Transcript for “The Threats to American Democracy" with Vance Cryer
Join our host Don MacPherson and Vance Cryer as they discuss the threats America faces in the intersection between polarization and national defense and how we can overcome them. Vance describes America’s external threats, what they stand to gain by a weakened America, and how they are using America’s division as a tool to undermine democracy.
Vance's 27-year career with the United States Marine Corps took him through flight school in Pensacola, Florida; to Top Level School at the National War College in Washington, D.C., where he earned a master's degree in national strategic studies; to four AV-8B squadron tours, including as the commanding officer of Marine Attack Squadron 211. He completed six combat tours in Iraq and served two tours of duty at the Pentagon-Headquarters Marine Corps in the Department of Aviation. In 2013, he was promoted to colonel and commanded the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton. In 2016, he was handpicked by Secretary Ray Mabus as the Marine Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.
In August 2018, Vance retired from active duty in the Marine Corps and is now serving as a Director for Special Programs at Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control (MFC). He serves as the liaison between MFC and Lockheed Martin Aerospace, working on the leading edge of missile and sensor technologies and future capabilities.
This season of the podcast is in collaboration with Starts with Us. Starts with Us is an organization committed to overcoming extreme political and cultural division. Check them out at startswith.us.
Vance Cryer: I think that we are hardwired for community, and that I think if we will take the time to get to know each other, be civil — we can see each other in a different light. And I think that dignity and respect that we all desire, that we, as we model that, that we can just make it a little better today than it was yesterday.
Don MacPherson: That is Vance Cryer. He is a retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel, and he joined 12 Geniuses to discuss the real threat to American democracy. My name is Don MacPherson, your host of 12 Geniuses. Heading into any election season can be divisive, that’s why 12 Geniuses has partnered with Starts With Us on this series to help you navigate the overall 2024 election. Drawing from their life experiences and current work, each expert guest provides critical insight to help listeners practice better habits when confronted with the election season rhetoric and discourse. The goal of this season is not to sway your vote, but rather to help you make informed decisions when you step into the voting booth.
In this episode, Vance Cryer uses his decades of experience defending the United States to help us better understand our foreign adversaries, what the motivations of these countries are, and how these external threats are using our internal division as their tools to compromise our security. Vance Cryer served 27 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He completed six combat tours in Iraq and has been on eight deployments. In 2016, he was handpicked to be the Marine Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, a position he held for 18 months. Vance currently works with Lockheed Martin missiles and fire control.
Thank you to Starts With Us for their collaboration on this series. Starts With Us is an organization committed to overcoming extreme political and cultural division. Check them out at startswith.us.
Vance, welcome to 12 Geniuses.
Vance: Thanks, Don. It’s great to be with you this morning.
Don: Let’s start out with your background. Tell us who you are and what you’ve been doing with your career over the last 30, 35 years.
Vance: You bet. Hey, I’m Vance Cryer. I hail from Fort Worth, Texas. A retired Marine veteran — 28 years. I was a Harrier pilot in the Marine Corps, commanded marine attack squad in 2011. As a colonel, I had the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit out in San Diego. Worked at acquisitions there in the Pentagon within Aviation Holloway and I was a Marine assistant to the Secretary of the Navy just prior to departing to active duty. Came back and did a startup with a small company in Austin called IOMAXIS, working some cyber capabilities. I did a standup for them there in Austin for about a year. And then I moved on to Lockheed Martin here in Fort Worth in Grand Prairie. I work at missiles and fire control on future weapons, advanced weapons, advanced programs, special programs.
Don: Fantastic. And our conversation is going to be around the threats to American democracy. We’re going to talk about external threats, we’ll talk about internal threats, and I can’t think of a better guest to have a conversation around these different threats. And I think that’s probably where we should start is where do you see America’s top threats? You can start with the external ones and then we’ll get into the internal ones.
Vance: Well, so my advanced degree is from the National War College there, Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., and that’s in national strategy and strategic frameworks. And so what we know about the nature of warfare is that it isn’t changing, right? This is the will of groups or peoples or countries, nation states in this case, that are coming into conflict with each other, whether that be physical conflict or something below that threshold. And so what we also know is that the character of warfare is ever-changing. Many of your podcasts have covered a lot of these individual technologies that are very interesting — we can hit on some of them. But this rapidly changing environment, it’s becoming more complex, meaning that the relationships are unknown. Many of them are unknowable, right? And so both the application of new technologies and the application of older technologies in new ways are changing the character of warfare in an increasingly quickening pace.
And so today, our rivals, our competition rivals are peer or near-peer rivals, right? China and Russia. And then the other kind of satellite bad actors, if you will, Iran and, of course, North Korea, and then lots of other smaller groups who wish our nation harm. I think we have, right now, we are facing a bit of a first-world conundrum, right? We live in this little bubble that is isolated geographically from the rest of the world nicely and so it buffers us and filters us a bit. But the American people go on day to day to day, and this is a blessing, right? That we’re just chasing our dreams and we’re making our money and we’re doing our thing, right? And whatever you choose to be passionate about and commit yourself to. But the fact of the matter is there are tens of thousands of people both in uniform and in organizations that get up every day to bring the demise of the United States, our people, to bring harm to our people.
And so there’s a myriad of threats that they are acting in these vectors, if you will. And we’re a victim a little bit of our own success, right? Militarily, right? Very quickly, in the last counterterrorism fight, the enemy elected, “Hey, going toe to toe is not really a good idea.” So, you know a little bit about the Marine Corps. I know Master Guns Stalker has talked to you about some of our Marine Corps’ exploits in Iraq and Afghanistan and so on. So, you know that the Marine Corps, as an example, is a very blunt instrument. So the enemy knows this as well, right? And so that has created, I guess, their incentive to act below the radar, if you will, to not elicit a response from America that is a blunt instrument like the Marine Corps.
And so that is occurring across all domains, right? Simultaneously. When I say domains, I mean warfare domains, right? So air, land, sea, cyber spectrum space — it’s happening, it’s game on. And so applying these new technologies that you’ve been talking about in these areas to work to affect the United States is what these nation states are doing. And so Thucydides would tell us in history, right? A History of Peloponnesian War, I don’t know if you’ve read that book or not, but it’s quoted often, but it’s because it’s such a treasure trove of just fundamentals and understanding. So, you can go read about history of warfare 3,000 years ago, the fundamentals, right? The nature of warfare unchanging, still is applicable today. And he said nations go to war for three reasons — fear, honor, and interest. And so the National War College would define interest, national interest in three categories — economy, security, and values.
Now, values, you can split into two topics. Either value projection — democracy, freedoms, rule of law, freedom of navigation, right? Value projection that we do as a nation. Or it can be value protection, right? In the case of take some of these other countries where we begin to encroach on what they see as their values, their way of life, they respond in a value protection kind of way, right? Those are national interest. If it’s not economy security or values, it’s not a national interest. That’s by the book. And so these competitive nations, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? What is this competition we’re in? Well, one, it’s economic, right? And two, it’s security-related. And then three, it’s value-related.
Don: You’d mentioned that there are tens of thousands of people getting up every day and working toward the demise of the United States.
Vance: Yes.
Don: And I think it’s also important to say there are hundreds of thousands of people, or millions of people who are part of the U.S. military and Department of Defense who are working to combat those adversaries. And you were alluding to different ways that combat and conflict are occurring. And I wonder if you could just talk about some of the ways that we are engaged in conflict.
Vance: So, it’s in everyday things that you don’t realize or appreciate, right? In order to create an opportunity to attack, you’re going to pay attention to, and you’re going to understand patterns of life, right? You’re going to do lots of collections. Most of it unclasps, right? It’s called OSINT, right? Open-source intelligence. So, there’s lots of collections going on. This is a very free society. And so it’s very easy to do. That’s being done against key leaders across industry. It’s being done with key leaders in the military, within their families, within their social circles, within their social networks of their children, of their friends, their neighbors, right? Why? Why is all of this collection going on? What is all of this data? Why is it also important?
And so they want to understand what are the weak links? Where might they have an opportunity at the time and place of their choosing to insert some chaos into that key leader’s life, right? And so this is called microtargeting, right? And so, it may just be to keep them off balance at a key negotiation coming up, right? It could be for a political leader, maybe it’s an industry piece, maybe it’s some of the collection that they’re doing to steal intellectual property, and so on, right? And so across the web, across the social networks, throughout the media organizations, it’s just penetrating our society to look for opportunities at a time and place of their choosing for their advantage to support those national interests with their own narrative, right? Or with their own story, or create some chaos within our own system, right?
Which is very easy to do. It’s very easy to do. It’s not a surprise to you that your telephone, I mean, even the conversation we’re having, your phone sitting on your desk could trigger the news feed that you have to be different today than it was this morning. Or you go on to Amazon and so on. Different things are going to pop up based upon different words that we have said, right? And so all of those algorithms that are working in the background, right? And so it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that some of those injects, if you will, of information and news or fake news, whatever you want to call it, are really targeted to elicit or incite a response from you.
And part of that response is keep watching, keep looking, right? But part of it is to strike maybe at what they believe in your profile. Your data profile might be a hotspot, something you would be passionate about, right? And so if they can just strike or to confirm a bias that you may have, right? All of that is to just get you to respond in a certain way. And even if you don’t respond, even if you’re reserved in your response, your temperament or your sentiment towards your neighbor or your boss or your workplace and the environment is not helpful, is not healthy. And so I would just say to our listeners, when something really sets you off at the instant you hear it, see it, touch it, then I would say your instinct needs to be, what is the source of this information?
Not, what did it say? Not, I can’t believe that they would do that, right? Just pause. What is the source? Where did this come from? What could be the alternative agenda in what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing, what’s being said? The Marine Corps teaches that we filter our actions with: Is it legal? Is it moral? Is it ethical? And I think as a leader, that’s a pretty good filter. If it doesn’t pass all three of those, you don’t get to move forward, right? So, it could be an order that you receive, right? It could be a direction you’re taking, it could be a project you’re working on, but is it legal? Is it moral? Is it ethical?
Don: How likely is it that Russia or China might have information about individual citizens like regular people like myself or others who might be listening right now?
Vance: I think it’s not only plausible, it’s a fact, right? This continued grab of data. And what would the interest of say, China, for example, of building these profiles be? Well, they would be looking for certain individuals who maybe are future leaders, right? And so, the earlier they start a profile on them, the more information they have when they rise to a position of influencer power or position. And so their process gets better over time, their collection abilities get better over time. So, it’s not wasted effort, right? You may think, “Well, nothing ever became of that person. Yeah, they just stayed in their hometown, and okay.” But the apparatus, if you will, surrounding that, that collection activity got better over time by that dossier, if you will. And so some of these algorithms are being tuned to project.
So, based upon the information they have just pulled down off of you today, they can kind of project where you might go. And so they start lead turning, well, who do they think will become influential members in society, and so on, and so forth. So yes, I think that’s occurring at some scale, at some level. And I would say for our listeners that they just need to be aware of their data. They need to be aware of what’s out there, and they just need to be a little more protective of their personal information.
Don: For me, one of the key vulnerabilities is cyber. And I wonder if you could comment on what our vulnerabilities are. And you don’t have to get into specific ones if you don’t want to.
Vance: I think that one, that’s a reality, right? And so if you haven’t thought about, for your listeners, would say, “So, I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” right? But I would just say look at the facts around you that your local community could be shut down, if you will, for services, electrical, water, right? Just for a couple of weeks or more, that’s a reality of the future that we live in. A little bit of preparation to be able to deal with a chaotic situation like that is in good order. I mean, we all maybe know a prepper out there, right? I’m not advocating for that. I’m just saying a little bit of preparation for an unlikely event like that to occur would be wise.
The capabilities within cyber, both the tools that are at play every day, right? So, every corporation in America is under a cyber-attack daily, right? The bigger corporations like Lockheed and others are under tremendous attacks. So, banking infrastructure are under tremendous attacks every single day. And so that warfare, if you will, below that level of conflict, as you described, it’s on. The fights on. The tools in which they have to embed malware, and so some of that creates chaos in the moment. It shuts down systems. It hasn’t been two weeks since my AT&T phone just didn’t work for an entire day. These kind of things are happening, they do happen. And then there’s things that are embedded in software and firmware and hardware that are just at a time and place of their choosing, or our choosing to be unlocked to create additional chaos, right?
And so there’s things there that we know can be there. It’s plausible that probably are there, but where are they? People like to separate and discuss the offensive and defensive capabilities of warfare. But really this is yin and yang, right? Two sides of the same coin. And so at the same time, we’re trying to build up our security structures and use new technologies to improve our encryption or defeat their encryption, right? So, it’s this ongoing struggle between the two offensive and defensive all the time. But as you move into that kind of contingency and crisis response, which is where I think you’re talking about, of something that we know is plausible, it could happen. It is going to happen, right?
We know there’s going to be a massive cyber-attack or a data breach on a U.S. corporation or industry this year. It will happen, right? Mark — it’s going to happen. Well, which industry is it? Well, what day is it? Well, those are unknowns. And so we bring people in, like your guests on this forum, and we get them to help us understand the details and how we might prepare and how we might act or how we might protect and so on. And so, in that space, in that complicated space, there’s lots of unknowns, but we use those subject matter experts to turn as many as we can into knowns, and then we set the conditions for success, right? Which the military does very good through planning exercise, through training exercise, through pre-deployment forces around the globe in the different domains, right? In the war fighting domains.
Well, why do we do that? Because we know these things are going to happen. They will happen, they will happen this year. And we’ve thought about that, and we have a plan for that, and we’re going to execute on a time and place of our choosing, right? By those preparations, we are seizing the initiative in those domains, right? If the question is, can we react to an enemy who acts upon us in a certain domain with a cyber-attack, for example? Well, yes, we can react to that, but that’s not where we want be, right? And politically, that’s where we find ourselves often, right? If something happens in the U.S., our citizenry, our allies, and then we find ourself in a position where politically we must react. Well, I would tell you, that’s not where we want to be in this kind of future of all domain warfare.
We want to be in a position that, yeah, we’ve thought of that and at a time and place of our choosing, we’re going to let the enemy react to us. And then in that complex domain, to where a 9/11-type event, right? So, say a cyber event that took out the power grid in the large part of the U.S. or something, so a black swan type event. Well, those events are truly complex, and they will never happen the same way twice. The relationships are not only unknown, they are unknowable. And so the strategies, so if it’s that type of event, so we can’t afford as taxpayers, or as a nation, or even as a group of allies to prevent against all eventualities all the time, right? Not going to happen. And so what do we do, well, that’s a risk calculation and a risk discussion of where do we put our dollars, what’s the most effective?
And what we’ve learned over time is that we take resiliency strategies. And that’s why I mentioned earlier — worth a little bit of thought on just preparations. Why? Because in the unlikely event that the grid on the eastern seaboard gets taken out for two weeks, then the US’s ability to bounce back quickly, reestablish order, reestablish power reestablish services, right? That is our measure of success. And so this resiliency approach to, in the unlikely event, something that we can’t prevent really occurs, we need the ability to bounce back quickly.
Don: You said the eastern seaboard losing power for two weeks. And I’m thinking to myself, that’s completely possible. And most listeners are probably thinking to themselves — no way is that possible. And I just wonder if you could respond to that.
Vance: At Lockheed Martin part of the strategy teams out there, and we do some exercises kind of thought leadership type activities in what Air Force Futures command, Army Futures command, both call threatcasting. Within the threat casting, and you may be familiar with the process, I don’t know, but there’s forecasting and back casting. So, we will take a topic, we just did one on neuromorphic compute technologies, right?
Don: Brian David Johnson is one of the guests who’s been on the show, and I think he does this for different parts of the military.
Vance: So, we’re partnered with BDJ…
Don: Yeah, a great guy.
Vance: … in these threatcasting workshops, right? In these events, you can come together with the right subject matter experts, and you could come up with a theme like, okay, the fragility of the grid and create a question. And then we can imagine any rank, any position in the company, right? We just pull a group of people together that have expertise in these areas, and we ask the question. And we start, well, what would a plausible scenario look like? It doesn’t have to be real. It’s imagined, right? And then we start working our way back. Well, how would we know that’s occurring? What would we measure, right? And so this process, if you will, allows us to then either set the conditions and goals and objectives so that that never happens. Or if it was something we wanted to happen, right? It’s a forecasting type thing, then we would set the conditions to make that happen. That’s how it would get to such a outlandish theme or thought is that it’s very plausible.
Don: Let’s talk about our internal threats. Could you just comment on what our internal threats are, whether it’s the far right or the far left, or whether it’s apathy of the electorate, what do you see there?
Vance: I think this is really a first-world problem. I don’t really believe that the left or the right is a threat in and of itself, right? I think apathy is certainly a threat. I think extremism can be a threat on the left or right, but that’s a pretty small contingency that tend to declare themselves pretty readily. And so I think those threats are being paid attention to by the appropriate folks. But I think that it’s really more of taking responsibility. So, for your listeners, right? I would say take it down a different path. And part of this Starts With Us movement is just that to say, “Okay, I’m not responsible for some key leader high in the government of what they say or do, what their policy is, or what they’re going to enact or not enact, right? That’s not going to fall on me.”
But as it pertains to me, let’s wind this back a little bit, right? My neighbors, do I know them? Do I know what they’re good at? If I had a neighbor having a problem with something mechanical, for example, do I know who the good mechanic is in the neighborhood that we could help solve this problem? Maybe some elderly people in my neighborhood that we need to make sure are taken care of? I think that in this responsibility theme, it’s worthy of our time to just stop, pause, look around and say, well, rather than just throwing our hands up and saying, “Well, the government should do that,” right? What is our responsibility in caring for one another, meeting each other’s needs, standing in the gap, protecting the vulnerable, feeding the hungry, whatever, whatever that is, right?
And do my neighbors know that they can count on me? Well, do they know that there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help them? And if they don’t, well, that could be something you could start with, right? Is get to know whose around you. And I think leadership is wise within your organization, your company, your business, whatever you’re doing, the same is true, right? Get to know your people, get to know their strengths. Study your people, because you can play to those strengths, and you can bring order, if you will, to your organization in that way. I think what we’re seeing a lot of, certainly in a lot of the major metropolitan areas around the country in the communities, is garage door goes up, car goes in, door goes down, and, “Hey, Bob” — “Jim,” right?
You never get to know them. You don’t know who they are or what they like, what they don’t like. I mean, you just don’t know them. And so what I’m saying is I think that we are hardwired for community, and that I think if we will take the time to get to know each other, be civil, we can see each other in a different light. And I think that dignity and respect that we all desire, that we, as we model that, that we can just make it a little better today than it was yesterday.
Don: You and I are the same age. I was class of ’87. I think you’re probably class of ’87 as well. We’re not old men. I would say I’m middle age. I want to be make it to 120. You probably want to make it to around the same. My question is, what have you observed over the course of your adulthood that has changed around this? Is it technology? Is it our attention? I mean, how did we arrive here?
Vance: I think it’s many factors. Technology, your phone in your pocket is a piece of it, right? But it’s expectations, right? Even for us middle age, right? We’ve had our careers, right? We’ve had our day in the sun. And so, really, many of us are modeling what this younger generation has taken off from day one, which is, well, I’m just going to be to myself and remove myself from all the problems. And I’m just going to go sit in my comfy chair and be in my own little immersive world. And so I think that’s a mistake, right? I would ask your listeners to think about if you are middle-aged men or women, you still, even if you’re retiring early, you’re in this phase of life — what is it you are contributing to that younger generation?
How many by name can you sit and write right now, write down the names of the young men and women that you are mentoring, grooming, growing, investing of yourself and your life lessons to them for their own success? I think in this striving for, maybe it’s even part of that American dream we talked about, right? Is we’re striving for a place of comfort. And I don’t think that that’s healthy, right? There needs to be some healthy tension in your life, and we need to continue to be investing of ourselves into the next generation.
Don: When you start to realize you are part of something, you’re part of a community, you’re part of a city, you’re part of an organization, that’s when you start to identify your purpose. And that’s what I find enduring. And that’s what leads to happiness and fulfillment and all of these really, really positive outcomes.
Vance: Make no mistake, there are two paths to the top. Now, I won’t call that success, but there are two paths to what society would call success. One is a genuine right, selfless leader who puts others’ interest ahead of themselves and invest in themselves to make the organization a better place, and to make the individuals within it have a fertile place to grow with dignity and respect, right? And so that leads to success. It does. But the other is step on everybody to look one inch taller as fast as you can, move on to the next rung on the ladder. They will both get somewhere at the top, but they’re leadership models. And so the leadership model that says, “I’m only interested what I can achieve,” — well, quite frankly, I don’t care who you are, you can’t achieve very much by yourself. When you have a moment of success in whatever it is you’re doing, the technique and there’s Marine Corps technique, right? Sergeant Major Senior enlisted, go find me the youngest, most junior Marine that had took part in this. And you pull them up and you give them credit for the whole thing, right? Why?
Because you want to reinforce those behaviors. You’re the commanding officer, right? You’re going to get credit anyway. You don’t have to tell anybody about it. It’s not helpful. You want to put credit back where the work is actually getting done because they deserve it. Their work is honorable, and you want to reflect that.
Don: What I realized when you were talking about the internal threats is not necessarily that they’re threats is that they’re tools of our enemies. And I was thinking about the far left and the far right and apathy and a disengaged electorate. And these are kind of outcomes, these are what our enemies want. This is not what we want. And I just wonder if you could comment on those various outcomes being the tools of our enemies, our external threats.
Vance: So they are. If your small extremist groups on the right or left, or even non-aligned, call it violent extremist organizations that subscribe to a different faith or whatever, right? So these groups are susceptible to the misinformation campaigns. And so if you haven’t studied it, it’s worth, for your listeners, it’s worth doing a little research on things formally known as PSYOPs or information warfare, right? What are the tenets of that, right? So, what is it that the enemy is trying to do? Let’s call it the fog of war, right? Well, that’s a tool, right? And so how do we inject that fog into what the American society is dealing with and make it… really what they’re doing is taking a small disturbance in whatever’s happened, the event, whether it be a school shooting or a riot downtown, or whatever, right? So they take that event that is, I would tell you more in that routine column, right? The relationships are known, the actors are known. Did they break the law? Yes or no? Do we hold them accountable? Yes or no? So, we know how to deal with these situations, but what they’re doing is they’re taking one of those events. And through media and misinformation and stirring up of the populace through the social media avenues, they’re moving it into a contingency in crisis response that the government’s having to respond to, right?
And so they’re taking, really, what is a non-event and making it an event. And so we’re susceptible, and these groups are certainly susceptible, and may even have bad actors planted within them. As you look at these active riots on the left and right in different groups, if you were to look at that and say, “Well, are there any bad actors in those groups?” I guarantee you there are, right? That are just fomenting and stirring up. And again, just trying to raise that non-event into an event status that someone might respond to or react to. And, at the least, it creates dissent, right? And so the disunity is really the objective. What does it take to unify us when an opportunity presents itself? From the leadership, they have to cast a vision and they have to lead, they have to be genuine to lead selflessly.
And they have to communicate, “Here’s where we’re going.” And when something bad happens, rather than just responding to the poll or responding to the whatever, right? Just trying to stay ahead of the narrative, which seems like the day job these days, actually say, “Look,” be genuine with people. “This is going to be difficult in the following ways. You’re going to experience friction and adversity in the following manners. We’re going to work through this. Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what we’ve put in place.” And so, again, reestablish resiliency approach, come back quickly, demonstrate that we’re not in control, if you will, but in charge of leading our way out to weather the mistakes that we’re going to make, right?
And then we have to very deliberately surround ourselves with people in our organization who are willing and that we charge with — “When you see it going wrong, come tell me.” Right? So, you have to create that feedback. If you create a mechanism of yes-men around you, if you will, with your staffs and with your governments only telling you the good news, right? If everybody’s afraid to bring bad news to the boss, what’s that do? It shuts off all the communication.
Don: I wonder, because you’ve been a leader your entire career, and you’ve been around amazing leaders, I would imagine, military leaders, maybe even heads of state, to certainly political leaders, what should the American electorate expect from their elected leaders?
Vance: I think the number one quality they should look for is character. Full stop. And that presents itself in many ways. And I think as we begin to get to know these leaders or study them, or really try to understand what’s beneath the veneer that we see or hear every day is, is this individual, and what I’m hearing, is this something that they’re saying because they think I want to hear it? So, we need a little bit of discernment to parse out what I call the say-do-gap, right? Are they saying just what we want to hear or are they saying what we need to hear, the hard truth, and what to expect? And here’s where we’re going and here’s why. Are they purpose-driven? Are they leading? Are they investing of themselves as a part of the solution and putting their own equity on the line for that solution?
Or is it just what we want to hear, next target? And so, politicians seem to be pretty prone to tell us what we want to hear, and that can be detrimental. Both campaign trails in the last couple of campaigns, nationally, right? That they make commitments to communities that they’re meeting with and make promises, right? And then those families and jobs and everything else are counting on that, and it doesn’t happen. That’s devastating, right? I think we should look for character above all.
Don: I wonder what advice you have for voters as they head to the polls this summer for primaries and this fall for the general election.
Vance: Well, I would just encourage your listeners to do their homework, right? Study what is available that you can learn about these individuals, their backgrounds, their experience, their exposures. Seek to understand the issues, but not just at the service level. I’d like you to take the time to consider some of these more complex issues that I believe will require us to come together as a nation to not only pool resources or do things in new ways or address, you know, policies and so on, but will require us to take on some responsibility down at the deck plate level, right? In your neighborhood and my neighborhood, and your workplace and my workplace.
And so I want to encourage you that investing of yourself into others is worthy of your time, right? It’s not going to change the world. It is going to change the world collectively, right? It’s not going to change the world in a movement, if you will. I applaud Starts With Us, and it’s great to be a part of this body of people who want to just make the dialectic a little better than it is today. So let’s do that, that’s great. But take a little responsibility. Get involved where it’s appropriate, but resist the urge to overreact to whatever happens this election season. So, our enemies, our competitive countries, they will inject some chaos into this election season. Full stop, right? We are not innocent of not doing that around the world either, right? So, it will happen. And so when it does happen, you need to maybe take a pause and think about how you might respond in a more responsible way.
Don: I want to ask you about the oath that the military takes. And I have heard this idea that there could be a rogue leader or a rogue president who would get the military on their side. Maybe a president doesn’t want to leave office, and they would get the military on their side. And I just don’t buy that notion primarily because I have talked with members of the military, and because they swear an oath to the Constitution. Where does the military’s loyalty lie?
Vance: So, there’s a couple of directions I can take this. First and foremost, I think that’s not a plausible scenario from my own experience from serving under both administrations for many, many years. If I just pull a date out of a hat, I couldn’t tell you who was in charge when, right? The president is a leader from a military perspective, right? They’re a leader just like the commanding officer down the hall in whatever unit I’m in. And so, they have a job to do, I have a job to do. I’m going to do my job both dutiful and faithfully, right? That’s what I’m here to do. I take an oath to the Constitution. And the Marine Corps gave me a filter. And that is, is it legal? Is it moral? Is it ethical?
It has to pass all three. If not, I’m duty-bound to go to my chain of command and say, “Look, this is not lawful. We got to address this, right? This is not ethical. This is immoral.” So, if it doesn’t pass all three, that conversation happens. And within the Marine Corps, I expect leadership at all levels, right? And so that young, lance corporal, that young corporal, that young sergeant, that young lieutenant or captain — I charge them with, “Bring it to me.” I want that. And so if there is a rogue, a step out of their constitutional oath of office, then that’s an issue. And the nation, the structure that our founding fathers were so thoughtful to put together can deal with those sorts of issues, right?
Your military does not have a misplaced loyalty, right? They are serving. The reason I mentioned we’re going to take a couple of different directions, right? So what is it that the young man or woman who’s volunteered in this volunteer force of ours, what is it they fight for, right? So, you’d probably like to think, well, they’re fighting for democracy. I would tell you they’re not. They don’t fight for lofty ideals. They fight for each other. They fight for the person left and right of them. They fight for the people in that organization that they are a part of. That’s what they fight for. That’s what they live and they die for. That’s what they give themselves for at the most basic level. And so the thought that this massive wave is going to join someone off the reservation, I just think it’s very highly unlikely.
Don: Vance, is there anything that I didn’t ask you that I should have?
Vance: I would just ask the listeners to take a little time. It’s appropriate to take time, to reflect right as we move into this kind of a chaotic season, if you will. But just reflect on our own responsibilities and how we can contribute to a positive election season in some small way, right? How we can contribute to a more positive narrative across our political system. Not for a political end state, right? But because it’s the right thing to do for just the dignity and the respect and for the future for our children and our children’s children that they might find a productive, fertile landscape to grow our democracy, our republic. So, make it worth the price you’d pay. Take it on yourselves. Look for ways to contribute to that constructively, as we said, and I look forward to continue dialogue.
Don: Vance, this has been an incredible honor. Thank you for your time, and thank you for being a genius.
Vance: Thanks so much, Don.
Don: Thank you for listening to 12 Geniuses. In our next episode, I interview Amanda Ripley, who is author of the book, High Conflict, and Co-Founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. Amanda and I discuss how we can all counter the culture wars and effectively resolve political disagreements. If you are learning from and enjoying the podcast, please share it with others who might find value in it, and please consider rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening, and thank you for being a genius.