What do you do?

2025-06-05 · Ho Chanh Nghia

Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-do-you-khanh-pham-ahqsc/

What do you do?

The Buddha said you are what you think, I say you are what you do.

I do human development, and it is as complex as can be. However, I have thought about simplifying for most of my life, as early as 7 years of age, and I am now 47.

Why answer this question? It matters to everything that you do. Birds of a feather flock together. You would not want to be the rabbit running with the wolf pack, or a koi swimming with the sharks.

I dabbled into the VC/Tech startup for 3 months on YCombinator. I have read a few articles and watched a few videos. Nothing like this has been said yet.

As the world shifts to/with AI development. This is essentially a tectonic plate shifting, or worse, the entire system of tectonic plates are all shifting with the new rules. From national security, to just making your daily bread. Winner inherits the earth, and losers surrender the earth. Which bandwagon do you hop on?

There is a great contrast in what I do and what the rest of the world do. I do human development, the world is making more money. Human development is a broad idea in my opinion. We can elaborate a little more to set more boundaries around the word.

The people making money, the people wanting to make money, are talking to you about non-human development. While Reddit provides an abundance of opinions, YCombinator provides an abundance of want-to-be tech companies. Look at what they do, and think, this may not be human development. Look on LinkedIn, and at what people are doing/discussing. It will either be human development or worse, human extermination, which is the opposite pole of human development. (but there are caveats to that, as defending 1 human, and eliminating millions can also be human development, due to the fact that 1 human is also a representative of 8 billion. It’s a complex math problem.)

Are there any money in what I do? Yes and no. It is a complex problem.

Let’s elaborate on how you make money, with the ability to develop human. 1490s, the European discovered the lands in North America, which is now the US of A and its backyards. How much money would you say that is, developing the most powerful country/empire in the world. Holding the most mighty army, biggest economy, and highly developed technologies. How much money do you think all those accomplishments are worth in money?

You could argue that it is not human development, but rather guns, steel, and disease that build society or this great country. It is easy enough to disprove, actually. If guns, steel, and disease were the formula for great empire, then it would not result in the opposite, the demise of empire. I can further simplify this to say, there are builders and destroyers of civilizations, and these categories are good at destroying human life, but not good at human development.

As you go through life, or LinkedIn, expanding your horizon, meeting good and evil, meeting competent and incompetent people, think along these lines—what do you do? Hey, if you want money, follow your heart. There is nothing wrong with human decisions; they were created the same and operate the same. Have a good time following your heart or mind. Explore the evil side, explore the good side, be a hedonist, be a Buddhist; if life’s purpose is to be happy, then I have seen enough people in every path. The pimp, the whore, the masochist, the sadist, the savior, the exterminator of humanity. If you are among your own kind, you will be happy. Look at the people in Israel; see how happy they are at killing babies?

When Benjamin discovered lightning, how much money is it worth in dollar amount? He’s out exploring the world and understanding the world through observation. There was no VC, or pitch for VC, he was building. When he was in France/Britain asking the elites to negotiate an amicable solution to the blight the colonists were grieving, how much money is that worth? We could look at it this way, the US debt is 37 trillions, so it must be worth that much, right. Or we can say the GDP is 27 trillions, so if we value it at 2.5, then we can say it is worth at least 65 trillions. Since it owns the money printing machine for the world, we can say it’s the only unicorn, and has a monopoly, we even set a multiplier of 10x or 100x or even 1,000x and it is still a win. Since you can just print whatever you need to pay for it. So, I would say, England lost 65 trillions USD in today’s dollars in 1776. But who would have thought about a 200 years profit and loss financial statement, and then be able to put numbers to it. In the reverse view, we can also say the founding fathers of the US, the framers of the US constitutions, the rebels that rose up against the British, were in essence investing in the long haul. (to that note, I would say Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, China, Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh) were/are doing the same thing as the founders of the USA were doing. Developing human.

The Americans have many cool terminologies for everything. We have this term called nation building. It sounds like what I was describing as human development. However, looking at how the US built nation in Iraq, I would have to say hell no. I suppose it was also building nation in Afghanistan for 20 years (without the people’s approval I may add).

*by the way, I also offer services for building up military capacity, as well as nation building, under a partnership in UAE. We can provide specialists in MASINT or any specialty with experience fighting with NATO, as well as experience fighting against NATO.

Benjamin built the first fire station. How much money is it worth, do you think? Saving people from natural and man-made disaster. To be honest, I cannot place a dollar amount on it, but I think it has a high value. Sending aid to people around the world to save them from starvation, how much money is that worth. All I can see is negative money, if I was paying. But if you look at it from the collective of humanity, then perhaps, as a collective, there is a net gain. We took something like 1% of the wealth from the 300 million, and we improved the lives of billions of human. I cannot evaluate the price/worth of that result, but it is worth a lot more than 40 billion USD in today’s money.

The Puritans built the first public school in the United States of America. How much money is that worth in dollars today? Several hundred years later, we have public school everywhere in America. Public library. Public museum. A great deal of “public” education rose up. Sadly, the trend towards private or overpriced elitist education has reverted nearly all the goods that the Puritans have started.

To cut it short, we are not the same.

We are not the same, you and I.

Between human development and non-human development, I am more into human development.

Between incremental improvements and building multi-million dollar unicorns, I am the one paying out of pocket to work, and sweating in the sun to build my company. You would be waiting for free money from angels.

Between maintaining a country and not maintaining a country; I am the one sacrificing years of my life maintaining it, while the rest of you are out and about having a good time with booze, drugs and sex. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/politics/fbi-soliciting-prostitution

Between serving the greater community and taking from the greater community, I am the one serving the greater community. I do consider a large portion of the population to be takers, and you’re welcome to form your own opinion. However, I reserve the right to hold my own opinions over yours.

There are many other pieces of evidence that demonstrate my distinctiveness. Being selected for the 9S100 career field in the USAF is, in itself, sufficient evidence for even the most rigorous academic standards. With aptitude scores in the 99% and the lowest in the 97%, it may be said that I am at least above 97% of the American population. Considering that I had only 10 years of education, compared to the 20 years of education typically pursued by others, I would say that this is truly exceptional performance. In 2002, the minimum aptitude was 90%, but I believe they have since lowered the minimum to 80%. It may be that they are running out of individuals with aptitudes above 90%. I was first and second in track in grade school, first in tennis in high school, and built a first-place engineering project winner at the state level in California. I defeated a larger, stronger, faster man in a boxing ring. I speak several languages. I identified faults in engineering drawings where a dozen engineers and technicians had failed for years. I designed and prototyped test equipment that should have received a patent and military awards, though management was more interested in claiming it as their own invention and securing payment from the US Air Force for my work. In 2013, the combined forces of the United States Air Force Technical Application decided to make an enemy of me, and they employed every means at their disposal to destroy me. I survived, though greatly weakened, I survived. I spent the next 10 years fighting for my life and livelihood against the formidable power of the US government/military.

How many men, dead or alive, have dared to stand against the might of the US military?

How many men have stood against the combined might of the US military and emerged victorious? There were 1,000+ at the US Air Force Technical Application Center. I defended myself against the combined expertise of military operations, regulations, policies, lawyers, and doctors with PhDs. Would you have achieved even half of what I achieved in such a fight? TSgt Clark did not, he shot himself. (In my opinion, he should have shot his persecutors, but I sympathize with his choice to secure benefits for his children and wife. My greatest pain during homelessness was not being able to provide food, cooling, and heating for my newborn in hot Florida).

The US military agreed to pay me until my death, which is valued at 2+ million dollars. This is equivalent to paying Putin 2 million USD to shake hands and call it even after all these years.

Find me another man on the planet, similar to me, and you may be onto something greater than a few dollars more.

Temujin rose from obscurity into the world’s most recognized figure in the 1100s. He killed his own brother to save his family from what appeared to be traitorous behavior. When Temujin was young, he was enslaved by a rival clan. He was assisted by a good-hearted individual, and made it out alive from his imprisonment. Despite lacking knowledge, financial means, and technology, he managed to conquer the greatest empire of his time. Correction, he conquered many empires of his time. If Temujin were to walk into the VC forum at Stanford and asked for a small startup investment of one million, they would point out all the indicators of why he would fail, and they would be correct, of course. But they would be wrong, because they measured Temujin with the same yardstick they measured themselves. And they are not the same, Temujin and these so-called business geniuses.

I had no advantages against the white men. By all algorithm and data I should have died. How did I survive? How did I win against the white men? What other win will you witness before my death?

We are not the same, you and I.

The people who sit at my table are not the same as the rest of the world. My flock is not the same as your flock.

We’re not the same, you and I.

99% of people alive would not understand the significance of scoring 99% on a scale of 1-99% for the military entrance exam. While a perfect score on the SAT can be achieved over time with enough studies. There is no perfect school in the ranking system. And saying people who scored 99% on this test are smart is like saying Pete Sampras is good at tennis. It does not quite capture the truth of the matter. Imagine you have a scale that has a maximum weight reading of 100 kilograms. A very large box is placed on top, and the scale shows you 100 kilograms. Do you know if the man weighs 100 kilograms?

While data does not lie, it does not mean much in this case. It eliminated some wrong answers, but failed to give you the correct answer.

Beyond data. Beyond artificial intelligence.

There is human intelligence. But maybe I can be proven wrong one day.

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, he charted the development of human kind across 1,000 years. I see this day that we live in in 2025. Technologies have rendered human roles obsolete. Knowing that the technocrats would have little development into the inner mind of human, he secretly set up a second foundation. The first foundation he designed to progress along technology, we can all call these the modern computer geniuses. The second foundation has no technology, if you could consider the mind as not being a technology. I could easily prove that the human mind is a technology, and is far superior to anything developed today. However, I would not waste time arguing over such trivial matters. So what is the bottom line? What is the point of explaining truth to a non believer.

Disclaimer: I neither belong in the first foundation nor am I in the second foundation. However, I do dabble in both technologies as we call it, as well as dabble in the science of the mind.

I offer a lot more than money or a winning strategy. What I bring is so much more than just military innovation, strategic brilliance, ruthless efficiency, psychological warfare, and an extraordinary ability to adapt and learn from the enemies’ strengths and weaknesses.

It was a great loss to the US Air Force and the United States of America.

It could be a great gain for you.

What do you think? Would you bet real money on your thinking? Would you bet your life on your thinking?

I have bet my money and my life on my thinking. Do you think we are the same?