Full transcript
Nic McKinley's Path from PJ to CIA
Nic McKinley opened the episode by walking through his career, explaining that he spent 11 years in the Air Force as a pararescueman (PJ) before transitioning into private equity, a stint he says he grew to dislike quickly ([PodScripts transcript](https://podscripts.co/podcasts/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He was subsequently recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served for a number of years he says he is not permitted to disclose, joking that the rules are stupid but that he still follows them. He described his selection into pararescue as brutally difficult, citing a 91% attrition rate during his water based selection course, where a single shallow water blackout was tolerated but a second one meant automatic elimination.
McKinley detailed how the PJ training pipeline extends more than a year and a half beyond selection, including HALO school, SERE school, combat dive qualification, and a mandatory civilian paramedic certification earned at a civilian hospital, since PJs have no equivalent to a machine gunner role and every operator must be capable of any mission task. He explained that PJs are typically attached to units like CAG, DEVGRU (referred to in the episode as DAM NEC), various Army Special Forces ODAs, SEAL teams, and Ranger Battalion, functioning as the medics, radio operators, and high angle rescue specialists on those teams ([PodScripts transcript](https://podscripts.co/podcasts/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He left the CIA roughly ten years before the episode aired, at a point he described as the wars winding down, after which he started several tech companies before ultimately dedicating himself to fighting child trafficking.
CIA Training, Culture, and Rules of Engagement
McKinley contrasted Air Force and CIA training standards, calling the agency's shooting program comparatively a gentleman's course in some respects but noting the accuracy bar was extremely high, with 32 separately scored tests during qualification and a strict student to instructor ratio of about one instructor per three students so nothing could be overlooked ([Wave AI Podcast Notes](https://pod.wave.co/podcast/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He said that operating within the agency meant ultimately answering to only one person, the President of the United States, and described the scope of authorized action as shocking given how little oversight existed in practice.
He also discussed the reality of rules of engagement in combat, saying that ROE shifted meaningfully over his roughly 30 combat deployments, from restrictions on engaging only when fired upon to later permissions allowing engagement of military age males carrying weapons, or people recording with cell phones. He stated bluntly that he broke international law during those deployments and that he never once saw an international law applied on the ground, criticizing lawyers who sit in the air conditioning and create rules for the people who were actually on the field. He also recounted a specific incident where he was nearly placed in the brig for 24 hours over non-NATO specialized ammunition issued to him by the U.S. government, an issue later resolved through agency leadership intervention.
The Iranian Rescue Leak and Combat Search and Rescue
One chapter of the episode focused on a pilot rescue operation connected to Iran, where McKinley explained the involvement of a C-130, two helicopters, PJs, tier one operators, and combat search and rescue security elements. He said the mission size was driven by circumstances, noting that if a media leak had not happened, the rescue likely would not have required a force of that size ([PodScripts transcript](https://podscripts.co/podcasts/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)).
He explained that the leak revealed to the Iranian government that a second pilot remained missing in action, since Iranian forces had believed the rescue of one pilot resolved the incident entirely. This leak, according to McKinley, alerted Iranian forces that another American was still unaccounted for and increased the risk and complexity of the follow on rescue. He praised the training level of combat search and rescue pilots and the A-10 Sandy qualified pilots who support these missions, calling their training among the most demanding in the Air Force.
Founding DeliverFund and the Counterterrorism Model
McKinley explained that DeliverFund grew out of an observation he made while deployed: trafficking networks in Afghanistan operated in ways structurally similar to terrorist networks he had targeted professionally. He described having smoking gun intelligence in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan on a trafficker moving people across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and realizing there was no formal government mechanism, not even a mandatory presidential reporting requirement, dedicated to addressing trafficking the way there was for terrorism ([Wave AI Podcast Notes](https://pod.wave.co/podcast/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)).
That realization led him to conclude that dollar for dollar the largest human trafficking market is the United States of America, and that a modified counterterrorism model could be applied domestically, using law enforcement as what he called the indigenous force in America. DeliverFund's model rests on three pillars: equipping law enforcement with technology and data, training officers on how to use it, and advising them with direct intelligence on traffickers. McKinley emphasized that DeliverFund does not kick down doors itself because that approach is not scalable, instead functioning as a force multiplier for the roughly 8,000 law enforcement officers across the country it distributes data to.
DeliverFund's Technology, Scale, and Case Outcomes
McKinley described DeliverFund's core technical operation as collecting commercial sex advertisements at scale, roughly 75,000 ads per day on average, which its analysts and engineers process to identify traffickers, customers, and victims tied to the same operations ([PodScripts transcript](https://podscripts.co/podcasts/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He said DeliverFund analysts work directly alongside law enforcement in task force operations, staying ahead of how traffickers pivot across markets and platforms, with findings then automated by engineers to increase throughput.
He claimed a hundred percent conviction rate on every single case DeliverFund has been involved in that has gone to court, spanning thousands of cases, though he did not name specific cases or defendants in detail. As a nonprofit, DeliverFund depends on donor funding to keep its servers, supercomputers, and engineering staff running, and McKinley said financial support is the organization's greatest current need. He also noted operational friction with tech and telecom companies, saying DeliverFund has flagged phone numbers used for exploitation to companies that do not even have the common courtesy to respond, and that flagged numbers and advertisements often remain active with no enforcement action taken.
The Economics and Mechanics of Trafficking Victims
McKinley laid out the financial scale of trafficking, stating that a single trafficked girl is worth on average about $93,000 a year in black market earnings, and that a single trafficker can run three to five girls simultaneously ([Wave AI Podcast Notes](https://pod.wave.co/podcast/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He also described a predator's outreach funnel in numeric terms: a predator typically has to talk to about 100 girls to get 50 to respond, 25 to engage in conversation, 10 to have a meaningful exchange, 5 to do something they regret, 2 to agree to meet, and ultimately 1 to actually show up.
He challenged the common assumption that most people identified as prostitutes are voluntary participants, stating that upwards of 80% are actually trafficking victims, some first trafficked by their own parents for drug money as early as age 12. He illustrated the social range of trafficking with two specific cases: a customer who broke down crying after being caught, revealing he had been buying his 13 year old daughter a recital dress and decided to book a commercial sex date with a 15 year old girl on his way home, and a case involving a trafficker who was a suburban single mother using proceeds from trafficking a 13 year old girl to pay for her own children's soccer fees.
How Smartphones and Gaming Platforms Enable Predators
McKinley connected the rise of trafficking directly to smartphone adoption, citing National Center for Missing and Exploited Children data showing an 846% increase in suspected trafficking cases between 2010 and 2015, which he attributed to broad smartphone adoption and the parallel rise of social media use ([PodScripts transcript](https://podscripts.co/podcasts/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He argued that broadband connected microcomputers in everybody's pockets, combined with social media targeting algorithms, effectively gave predators direct access to potential victims, since a predator today only needs a burner phone, a burner email, and a fake social account to begin operating.
He singled out Roblox as a major point of concern, stating DeliverFund maintains a list of over 400,000 confirmed predator accounts on the platform, and cited Roblox's own reported scale of 10 billion registered accounts, 380 million monthly users, 144 million daily active users, and roughly 40% of users under age 13. He criticized Roblox's age gating system, which allows users to message people one age group above or below their own, saying this lets a 15 year old boy message a 9 year old girl he has never met, and criticized the platform's age estimation tooling as easily fooled, citing viral examples of children drawing faces on their thumbs or beards on their chins to bypass it. He described the typical predation pathway as beginning on a gaming platform with a false identity, then moving victims off platform to apps like Discord or Snapchat to obtain compromising material used for extortion, and named the group known as 764 as a self-described satanic cult whose goal, according to McKinley, is not financial but getting children to self harm and carve the numbers 7, 6, 4 into their skin, sometimes on camera.
Policy Proposals and Calls to Action
McKinley proposed applying existing FCC telecom regulations to VoIP providers, arguing that burner phone numbers should require identification before sale, the same way regulated purchases work in other industries, pointing out that tobacco can be bought without ID while a burner phone number can be purchased on an app for 99 cents with no identity check at all ([Wave AI Podcast Notes](https://pod.wave.co/podcast/unsubscribe-podcast/the-ex-cia-air-force-pj-who-hunts-predators-nic-mckinley-unsubscribe-podcast-262)). He was careful to distinguish this proposal from a surveillance state, stating there should be no new government phone registry, only judge signed subpoenas allowing law enforcement to request the identity behind a number already tied to child exploitation, framing this as closing a technological loophole rather than writing new law.
He closed by directing listeners to support DeliverFund financially, since the nonprofit relies on donations to fund servers, supercomputers, and engineering staff year round, and by encouraging any law enforcement officers listening to reach out directly for access to DeliverFund's data, training, and analyst support. For an entrepreneurial or tech minded audience, McKinley's core message was that trafficking is fundamentally a data and technology problem that can be approached with startup style scalable thinking, framing DeliverFund's mission as building repeatable, automatable intelligence pipelines rather than relying on one off rescues, which he said is the only way to make a dent in a market this large.