Too Pure For This World
This is the Nobel podcast, where we talk about how to optimize your technology, life, and mind. We're joined by special operations veterans, entrepreneurs, investors, and others who have overcome difficulty to make it to the top of their craft by staying in the fight.
Sam Alaimo:What's your name?
Kieran Carroll:Kieran Carroll. Where'd you grow up?
Sam Alaimo:I'll start with that one.
Kieran Carroll:I was born in Washington, DC. I grew up right outside of DC in Maryland, went to high school in Bethesda. And then from there, I went to the Naval Academy after high school. So how how old were you
Sam Alaimo:when you realized you wanted to go into the Naval Academy, do the military thing?
Kieran Carroll:My dad was a marine officer, like, in the early seventies. We had been exposed to the military, I guess. And then the other thing too is I have a twin brother, and he also went to the Naval academy, same class. He was way more forward leaning with the military. But, like, realistically, after 911, I think that that became the the ultimate path.
Kieran Carroll:Obviously, the DC area was, like, heavily affected by 911, and we knew people that, like, lost their lives. Our families knew people. So there was, like, obviously, the element of, you know, retribution and doing something for your country. And then on top of that, my parents paid a shitload of money for private high school. So, you know, going somewhere on a military scholarship, either a service academy or ROTC made a lot of sense.
Kieran Carroll:I was I was heavily pushed to do that by my parents.
Rob Huberty:Where were you when 911 happened?
Kieran Carroll:I was a junior in high school. I was I was at high school. I'll never forget this. I was, like, sitting in, like, 1st period class, and, like, somebody came in. They're, like, a plane just hit the World Trade Center, and, you know, there's we didn't have, like, TVs in the classrooms like they do now.
Kieran Carroll:Right? So, like, literally, someone build one of those, like, wheelie TV carts with, like, the, you know, the old school fat boy TVs. We were watching when the second point hit.
Sam Alaimo:Did you get what that meant in junior or high school?
Kieran Carroll:I think people knew that it was, like, gonna be game on at that point.
Sam Alaimo:Was that so was that before or after you realized you wanted to go Naval Academy?
Kieran Carroll:It was, like, right about the time I was trying to figure it out. You know what I mean? So, like, that it was it definitely pushed me in that direction with without a doubt. So Naval Academy, did you know
Sam Alaimo:what you wanted to do? Pilots? Swoe?
Kieran Carroll:When I first went in, I I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought flying would have been cool. I really quickly ruled that out.
Rob Huberty:Was there an aspect that you were doing it? Like, you just did you get to go on flights and stuff?
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. I so I actually have to fly in the back to an f 14. The pilot was such a dickhead. It's hilarious. That's the thing.
Kieran Carroll:There's right supposed to be like I oh I threw up dude Yeah, blacked out is and that was that was a that was a piece of it. I was recruited to swim, so I, you know, went to swim. Not you know, I started failing classes pretty much immediately freshman year. So I stopped swimming, and I focused on academics. I I eventually got my academics back up.
Kieran Carroll:But, like, I never fully recovered. I basically got forced into service warfare, which which is which is okay. It happens to a lot of people. It's it's just it's a part of life there. The other option was marine corps ground, and, like, every every person I talked to who wanted to be a marine, I thought it was, like, insufferable.
Kieran Carroll:So, you know
Rob Huberty:What did your brother end up doing?
Kieran Carroll:Right. So so my brother, I think, would have been the number 2 seal selectee from our class. Collins, he's a freak athlete. He's super smart. He was an aerospace engineer.
Kieran Carroll:I was a history major just to, like, put the you know, differentiate us a little bit. He and him getting kidney stones from Lightweight Crew. They didn't give him seals, and I think he always had a a chip on a shoulder based on that. So he had to eventually go on marine ground, force recon, and then did other stuff after that. But, yeah, he's always been super butthurt about that.
Rob Huberty:But a less insufferable marine? Or
Kieran Carroll:Oh, no. He is he is equally insufferable. Honestly, a lot of the a lot of the SW guys were also insufferable.
Sam Alaimo:This is the part of your story I don't know, so I'm super stoked to get it filled out. So you you became Swoe, and then somehow you went extremely nontraditional, unconventional. What just go over that.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. So I was I was here. I was a terrible swell. I did my first tour on an amphib about Little Creek in Virginia Beach. Spent 2 years on the ship.
Kieran Carroll:It was one of those things where, like, they didn't have a job for you. Right? There were so many junior officers on board. Obviously, Carter Stapleton from our team was also on on the Ashland. I basically just went to a series of schools, right, for the 1st 3, 4, 5 months I was on board.
Kieran Carroll:The fleet has, like, the boarding teams. I went and did, you know, those schools. I did some other stuff. And then and then we then we deployed. So we were, like, the afloat for staging base between the 2 oil platforms, like, literally right off the beach in Iraq.
Kieran Carroll:The op line between Iraq and Iran is also right there. So there's, like, the Iranian stuff going on. We had, like, Brits on board. We had Iraqi navy marine guys on board. For my first experience working with, like, partner forces was that.
Kieran Carroll:It was really weird. We also did, like, the anti piracy stuff off Somalia and East Africa. So we're the Southeast Africa partnership station as well. What were you guys doing? Patrolling?
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. We were just out there. So the marines that were supposed to go on the ended up flying off to Afghanistan right before we deployed. Mhmm. So we went out there, basically, with no actual mission set beyond, hey, establish presence, do some VBSS stuff.
Kieran Carroll:It's basically advising assist off Iraq as well as sort sort of, like, at the the naval version of that. We also hit, like, 11 ports on that deployment, so we were frequently in port. We did exercises with, like, the Israelis. We were in Israel for 2 weeks over Easter Sunday. I ended up going underway with Israeli warships.
Kieran Carroll:That was also sort of a first introduction into, like, working with partner forces. I I did my, you know, 2 years during that time. The navy set up this thing called the riverine forces. The riverine forces were, like, something totally different. Right?
Kieran Carroll:And, like like all beautiful creatures, the navy ended up killing it because it was it was it was too pure for this world. But
Rob Huberty:The riverine is a beautiful creature too pure for this
Kieran Carroll:world. God. That's that's the way I like to think of it. Right? So in 06, when when OIF had been going full swing for a few years, the SBTs, in particular, like, special boat team 22, NSW made the decision to pull SBT 22 out of Iraq, which left a a gap.
Kieran Carroll:So the navy was like, alright. We're gonna go build, basically, SWIC light. So they pulled together a bunch of, like, you know it it was like the island of misfit toys. Right? We had guys that had come from Dan Neck.
Kieran Carroll:We had guys that were SWIC. The officers, the OEs involved, were a mixture of EOD officers and service warfare officers. They gave us a lot of training, everything from, like, ground warfare stuff all the way through the boat stuff. And then they they upskilled a lot of people too into, like, JTAC, into, you know, human collection. And all the training was down at Camp Lejeune.
Kieran Carroll:Once you got selected to go, you went through 6 months of schools, roughly, maybe maybe a little bit more. Then you got to your unit, and you did work up to go Iraq. So by the time I showed up to riverine squadron 2, these guys had just gotten back from OIF. It had been kinetic for them. They they had a good deployment from that perspective.
Kieran Carroll:What was the Riverine doing
Sam Alaimo:in Iraq that was kinetic?
Kieran Carroll:So they did everything from, like, direct action. They did, obviously, insert extract. What was interesting about the riverine units too is that the boat debts had their own ground debt as part of it. So it was, like, again, this hodgepodge thing of, like, you get you get 4 boats, and then you have, like, 10 or 12 dudes that would hop out on the ground and go do limited operations ashore.
Rob Huberty:For a Swoe Daddy, crack deal.
Kieran Carroll:It was it was absolutely a crack deal. And I I think the more interesting thing is, like, if you look at the Swoe the junior officers who were supposed there and, like, where they ended up going into in more interesting places, I think that was, like, the the breeding ground for a lot of it.
Sam Alaimo:It sounds it's like it was entrepreneurial. Like, it sounds like it was an early stage showed up that was There was really stage and dynamic to survive. Right.
Kieran Carroll:So so black and white from the fleet. Right? So the fleet everything is like checklist. Right? Yeah.
Kieran Carroll:You gotta fucking do this and, you know, check check the boxes. Right? I guess, the riverine, there there was none of that. We we took, like, I ads from NSW. We took stuff from the Marine Corps.
Kieran Carroll:We smashed it together. And then, of course, you have the EOD guys that have their own sort of, like, their their spin on things. And it it was an incredible organization to be part of. There were 3 squadrons at the time. And then 2010 happened, and then they did the reduction force.
Kieran Carroll:So our our detachment never ended up going. So it was a major letdown. And then for a year and a half, it was like, well, like, now what the fuck do we do? Right? And this is where I really started.
Kieran Carroll:You know? They they sent me to a bunch schools. Right? I went to a bunch of human schools on SOCOM dollars.
Rob Huberty:So we're using acronyms for OS Everything. Let's define something.
Kieran Carroll:It's human human intelligence collection as a collector.
Rob Huberty:So as a surface warfare officer, you were learning, you know, spy.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. Sources, methods, all that all that fun. The stuff that sounds cool
Rob Huberty:How many other circus work for officers get to do that?
Sam Alaimo:I mean, there there's a handful. There's a handful.
Rob Huberty:So you did a deployment that was, relatively speaking, like a pretty cool SWO deployment. Yep. And then you got to do a riverine, which was, like, seems pretty incredible.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:Then it basically they, you know, down selected in 2010, 3 years into your career, whatnot.
Kieran Carroll:Basically, they were looking for guys to go to Afghanistan on a on a special sort of special projects type of thing, so I ended up doing that. I was in Afghanistan, I think, for 13 months between July of 2011 through, like, August of 2012. And I went over there as a as a collector, specifically focused on, like, document media exploitation, collection on the battlefield. So I think it's, like, ripping people's cell phones, like, tactically.
Sam Alaimo:So you're with the ground. You're You're on-site,
Kieran Carroll:and then you can't
Sam Alaimo:do your collection.
Kieran Carroll:But it so this is the best appointment I've ever had, I think. And I it's it's really hard to top it because I went over there. I was chopped over to CJ soda through a program called tac domax, which, you know, was basically a standalone Afghanistan unit. It was it's hard to describe what it was. But I went I showed up, and they're like, hey.
Kieran Carroll:You're gonna go to Sangin to start. So I went to Sangin, high like, high of the fighting season, you know, July of 2011. I literally just hung out with infantry marines for, like, 6 months, you know. And and some ODAs and some other guys that were, like, in the AO. First battalion, 5th marines was there.
Kieran Carroll:They got really gnarly for them, super kinetic. And then 37 chopped it ripped out with them. And then 37 ended up, you know, getting torn up a little bit. I had no oversight. Like, literally no oversight for months.
Kieran Carroll:I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to do. I could jump out
Rob Huberty:Crack deal.
Kieran Carroll:Crack deal. I could go out on clearing ops or raids or snap VCPs or vehicle checkpoints. Right? Or whatever. I go assist with, like
Rob Huberty:And all all your training and stuff is still, like, you know, interrogations, you know, following people and whatever, and now you're doing
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. I I I did I did some of that too. So it turns out the marines have really robust human stuff already, so it's not like I didn't really add a ton of value. They had, like, these human exploitation teams. I I would sit in there with them.
Kieran Carroll:I I would try to help them out, like, low level source operations. All the the soft teams to the north of us, so there's, like, their ODA teams, MSOTs. They typically had their own human capability. Right? So, like, it was less of that, and it was more of, like, hey, like, do you guys need an extra gun?
Rob Huberty:Like, so who's gonna answer that question? So you you go you know, you were a swimmer. You go to the naval academy. You go to surface warfare, you know, on ships, Brevereen, where you kind of get to do a lot cooler stuff. But, like, you haven't gone through, like, a bunch, like, blocks of kind of basic infantry training or whatever it is at this point or have you?
Kieran Carroll:Oh, we no. That that that was heavily recurring. So that that
Rob Huberty:was okay. So in the
Kieran Carroll:ring,
Rob Huberty:you got to do some of
Kieran Carroll:that stuff.
Rob Huberty:Yeah. So you get to go be a
Kieran Carroll:shooter Yeah. Out of the SWOW community, which is Unusual. Right.
Rob Huberty:Yeah. So you're on this deployment. Did you ever feel overwhelmed by this?
Kieran Carroll:The River East Schoolhouse is basically the school of infantry to start. Okay. So, like yeah. I mean, what what I'm getting weird is that I'd be out, like, I'd be like I'd be like a I was a full lieutenant at o 3, and, like, I'd be out with, like, a squad of marines, dude. And they're, like, looking at me, like, maneuver stuff.
Kieran Carroll:I'm like, hey, man. Like, I'm I'm literally just here at the Straphanger, like but, you know
Rob Huberty:Just here for the fun, man.
Kieran Carroll:I would recommend that we don't walk through the IEDs. Right? Like, you know, stuff like that. The only one piece to me was watching really bad tactics happen, like, in daylight, in the green zone, in IED belts, and, like, you know, not a shot at the Marine Corps, but they I think that they made some missteps quite frequently when I was out there. But, again, I would never say that to them while I was out there, you know.
Sam Alaimo:Do you got this this cool autonomous deployment with the Marines? Yeah. So what what what what happened next? And how did that come? So I was I
Kieran Carroll:was in Sangin, and then I got a call one day, And they're like, hey. Can you can you go cover for this guy who was down in Marja? Marja had been, like, super gnarly earlier in the war, like, a year or 2 before that. I show up, and they're like, can you can you go down and, like, hang out with 2nd battalion 9th marines? I was like, you gotta be shitting me because, like, that's my my brother's at that unit.
Kieran Carroll:So my brother took a hot fill billet to be their s 2, their intel officer, after he left recon. So I called my brother, like, on the, you know, the SBIR VoIP phone or whatever. I was like, hey. I'm coming down to hang out. He's like, dude, no.
Kieran Carroll:You're not. I'm like, alright. So then, like, 3 days later, like, the bird drops me off in the LZ, and I have all my shit. I'm like, hey. Like, can someone get captain Carol out here to help me, like, carry this stuff?
Kieran Carroll:So Colin comes down. He's like, goddamn it. But it was it was more of the same. Like, you know, I, again, had little very little oversight. I had a civilian, like, FSR I was working with at the time who was, like honestly, did most of, like, the actual, like, exploitation work, which just freed me up to go do whatever I wanted to do.
Kieran Carroll:So I bounced out again, you know, all the time, you know, basically to hang out. I went on some stuff with my brother, which probably shouldn't have happened. The mechanic commander, like, figured it out a few weeks and that we were related, which funny, and he was like, you can't ever tell anybody this. The Sullivan brothers rule from the AV and all whatever. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it was cool.
Kieran Carroll:I guess I guess my brother kinda operate in this element. And then they they called me, and they're like, hey. Can you come back to Kabul at the time? So Cipsoft was, like, the one star white soft headquarters in Afghanistan, and then CJ Sodaf was, like, the 06 level, like, tactical kinda command, right, that had a bunch of VSP sites and VSO sites. So I I show up in in Bagram to what I thought was this gonna be, like, a headquarters element job, But they they kicked me over to this, actually, a really interesting program, special program that was looking at at the time, they called green on blue threats.
Kieran Carroll:Right? So, like, you know, you had bad actors that infiltrated the Afghan National Army or the Afghan local police or whatever. Turns out they're all bad actors, right, for the most part. Can we, like, collect on these guys, right, to to predict or figure out or, you know, for targeting purposes, like, like, what can we do? So green
Sam Alaimo:on blue, the threat was that the Afghan partner forces might kill American forces.
Kieran Carroll:They they're already been doing it. So they they they're trying to get ahead of it. We we had a a cover team through the Ministry of Interior called the the in processing team. So when you guys are out at VSPs, right, or VSOs, they had these Afghan local police partner force guys. The Afghan Ministry of Interior was responsible for, like, paying them, training them, equipping them, all this stuff.
Kieran Carroll:And as you guys are intimately familiar, most of these dudes either were or were former Taliban at the time that we just paid to switch sides. Turns out it doesn't work out that way. We had these in processing teams, and CFSOC had, I think, 4 or 5 elements that would go out as part of the using the in processing team as a cover to go, like, exploit phones and, like, you know, you know, do some, like, source operations. So there were a bunch of, like, c l o threes, army s f, e 8, who was, like, one of the guys. I got hooked up with these guys.
Kieran Carroll:I I that's what I did for the next 6 months. I just I flew around all over all over Afghanistan. I probably went to at least 50 VSO sites, maybe more than that. We always had, like, these Afghan dudes in tow with us who were ministry of interior guys that we could just use to, like, get into these places. We go out to VSOs for a few days at a time and just collect a lot of intel on and targeting stuff on who was good, who was bad.
Kieran Carroll:We obviously sent it all back up to actual intel analysts and stuff like that to to go action, but that was my first, like, introduction to, like, big soft. Right? Like, being in this headquarters element. This is also where I first started meeting a bunch of dudes I would later go work for.
Sam Alaimo:This was all in that first 13 month deployment.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. Yeah. So I I rolled out August of 2013. I was in a helicopter hard landing towards the end of my time there. Honestly, I was, like, the least injured guy in Burley.
Kieran Carroll:People broke bones and badly lacerated their heads. This is out in Anghar, actually.
Rob Huberty:What kind of helicopter?
Kieran Carroll:It was a 60 from Ford Guard, I believe. It was a brownout. It was, like, it was, like, 4:30 in the morning. These guys hit, like, a wire that was kind of along the ground a little bit, and the back end of the bird slammed down and The pilots didn't want to fly it out. They tripped a wrecker out from Jbad.
Kieran Carroll:Was this a hot target
Sam Alaimo:or is this just We
Kieran Carroll:were going out for a kle. So there was, like, an ODA team that Key
Rob Huberty:leader engage.
Kieran Carroll:Sorry. Key leader engagement. They're an ODA team that had, like, secured the LZ, sort of, but it was also dark, and it was at night. So it was really hard to do it. Rocky.
Kieran Carroll:They called him medevac burden. 1 dude broke had broken collarbones, so he was he was he was probably the worst guy. The pilots, they medevac them out, so it was you know, ended up holding security on this bird for a couple days as well. It was supposed to be, like, a 4 hour ride. It ended up being, like, a 2 day fucking marathon of, you know, getting this truck out to When you were in
Rob Huberty:it, how scared were you? And did you realize how bad everybody was? You said you were the the Lee Sinjar guy. But with that kind of stuff and helicopters, I've been in a lot of close calls. Yeah.
Rob Huberty:The worst part for me is I was usually on the comms because I was a JTAC and I had the responsibilities.
Kieran Carroll:Yep.
Rob Huberty:And I've been in helicopters where I heard pilots go, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. So And, like, that is literally just like, oh, we're dying.
Kieran Carroll:The crew chief Right. As we were landing, we were only we were probably, like, 7, 8 feet off the ground. It wasn't that It's just hard. It was a super hard landing.
Rob Huberty:Right.
Kieran Carroll:I was the only guy wearing a helmet, and I had, like, a dork. I had my heli landed on. Right? Other guys didn't do that.
Rob Huberty:So I've I've become afraid of helicopters probably by a point. I've seen a lot of stuff. I would immediately put my heli lanyard on. Dude. Yeah.
Rob Huberty:I'd get in. I was in the 30 seconds thing? No, man. Like, I'd have it, like, ready to unhook. I'd get it cleared.
Rob Huberty:I was, like, a 5 second halo, dude. Like, I'm not falling out of this thing at 300 feet.
Kieran Carroll:Nope.
Rob Huberty:Nope. No way.
Sam Alaimo:Nope.
Rob Huberty:I've been in enough helicopters to know that if I'm unhooked 30 seconds before landing, they make a lot of crazy moves that could I could fall out.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. And my wife's like, want like, we're in Hawaii or something. She's like, oh, we should do this helicopter. I was like I was like, don't this forever.
Rob Huberty:Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:It's an amazing deployment for a surface warfare officer
Kieran Carroll:and a very good deployment.
Sam Alaimo:You made a bunch of crucial introductions. Yep. How did that pivot into your next role?
Kieran Carroll:So I had orders down to the Defense Intelligence Agency down in Charlottesville. It's kind of a crack deal, but, like, I believe they were actually coded for a surfboard for us, so I could be wrong about that, but, like, they they tried to slide me in based on the human stuff. Right? Then big navy found out that I was in a hard landing and that I had a separated disc in my back, And someone freaked out in the chain of command. They're like like like, what what is this guy even doing here?
Kieran Carroll:Right? Kind of thing.
Rob Huberty:From the surface warfare community, from DIA.
Kieran Carroll:From Millington. So Millington, like the beep bupers.
Rob Huberty:Right? The overarching members of the navy.
Kieran Carroll:The surface warfare community managers. And they're like, we need to get him back to a military treatment facility to get, you know, physical therapy and whatever. And, honestly, I I was, like, fine. I mean, for the most part, it's fine. So they sent me back to Walter Reed in Bethesda.
Kieran Carroll:He's called Bethesda Naval, and now it's Walter Reed. I was there for about a year, and I I didn't really have a job. Like, they gave me, like, some bullshit program management job, which I didn't hardly ever showed up for. Again, like, I didn't have a ton of oversight. There there are other people that, like, in the in the office I worked in, it was, like, the the nonmedical wounded warrior Navy's wounded warrior office kind of a thing.
Kieran Carroll:We did not have a ton of wounded warriors in the navy, and the ones that we did typically came out soft. So SOCOM had the Care Coalition guys, and that was that's where they all went to. So
Rob Huberty:I I just I I wanna go over this in my head. The time in the Navy where Kieran Carroll didn't really have a job, Let's start the your 1st ship, you just basically learn and you don't really do anything, so that's not really a job.
Kieran Carroll:Correct.
Rob Huberty:Your second one was, like, a commissioning kind of a new thing and kinda doing that, and it's a job, but, like, the responsibilities, whatever, are nebulous.
Kieran Carroll:I mean, you're you're a mission commander. Like, it Okay. Yeah. So you're
Rob Huberty:So that that one's a job.
Kieran Carroll:That's a job.
Rob Huberty:And then basically for that 13 month deployment, it was whatever you wanted to do. You were basically entrepreneurial soldier
Kieran Carroll:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:Who was just like, this seems like a fun fight.
Kieran Carroll:Right.
Rob Huberty:And then after that, you had a hard landing, and then you're supposedly recovering without a job.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. I mean, I'd go to physical therapy and whatever.
Rob Huberty:Literally years where there's, like, very little to no supervision.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. This is one of them. I lived in DC with, like, my high school friends. Like, it was it was whatever. An army of 6 that I met who I he had this incredible background.
Kieran Carroll:I met him in Afghanistan. He was either at. He was, like, one of the supporting things. He was, like, a a a a special mission unit guy, Intel dude, signature. He randomly hit me up one day and was like, hey.
Kieran Carroll:Like, you know, I I enjoyed working with you. I I would drive him around and stuff sometimes. Enjoyed working with you. Like, what are you up to now? I was like, hey.
Kieran Carroll:I'm over here at Walter Reed. I'm I'm at that time, I was thinking about getting out. I'm like, I, like, bought my GMAT test prep book. You know? And he's like, hey.
Kieran Carroll:Like, you know, have you thought about and he was one of the lead liaisons to the NSA at the time. He's like, have you thought about maybe coming over here? He's like, I could try to find something interesting for you
Sam Alaimo:to do, the Jay Soccer NSA.
Kieran Carroll:To a he was a Jay soccer at NSA. Okay. So, like, there's a bunch of them. I did sit there, you know, whatever and coordinate and, you know, target. And I was like, yeah, sounds cool.
Kieran Carroll:I said, the Navy will never let me do this. And he was like, well, let me make some calls, you know, who like, who do I have to talk to? So I gave him, like, my my detail and my career manager's name. Luckily, my at the time, my career manager had come from Riverine Squadron, and he was an o eight Naval Academy grad, and this this is a future admiral. The guy's awesome.
Kieran Carroll:And he was like, fuck it. Like, yeah. Like, let him go. So they cut me orders, 3 year orders. At this at this point, I was so off course for typical Swell promotions or or or milestones is is what they call it.
Rob Huberty:Sure. They were in a SWO.
Kieran Carroll:Right. And, like, I didn't care because, like, I didn't plan on making the Navy a career. Right? I I just wanna keep doing interesting stuff. So I I owe, this one dude in particular a bunch of beers for for actually getting it worse to go over there.
Kieran Carroll:So I went to the National Security Agency for, like, roughly 3 years. And when I first showed up, I don't I don't have a sticking background. Like, obviously, I don't have a cyber background. They made me go through information warfare officer school to start, so that's down, like, Pensacola. Which, like,
Rob Huberty:that's why I mean, 22 year olds go to that. Right?
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. That's,
Rob Huberty:like, the first school they if if you're in that group.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. Exactly. If you're an information warfare officer in the Navy, you you start there. And it's, like, 8 weeks in in Pensacola. Information warfare community, though, has a lot of, like they call them accessions.
Kieran Carroll:So, like, they have a lot of o threes, o fours coming from other career specialties into the into the community.
Rob Huberty:There's a bunch of dudes at that school. It's like, who is that guy? Don't worry about it.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. I mean, I I think a lot of people with interesting backgrounds. Guys. And then I show up, and the XO you know, not a lot of people probably realize this or understand this, but the National Security Agency, right, is is a Department of Defense Agency. Right?
Kieran Carroll:So you have a bunch of civilians that work there that keep the lights going, that are, like, the sort of the key decision makers. But then he has, like, a ton of military people that are, like, revolving it out of there. And the navy, I think, has something like at the time when I was there, I think with the navy, we had, like, almost 2,000 people Mhmm. At actual, for me, like, NSA headquarters, but you never know it. I showed up, and the the the one requirement the navy made me do besides the school was I had to go qualify on the battle watch floor that the navy has there.
Kieran Carroll:And I think I I set, like, the all time record to qualify and get the fuck off the battle watch floor because it was brutal.
Rob Huberty:What is the battle watch for?
Kieran Carroll:It's it is a operations center that you sit there in 12 hour shifts. And, you know, you have a bunch of analysts doing what their stuff. Right? A lot of it was tracking, like, foreign foreign naval assets and whatever else. Right?
Kieran Carroll:You're also
Rob Huberty:room that's an operation center. A bunch of people staring at computers, big TVs around the wall, maps of the world Yeah. Television screens.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. Basically You
Rob Huberty:have to run a operation center.
Kieran Carroll:You gotta sit for, like, murder boards and stuff and and whatever else. What's a
Rob Huberty:murder board?
Kieran Carroll:A murder board is when they they ask you a lot of questions rapidly and make you feel really dumb. If you're in the fleet and you're an officer, you sit through a lot of murder boards in in your career, either getting murder boarded or murder boarding somebody else. Anyways, so I had to do that. I I I think I was there for maybe, like, 2 months tops. You know?
Kieran Carroll:You weren't there every day. It was, like I think you had, like, 3 or 4 3 or 4 day shifts or whatever. When I left, I went to NSA's counterterrorism directorate. I was one of the liaisons. There there's a bunch of them.
Kieran Carroll:And I had East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were were were were the 2 AOs that I focused in.
Sam Alaimo:What on a high level was that that you were doing in the Arabian Peninsula? What was the what was the overarching objective that I had?
Kieran Carroll:So so I supported, like, all the the tier one units that were operating out of there. Okay. So national level collection. Right? So, like, you think of, like, you know, the various assets that we have flying, collecting, or, you know, waterborne assets or whatever, all the way down to, like, the tactical, like, guys putting devices in places who support specific operations.
Sam Alaimo:So it sounds ambiguous. Did you have a direct order, or were you, again, making up your own ways you went along?
Kieran Carroll:I mean, the the direct order came all the way down from the National Security Council. It was how do you target, kill, or capture, like, these bad these bad dudes. Right? So it's like the J PAL targeting list, but for those AOs What's the
Sam Alaimo:J PAL targeting list?
Kieran Carroll:So what it is? It's like the the joint prioritized effects list. So it's like, you know, it's the the bad people that we're interested in
Sam Alaimo:affecting. So you had a list of bad people you needed to affect. Right. And your task was to go out there and
Kieran Carroll:affect it. And and figure it out. And the NSA analysts, right, the Intel guys and the collectors, they're the ones who are out there that are collecting on the network, mapping the network, analyzing the network, figuring out what the next step is, and how do we get closer to this person, and how are we in this person's comms. But at the end of the day, like, these are the guys that in the movies, when you see people, like, he's moving from here to there, and, like, we have on ISR, and we have his, like, his his cell phone selector, and they cross correlate all this stuff. These are the guys that are
Sam Alaimo:doing that. And you were part of that?
Kieran Carroll:I yes. The NSA guys were doing it, but I was the one taking that and feeding it back over into into the JSOC world. And I also worked a bunch with the CIA and some of the other interagency stuff. I worked with, like, the JSOC, like, you know, Delta. Right?
Kieran Carroll:Had a had some stuff going on. Dan Mack, Naval Special Warfare Development Group owned both of those AOs from that tactical perspective. Right? Like, they they they, like, they were the the forward forces that were there. So I got to know Dev grew really well from from that perspective.
Kieran Carroll:And then, obviously, the agency has their stuff going on. Then there's a bunch of other JSOC units that, you know, may or may not be very well known that are also they're doing their specific thing. But, anyway, while I was doing this, I started so I I ended up going back to Afghanistan twice, actually.
Rob Huberty:You were supposed to be on a watch floor in a room feeding information to people that were
Kieran Carroll:Not not even really a watch floor. Right? Like, I I it's it's really hard to describe unless you guys are there. But, like, you're you're there. You're, like, you're a conduit.
Kieran Carroll:Right? You're a conduit because, like, you got so used They collect their information.
Sam Alaimo:Right.
Rob Huberty:Where is the bad guy? They're in this car. These are the ways we're gonna find out. Right. And you're like I
Kieran Carroll:spent a lot of time watching ISR feeds. Right. Like So
Rob Huberty:you you give this information to the the dudes on the ground, whoever they be, super sneaky, you know, tip of the spear kind of dudes. Right.
Kieran Carroll:And they
Rob Huberty:were like, you know what? I should go over there.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. And while I was there, I had a really good senior executive that I worked with. And, again, being sort of weird, right, there were times, several times where they would bring me into these National Security Council meetings, and I would literally just sit in the back like this and not say anything against a wall with, like, 30 other people that were there for the same reason. And they would either call them PCs, which are principal committees. So you think of, like, the national security adviser, the secretary of state, secretary of defense are all in these meetings, or they're, like, 1 or 2 levels below that.
Kieran Carroll:So, like, they're they're they're they're deputies. When I was in there, they were like, okay. Like, we were getting target packages approved, essentially. Right? So you gotta sit up there and defend and be like, here's here's what we have on this guy or whoever.
Kieran Carroll:Right? And then, you know, everyone with equities as they used to like to say, would sit there and be like, you know, I don't know. Right? Or, you know, the department of the treasury guy would be like, well, you know, if we remove him, then we lose this intel line of, you know, threat finance stuff. Right?
Kieran Carroll:How did you go from where you are right now in the story to transitioning out of the military? Yeah. So I left in December 2015. I went to SEAL team 18 as a reservist. I went to the the SEAL Team 18 as a special boat unit.
Kieran Carroll:And while I was there, the damn it, guys were like, hey. Do you wanna come back to active duty for a little bit? I said, yeah. So I ended up going back for 18 months, deployed, you know, 2 depending how you would look at it, either 2 or 3 more times to North Africa. Was the OIC of a of a JSOC maneuver unit that was a boat?
Kieran Carroll:Probably, like, professionally one of the most rewarding things I've done, I think. But that's how my wife was so pissed, right, with all the stuff. I went back into the reserves after that, back to 18 for a little bit. And then
Sam Alaimo:what year is this?
Kieran Carroll:I I I I got done, like, early 2018. You know, like, mid 2018.
Sam Alaimo:Okay. So we we found a 0 as Yeah. Early, mid 2018. So you're getting out early.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. It was I was getting out. I went back to reserves. I I went to PwC as a consultant for my full time thing. How did you go from
Sam Alaimo:the reserves to PWC?
Kieran Carroll:So I I mean, I came here to Philly. I didn't have a job. So, like, I literally ran to Shantoule, and I think at, like, a bar or something. And he was like, I can get you a job within 2 weeks. And I was like, that sounds awesome.
Sam Alaimo:You got out without a blast. Idea.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I I started talking to people, but, like, you know, I didn't have and then, you know, consulting is just a kind of a catchall. Right?
Kieran Carroll:So I, you know, did consulting for 15 months or whatever it was, 16 months.
Rob Huberty:Naval Academy, surface warfare officer, riverine, deployed with marines, did whatever you wanted in country, got super sneaky organizations back home, NSA, then further sneaky reserves, Dan Neck, PWC. Yeah. And then startup, and then Weemat.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:Okay.
Kieran Carroll:And I think in there too, when I was at PwC, I started my executive MBA and then wrapped it up while I was here. What did you
Sam Alaimo:think about ZeroEyes before you joined it and you were you were aware
Kieran Carroll:of it? I mean, I think when when Rob and Mike told me the whole thing, I was like, this is a game changer. If this is if this can work, this is a game changer.
Sam Alaimo:What was the discussion like to drop your your job with PwC to die?
Rob Huberty:So we met at Bunker Labs, I think, was the first time. Right? And so I don't if you were doing your pitch of your company, like, as you certainly did in that thing and maybe we were together, but I think you were supposed to be, like, someone who helped out.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:And we were doing a bunch of pitch pitch decks and like we had gone, you know, to business school, whatever. Like, we were okay at PowerPoint, like, having gone to business school, but, like, we were a list of dudes. So, like, typically, the officers from the Naval Academy do a lot more power PowerPoint decks than we do, and he was consultant. Consultants basically are, PowerPoint wizards. And we're like, I could help you for free.
Rob Huberty:And free was a great price for us.
Kieran Carroll:It's the only price for you.
Rob Huberty:Right. It was the only price at the time because, like, we had no money. We were we were doing the WeWork thing, and then he'd help out. And so, like, we met in, you know, WeWork in Philly where he would help us with, like, the silly thing is just, like, is that the right color periwinkle blue?
Sam Alaimo:Is this kinda like when you join the riverines? Or is that that Afghan deployment with the marines? Are you basically just figure it the fuck out? Yeah.
Kieran Carroll:I think so. I mean, that's what we've all had to do this entire time. Right? There there's there's no playbook we're executing from. Like, this doesn't exist.
Sam Alaimo:I feel like your role your role, like, even right now today is still similar to that. So talk about what you're doing with strategy and how is this this vague overarching agenda and how you're maneuvering through it. Let's just leave it broad like that.
Rob Huberty:What do
Kieran Carroll:you I think for one thing, I think it's it's it's unusual for, like, post series a and series b companies to even have, like, a strategy team because that really that conjures up more of, like, a corporate development arm, which, hopefully, we grow into that one day. Right? That that would be awesome. But I think right now, it's all about how do you accelerate rapid growth. That's, you know, what we're focused on.
Kieran Carroll:So we have the government affairs effort, which so far seems to be going really well. The end goal for the company, right, is that this our software capability is basically part of everyday life for a camera. Like, it it's it's a it's a standardized feature across all security cameras for the most part. Realistically, right, there's no political solution to gun violence in our lifetime. So we we have to do something tech technology wise to be a stopgap, and we're a good layer to that.
Kieran Carroll:So it's going and, you know, talking to policymakers and educating them about this kind of stuff. We're so new and unique and differentiated that we, you know, we get a lot of attention on us, plus our backgrounds. Right? We're veterans hire better we hire veterans. We bring veterans into emerging technology roles, plays really well with policymakers.
Kieran Carroll:And then it's like the other thing that we're focused on too, right, is a competitive road map. Like, how do we stay competitive as a company? So we look at, like, FedRAMP. We look at SafetyAct. We look at ISO and SOC 2, and these things that we we have to do as a company to be competitive in the market.
Kieran Carroll:And they're they're they're major muscle movement for the company. They impact every single team. And so the strategy team's kinda helps coordinate a lot a lot of that stuff because there's so many balls in the air as we're trying to get FedRAMP done, for example. And then it's like, well, what's after FedRAMP? And then so so we're looking at at all that kind of stuff too.
Kieran Carroll:And then there's, like, the the random strategic initiatives or special projects or whatever you wanna call them. So, like, the insurance stuff for us, right, which could be huge down the road, but you gotta start somewhere at some point, and we're starting now. We're probably a little bit heavier on it, but can our software impact the insurance market and bring the insurance market into into our market? I think so far, the answer seems like, yeah, maybe, and and that would be huge.
Rob Huberty:You said, you know, maybe we're a little ahead of our skis. So going to business school, knowing the story that you just told is, like, I know that you've downplayed this, but it's the most interesting swell in the Navy kind of stuff. I I am aware that there's, like Turns out I'm not, actually. 2 or 3 others or whatever it is. But that is an outrageous make believe
Kieran Carroll:It doesn't even sound real.
Rob Huberty:It it sounds phony. Yeah. You've never had stability in your professional career, even going to school, I would argue, based on what you said, where you were, like, on a trajectory where you started and you finished in a different direction. So in stages of companies, particularly in entrepreneurship, you'll you'll see that maybe some people are are better, you know, at different stages. I still don't know what stage we are best at.
Rob Huberty:You know, we're trying to go our way through.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:But, like, I, you know, I worked at Amazon in a a very late stage thing. Correct. Not the best fit for me personally.
Kieran Carroll:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:And I I thrive in chaos. And to say that you don't that you only know chaos. Do you see yourself in a different thing? How how do you view yourself for other people who I mean, I don't know that anybody's gonna get as interesting of a career, but, like, how do you see that playing in your life?
Kieran Carroll:I think it's true of all of us, not not just me. Right? But I think anyone that, like, went through some of the stuff that we did throughout the global war on terror and all these different things, I think we bring organization to chaos. That that that's one of our biggest strengths, and we have a lot of people that with that strength on our team, without a doubt. If you're not operating in that environment and, like, you you have to be able to organize chaos.
Rob Huberty:So sounds like you've had a lot of job interviews or connected the dots through driving people in, you know, g wagons overseas to meetings behind closed doors where you're the silent dude in the back Yeah. To connecting dots. In, like, a chaos world. You were able to have these individual connections that kind of advance you that you didn't plan or see coming. So very entrepreneurial.
Rob Huberty:You joined us. Was that because you were running towards something or running away from something?
Kieran Carroll:Obviously, was excited about what you guys were doing. Waking up every morning and seeing a mass shooting in the newspaper, you know, and then knowing that there's a potential layered solution out there for it. Hard to live with myself otherwise. Right. If I couldn't come here and and work on it.
Kieran Carroll:I wake up every morning excited to get to work. Like, it sounds stupid to say that, but it it it's literally true. You know what I mean? And, like, we don't have the corporate environment here, which is awesome.
Sam Alaimo:Doing everything we can not to have it.
Kieran Carroll:Right. We should never have that if if at all we can help that. We we all operate at a high level and we resonate at that level. I think we've done a good job attracting people that resonate at that frequency into the company.
Sam Alaimo:That's it for this episode. If you wanna check out more from the podcast, head to zero eyes dot com slash Nobel, where you can see show notes, read more about our guests, and suggest guests or topics of your own. Until next time, stay in the fight. Don't ring the bell.