 And welcome to Figments on Reality. I'm your host. Why else would I be talking? Dan Leif, and I go by Fig. I hope many of you are repeat viewers. Figments on Reality is a look at things in the news, but it's non-political and without vitriol. And even though I'm going to be talking about the Washington problem in national security, I'm not going to be talking politics and not going to be naming names because I don't think that does much good. I'm going to talk about systemic issues in our national security community. But before I do that, I have to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and of course the crash at Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I was in the Pentagon on September 11th, and I've watched several documentaries sort of revisiting that day, that incredible day. And I'm struck by how many of the people at time from all political perspectives talked about the anger and revenge that they needed. And that bothers me because revenge is a fool's errand. First of all, I think there are some moral issues when being vengeful. And it takes away focus from the real objectives. I contrast our response to September 11th to the do little raid on Japan early in World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which had a military purpose that it achieved. Certainly it was a morale booster for folks at home and in the military, but it also had a military purpose and wasn't just a matter of revenge. So we'll talk about the Washington problem. And second, first I want to acknowledge that the figments on reality episode on accountability was the top think tech show last week. And I'm proud for that. It's good to get viewers. I try to say something meaningful. And in this case, the accountability episode where I talked about the need to fire relief people who hadn't performed the mission well, it's had some effect because this weekend, the Naval Academy football team fired their offensive coordinator because of their dismal start to this year, including a lopsided loss to the Air Force Academy. Come on, man. We fire a football coach, but we don't hold generals and admirals responsible for mission failure. I don't know about you, but I find that pretty annoying. So I think we have another problem. I mentioned on a couple of shows that I had a interesting conversation with an active duty four star, who I respect very much, very thoughtful comments on Afghanistan. And he served in roles that played a significant part in some of that effort. And he said that he thought our real problem was that we didn't appreciate Afghan desires, what the Afghans wanted. I thought, how can that be? How can we lack at least some understanding and empathy for the views of the place we're fighting? And looking back, it made me think of the many stumbles we've had in national security. And these aren't necessarily failures, but boy, we didn't achieve our objectives in the Korea case. We're still at a dangerous stalemate decades later. In Vietnam, I won't revisit that whole situation. And the U.S.-Vietnam relationship is flourishing right now, but at the cost of millions of lives, thousands, 50,000 plus American lives. In the war against terror, we failed in Somalia. Our failure in Iraq was related to the aftermath and al-Qaeda simply has morphed not the threat of extremist terrorism hasn't been eliminated. And now we're looking at the Afghan aftermath and so far not so good. And of course, all of that concerns me. And it concerns me in the bigger, future-oriented perspective, too, because rising China, definitely a competitor, possibly a threat, and certainly somebody we have to coexist with in the modern world. If we fail at these other efforts, how are we going to have a national security community properly postured to succeed in meeting that challenge? So I'm not talking about bad people here when I speak of civilian and military leaders. Many of them I've worked with or for, and I know them, and they're smart and they're dedicated and committed to what they see as their role. So if any of you are watching and you think I'm dissing you, I'm not. But I think our security environment has caused some systemic problems recently exacerbated by two things. And again, this is not a political statement. I'm talking about the current Democratic administration because it's the current administration. I think one of the things that has exacerbated sort of the self-validating, we believe, what we believe even if it's not working view is that they were only out of office for four years. And that means that we have a lot of people cycling relatively quickly back into significant national security posts, not bad people. And it's more a Democrat problem because President Trump basically created chaos in the civilian ranks with his approach to it. I'm not advocating chaos, but I'd like to talk about some significant issues I see with national security professionals whose lives and careers revolve around Washington D.C. And I've got a little map of the heart of the problem to show you. Thanks Google Maps. And that is the National Capital Region with the Pentagon, the White House, Capitol Hill. We don't show all the think tanks that are in or just outside that view, but it's the heart of our national security community. And it's kind of insulated and isolated. And I don't think that's good because what I believe we have, and I'm going to start talking about the problems that I see with our national security community as it's currently constituted, first and foremost, is a lack of diversity. That's right, a lack of diversity, not in gender, race, orientation, or any of the other demographic discriminators that might represent diversity. There's plenty of that, I think, but in diversity of thought and background. And if you will take a look at the biographies of most of our civilian leaders currently in the office of the Secretary of Defense, that's not one office, by the way, it'd be very crowded. You'll see that they have kind of a common thread, very east-toast oriented, often starting perhaps as a staff member in Congress, then perhaps working in the national security council. Then maybe they worked for a think tank when their folks were out of office, and then they came back to the Pentagon or came to the Pentagon. But it's a very tight-knit circle of people who generally think alike because administrations are naturally politically oriented. And again, these aren't bad people. I'll probably say that again before the show is over, but there's a lack of diversity of view. And if you keep reinforcing what you already believe because you've worked together, shared offices, thoughts, written papers together, given speeches together, you're going to reinforce a view that isn't responsive to a changing environment. The environment is always changing. Another thing I see in the biographies is a significant absence, not total, of experience outside the United States. And clearly I'm talking about the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the military in Washington, not about our State Department representatives. But if your national security has a very significant, this is an understatement folks, international element. And you may have studied, name a country, and thought about it, written about it, become an academic expert on it. But if you haven't worked in that country, and I would exclude going to war there as work, it's different, it doesn't, it's a different perspective. If you haven't worked overseas, whether it's Yankee or Venice, then you don't fully understand differences and similarities between our perspective and another country's perspective. And I think that's a very serious shortcoming. Now in the military, we go overseas a lot. I think I spent roughly a third, maybe more of my career in places like Japan, Korea, Italy, and elsewhere. But going overseas in the military isn't the issue, diversity-wise, or traveling in the same circles, kind of, I'll get to that in a minute. It's the lack of diversity and leadership. And again, I'm going to speak of people I know and respect and admire. But we have had a very significant lack of diversity in the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On the CJA CS side, our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been a ground officer for the past 10 years. How have things gone in those 10 years? Now that doesn't mean that the perspective of an army or marine general who served admirably on the ground, usually in combat, I think in all of these cases with combat experience, it doesn't mean they're idiots. It means they have a ground perspective. And that lack of diversity of thought and background is a limiting factor in how imaginatively innovatively we think about defense and national security. That's a bad thing. And when you look at the Secretary of Defense, we've had ground combat officers in General Mattis and General Austin, then secretaries, each of them, as the Secretary of Defense for three of the last five years. That's too much sameness, too much. We look at it from our lens, our history, our background, and I don't care who you are. You can't step entirely out of your experience. Now, another issue in that is allowing generals to be Secretary of Defense requires a waiver representative. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin just introduced an amendment that would increase the requirement for a waiver to the 10-year point. Here's my vote on when a former general or admiral should be Secretary of Defense. I vote never, never because we need diversity of background and thought. We also need some separation, better separation and roles and responsibilities between civilians in national security and military national security. And of course, I'll talk a bit more about that. But before I do, let me take a quick break, catch my breath, because this gets me pretty fired up and tell you that a week from today at two o'clock, while I standard time on the 20th, I will talk to a retired Navy captain. He's just a jag. He's a lawyer who fell out of airplanes 1200 times, free fall jumps. Now, how does a Navy jag get to do that? You'll have to tune in to see. It's a great story from a really good friend of mine who I worked with at the Daniel T. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. So tune in, please, and remember to click like if you're so inclined. So that lack of diversity and the traveling in the same circles creates a number of problems. I think one of the problems is that a frequent stopping point for civilians who are in the national security community between political appointments are think tanks. Now, think tanks are not a bad thing. It's good to have people who have time and funding to think about the very thorny and difficult national security issues that our nations face. And many of them are really quite good, and they conduct robust examinations of national security issues. But they're not unbiased. We can't expect them to be. They are generally politically aligned. One think tank with the Republicans, maybe one with the more conservative Republicans, another with various parts of the Democrat community. Again, not bad, but it is does create a bias. And it can be a confirmation bias, whereas these officials step out of government waiting for their next turn, if you will, they come they reinforce a consistent set of beliefs that is somewhat unchanging. It doesn't mean they don't learn, but confirmation bias is a real thing in national security. I think it's a real problem. So I think the using the think tanks, especially when they're centered in Washington DC, as a holding pattern for people who will then come back to government and ping pong back and forth is an issue. So I think we shouldn't do it. And I'll talk to that in my recommendations. Another issue that I saw a lot in my military experience is the blurring of lines between civilian and military roles, responsibilities and authorities. Now, we have a system that's fundamentally based on civilian control of military, and we ought not get away from that. That is a given. I don't think it's an issue. But over time, I believe we have lost many of the distinctions between whose job what is. And I think that's a pretty good sentence. Whose job is what? Maybe that's better sentence. And some of that's due to technology in the times. We can communicate perhaps too much. We can jump on Zoom or pick up a secure phone and collaborate. Collaboration is useful, but it shouldn't always be the case. The military should have one perspective. The civilian leadership's perhaps not a distinctly different, but they play a different role, oversight and direction. And military is focused more on execution. And even within the military departments, Department of the Air Force being the example on most familiar, we've blurred those lines. And while I was serving in the Pentagon from 2000 to 2003, it seemed longer, by the way. I watched a great secretary of the Air Force and a great chief of staff of the Air Force, two people I respect and admire a great deal. But they put so much emphasis on collaboration that they lost the goodness of the dynamic tension that should exist. There's a reason that we have different roles. And that tension creates a debate and dissent that leads to a more conservative decision. Sometimes significant disagreement. And in that case, we default to civilian control of the military. But that's healthy. And it creates a better environment for making good decisions. My perspective on division roles and responsibilities was emphasized in 2007. For a brief but glorious two weeks, I was the acting commander of then US Pacific Command. And it was a temporary thing. And I knew that I was holding the place between two admirals, Admiral Fallon and Admiral Keating, waiting for Admiral Keating to be able to get confirmed and in place. But at the ceremony where Admiral Fallon was relieved to be sent to Central Command, General Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff was there. And after the ceremony, he took me aside and he said, Dan, I know you're acting, but don't think that way. And if you need to do something, do something. You are the combatant commander. And it'll be great if you can keep Secretary of Defense and me informed. I think more than great, necessary. But if you've got to do something, do something. And that's a key separation and roles and responsibilities. Every Pacific Command and Indo Pacific Command commander I've ever known, and I've known most of them for a long time, has said at some point to somebody either in uniform or out, hey, that's great, but I don't work for you. I work for two people, the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States. And that's organizational discipline to stick to your roles and responsibilities. And it helps you ensure, again, that you're not in an echo chamber, getting the same views bounced off the same walls that reinforce things that might not be working and recently haven't worked. So I think that's really important. I also served on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Now, 39 of the members of that board were really smart engineers, scientists, geniuses, with remarkable backgrounds. I was the dumb fighter pilot to give an operational perspective. But we were all outsiders, unpaid outsiders, to give scientific and developmental advice to the Secretary of the Air Force because they needed, again, a distinct role and responsibility separation that's really important. If you don't have it, you're not going to make the best or most informed decisions. I think there have also been significant failures in oversight and I watched as part of my reflection on the events of 20 years ago. I watched with my wife at her suggestion a documentary on Netflix about the attacks on September 11. And I was most struck by the statements of Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat from California. And she's not my representative. So I don't know a whole lot about her politics, but I suspect she and I differ on many issues. Here's one thing we don't differ on. She was the only person to vote against the authorization for use of military force in 2001 that gave broad authorities to the executive branch to wage war in response to the attacks on 9-11. No senator, no other representative dissented with that. That's stunning to me. And now she was pilloried for it. And I remember the emotion of the time. I remember the terror on the faces of the people running from the collapsing Twin Towers, which even though I was in the Pentagon, that's my starkest memory of September 11. But how can it be that Congress wasn't more thoughtful, more resolute in providing oversight to the executive branches use of military force? It was going to pass. But why wasn't there more debate about the breadth of the authorities that were given? And in terms of most oversight, now shifting gears a little bit and going back to something I spoke about in the famous accountability episode, most of the leadership inspector general and congressional oversight is focused on what? It's focused on procurement and personal conduct, not on the mission. So these oversight agencies should look at failure with genuine accountability. The GAO report that says, hey, you didn't do a good job. If it doesn't have any impact, it might as well be about the current baseball season in terms of effect on national security. I'm a baseball fan, but it's not as important as national security in accomplishing the mission. So all of these factors, the lack of diversity in our leaders, the lack of thought diversity, diversity of thought, the echo chambers, including think tanks not limited to that, the blurred lines of authority and responsibility, and the failures of oversight or problems. There are another final problem that I'd cite is the fact that our leaders play to the public too much. That's not a new problem. Our entry into World War II was delayed by public opinion. You've got, I mean, you have to play to the public, but it seems when we get into mission execution too much of that comes front and center and not of executing the mission and when it doesn't go well, living up to your responsibility in public. All of these factors, again, the diversity, lack thereof, echo chambers, blurred lines, failures in oversight, and the interest in public opinion and therefore votes have led us to an unjustified confidence best described by my new favorite word, hubris, and I've talked about that before too. If we look back at that list that I showed earlier of national security symbols, we shouldn't be very confident. We should be really confident in our capability, our military capability. We shouldn't be too high on ourselves in terms of our application of said capability, and we are. So I have a question from a viewer sent by direct message and let me read it. So we also see sameness demographically among a military and national security leadership. Most the people in leadership are white men. Shouldn't we begin by diversifying leadership to include more women and people of color, which will lead through to diversity of thought? Absolutely. And I think we've done that. While I was the director at AP CSS, women, peace, and security was my top priority. Nobody gave that to me, but because of the importance of diversity, we more than double the participation of women. And it had a significant impact in the quality of discussion and learning that went on at the center. We've done that. But if you take your demographic diversity from the same geographic and intellectual pool, it won't achieve the desired effect. And that's a problem. So, yes, I think we have, I think we should continue to do that. But it's not enough if you draw from the same crowd all the time. So what would fig do? I've stated several problems. What would I do about it? Because we have to do something. So we do better facing the significant challenges of the future. And here's what I do. First of all, something I didn't mention is most of our civilian leaders are not their experts. And they're in some cases brilliant. And as I said, committed, dedicated, et cetera. But they may not have training in organizational leadership. And now they lead organizations. And part of leading an organization well is knowing how to encourage debate, tolerate dissent, and recognize that as the leader, you're not paid to be right. You're paid to decide. But choose what's right. You don't have to be right yourself. They should get that leadership from a non-government source. And the military sends many of their senior officers to civilian non-government leadership schools. I went to the leadership at the peak in Colorado Springs. It was a great experience, really an eye-opening experience. I remember specifically in one of the breakout groups during this two weeks, and the other participants were CEOs and COOs from big companies. And at one point while we're doing feedback amongst our group, one of them said, Fig, we love the way you ask for our opinion. Kind of puffed up a little bit. And he said, we sure wish you'd listen to it. And he was right. I was asking for it, but not listening to it. We have to encourage debate and dissent. And that's not easy. Again, you have to make a decision at some point. We should mandate overseas experience for senior national security officials. Some of them have it, but that's a congressional oversight issue. They can mandate it. We should consciously diversify our great civilian core from beyond these codes. Even Hawaii, perhaps not me, but even Hawaii. And we should put some limits on the revolving door for going from Congress to the National Security Council to think tanks and perhaps maybe two events for a total of six years maximum because change is good, new thought is good, refreshing the gene pool is valuable. In DOD, I think we could do the same thing. And that means that we could say you can't serve more than two consecutive assignments in Washington, D.C. as a senior colonel and above military officer over the course of no more than six years. Many of the generals and admirals would like that because it would get them out of Washington. But it's important to get away from the insular nature of it and then legislatively revitalize separation of civil and military authorities. And that starts with prohibiting a former general or admiral from being the secretary of defense. Now, some of this might be might be wishful thinking, but it's really important. And we have to take it on because our national security matters and what we've been doing hasn't been working very well. So we're at the end of a very rapid 30 minutes. I'm thank you for watching and I invite you to tune in, as I said, to figments the power of imagination next week and listen to somebody defied gravity. I thank Think Tech Hawaii for supporting this. We're all nonprofit in this business. So we're not doing it money for money. We're citizen journalists trying to encourage a thoughtful, respectful debate on issues of the time. So please donate to Think Tank if you have the wherewithal in the will to do so. I'll see you next week and figments the power of imagination. Aloha.