Mike Drop Podcast (Mike Ritland) · July 2026
Meet The Real Jack Ryan: PJ Turned CIA Spy
Nic McKinley joins Mike Ritland - retired Navy SEAL and host of Mike Drop - to walk through the full arc: Air Force Pararescue, the CIA, and building DeliverFund. A direct conversation on what it takes to operate in high-stakes environments and why the next war is being fought online.
Key Takeaways
- The path from Air Force Pararescue to the CIA is not a straight line - it requires being selected twice and rebuilding after the first attempt.
- What the CIA actually looks for in candidates from special operations backgrounds, and what gets people cut.
- How the same operational mindset that keeps a combat team alive under fire translates directly to running a counter-trafficking intelligence operation.
- Why the Jack Ryan framing misses the point - the real tradecraft is less dramatic and more methodical than fiction suggests.
From the episode
Former U.S. Air Force Pararescueman and CIA officer Nic McKinley — a Harvard grad dubbed “the real Jack Ryan“ for his operational background across spec ops and intelligence work.
His 11 years as a PJ and later role as country chief of a special CIA unit exposed him to the realities of child trafficking and illicit markets, work that eventually became the foundation for Deli...
We dig into how smartphones and gaming platforms turned into a direct pipeline connecting predators to kids, why the policy fixes are obvious but the people with the power to enact them won't touch...
Episode chapters · 4:03:30