what's happening, here's what this is, here's what they were posting and saying it was, and you know, there it is.
That's cut. You don't need me. I don't need to like tell you how to feel about this, you know. Yeah.
And I think that's that's one of the other things that I think the way you deliver is so refreshing because you know, you're letting people make the decision on where their biases is going to lead them to regardless, right, And so it's just I think the more people that we can have out delivering that that style of information, the better, right And and and I think you know, the greatest challenge in particular as people are making this transition away from you know, the old guard media whatever that is now, you know, into this new space is like how do they determine, you know, which channel to follow and and why? You know? And I think that that lends itself when when people can innately kind of uh what feel the clarity of of your deliverable your deliverable, then then they're more.
That that trust builds up in a quicker capacity.
Yeah, well that's another thing. It takes time for people to trust you. You know, you got to earn the trust. And if you're like if you if you're like, hey, we you know, we made a mistake, or if you like if the video was you know, maybe you jacked up some information on it and you remove it, then it's not there anymore, and then that way people see you know you don't.
But here's the thing, Like.
I'm not gonna necessarily come out and say, oops, we made a mistake.
I'll just take it down.
I'll just immediately take that accountability, remove it, and then we'll keep pushing forward. You know, I don't like necessarily spend a lot of time on oops, see my bad. I'll just delete it because it's like, no, we're gonna take care of this right now and then we're gonna move on to the next thing.
Cool.
And maybe that's like an aggressive approach to it or not as a nuance of an approach, because like it might maybe to some people feel more personable if I'm like like if I publicly talk about, hey, this was wrong or this wasn't right.
So we deleted it.
But I mean, as people stick around and they get to know me, or they watch podcasts and me talking about stuff with people's podcasts, and they can get to know that stuff from here rather than me posting a short video that's like an apology video which doesn't do anything anyway. You know, like honestly, if there's something that I put up that's like incorrect or wrong or or another thing that I that I noticed, is if it's just like pure inflammatory stuff that's just like making like people get divided that happened in the nation, Like I don't know, you could find plenty of topics to talk about then I typically just you know, I posted something a while back about it, and it just caused a bunch of people to start fighting. And because it was like there's some racial stuff involved with it, and it was like somebody got murdered and like that kind of thing, and I was like, you know what, this isn't really doing anything beneficial for the community of people that are engaging with my content. I'm just going to try to keep I like to be informative and informed and teach people stuff. But I'm not trying to like rage bait people. That's not what I'm interested. I don't I don't want to. There's enough people out there doing that crap. I don't want to contribute to it. I I'm going to report and talk about certain things that may be controversial and may have some people that get upset about it, but it's not explicitly there to rage bait people.
And so that's something I have had to.
Like figure out and kind of like work through and figure out, like what's the right way to approach this without feeling like I'm censoring myself or censoring my ability to communicate information.
You know, it's a it's a tough it's a tough kind of dance.
I guess you know, it's in pot it's a very difficult dance because there's a certain there's a certain appetite that I think people on the Internet, and particular in people who want to be more informed, who are spending an exorbitant amount of time through their feed and getting captured by that that that rage bait stuff, and you know, they're they're they're going to gravitate that towards you know, just by the natural order of their conditioning right through that that propaganda feed that fortifies in their their consciousness, right so, you know, but I also do believe that, you know, that's why your show has become so successful is because you've been able to kind of rise through all that as as you could very easily go down that road and and and make hardcore commentary about these different types of engagements based on your background and your your familiarity with them, but you don't. You keep that restriction upon yourself, which is which is really kind of interesting. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this. You know, there's a I think there's a there's a growing I don't know whether it's fabricator whatever controversy in particular on the right, I think when left has its own issues or whatever. But it's like, what is what is your responsibility as a creator? You know, and and what is your responsibility especially when you get to a certain level you know, and you you had talked about when you first got I'm not an expert in these things. I'm trying to deliver this type of factual evaluation of it for you to make your.
Own conclusive decisions.
Do you and you talked a little bit about through the interview, but like, what can you explain deeper that level of responsibility and how it's grown in you as you've your audience has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Okay, thank you so much for listening today. Pardon the interruption, but I just got to give a shout out to one of our big sponsors here, and this comes from my good friend Alex, you know, who has a family owned business called Firecracker Farm. When I talk about family business, and I've worked with thousands of family businesses across the country for the last twenty years of public speaking, you know, it's when I meet them and I know that this business is going to succeed, and it's successful because it's a business that's that's a part of love and their family and how they support each other. This is that place, you know, I've been up. I've been to their farm. I watch how they raise their peppers with love. I watch how they process them in this thing they call the Three Kings, and how they infuse them into this these beauty, this beautiful salt, the spicy salt that enhances your food. I put it on my eggs every single morning. I put it on my steak, I put it on my protein. It's in these cool salt shakers. But you know more so that the product is impeccable. It's I've even been able to phase out ultra process uh sauces hot sauces, and I'm now I'm using this, this spicy salt. But the thing I know is just how much Alex loves doing this, how much his family loves to support them, and really the quality of the products. So if you believe me and you trust what I'm telling you, please visit Firecracker dot Farm and if you want a discount, you can pipe in the discount code rut r U t Romeo Uniform Tango one five to get your discount. Again, a family owned business that's incredible.
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Well, I've definitely become more self aware of biases I have, you know, That's that's one thing.
I've become very self aware of it.
And and I've gotten called out for being biased for certain things in certain posts, even if it wasn't like overtly biased, maybe it was just like slightly biased, or maybe I put in some wording that seemed like I was four or against something. And you know, I'm gonna have biases, and sometimes I'm going to post about things and say like I feel a certain way about it, or that I feel like this is the reason why this is happening, or this is the reason why they are doing this thing or whatever, and you know, I but at the same time, I also try to put it out there because I'm not trying. I don't want to like tell people how to think or how to feel about stuff. Like I have my own opinions about things, and like, you know, I'm sure there's probably people out there that think I'm all right.
There's also probably people out there that think I'm.
A liberal, you know, but they don't know because I don't talk about that stuff, you know what I mean, Like I registered independent for a reason, you.
Know what I mean.
I've always I've been a registered independent for years now because I, like, I I believe in liberty, but I also want people to make up their own mind, and I believe in like freedom, you know, And I don't want to, Like I've never done ads for any political action committee, and I won't ever because like that's something I want to stay very far away from and remove from, and I you know, want to you know.
I want people to feel like at the end of the day.
One of the biggest things I've noticed, especially with social media, is that like a lot of these echo chambers have formed, like along party lines in all kinds of ways, and it just what ends up happening is like these pages that are very big pages across social media will post stuff that is obviously appealing to a specific type of individual and and it's designed to get people mad and comment and say something because they're angry or because they're like or because it makes them feel a certain way, or it makes it evokes certain emotions that cause them to want to engage with it a trigger. Yeah, it's like a trick, right, And obviously, like I would say, probably older folks are probably more likely to fall for that one because it's still relatively new and they have, like social media hasn't been around their whole life, like a lot of gen Zers. By the time gen z Ers are the Saint are in their sixties and retirement age, they'll have had social media their whole life and they'll know how to deal with this stuff. But although there's probably gonna be other challenges by them with AI.
And everything, but.
You know, I think one of the biggest problems is that, like there's a lot of people that are just posting stuff that doesn't do anything to bring people together, because at the end of the day, like we're all Americans first, and I feel like we need more stuff that's just like, Hey, this is what's happening. This is something that's taking place. Here's what's in this bill. Here's what's in this statement from this department. Here's what they said, Here's what they're doing. Here's what the your Congress is voting on right now. Here's what's in the package. Here's what's in the one big beautiful bill. Oh it's a thousand pages. Well, you know, here's something that the left is going to really like that's in the bill.
Okay, here's something that the right's.
Going to really like in this bill or whatever, you know, like, here's just what it is, here's what the wording is.
Like you can decide for yourself.
I don't want people to think that my page is a right wing media page or a left wing media page. I want them to think like, hey, this is a guy that just talks about current events, current affairs, military stuff, technology, science, things that are happening.
It's interesting and we can all kind of be here.
The problem is is I notice, no matter what it is, if it's if it's been politicized in some way, people fight in the comments. And it's not like I'm asking for that. I don't want that to happen. I'm not trying. I'm not posting it because I want people to argue in the comments with each other. I'm posting it because it's just like this is something I found interesting that's new or has come out recently. But you can't do any once once your media grows to a certain level, it becomes totally unmanageable for one person to go in there and like clean your comments section up. You can't do it. It's impossible, and honestly, like for my own mental sanity. I spend less time in the comments than ever before because I'm an habitual Joe Rogan listener, Like I really like the things that he does and the people he has on that he talks to. I think he's a very reasonable guy, like straight, like center of the road, like I like. I think most Americans are probably in the center. I genuinely believe that, and that the the only reason why all the it seems like we're super divided is because the people that are the loudest on the right and the loudest on the left are super super loud and get like magnified because.
It's so outlandish.
I think most people are in the center, And I think most people like want to want everybody to be able to like have enough money to feed your family, have a nice like a house with a roof over your head, have a good, steady paying job, like have enough time to like take vacations, uh, you know, have not have food insecurity, you know. I want to see everybody in the country be able to have some level of success. And I still feel like this is still like the land of where you can actually pursue happiness, where you have the freedom to pursue happiness, not the freedom to like be given happiness.
It's not something you're entitled to.
But you're free to pursue whatever you want and like worship whatever god of your understanding you want, and you know, live your life as you see fit. As long as you're not having a negative impact on somebody else physically, right mentally, maybe that's going to happen. But that's like okay, like as long as you're not like guilty of some sort of crime, you know, But that's another that's a whole another thing too. It's like you see a lot of politicization of legal stuff right now. It's like, man, that makes the water super muddy too. And it's like I don't even I'm not a lawyer, Like I don't understand how that stuff works.
Man.
It's like that's why I just try to keep it clean and straight simple, like, hey, this is what's happening, this is what I'm seeing. You can decide this is what this is, what the wording is in this statement, this person said or whatever, like you can decide how you feel about it, and here it is.
You know, well, Kagan, I I just can't thank you enough for the focus that you have and doing that and in your delivery and having that type of personal responsibility to believe that that's the way that that's such a benefit to the society right now, because as you said, those those people that are screaming at the top of their lungs, man, they're they're getting a lot of traction. And you know, those bot farms that we talked about before coming on are are are increasing their capabilities. They're driving more diversity and or not diversity, but decite divisiveness within the American public. And I too agree that a man, the best thing we can do right now is find out that common ground on the.
Information, that common ground, man, that that's the real problem.
It's like, dude, I guarantee you could.
You could take fifty Democrats and fifty Republicans, put them in the room and they would all be able to find something in common with each other, you know, and and like we should all like you, we should all root for the success of the nation, no matter who's in power, no matter who's running what, no matter who's in charge of what. You know, we should all be like, well, I want this to win. I want like to see the American people succeed, and I want people to be able to have more money to spend on their kids and like have some semblance of happiness and you know that kind of stuff.
Man a man, all right, brother, thank you so much for your time and for what you're doing. Is there any uh where where can people find you follow you if they haven't already, and then obviously, you know what, do you have anything kind of cool or unique coming up? Are there any veterans charities you're working with or groups that you'd like to highlight?
Yeah? Absolutely well.
So, I mean, if anybody wants to find me, you just type CAG and done lap on pretty much any any social platform.
And I mean it's my first thing and last name where you can google me.
If you type in my name in Google Kagan ka g a N last name, dunlap d u n l a P, then all my social media will pop up up there and you can just find it on there. It's easy to find. As far as veteran charities, so there's a couple of great organizations, Like this shirt that I'm wearing right now is from an organization called Operation Allies Refuge Foundation and we actually just did a a big roundtable discussion video that we posted on YouTube together. It was a pretty big event we did, and we recorded it in Quantico, I would say about a month ago, maybe it was like at the beginning. I think it was the very beginning of April. I went up there on a weekend on a Friday, and we were we had they had three Vietnam vets that helped evacuate Saigon, the Saigon Embassy and one of the consulates, and then three h Hamatkarzai International Airport veterans who were in the Marine Corps that helped evacuate the airport there in twenty twenty one. And we brought the three or the six of them together, two different generations that had both evacuated a country, and they and they had a roundtable discussion. I just kind of sat there as like a mediator and asked questions if.
Like things came up.
And we also did with like the organization, they did one on one interviews for every single one of these people and that way they could kind of like tell tell their story about what their experiences were. And then we put together all of this footage into a big YouTube video. It's on my YouTube channel right now, which you know, if we can get.
This thing moving.
It was posted on the anniversary of the evacuation of Saigon on the thirtieth of April, and basically any of the money that's generated from this thing in revenue is going to go back to that foundation. And then also there's like fundraising links in the pinned in the comment for it, and also in the description for the video.
But they're a great organization.
They do a lot to help folks that served in Afghanistan during the evacuation, like to heal from moral injury, and to bring people together and just and help people in the in the g Wat community that have a lot of moral injury from that whole that whole thing, you know. And so that's a good that's a good organization. I'm sure you know who Hunter seven is probably a hundred seven foundation. Chelsea's good friend of mine and her and her husband as well. They're all great people. They've done an immense amount to help out veterans and folks and folks in the first responder community and any and police and all that stuff. Like they've done free cancer screenings for thousands of people. Each cancer screening costs like I think twelve to fifteen hundred dollars per cancer screening and they do free cancer screenings to people all over the place all the time.
Wow.
In at Shot Show they screened like I think over a hundred people or something crazy like that for free. And uh, you know, they they really do help a lot of people in the veteran community get get screened and they they they they do a lot for cancer research to for exposure related illnesses.
Check them out hundred seven Foundation. They're great. They're great people, I mean, and there's tons of others too.
There's tons of Another good one a friend of mine I went to college with called Jets for Vets uh, and they basically fly junior service members home for free from their duty station right now overseas for like seeing family, because like if you're a junior enlisted service member, it's expensive to pay for tickets coming home. I only went home three times the five years I was stationed in Hawaii because it's like one thousand dollars round trip to fly back to the East Coast, And so I was like, I'm just.
Not going to go home. You know, most people, most people can't afford it.
You know, you're PFC and you're making like six hundred and seven hundred dollars every two weeks, You're not gonna be able to afford a thousand dollars you know, round trip flight, you know, like you barely afford anything, you know. So they do a really good job too. But there's tons, tons of good organizations that could go on and on there. I mean, I'm friends with a lot of folks that run nonprofits and I love everything that they're doing, and that's one of the things I'd like to get more heavily involved in once I can get because I'm still like trying to build my business and my brand to a point where because I if I can get to a point where I can just give away thousands of dollars a month of my own money, I want to do that. Like that's what I really that's where I'm working towards. And you have to build something that's profitable to get to a point where you can do that.
And a lot of people don't understand that.
They think, oh, well, this person's just making all this money and they're keeping it off of themselves. Like, bro, how do you think Black Rifle Coffee got so successful? You think they just got that successful just giving everything away they made, no they had to roll it back into the company until they grew big enough where now they give hundreds of thousands of dollars away to tons of veteran charity organizations. And that's what I want to get to be able to do eventually, because I want to have an impact on people and I want to help people.
That's really what it comes down to.
Because we do a really good job of uh we do a really good job of tearing each other down. We also do a really good job of helping each other up when we're having a hard time, you know. And that's and I feel like we have an obligation as service members, you know, military members, veterans, first responders, of doing the right thing, taking care of each other, being good ambassadors for our community because you know, the people are left in our right, whether they're still in or out, you know, deserve that, you know. And so that's that's what I hope. I hope that happens. I hope more people do that. Maybe maybe they see what I'm doing and maybe they're like, Okay, maybe I should try to do something more myself. You know, I don't know if I'm the best role model. I definitely don't think so. Like I'm just trying to do the best I can, like everybody else out there, like you, like everybody that's that's out here, trying to do something to put out a good message or talk through things, or have good, honest, open dialogue about stuff, and and and raising awareness about good organizations that have doing good things for other people in the community.
You know.
So I start rambling, I think probably I lose track of my I lose track of what I'm saying sometimes.
But I'll tell you what those are the best rambles that you just had ever. Man.
I wish you all the best. God bless you Kagan, and keep up the outstanding work man. Stay safe too, please.
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on again. Man, I appreciate your time. Thank you absolutely