PART⚡TIME HITTER Newsletter

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Hollywood Leadership vs Real Leadership

“He is best who is trained in the severest school.” - Thucydides

You’re hiring for a critical people manager position. You’ve put in the work, done the interviews, and eliminated the Chuds from contention. You know who the Chads are and now it’s time to make a decision. You have two final candidates:

A former Navy SEAL Platoon Commander and a drilling National Guard Platoon Leader in a conventional unit.

Who are you picking?

Hold that thought.

I’m going to tell you a secret.

While Navy SEALs and Green Berets get the book deals and executive speaking engagements, it takes a much stronger leader to be successful in a traditional National Guard or Reserve unit. Yeah, actually.

I know what you’re thinking—"this guy has been huffing air duster again. I never miss an episode of SEAL Team on CBS and I can tell these guys are the best of the best in every way. How dare he imply that our nation’s finest, toughest, bravest, most tip-of-the-spearest special operators might not always make the best leaders. He’s stupid, let’s throw rocks at him.”

Well, it’s not rocket science. You learn leadership when you’re faced with real leadership challenges. Thucydides was on to something.

Units in the United States Special Operations Command, or “SOCOM” as I like to call it, are incredibly well-funded. They get the best people, the best training, the best equipment, the best support, and the best missions. When you lead a team of incredibly high-performers with the best resources and support, your job as a leader is not hard. Your people are going to accomplish the mission, with or without you. Your impact as the Asshole-In-Charge is negligible.

Compare that with a part time company commander or platoon sergeant in the National Guard or Reserve. You are continually expected to accomplish your assigned missions with one or both hands tied behind your back. You never, and I mean NEVER, have enough people, equipment, time, or authority, but that doesn’t matter. You’re expected to get it done.

In order to do this, Guard and Reserve leaders have to influence people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission. Coincidentally, this happens to be the Army’s doctrinal definition of leadership in Field Manual 6-22. Weird. True leadership is getting people to accomplish the mission when you don’t necessarily have all the tools at your disposal to make them. This is almost always the case for a leader in the Guard or Reserve. In my opinion, these people often pull off miracles given the limits they compete with to get the job done.

So who are you hiring to run your team?

The guy that was put in charge of the All-Star team on a number of cherry-picked missions with the best equipment DoD can buy? Or the guy that led a highly diverse group of people in whatever mission came up with minimal time to train, extreme resource and personnel constraints, and significantly lesser carrots and sticks at his disposal?

I know who I’d pick, but maybe your company only hires the best of the best. In that case, pick the Navy SEAL.

If you are a Navy SEAL or Green Beret and this piece offended you, please contact us via email to arrange a duel.

What We’re Running

Every week we will discuss a piece of kit, equipment, or “bling” that you can consider incorporating into your loadout. We select products we actually use and that provide real utility, or they’re just fuckin’ cool.

The Almighty Field Pillow

Don’t sleep on the field pillow. Wait, that’s the point of a field pillow hehe. I picked up one of these bad boys in ACU pattern at the Fort Indiantown Gap PX a million years ago and I still have it. I don’t think it’s ever been washed, but it’s water proof and has helped me achieve some crucial moments of relative comfort during many shitty and boring periods of time with the Army.

It is now part of my standard kit and comes with me in my ruck whenever I’m punching out and going to work. You can buy them in most Army PXs. For like 10 bucks or something, I’ve gotten tons of use out of it. Try sleeping on a rock, it just don’t hit the same.

Field pillows save lives.

PART ⚡TIME News

You know you want it… hand-curated news you need to be tracking to not look like a total CHUD.

• Hamas terrorists launched barbaric attacks against Israel. At the time of writing, U.S. involvement is limited and at least 22 American citizens have been killed and an unconfirmed amount are being held hostage. The Navy has arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean as a strong signal of deterrence and SecDef Austin has offered Israel JSOC support to assist with intelligence and rescue hostages. The situation is changing by the minute and we strongly encourage all of our readers to stay updated daily. Follow these live trackers and X (f.k.a. Twitter): CNN, Fox News, CNBC.

• “At the most harrowing of times, some Israeli citizens living overseas aren’t running from the war at home, but to it. From Athens to New York, they’re rushing to airports and diving into online chat groups for help, desperate to make their way to the country after Hamas militants attacked.” 360,000 Israeli reservists have been activated and more are trying to fly back to their homeland to help defend it against Hamas terrorists waging war against them. We fully support our fellow foreign reservists and wish them much strength. Read more about this here.

Intel Drop: Eye on China

People should know what’s going on with China, especially those in the military. In this section, we continue our collaboration with Vermillion China in which we examine the Chinese Communist Party.

Be sure to check out Vermillion’s website and Instagram page so you can stay updated on these incredibly important and relevant stories.

What is the CCP?

Confusion reigns in the US on the topic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Simply put, the CCP is the founding and ruling political party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The CCP itself is controlled by Xi Jinping and the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CCP. This committee varies in size from five to eleven members and the first amongst equals is Xi Jinping. In addition to being the general secretary of the CCP, Xi is the president of the PRC, and the chairman of the Central Military Commission. He is widely referred to as the “paramount leader” (领袖) of China, a status previously reserved for Mao Zedong.

Control of the State

The administrative component of the PRC is the responsibility of the central government and subordinate provincial, municipal, and local governments. These governments are technically separate from the CCP, but all individuals within these governments are appointed by local CCP committees, meaning they are required to be CCP members and adhere to directives handed down by the CCP. This fictional line allows the CCP to claim that the government and the CCP are two distinct entities. This blurring of authorities permits bad actors to assert they aren’t working with the CCP when they are working with the PRC government. An example is US consulting firm McKinsey engaging in client work with provincial and municipal level governments in the PRC and then claiming that this was in no way connected to work with the CCP.

Control of the Military

The PRC military has many fundamental differences with the US military. Perhaps the most important is that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is not China’s army and not the government’s/state’s army. The PLA is explicitly the CCP’s armed wing, and PLA members take an oath to the Communist Party, not to their own country.

“I am a member of the People’s Liberation Army. I promise that I will follow the leadership of the Communist Party of China, serve the people wholeheartedly, obey orders, strictly observe discipline, fight heroically, fear no sacrifice, loyally discharge my duties, work hard, practice hard to master combat skills, and resolutely fulfill my missions. Under no circumstances will I betray the Motherland or desert the army.”

Control of Business

The largest businesses in the PRC are state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are organizations that conduct commercial activities for the PRC government and are led by CCP officials. The most important economic sectors (telecom, energy, aerospace, utilities, steel, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, military hardware, etc.) are dominated by these government companies and their leadership is appointed by the Organization Department of the CCP.

Non-SOE private businesses are also forced to accept an internal communist cadre structure which is not always delineated to the public. Xi has accelerated this campaign since 2021, and according to the party’s internal metrics, most mainland private businesses are hosts to Party bodies.

Control of Society

The CCP’s monopoly of power on all the above institutions allows it to project a high degree of social control over PRC society to the individual level. Unfortunately, this power base allows the CCP to project social control internationally, even in the U.S. The CCP uses a myriad of formal and informal organizations to maintain this control, one example of which is below.

The Ministry of Propaganda maintains massive influence over traditional and social media in mainland China. All major newspapers and information outlets either directly originated from the CCP or are subject to the CCP’s intimate supervision. In many news organizations, reporters and journalists are regularly handed talking points from the Ministry of Propaganda, and those who deviate from the Party line are removed from news work.

Why Does it Matter?

The CCP maintains multiple and overlapping methods of control for all aspects of mainland Chinese society. These methods will never be perfect, but while the CCP rules, it will gain directive control in areas of importance to the Party. The US needs to wake up to the fact that all major interactions with the PRC are interactions with the CCP. Even small-scale interactions have the CCP lurking quietly in the background, ready to strike if a vulnerability surfaces. The CCP seeks to bend all interactions towards the party’s favor in win-win deals where it is the Party that wins twice.

Life Pro Tips and Business Tradecraft

Free chicken for those looking for that extra edge in life and business.

TSA PreCheck

An oldie, but a goodie. If you have a DoD ID Number, you have TSA PreCheck, or the ability to get it.

In case you have been living under a rock, TSA PreCheck allows you to use the (usually) shorter security line at the airport and not have to take off your shoes, belt, etc. It’s a nice perk, and it’s free because you’re a military hero.

When you book air travel, enter your DoD ID number as the Known Traveler Number when asked.

Team Guy October Reading List

“Reading is FUNdamental” - The Fratty Guard

• The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, Peter Zeihan

• I will Teach You to Be Rich, Ramit Sethi

• Battlefield Cyber, Michael McLaughlin and William Holstein