The Power of Public-Private Partnerships in Innovation, Security, and Civility

The vast majority of the people I worked with were true patriots. These are the guys at 3 o'clock in the morning that are breaking down doors and arresting some of the scariest, most horrible people, protecting our families. And we pay them nothing. Unsung heroes. These are the people that we need to sort of remember that they're not doing it for the glory. They're doing it because they truly believe in the better of the common good. And we were there to try to figure out what was going on and make their lives better.

Welcome to The Deal Table. Today we're excited to welcome Douglas Smith, a leader with 3 decades of experience at the crossroads of national security, government, and business.

He played a key role in major security initiatives like Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, and he led U.S. delegations to over 40 countries ensuring global security and economic stability.

He currently leads global affairs for Orchard Global, where he advises on national security, private equity, and international government relations.

We know you'll enjoy this episode.

So Douglas, you know, I really appreciate you being here with us today. You know, we met a year and a half, 2 years ago. It's been a while. And one thing I think I love about my personality is being naive about people's status. And I just— I think one of the greatest things that for me at least is I talk to everybody the same, whether the cleaning lady or the president or whatever. It's just And when I first met you, I didn't really understand your status and whatever. And then actually researching you, I'm like, oh, I talked to Douglas way too informally. So I apologize. The Honorable Douglas Smith, welcome.

I think the most important thing is that we met. I think we're all the same. That's the problem. And people just forget about that in this day and age. That old saying, we all put our pants on one leg at a time. So I think civility is what's so important. And if I wasn't such a courage, you know, fearful of needles on my arm, I would get civility costs nothing tattooed on it. I just don't like needles that much. I don't either. I don't blame you. Civility.

I like that. Civility costs nothing. So one of the things when you saw that we were doing this project and you reached out and you were like, hey, I think it'd be really cool if we talk about the intersection of public policy and business. I'd rather just— I just love to jump in the deep end and just get after that. Sure. And just let you free rein, just start chatting and let's go.

That's a little dangerous. Just let me go. Yeah, my wife is not a big fan of that. If I just go, who knows what will happen. But, you know, I do think, you know, in the time we're living in, it's important to sort of take a deep breath and remember that it takes both sides to make these things happen. Corporate America can want one entire design, but if the government is fighting the whole way, it's not going to happen and vice versa. But even more importantly, if we want to solve some really complex, challenging problems, it requires that collaboration. And each side brings something unique and important to achieve that, whether it's, you know, through regulatory processes in the financial services world to, you know, how we deal with natural disasters in Texas and a hurricane. Without both these sides coming to the table, it's just not going to happen. Yeah.

I think too often, you know, pure capitalists forget that maybe they got their start with a little government nudge, you know, and we were talking about this earlier with Victor Vescovo. You know, a lot of people don't realize that a lot of innovation came from the space program that was funded by the government, you know. So I'd love to get into that and your thoughts on that about what it means to have that government nudge to spark innovation, to spark business, to spark growth?

Yeah, I don't know if it's— I mean, it's an amazing example what you just said with NASA. I mean, everything from the pen that can write upside down, what came out of it. But I guess maybe we'll start with an interesting story in my time when I was at DHS and Homeland Security and the challenges we had at throughput at airports. And if you think about it, it's the same as throughput in any business. If you can't move product off the shelf, it's not happening. And a kind of a micro example of that was looking at tourists flying into Vegas. So the casinos in Vegas, the hotels, the restaurants, they want a happy customer. And if that customer is coming off the plane and sitting in a long line and not able to get through, by the time they get through, they're not happy, they're not spending. And so if the corporations want to be profitable, they want a happy customer. Now, our challenge at DHS was, as you know, post-9/11 in particular, is we were beginning to, you know, really just do many, many, many, many different databases, check everything we possibly could about you before you got on a plane. It slowed the process down. And we came up with this idea called Global Entry. That was a concept that there is a massive haystack out there. And if we could shrink that haystack, I don't want to worry about Ryan. Ryan's a great guy. You know, I know everything about it. If we could create this sort of grand bargain with you saying, hey, Ryan, share all of your personal data with us in an obviously controlled, classified sort of setting. In return, you're going to the head of the line. So when you land in a port of entry, you're not waiting in the customs line. You're going straight through. So on the government side, we had the ability to check everything we thought we could about you to make sure that you were a safe risk. What we didn't know how to do was, how do I sell it to you? Like, that was not our bailiwick. So at the time, I pick up the phone and call Richard Anderson, who had been the CEO of Delta Airlines. And I had gotten to be quite friendly with him on a variety of these international aviation issues and explain this problem set. And I said, Richard, we know you guys are mad at us. People are missing connections. They're getting to this country unhappy, grumpy. Here's what we could do on our side, but I don't know how to convince your customer, do it. It's like, Douglas, give me a couple days, I'll call you right back. Hangs up, few days go by, calls me and says, I'm bringing the whole team up to meet with you and the secretary, the whole team at DHS on Friday. The advantages of being the CEO of a major global airline is you get on a plane and move it away. So Richard came up with the concept of the premium customer. The premium customer is always asking for something better. Like, what do I get for all the miles I'm putting sitting in a seat? What was the benefit I can get? And so he realized he could use this head-of-the-line privilege with his top-tier customers and market to them. So with that, it was born. And, you know, with Delta Airlines and then, you know, being the government, you have to take— you can't take sides. We also had United Airlines. We picked 4 ports of entry to begin to experiment what is now known as, you know, TSA PreCheck, Global Entry. But it was a true public-private partnership. It was out— Richard's sort of leadership on the private sector side and using the marketing geniuses at Delta to help us figure out how to sell it to the American people. Didn't matter this amazing concept that we had at the government, you know, and from there, you know, it was born and the rest is history.

So when you say sell it, do you mean as a concept or actually Sell it because like, I think it was only like $50.

Sell it. We would have given it away for free, the government, to be totally honest. By statute, we weren't allowed to, but we would have literally given it away for free. Sell it. I mean, I needed to convince you to opt in. You had to be comfortable enough to say, all right, I'll fill out this form, go online, give you all my personal data, you know, where I've lived, who I'm married to, not the car I drive, but close. And in return, we're going to give you a benefit. And that benefit is— and I don't know the last time you've come in internationally, you know, Customs and Border Protection has— continues to advance, you know, thanks to cloud computing, etc. I mean, you no longer even have to stop. You walk to that kiosk, break stride for a hundredth of a second, just enough for them to grab your picture, and off you go. But none of that could have happened if we couldn't figure out a way to sort of present that to the American traveling public and sell them on it that they, in return. And this is what we have now as a result.

Yeah.

When I did the TSA PreCheck, I can't remember when I did it, but I know you do the form and I think I had to go to the airport to make sure that I'm a real human.

Yes.

Maybe do a thumb thing. But domestically, it's been, it's been amazing. And it's been a while. I think it's been way too long since I've been international. And the international that I would do would go was Dubai and Qatar. And in there you have a different sort of pre-check, which is, oh, you're an American white male, you're in this line, you're everybody else, you're in that long line over there. But that's not a government thing. That's just a— that's that country thing. But to have a global— I didn't realize that TSA PreCheck was from that.

Came from. Yes. That's amazing. And that's kind of how we use that concept, that screening concept to develop all this. And then it went to a whole new level. If you're in the program and you're Canadian, you clear customs now in Canada. If you're leaving from Abu Dhabi, to use your Emirates example, you're in America once you get on that plane. We have US customs officers based in Abu Dhabi at the airport there. You clear that kiosk. Off you go, you're in America. And so we ended up signing— this was an international treaty. I think it's now the Emirates, Germany, Canada, a variety of countries. But, you know, it all came down to the critical importance of this cooperation. Like, how do we get both sides? You know, we had an incredible ability to micro-target bad people.

From a business standpoint, is TSA— is that government or is that a government? Okay.

Yeah, well, at the moment it's still government. It falls under— there's 7 operating components under DHS, and TSA is one of them, Transportation Security Administration.

So from the— I guess from the economic standpoint of it, to your analogy earlier, is you want the happy customers. Like, the quicker they can get to the casino, Vegas, your example, the more money they'll spend, which drives revenue, which drives taxes, which drives everything.

And that, you know, any city in America, you know, the faster I can get people through and out, you know, what the security people want to do is they want to clear the haystack. They want to get 99% of that out of the way. And that's the 1% they're concerned about. And then they can really focus their resources on that. And that allows them to be much more effective, much more efficient. And, you know, for the traveling public, a much better experience.

And I guess the economics of that is, Is there an empirical study to show how much revenue is generated from, you know, somebody that's in a better mood? Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know if there's a study on the mood. I think that's probably just sort of common sense, but we did do a lot of studies on, you know, the speed at which moving it through. I mean, I'll give you another example of, of this public-private partnership. I want to say 2013 or so. You double-check my math. There was a printer cartridge that was shipped out of Yemen that had— it was explosive cartridge, and it was being sent through one of the premium air carrier services. I won't use the word blow them up. I won't mention who they were, but it slipped through, and it was a gigantic wake-up call to us. This is coming after 9/11. The airline industry had barely recovered just in terms of the losses they had experienced from lack of revenue during post-9/11. And so what we realized is that a lot of these customs declaration forms were still very much paper, archaic. And so working with, in collaboration with FedEx, DHL, and UPS, we came up with a whole new program, electronic form program that allowed them to be that much more efficient. So we could much more accurately identify what was on every single one of these planes flying around in the world. There is a staggering percentage of global GDP that is flying around in the belly of these planes. I mean, this is where your high-value products are getting moved around. And so, you know, we realized we couldn't just ground everything. I mean, that would have been the easy answer. Just, you know, don't let any planes fly. But if we had ground every UPS, DHL, FedEx, Atlas Air, etc., planes, I mean, the global economy would have screeched to a halt. And so it was another example of bringing these guys in together, saying, we know where the threat's coming from. We've ranked them. We know where the highest risks are. But we need you guys to collaborate with us. We need your brainpower to work with us on this to create a much more efficient pre-screening system of products coming into the country that will allow those planes to fly safely, your product to get there, but for us to feel comfortable that dangerous goods aren't being transported.

I love the example of the public-private partnership. I love the example that it was initiated by government who saw an issue, a challenge, and approached the private sector. That's contrary to, I think, a lot of people's perception of government, which is it's this bloated, inefficient machine. In your experience, you had a rich experience in the government. Did you see other examples of that? Because I think of that as being uncommon, that the government would identify a problem and approach the private sector.

I think it's everywhere. I mean, let's pause for a second on just given the world we live in, let's be realistic, waste, fraud, and abuse. You tell me any common sense person isn't for that. Everybody is for eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. If they're truly being honest, from the far, far left reaches of the Democratic Party to the far right wings of the Republican Party, that is a common goal that we should all have. If you're running, I now work in private business and financial services. And we, for our investors, for our business, I mean, we spend all day long thinking about that. It's an admirable, smart goal. The reality is every business, whether it's public or private, is gonna have these issues. And should we be systematic and smart and methodical? Absolutely. What I can tell you is my experience in all the years in public service, The vast majority of the people I worked with were true patriots, whether it was the guys at 3 o'clock in the morning. You know, you and I have kids. These are the guys at 3 o'clock in the morning that are breaking down doors and arresting some of the scariest, most horrible people protecting our families. And we pay them nothing. I mean, they, they put their lives on the line every night. In a couple of weeks in Vail, I'm hosting the Navy SEAL Foundation for an event. What we have asked of not just top-tier operators, but our entire United States military over the last 30 years has been unbelievable what we have asked them to do. And I think when we sort of look at what government's been able to do and the partnerships they've had, I mean, I think sometimes people forget, like the EPA, the bookie man of the EPA was actually founded by a Republican, Richard Nixon. And what, you know, the EPA was able to do and the sort of innovative things to protect our waterways and such over all the many years. There's an amazing company called Palantir. Palantir was born out of the US government. That was US government funding that allowed Palantir to really take off. Now, it took some time, but now, I mean, no one can dispute what Dr. Karp has done to grow that company and the incredible value it's brought, particularly in the national security space. But once again, you know, that was, you know, coming out of In-Q-Tel, out of the United States government to sort of help foster these businesses in partnership. So, I mean, I think if you— the interesting thing with government, which is different from private business, you know, the government has a set sort of budgetary cycle, right? It starts on October 1st, and I give the Ryan Agency $100 million and hopefully he's created a good smart budget and that budget goes from October 1st all the way to the end of September down to zero. Ryan, private business running company, you're working on a different thing. It's not that one's right, one's wrong. It's just you have to sort of understand there are two different systems by which they're done. But I do think, look at the from, you know, in the health space, the ability, you know, thanks to President Bush 43 predominantly, what they were able to do to push AIDS research, you know, was a global health crisis, how they were able to do it. Look, and to President Trump's credit in the first term, I mean, COVID caught everyone by surprise. And it was an amazing collaboration between the NIH and privately held pharma companies to fast-track a vaccine to get the world back to work again. You know, it's, you know, one couldn't have done it without the other, to be very clear. They all want to take credit, but the reality is it took like both sides really kind of getting behind this and thinking about innovative solutions to achieve things. You know, I'll just leave you with one other example is, have you been sitting in a restaurant and your phone goes off and it says, whether it's an Amber Alert or take shelter, That, that was a public-private partnership that we created at DHS where we realized, like you were saying, you're from Memphis. I'm seeing you here in Dallas right now. If there's a flood in Memphis today, it's, it's not— you want to know about it, but it's not that important. But if there is a tornado that is dropping down in Dallas, Texas, you know, 100 yards from here, you do want to know. And so we worked with the cell phone companies at the time, Sprint, AT&T, et cetera, to embed into these phones a geolocating system that allows public safety authorities to— you right now, like, I don't live in Dallas, you don't live in Dallas, but if there was something bad happening right now, it would find our phone and give us that alert. And so it was the kind of the ability of FEMA and the USG to aggregate a lot of this information But it was the technology of the providers that allowed it to keep the American people safe. And it's these kind of partnerships that have made people so much better. I was in the UAE not that long ago, and the UAE, I was meeting with some of their national security staff there, and they were describing this whole new system they're rolling out. I was like, huh, that sounds super familiar. And he reaches up and he pulls a binding off the shelf. 3-ring binder, opens it up, and literally the front page has a memo that I wrote with my signature on it. Like, they literally took our plan for how to better put in a public safety system straight out of DHS. And, you know, some people would be offended. I mean, I don't agree. Like, right, you know, what's that great expression? The imitation is the greatest sign of flattery, something like that.

So, so there is a a profound, meaningful role for government, and it's improving the lives and doing it, fulfilling its role. How did we get to this place where that perception is so different? Or am I wrong?

No, I think we're in a very dark, sad place. You know, I remember being a young, stupid kid working in the Clinton White House. The entire world revolved around the nightly news. What was Peter Jennings or Dan Rather? I guess at that, I think at that point Walter Cronkite had retired. What was the lead story at night? And that was it. It was like a 24-hour, okay, start all over again. And you threw, as the internet got bigger and bigger and unnamed platforms became more and more prolific, the ability just to throw anything out there to see if it would stick. Has created this, well, for lack of a better, 120-some characters at a time sort of mental grasp of this stuff. And I think everything just gets on all sides. I'm an equal opportunity basher. I think both parties in this country have a lot, equally have a lot of blame for this. The fact that you're no longer able to just sort of calmly disagree but have a civil discussion about it. I had the fortunate opportunity when I was a young guy in the Clinton administration working for General Wesley Clark, who was the Supreme Allied Commander at the time. We were engaged in life-saving peace work in Bosnia during the war there. And here's a man who was wrong side of the tracks, goes to West Point, number 1 in his class, Rhodes Scholar, goes to Vietnam, comes home wounded. You know, he spent his entire life serving the country. I mean, he's after President Clinton, probably. He's probably going to watch this and get mad at me. But after President Clinton, the second smartest guy I've ever met. And he is deeply concerned and worried about this inability for us to have this. Just a— we don't have to agree on everything. We don't have to be of the same party. But how do we get back to the ability to engage in civil dialogue? And so he's actually started a foundation called Renew America Together, and the entire concept is to— it's partisan, it's meant to be. They want to bring both sides to the table and reprogram people on how to actually have civil discussions and to talk about problems and solve them and not just throw past each other.

Well, I think a lot of it is is the Roman Colosseum aspect of it, where, you know, because of social media, because of, uh, the unnamed platforms, as you would say, before— because of like, you know, even like the TikToks and whatnot— there's this, this Roman Colosseum aspect where it's like, your opinion, my opinion, we need to go to the center and fight, but only one can survive. And whereas it used to be like, hey, let's come to a table like this, have a conversation, agree to disagree, shake hands, move on. And I think— but also there's that voyeurism aspect where there's the— I don't know if this is a word, but the sportification of it, you know?

Oh, it is. You know, it's the gotcha game and it's— and look, both sides are guilty of it. I think, you know, social media plays a massive role in it. You know, people get lazy. They don't check their facts. You know, it's the great saying, you know, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. You're not entitled to your own facts. That's, you know, until we can sort of lower that rhetoric and get back to it, you know, it makes me sad because I, you know, and as the years went on and I rose in the ranks and I became the Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security and I showed up at, to a crisis situation, you know what the back of my jacket said?

USA.

It's a DHS. It didn't say Democrat, it didn't say Republican, it didn't say gay, didn't say straight, it didn't say Catholic, let's say Jewish. It just said DHS. We were there on people's worst days, and we were there to try to make— figure out what was going on to make their lives better. And I had the honor of— I'm this big. You made that very nice flattering comment to me, but I'm realistic. I was like this tiniest, tiniest little speck of a cog in a much larger machine and had the honor of serving alongside some of these just Names you'll never know. I mean, I met the post the Bin Laden raid, the people that were in these gigantic warehouses sorting through data, people you'll never know who were the people that figured out where was Bin Laden, how did we get Bin Laden? Unsung heroes making $89,000 a year or something, living in nondescript homes. These are the people that we need to sort of remember that they're not doing it for the glory. They're, you know, they're doing it because they truly believe in the better of the common good. And I think until we can everyone take a collective breath and just say we could disagree on— everyone got all crazy this last election and look, elections are important. Yeah, you pick a person for a reason and there was a reason Donald Trump won. And, and yes, he did win. You know, I think the challenge is saying to the victor goes the spoils. We got to get away from that because this is a big country with a lot of really, really big challenging problems. And if we can't re-engage and lower the temperature and solve them, you know, I've got an 18-year-old daughter and I'm terrified of the world that she's going to inherit.

I was at an event last night and it's interesting, and, um, it had, uh, Ambassador, uh, Hutchison and, uh, Senator Lankford. And one of the things that Sir Blanford was saying was, in the outside world, we're all Americans. And, and, and he was talking about how he was talking to Australians, like, but we don't understand why y'all fight amongst each other so much, you know. And it's just like, because, you know, at the— from the outside looking in, we're all Americans, but we fight a lot, you know. And it's— and I also heard somewhere else that, you know, other countries wish they had the problems that we have. But one of the things that, you know, to circle back to this public-private partnership aspect, because the example you gave was Delta, and that's like, you know, borderline public service utility, you know, like I can't imagine a world where we don't have airplanes and the ability to travel from Dallas to New York or Dallas to Colorado like that. Where, where's the line? And like, you know, if I'm, if I'm a small business or if I'm a medium business, At what point is it relevant that I should be thinking about the possibility of partnering with the government?

I think the entire supply chain, from the smallest business to the biggest one. You know, so much of— in the United States, 90% of all— 90% of all employers are 100 people or less. So to put in perspective, yes, we all know the big names, you know, the public-traded companies, you know, Apple, Delta, Chevron. So I think some Texas names real quick. We all know those big ones, but I think, you know, the small ones are just as important and the role they play in it. And it's interesting. So within the Department of Commerce, there's something called the Foreign Commercial Service. And this is a really cool entity that their sole job is— many of these officers are placed in our embassies all around the world. And it's to sell America, to help US businesses expand their footprints overseas. And I think whether you're a small little tech startup out in Silicon Valley or wherever you happen to be, you know, a fabricator in New York.

You.

Know, having, you know, at least in the past, having the might of the US government behind you as you're trying to expand your business and to hire more people, which creates a better economy for America. And as the old saying goes, rising tide lifts all ships. And so I think it's not always easy. You have to sort of break the code a little bit. But my experience is, particularly when I was sort of at DHS, I can't tell you how many funky little small obviously in the security space phenomenally, would come and meet with us. And you find these ideas you had no idea. And yes, big ideas come from Lockheed Martin and General Atomics and all these other companies, but just as many, if not more, are coming from these small mom-and-pop operations that are coming up with really creative, innovative things. And I mean, thank goodness for it, because without them, we wouldn't be able to have some of the solutions that we got.

Yeah, to that point, uh, one of the, the lessons I got from the Goldman Sachs program is there's approximately 33 million businesses in the United States, but only 6.1 million have any employees, just any employees. So only 20% of businesses, less than 20% of businesses have more than just the, the solopreneur and, uh, employee, which I think is fascinating.

Yeah, we're still a small business-driven economy in so many ways. And it's, I mean, it's so important just to have that, so that greater collaboration. But it's also where the risks, to sort of turn slightly, where some of the risks are. And, you know, the people ask me still like, what's the thing you're most scared about? And I'm, the top 3 things I'm most scared about are cyber, cyber, cyber. And it's everything is connected. You're sitting there working on a cyber-connected device right now. And the challenge is how do we improve the communication between the big guys? I mean, the big banks, their walls are high and they're, for the most part, do a pretty amazing job. But as you cascade down to suppliers and the lower you go down in that supply chain, the greater the risks become. JP Morgan, Citi, these others, they can afford to spend huge. Now, yes, they're regulated and yes, they have to put it in their reports and all that. But they need to do it because it makes good common sense. The challenge is how do we share those learnings to smaller businesses like yours? Because you're just as great a risk as they are. And in some ways, if you're not protected, that puts them at risk as well. When you go to make your electronic transfer or something and your equipment has been infiltrated, you pass that virus along. Well, not only that, not to scare.

You, but well, I mean, it's funny because like I had a big lesson. It's not so much cyber, but it is security aspect or more like fraud because about a year and a half, 2 years ago, we had a fraudulent bank thing. And then all of a sudden my bank just shut us down and I had to run payroll and they're like, well, we're researching it. And luckily I had an angel investor and he's like, hold on, just call the private banker.. And it was just, it was amazing to me the difference between Ryan Harper, the solopreneur, versus Ryan Harper with an angel investor. Right. Hey, this is a 2-week research, we'll get back to you versus it's fixed.

Yeah.

Within half a minute. And it was just like, oh, so that's the power of having, you know, somebody with a wallet behind. Yeah. Yeah. There's no relevance there other than I.

Wish I— I'm glad you had that.

Well, I wish I had more.

You are, you're in the private sector now, Global Orchard, wanna learn about that. And you consult private equity. I'm an M&A advisor, and so I deal with private equity 'cause they buy the businesses that I represent. And I have had a number of discussions in the last several months related to cybersecurity where companies that are subject to an acquisition are being attacked and then held for ransom. And it's, I didn't realize that was a thing until recently.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's terrifying. I mean, it's fascinating. We're Orchard Global, which is headquartered in Texas. Offices all over the world. We're an amazing, super smart company, but we're tiny compared to like a Citadel. But guess what? It doesn't make a difference. The challenges that our CEO has to face every single day and the challenges that the CEO of Citadel are all the same. If he messes up, if Ken messes up, they're 10x worse just given their size. But we spend a lot of time, and I guess it's one of the advantages of still being kind of nimble. While we're in Houston, we're in London, we're in Singapore, we're crossing all these time.

Zones.

So critically important. And we spend a huge amount of time internally looking not just at our own protections and how high our walls are, but to your point, we're not day traders. We're a private debt shop. Our stuff is— our CLO likes to say it's very complicated. It's challenging. But people come to us to— when people want to stay rich, they come to us because that's what we give back. Our clients are our sovereign wealth funds, our teacher unions, et cetera. And we, you know, it's very important to us. You know, they are trusting us, you know, with their generation-skipping investment strategies and the world we live in now, like any little thing.

Yes.

You know, the president's current ups and downs on trade wars, yes, that plays a part. But the most important thing is to what you were just saying is what are we doing to safeguard all of our internal processes to ensure that we're able to be good custodial agents for our clients' business. And not to belabor the cyber topic, but that's, I mean, that's the thing that keeps our guys up at night. And I will tell you, it was the thing that keeps Jamie Dimon up at.

Night.

You know, every significant financial services CEO worth their salt, it is the number one thing they're worried about. Are they reading the headlines every single day as to what the president is saying or not saying? To a degree. You know, they're much more worried about controlling their own fate and protecting their investors, their employees, etc., on things like cyber. And that's the thing that is one of the single greatest challenges out there.

And given that, you would hope that government would ramp up their efforts. And instead, I read in preparation for this that the current new head of the Department of Homeland Security has indicated her intent to reduce the scope of cybersecurity and infrastructure Security Agency, suggesting it narrow its focus, and they've dismantled the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council. This is scaring people.

I think you should be more than scared. I mean, this, this is another— I'm glad you brought that up because it's another amazing example of if you can build trust between government and industry, wow, the problems you can solve and the problems you can prevent. And just by eliminating these advisory councils, Forget eliminating all the other internal experts that are just, you know, hundreds of years of expertise that we are flushing down the toilet. These partnerships, whether it was in the aviation space, the other 12 critical infrastructure sectors, having the business leaders within those groups have the level of comfort to be able to talk to the people on the other side of the wall and in real time share these things. I mean, when I was at DHS, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I would pick up a phone and reach out to a CEO and say, where are you? I need to come see you. I can't talk about it on the phone, but there's something you need to know. And there was a level of trust there. And they also knew that we were going to protect their secret sauce, their data, the— just like whether it be air quotes, a Google or an Amazon and such like that, they knew the trust went both ways. That if Amazon or Google or Microsoft, you pick your tech company of choice, came to us with a real problem, there was a level of understanding that we weren't gonna go to their rival and say, hey, guess what? Guess who just told us this? And to eliminate this sort of level of shared information sharing, me personally, I mean, I'm terrified for it 'cause I think we're, everyone is going to retreat into their trenches and we're not going to share that information. And, you know, it took, you know, Governor Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, who I had the chance to meet any number of times. I mean, one of the most honorable, decent public servants you'll ever meet in your entire life. You know, he— yes, Republican. You wouldn't know it. Like, he went in there after one of the darkest days in American history. You know, and President Bush gave him this honor to establish the Department of Homeland Security. And it's taken time. It's not been perfect by any means. There have been issues. It's bounced around. But over time, they've amassed, you know, 235,000 or so full-time employees who go to bed every single night with the single mission of keeping the American people safe. And to break that apart and to get rid of that is just terrifying. I mean, much like circling back to, here we are sitting in Dallas in this incredible facility at Old Parkland, the institutional knowledge of financial expertise of the people working here. How would you replace that? You can't. It's thousands of years of cumulative things that have been picked up. You as a 22-year-old young finance analyst compared to you 49-year-old you dramatically different, right? You just, you know, the tire, you know, the miles under the tires adds up. And to, in this critical time in the world around us right now, to get rid of that, it was just a very scary thing.

A part of your resume and a part of your description of working at Global Orchard is advising on international government relations. And in, in this context of this huge change in leadership. It appears the US is really pivoting. Is that part of your engagement with your clients is to discuss how the world order is going to work now?

I would say only so slightly. So we're fortunate. Our CEO, really super smart guy, went to Georgetown, Harvard Business School, but a real internationalist. Spent his first 18 years of his career in London. And so he and I spent a lot of time, and I would say the biggest thing we've been doing in the last few months is just telling people, take a deep breath. And particularly with, we do a lot, well, we do some all over the world, but I noticed particularly with our relationships in the Middle East of just saying, put the pen down. Deep breath. Yeah, let's see what tomorrow's news cycle says. Your portfolios, your GDP, all that isn't going to bounce around that much in 24 hours. And then if you spend every single second like, oh my God, what just got said? What just got said? You're going to lose your mind. And so I think I still passionately believe that the United States is truly the greatest country in the world. I mean, just before I walked in here, Ryan, every time I'm on this campus and walk around and see the quotes on the walls and the art and the things that tie back to hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if you will, of years of history, it kind of reminds you of how we got to where we are. And I think that's the advantage the Chinese have over us. They think the super crazy long game. And for right now, you know, we think, you know, wait, what? My phone just went off. Like, what would it just say? And so to answer your question, I mean, a lot of what, you know, we're fortunate that we have some really, really smart people that manage the day in and day out the investments. And so for those of us who luckily they don't let us like touch those things, which is a smart thing, you know, our job is to remain calm. You know, just kind of— it's an interesting time right now. Market's going to go up, market's going to go down. Trade wars are going to start, trade wars are going to stop. But for a lot of our clients that we deal with, we're with them for the long haul. We're not day traders. We're there thinking large, complex solutions to very, very challenging financial problems and how to build the foundations that last for a long time.

So speaking of, of like your role, your job, like what— how does Orchard Global benefit from having like a Douglas Smith as the, the head of global affairs? Because obviously you have a tremendous amount of experience in, in public service, like all those connections, all that knowledge. How does Orchard Global, like, how are they— what's the alpha of having you on the team?

I mean, I think it's Look, I mean, I'm a small cog in an amazing organization. The, you know, I think, you know, what our CEO and our CIO, you know, have sort of realized, you know, data wins the war. And they have done an amazing job of whether it's people like me or currency experts, you pick an area of, searching the world over to find these people that then come together and do that. I mean, during crises when I was DHS and I would be sitting in the Situation Room, it wasn't just an expert, right? It was a collection. I mean, it was the most valuable lesson I think I ever learned from President Clinton is while without a doubt he was always the smartest guy in the room, he desperately tried to surround himself with really, really smart people. Who hopefully could come up with a— see something he wasn't seeing. And, you know, in a firm like ours, I mean, that's, you know, Paul, our CEO, I mean, that's kind of his mantra is like he wants everyone around that table because someone's going to see something that someone else hasn't seen. And, you know, I think one of the things that I bring is that I did not have a financial services background. So I did not get— and I don't mean this in a meanway, I didn't get brainwashed by people on Wall Street. You know, I can look at it with a fresh approach, see it from a different angle that sometimes some of our incredibly smart sort of analysts who have been, you know, working on the street for 30 years might not be seeing. And, you know, I think that's, you know, kind of the, kind of our secret sauce is how do we bring people with different perspectives into this as we try to solve these incredibly complex challenges.

Well, I mean, it's in the name, Global Affairs. You know, I'm here, the head of the Global Affairs. So if like you're trying to be a global company, you need somebody that's worked in global affairs. Yeah.

What we try to do is recognize, you know, we live in— anyone in the financial services business lives in an insanely regulated industry. And who is regulating it? Governments. And so, you know, we don't lobby, you know, we don't Yeah, I'm not saying alignment's a bad thing, we just don't do that. You know, our mantra is data collection. Like how do we have the best contacts in the most diverse spaces to be able to collect the most interesting information that we can then use and share internally, but also share back to our clients and help them make the best decisions they can. And kind of that's our secret sauce. You know, the space, there are lots of amazing financial services firms in this country, in the world, Our secret sauce is that we believe access to decision makers and listening and collecting quietly the data points that they're thinking about and the challenges that they're facing gives us strategic advantage over our competitors.

Where do you think AI falls into all this?

Boy, I mean, it's— as a father of a freshman in college, I think about AI all the time. Look, I think it's—.