Good morning, friends!

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Chris C. Miller had just finished a run when he got in his car and turned on the radio. An announcer abruptly cut into the radio show Miller was listening to and said: "Something's happened. We have a report of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center."

Miller remembers the striking and serious nature of the announcer's tone of voice. At the time, Miller was in a Special Forces group responsible for covering the Middle East.

"By the time I walked into work into our intelligence section, they had the TV on, and we saw the second plane go into the building," he says. "I said, 'OK our world has just changed in this moment.' We knew we were going to go to war."

And it was Miller, a company commander with the 5th Special Forces Group, who helped direct the first, covert invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. A number of Green Berets from the 5th Group were sent to invade Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban — some of them on horseback — in a secret and dangerous mission, which was portrayed in the film '12 Strong.'

Miller, a 35-year-old major at the time, went on to have a long career with the military.

He participated in the 2003 Iraq invasion and completed multiple additional deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He then went on to become the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. In 2014, he retired from the Army, went to the Pentagon, and worked as a special operations consultant to the under secretaries of defense for Intelligence and Policy.

In November 2020, he was tapped by then-President Donald Trump to serve as the acting secretary of defense. Miller, who describes himself as non-partisan, says he received a call from Trump asking him if he wanted the job.

"I'm like, 'I don't particularly want the job, but you're not asking me,'" Miller says. "You don't go to the Oval Office and say, 'Oh no, I'm really not interested, thanks a lot.' You're not allowed to do that. You're a public servant, and I take that seriously."

The 73 days that Miller spent as the acting secretary of defense was not uneventful. On Jan. 6, rioters stormed the Capitol, and Miller told VICE that he thought there was direct "cause-and-effect" between Trump's words and what happened on that day. Miller was later criticized for the time it took the Department of Defense to deploy the National Guard.

In the conversation with The Profile, Miller rejected the criticism and defended the military response. "The full story has not been told," he says. "When the story comes out, I will stand by every decision I made because it was a direct and proper use of the Armed Forces."

He adds: "This idea that 'Poof, we'll just take the National Guard from one side of town and plop them down at the Capitol’ — no, no, no. You've got to move people, you've got to coordinate, you need to backfill them in — all this takes time."

Miller's next act? He has a book in the works, and he's also working on Boundary Channel Partners, a new company offering a range of strategic advisory and consultative services.

"I'm not giving up on America yet," Miller says. "We've got problems right now, we know that, but my friends and family wouldn't be able to tolerate me if I just walked away."

In this conversation, Miller explains what training for the Afghanistan mission entailed, how he used his experiences in the field to transition from a tactical position into a strategic one, the challenges of his role as the acting secretary of defense, and the leadership lessons he's learned along the way. (I co-hosted this conversation with my husband Anthony Pompliano, a combat veteran who served in the U.S. Army and deployed overseas in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

🎧 Listen to the full interview below:

Exclusive: Former Acting Secretary of Defense Chris C. Miller On Invading Afghanistan, His Time in the White House, and His Next ActBy Polina Marinova PomplianoPodcast episode

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PROFILES.

— The digital artist who crashed the art world[**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The psychologist who changed the meaning of memory
— The youngest female self-made billionaire
— The actor finding his creative muse
— The doctor fueling the opioid pandemic
— The publication trying to clean up its mess
— The therapists living in your phone
— The pastry AI that learned to fight cancer

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The digital artist who crashed the art world: Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist who goes by the name Beeple, recently sold a mosaic of his pieces, “Everydays," as a non-fungible token (NFT) for a whopping $69 million. That price makes Winkelmann’s work the third most expensive ever sold by a living artist. He is 39 years old and lives in a plain, four-bedroom house outside of Charleston, S.C, with his wife, Jen, a former schoolteacher, and their two children. “What can one person and a computer do?” Winkelmann said. “That has always been a really cool concept to me, because it’s the equalizer, in a way.” This is a must-read profile. (The New Yorker)

“Oh, sweet baby Jesus, this is ridiculous.”

The psychologist who changed the meaning of memory: Elizabeth Loftus, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, is the most influential female psychologist of the 20th century. According to Loftus, memories are reconstructed, not replayed. In the past 45 years, she has testified or consulted in more than 300 cases, on behalf of people wrongly accused of robbery and murder, as well as for high-profile & controversial defendants like Bill Cosby, Jerry Sandusky, and the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape, in 2006. In this profile, she elaborates on the “flimsy curtain that separates our imagination and our memory.” (The New Yorker)

“If the MeToo movement had an office, Beth’s picture would be on the ten-most-wanted list.”

The youngest female self-made billionaire: After Bumble's IPO, founder Whitney Wolfe Herd became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire and the youngest woman to take a company public. Until recently, Bumble was a dating app, a business-networking bazaar, and a friend-finding tool that has engineered 8.6 billion connections among tens of millions of users in 237 countries since 2014. A month after the IPO, it's a tech titan valued at more than $14 billion. Here's what Wolfe Herd is planning next. (TIME)

“The brand is better than the product right now. But that’s gonna change.”

The actor finding his creative muse: Seth Rogen's year of quarantine has been ... different, to say the least. He's been smoking marijuana (eight or nine joints per day), watching porn, doing pottery, working on several film projects, and writing a book. How? He has a detailed schedule — down to the hour — of what he should be doing each day and he's maniacal about sticking to it. Take a look at Rogen's bizarre life during lockdown. (GQ)

“He just wants to be on the couch, with his wife and his dog and his weed, watching reality television."

The doctor fueling the opioid pandemic: George Otto was a respected family physician with a bustling clinic in Toronto. But he had a secret: after hours, he was running a booming fentanyl business, earning as much as $9,000 a week under the table. This is a wild story. (Toronto Life)

"The cash helped pay for the extravagant life he’d set up for himself and his family."

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The publication trying to clean up its mess: What happened to publishing platform Medium? Medium entered the year with more than 700,000 paid subscriptions, putting it on track for more than $35 million in revenue. That’s a healthy sum for a media company. But it represents a weak outcome for billionaire Ev Williams, who co-founded Twitter. Here's how things at Medium took a messy turn . (The Verge)

“The role of publications — in the world, not just on Medium — has decreased in the modern era.”

The therapists living in your phone: According to the CDC, 40% of American adults were dealing with mental-health or substance-abuse issues in late June. Businesses in the "digital behavioral health" space are popping up to serve people in need. In January, Talkspace announced plans to go public this year in a $1.4 billion SPAC deal. And app-based therapy is only in its infancy. There's Reflectly, Sayana, and Youper, that all promise to help you through "self-guided therapy." Are these slickly marketed companies promising a service they cannot possibly provide? (New York Magazine)

"Therapy doesn’t have to be just sitting around talking about feelings. Therapy can be whatever you want it to be.”

The pastry AI that learned to fight cancer: BakeryScan was a Japan-based AI system designed to distinguish croissants from bear claws. In early 2017, a doctor in Kyoto saw a TV segment about it and realized that cancer cells, under a microscope, looked kind of like bread. BRAIN, the company behind BakeryScan, decided to develop a version for pathologists. Now, instead of identifying powdered sugar or bacon, their system would take a microscope slide of a urinary cell and identify and measure its nucleus. This is fascinating. (The New Yorker)

"Deep learning took the wrappers off; BakeryScan did the rest."

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AUDIO TO HEAR.

Beeple on crushing the traditional art market: Mike Winklemann, also known as Beeple, has become the poster child for NFTs (non-fungible tokens). When it was listed on Christie's, Beeple's digital artwork went from an opening bid of $100 to more than $1 million in the first 10 minutes. It closed at $69 million, which marked a historic moment in the art market. Here's how he thinks about the future of digital art. (Link available to premium members.)

Taylor Swift on the most creative period of her life: In this rare longform interview, Taylor Swift explains how her songwriting process has evolved in the last few years. During the pandemic, she released two surprise albums. "It was a breakthrough moment of excitement and happiness," she says. "I have referred to writing these songs as a kind of floatation device because obviously, [2020] has been hell on earth for everyone." (Link available to premium members.)

Guy Raz on getting through the darkness: When How I Built This host Guy Raz begins his interviews, he asks his subject to surrender to their vulnerability. In this interview, he's the one who surrenders. Raz discusses his ongoing battle with depression and how he's learned to not let it take over his life. (Link available to premium members.)

VIDEOS TO SEE.

Patrick McKenzie on building a sustainable business: In this wildly practical and helpful talk, Patrick McKenzie takes creators on a journey from making $0 on the internet to $100,000 a month. Should your business be a sole proprietorship or an LLC? How do you record your expenses? Do I need an insurance policy? McKenzie answers all of these questions and more. (Link available to premium members.)

Christopher Nolan on the value of obsession: Christopher Nolan is the film director behind some of the most cerebral and thought-provoking movies like Inception, Memento, and Interstellar. He uses a technique called "non-linear storytelling" that plays with the rules of time and space. Nolan's obsession with details, complexity, and mental puzzles forces his viewers to think. This is a really great breakdown of Nolan's craft. (Link available to premium members.)

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