 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's a given Wednesday afternoon, five o'clock block. Very important discussion on community matters today with Harvey Meyerson, who is a journalist and an historian, among other things, with tremendous credentials and academic insight. And he wrote a book, and the book is on the table. Can we look at the book? And then we'll look at Harvey. This Harvey's book, it's called Jefferson, the Army and the Internet. That's why we have entitled this episode, Jefferson, the Army and the Internet. Welcome to the show, Harvey. Thanks, Jay. It's great to have you here. It's great to be able to examine a book like this. This is really a deep dive, if you will. This is a book of sweeping, sweeping, you know, sea change in the American story. And it's a matter of connecting huge foundational, institutional things together to find the connection that actually defines the country. It's no small task. And he wrote this book in three places. He wrote this book, let's see, first place. It was Vietnam, or at least based on your Vietnam reporting experience. And then you wrote it in Charlottesville, Virginia for a time. Yes. And then you wrote it here in Honolulu. Where I was raised and where we returned in time for my 60th high school. 60, okay. Now, so, you know, let's first, you know, sort of get a kind of a handle on this book. This is a very broad study of the American history and your into history, of course, and the American dream, in a sense, and the American future. No small task. But how did you come up with this idea? And what is the idea of the book? The idea kind of, Jay, crept up on me. It began, as you mentioned, when I was a correspondent in Vietnam in the 60s. And I became interested in an aspect of the army that other correspondents didn't pay a lot of attention to, which was logistics. How the army supplied itself, how it kept going 13,000 miles away from its home base. And I wondered, you know, what are these resources, these incredibly unique, and what I found I'd been a reporter covering politics for several years, might be applied in the civilian community. And this led me step by step into an inquiry that to me was full of surprises. I did not expect that the army had so much background, so much history, in what you might call domestic nation building. And the book led me step by step through the history of the army. Well, finally I had to go back to the beginning. How did this all begin? To pull it together and then carry it forward through the settlement of the West. And then when the army went overseas, but then I discovered it didn't leave that mission behind. It was doing things in the United States at the same time, right up to today. And when I came across what to me was rather astonishing perspectives, approaches on part of the army that I believe has considerable applications in the civilian sector. Well, so it's interesting that it's like Proust and the petite metal end in remembrance of things past. When you look through the keyhole, and then it trips your mind and expands your growing and growing and you begin to see you know lots of things in great detail that you might not otherwise have seen. And it seems to me that you're looking through the keyhole from the Vietnam perspective through the keyhole of logistics. And because the army is largely involved, largely dedicated to logistics, and they look back down the historical trail and examine the culture of the army. What is the army? It's probably the greatest army in the world without question. Without question. And I mean it's got great people, it's great history, great achievements. And you know it's a great organization and great of course logistics. So it seems to me that when you look back down through the keyhole, you have to look at the formation of the army and you did that. And you found that West Point was established, well you knew, I didn't know, that West Point was established by Thomas Jefferson. Well I didn't know actually when I began because, and I mentioned this in the book, in 2002, the 200th anniversary of the founding of West Point, there was a conference, the many conferences imposed him at West Point, called by a professor of history at West Point. For an interesting purpose, as he put it, I began a chapter in that point. Up until then, even among West Point faculty, leaders of the army, it was assumed that West Point was founded by Thomas Jefferson. The only problem with this was, as he pointed out in the opening chapter of a book that came out, I suppose, that, founded by George Washington, I think I should say, Washington was dead. Who founded West Point? And it wasn't until 2002 that West Point realized that it's founder, Thomas Jefferson, even the institution itself, much less the army and much less the rest of the public. Why was this? How did this happen? And that, you know, why? Well, part of the reason is, people don't like to remember Jefferson as the founder of West Point because he was not known as a military man. Washington makes a much better founder. Many of the supporters of Jefferson don't like to think of him as the founder of West Point. And so there was kind of a what's sultry in this and called, in another context about the Soviet Union, a desire not to know that this man founded West Point. And then the question became why? Because he had opposed the founding of West Point in the 1790s. There had been proposals by Washington and proposals by Hamilton for military academy. And Jefferson rejected the amount of hat. But he had something in mind and you had to really dig down through his papers. He wanted an engineering school. You know, Jefferson, Hamilton was pointed across the Atlantic. He wanted a giant army and, you know, in the best European tradition. Jefferson saw this vast continent needed to be settled. We had some pioneers charging out across this continent. And you had no discipline. You had no infrastructure capability. You had nothing. The universities at the time, Harvard, Yale, they taught classics and they taught theology. Well, that wasn't going to do you much good. It wasn't going to cross the country building a nation. Building a nation. So he snuck in a bill for a military academy, which was in effect the establishment. It was the first university in the United States to offer a four year degree in engineering. And was the only one for half a century. How does that compare against Europe? Were there engineering universities in Europe? There was one in France, which influenced Jefferson, a called polytechnique, which trained engineers, but they had a choice of going into the army or into civilian life. I think we have to appreciate the connection between engineering and the army. Engineers would help an army, would enable, facilitate the moves of an army. It wasn't just building buildings. It was logistics back again to that, no? It was logistics. It was roads. I mean, to get across the continent. And the capability when you talked about an engineer in those days were people who could build practical things. Jefferson called it useful knowledge. How can you build a road? And they came up with this fast, wonderful idea. How do you justify the military building roads? Well, they called them military roads. They connected the various strategic points, forts, yeah, cross country. But these were the first highways that were used was basically for settlers. They provided the engineers for the railroads. There were no engine. There were no American trained engineers. They didn't exist. The engineers during the Revolutionary War were all mainly from Europe, mainly from France. Yeah, so interesting. And you know, it was visionary for Jefferson to see this visionary family to understand that this was different in Europe because we had to look West. We were going to build a nation as kind of an early manifest destiny. We have to build this place. And in order to do it, we have to make strategical forts. We have to we have to connect them with roads. And so what you have is the I'm not sure which way to put this, but the Army is the wrapper for engineers or engineers are the wrapper for army, but they were inextricably intertwined at that point. Yes. And they went on in the 19th century also to have a profound influence. And here we can follow this all the way through this on the civilian center. Because the first departments in science and engineering at Harvard, at Yale, at Michigan, were all run by faculty from West Point. No kidding. Yes. Trigonometry was introduced to the United States by way of West Point. So it was a truly revolutionary educational institution. Well, you know, you talk about how they had did theology and philosophy and whatnot. Why have why had these other institutions failed to understand the value of engineering? Why did they have to wait for West Point to do engineering? Why did they think of that earlier? Well, you know, higher education in those days was dominated by a certain mindset. It was dominated by classics and theology and engineering was kind of looked down on. Jefferson didn't see it that way. He called it quote, useful knowledge. And we need a little bit more in the United States. And he pushed it uniquely among the people. Hamilton didn't think that much. He was mainly interested in an academy to train soldiers for war. Jefferson said, wait a minute. First, we need to, you know, war with big European powers. And Jefferson literally almost single handedly turned the country westward. Well, it was a disruptive thought, wasn't it? I mean, he had his, you know, you could put that in a list of a very few things to say, these things made the country great. It made us able to reach from shore to shore. It made us able to build a nation and an economy. And his idea, his vision was right in the center of that, wasn't it? Oh, very much so. And you know, it continues to this day, and it hadn't had an effect on the character of the army also. Because as you move across the continent, and as you have to supply this army, you you're dealing with something much larger, you know, the supply lines and that from Paris, to say Berlin, where the great wars were fought, were nothing compared to the supply lines that had to be constructed to settle a continent. Yeah. So, so you developed a certain mindset, a certain can do, sort of we have to get from here to there, and we have to keep supply. And he also kept the army very small. It established a culture. So can you talk about how your book tracks on the 19th century, how your book tracks on the development of the army with this Jeffersonian concept? Well, it follows how the army moved out, beginning, in fact, I should mention, and again, with Jefferson, with the Lewis and Clark expedition, which it was no coincidence, these were two army officers. Ah, it was run the whole expedition, like an army encampment. They had court marshals during this. During their two year, I mean, because Jefferson saw you needed this discipline, they were sending back scientific specimens, they needed this training. And in those days, it was fascinating, because apparently, the White House was like a natural history museum was full of crates and boxes. Lewis and Clark had sent sent back to Jefferson, who's sitting here, you know, instead of wheeling and dealing is going over all these scientific specimens shipped him. So this character grew up in the army as a kind of entity. They built roads, the the National Weather Service grew out of an order by the Surgeon General, one of the things about the army is they had forts all over the country. So the Surgeon General was curious about climate. So he directed the surgeons, they call them in those days, there were physicians in the various forts to keep records of the weather. So he could check it out for diseases, things like this, out of this over a period of decades, grew the National Weather Service, and ultimately, Noah. So you can trace if you trace the roots of Noah back to its origins, you will find army officers, surgeons in Fort Laramie, far west and so on. recounting things. Another thing about it that that was very distinctive for the United States. The army in those days was the province, the officer corps of aristocrats. It was limited to people of higher standing. And it was that way in the United States until Jefferson. And then he changed the whole character. And when you notice today how cadets are chosen from different states, so many per state, that was a deliberate. That was Jeffersonian too. Very much so. And the idea was to spread out the officer corps. To democratize it. Yes. And it was a very deliberate policy. And what's fascinating, at least to me, as someone coming at this from a contemporary viewpoint, was how little I knew about this. And I had a doctorate in history, and I kept digging in. And this wasn't in my history books. But you know, it strikes me that when you put us all together, the democratization of the army, the science in the army, science that the average community could not have or afford, science that the average, you know, citizen would not have access to. Now all of a sudden, the army had specialists who were willing to share their knowledge, their engineering expertise, their scientific, medical, environmental, all the things the army does with the public. And they became a backbone of knowledge, sharing with the country. They were a resource. They dug wells. The first, the Great Plains, which was considered a desert, until the army dug some deep wells. And lo and behold, you know, they found water. The pioneers, going back and forth, would stop at Army Forts for medical assistance, free of charge, you know, to hoof their horses for advice, where army officers wrote guidebooks on how to get across the country. There was a very close- I needed help. You went to the army. You went to the army and you didn't think about it. This creates a great culture and arguably the backbone of a great nation. Let's take a short break. Harvey Morrison, a journalist and historian and author of Jefferson, the Army and the Internet. And when we come back, we want to get to the point about the Internet and kind of the worldview that appears in the last part of the book, the last third of the book, I think, where Harvey is making some important conclusions and suggestions for our country going forward. We'll be right back. Matchday is no ordinary day. The pitch, hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your Matchday experience. If you drink, never drive. OK, here's the book that Harvey Morrison, our guest, wrote over three separate venues and probably many years. Jefferson, the Army and the Internet. It's a life project for you, isn't it? It, in many ways it was. I've been working on it since my retirement full time and it took about 12 years. Yeah, wonderful. But then you can really think it through that way. And so, I mean, that, and sort of you connect it up. And I want to connect up now where we get to the Internet because the title of the book is Connecting Jefferson back in the 18th century to the Army through the 19th century and beyond. And now the Internet. Why did you go that far? How did you go that far? What is it that you connected? I didn't have that in mind when I began. First, let me say that. It came as a complete surprise. I was following the Army curious how far it went, whether it continued, how this evolved, all the way up to the present and where I saw things going on that startled me and that I could mention. But the real turning point occurred when I got into the subject of energy and came across a quote that led me into a lot of unexpected territory by the commander of the 1st Marine Division in Iraq during the war, general by the name of James Mattis, who is now better known in a higher position in government. Mattis cables back to Washington, D.C., release me from the tether of fuel. What was his problem? Well, units in Iraq relied on, you know, dependent on supply convoys. Eighty percent of the contents of these supply convoys was fuel. Troops had to be diverted to protect the supply convoys. They were taking casualties. You read about IEDs and things like that, which were mainly hitting supply convoys. Mattis is saying something's wrong here. He's asking the Pentagon, what can we do about reducing this dependence? So the Pentagon convenes an entity called the Defense Science Board, a high-ranking former officials at the Timelands Chair by James Schlesinger, who is a former secretary of energy and of defense. And they came up with a couple of proposals. First, looking overseas, they said we've got to make our bases more independent. And the military launched a crash renewable energy problem. I'm not used to reading about the military launching renewable energy problem. But was it even more interesting? Was there a recommendation for the continental United States? They were very concerned about the security of the military units in the continental United States. Why? Because they were dependent on a vulnerable electric grid. And so the Defense Department launched the campaign. They opened a new office. It was called the Operational Energy Office. And the military, the key word, if you put operational in front of it, this means that high priority. High priority, we want action. And a huge program has been launched within, you may notice here in Hawaii, a lot of solar panels are being used on military bases. So this is a part, and this is a byproduct of Iraq and Afghanistan and of a sense of the army coming at energy from a national security perspective, not because of climate change, not because of global warming, but because we have to be operational. And if we lose contact with the grid, we can't do anything. That led to, well, let me look the inquiring reporter and historian, what makes the grid so vulnerable? Well, what makes it so vulnerable is the internet. Because in the last 15 or 20 years, the electric grid has been automated nationally. And as something like an equivalent, but much larger of the Bank of America, it's automated. And therefore, it's vulnerable to cyber attack. And the military was very concerned about this ahead of ahead of everyone else. And as launched a campaign in the army, it's called net zero. Their objective is to get every army base completely energy, self sufficient and completely off the grid, off the grid and recycling its own water. And and its waste. They join it? Yes. It's called net zero. They're about 15 sort of pilot bases that they began with. And they meet regularly and they're meeting their goals. I follow, I follow it with increasing fascination. The Congress got very startled by this. The Navy took this up. And of course, you can't do solar in the Navy. So they went into biofuels and at RIMPAC in 2012, right off of Hawaii. Five years ago. Yes. Ray Mabus, the Secretary in the Navy, tested out what he called the Great Green Fleet, which was a carrier strike group, running entirely on biofuels. This led to enormous anxiety back in Congress, which they weren't used to thinking of renewable energy in the Armed Services Committee and the military. And you have some fascinating hearings where Mabus is being taken down by Senator Inhoff and even Senator McCain. Why are you going into the energy business? Senator, this is necessary for national security. I'm sorry. We have to so I saw this phenomenon. Yes. It's a, you know, it's a moment in the evolution, if you will, of the development of the army, the military in general. But how does it connect back to what we were talking about before this, this culture point that was created in the creation of West Point and perpetuated at least, well, for 200 years after? How does that connect with this? How does it extension expression of what you were talking about? Well, the expression came in, actually, I have to go back to one previous example, which led me in any case. The military had an approach to renewable energy, seeing it as a, as a threat, as a national security issue, that grew out of its perspective of protecting the nation, not just by projecting power overseas, but by looking at threats directly in front of itself, and by bringing that, that mindset into its perception of these. But then beyond that, well, I have to take probably the best example, which was a model from Michael. I only have a couple of minutes left. Well, the Civilian Conservation Corps was run by the army, although hardly anyone knows it. Jefferson couldn't. It was a very important piece for the country in those days in the middle 30s. Well, the, and Roosevelt organized, called on the army because the civilian agents couldn't do it, to build 1,300 camps, staffed them with 250,000 people in 60 days. It was the largest peacetime mobilization organization. This is an amazing, amazing event. And what led me to that, and the outlook today was to think about how the army might be used or might contribute to doing for the country what it's doing for all its military bases. It's built into its DNA somehow. Oh, very much so. The early days that you spoke about. But we only have a minute left. But, you know, this takes you to a suggestion, a sort of wrapping all these things together, synergizing all that has happened and all that you've read and studied and written about for the future of the country. Can you articulate that for us? Yeah, we need, and the army saw this in its bases, what the country needs is to decentralize. We're too decentralized. The difference between cities are too big from a national security perspective. The difference between earthquake in Los Angeles in 1900 and 2000 is 10 million people. The army seizes and they want to decentralize their operations. They want to get off the grid. And the book includes with the proposal for a national campaign toward decentralization, toward decentralizing the economy, making it more vibrant with a little help from the army. Yeah, and it's an expression of Jefferson's creation. I think Jefferson would love it. I'm sure he would from 1802 until now. I always ask authors to come on the show to read a paragraph they feel can give us the flavor of the book and I wonder if you can do that, Harvey. Well, I can take the graph from the chapter entitled, on West Point, I quote it for him, but I'll read it for him anyway. In November 2001, a group of prominent American historians gathered the United States Military Academy to commemorate the Academy's 200th anniversary by setting an important part of its history right. It seemed that the widespread belief that George Washington founded that Hallow Institution didn't stand up for a simple yet long overlooked reason neatly summarized by West Point history professor Robert McDonald, who convened the 2001 gathering, quote from McDonald. No one thought to mention that when West Point was founded, Washington was dead. An important point in the history of those critical, critical American military history. Yeah. Well, Harvey, just one other question and we'll have to close and that is, if you had to, you know, state a message, a takeaway that you would like people to get from this book, how you would want it to influence them, what would that be? Yeah, I think in the largest sense I would say what I learned myself because I suffered from it, there is too much compartmentalization between the military and civilian worlds. And they really need to get to know each other better, to understand each other, and even to work together a little more. Yeah. And if I can, if I can have contributed to that and I'll be happy. That's great, Harvey. They are us, we are them, we are all together in this. Exactly. Thank you so much. Harvey Meyers, an author, journalist, and the writer of Jefferson, the Army and the Internet. Aloha. Aloha, dear.