Jack Murphy is an eight year Army Special Operations veteran who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group. Having left the military in 2010, he graduated from Columbia with a BA in political science. Murphy is the author of Reflexive Fire, Target Deck, Direct Action, and numerous non-fiction articles about Weapons, Tactics, Special Operations, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism. He has appeared in documentaries, national television, and syndicated radio.

 

Topics Covered Include:

1. What makes the Special Forces mission unique
2. What is SOFREP and what was the impetus for starting it?
3. Balancing transparency and operational security.
4. Avoiding identity politics and why the military shouldn't be exempt from scrutiny
5. Discrepancy between mainstream media reports of special operations missions and the reality on the ground
6. Maintaining a sense of purpose at the tactical level in the face of strategic ambiguity
7. The downside of messing with stability
8. How Iraq and Afghanistan differ strategically and politically