The Dark Side of Special Operations Nobody Talks About | Nick Koumalatsos | TRS Episode 109

Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine. Iran is targeting American forces in the Middle East. North Korea continues building up its military. These may seem like separate threats, but according to Gordon Chang, there's one country behind it all — China. Gordon Chang returns to The Resilient Show for Part 2 of his conversation with Chad, digging into Beijing's growing relationships with America's adversaries and why he believes we're underestimating just how closely they're working together. KEY TOPICS: What Xi Jinping really wanted from his meeting with President Trump

The nightmare scenario has long been the same: China makes a move on Taiwan, the U.S. gets pulled into a war in the Pacific, and the world watches two superpowers collide thousands of miles from American soil.

Before Brazilian jiu-jitsu became a global sport, Vinicius “Draculino” Magalhães was a kid surfing alongside the Gracies in Brazil. The people he grew up around would help shape martial arts history — and he would become part of that story himself. He went from watching his idols to facing them in competitions. In this episode of The Resilient Show, Chad sits down with his former instructor to revisit a lifetime on the mats. Chad knows firsthand what it’s like to learn from Draculino, and that shared history makes this conversation personal. Between the laughs and old stories, you get to know a fierce competitor who now finds some of his greatest pride in what his students accomplish outside the gym. KEY TOPICS: Growing up alongside the Gracies and finding jiu-jitsu through surfing

The U.S. grid gets taken down by an enemy and the entire country goes dark. No phones. No ATMs. No gas pumps. No grocery deliveries. No running water. What now?That question drives Part 2 of our conversation with Jonathan Hollerman. Part 1 exposed how easily the grid could be attacked. Now Jon walks Chad through what he would actually do to survive it. Over the next hour and a half, Jon builds a survival plan from the ground up. First, he explains what you need to do now while the lights are still on. Then he walks through the decisions that could keep your family alive once the grid collapses and America descends into a Mad Max scenario — from escaping the city to storing food to choosing weapons, and everything in between.

Most Americans assume the electrical grid is protected — and that if it ever failed, the military or federal government would step in. Jonathan Hollerman once wrongly assumed the same thing. That changed after he participated in a nationwide grid-down war game at Maxwell Air Force Base alongside federal agencies, military branches and utility experts. Jonathan walked away convinced that the safety net Americans expect simply isn’t there. And worse, any attack on the grid would be absolutely catastrophic to the American people. In part one of this two-part conversation, Jonathan joins Chad to explain why America’s power grid may be the country’s greatest weakness, how quickly a nationwide failure could become catastrophic, and why decades of warnings have produced so little action. KEY TOPICS: What Jonathan witnessed during a nationwide grid-down war game