Mug Shots and Neck Tattoos
Cognitive biases have crippled the U.S. Department of Defense, cost America's taxpayers billions, and weakened national security. Is the solution on the soccer pitch?
He’s 5-foot-10, weighs 170 pounds, and had he been blessed with 6 more inches, San Francisco resident Adam Fish may have just completed his 14th NFL season. Instead, this college football-obsessed California native helms venture-backed Ditto (link), whose cutting edge technology magically syncs apps in real-time even without the internet. It’s the kind of breakthrough America’s warfighting strategy, known as multi-domain operations (MDO), depends on. Conflict deterrence (aka world peace) in the future depends more on dominance in space, cyber, air, and intelligence, and less so on legions of ground-based troops plucked from the cornfields of Nebraska, or barrios of El Paso, to perform bloody WWII-era tactics. In fact, the U.S. Air Force believes Ditto’s technology is so valuable it awarded the 4-year-old company a $950 Million contract announced on March 29th (source). Ditto’s CEO is not the socially awkward nerd whose college years were spent hacking sorority house personnel records. Just glance at Fish’s LinkedIn profile; he’s a proud scholar-athlete – an accomplished rower whose exploits helped the University of Southern California (USC) from 2004 - 2008. America needs more Adam Fishes.
What stands in the way?
When the clock strikes midnight on September 30th, 2022, it will close the federal fiscal year, one that sees the United States Air Force spend $1.5B+ and employ 2,800+ people responsible for recruiting 28,000 new airmen (source) while losing a whopping thirty percent (30%) of its workforce as it has every year since 1998 (source). The Air Force’s recruiting strategy has fleeced American taxpayers for 50 years, however, 2022 represents a high watermark. While enlistment bonuses top $50,000 for some career fields – an all-time high in American history – the Air Force’s Recruiting Command will enter FY23 unscathed and as unaccountable to national security as ever despite failing to meet its Congressionally approved end-strength requirement by an historic margin. It’s an intolerable reality, the kind demanding transformative action through bold leadership. So how does an increasingly indebted (source), diabetic (source), and obese (source) America summon the courage to systemically incentivize education and good health in the name of national service? The answer may reside on the rinks, pitches, courts, and fields sprinkled across towns and counties big and small.
Leaders Assemble
It’s April 18th, 2022 when Mark Engelbaum, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, convenes a meeting involving senior leaders responsible for recruiting. We are 59 years, 9 months, and 16 days since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, yet what transpires undermines nearly 6 decades of social progress.
It’s what stands in the way.
Engelbaum is a civilian, the kind responsible for operating America’s military service branches in accordance with the National Security Act of 1947 (source) which replaced the War Department with the Defense Department and codified civilian oversight. The genesis of April’s engagement is telling. It begins with a friendly email on February 23rd from a uniformed Air Force Major General. Engelbaum does not respond. Six subsequent weeks of tactful prodding yields a reply, Engelbaum acquiesces, and a cadre of senior Air Force officials responsible for overseeing the Air Force’s largest recruiting shortfall in American history agree to convene 2 weeks later.
In advance, Engelbaum invites Major General Ed Thomas, Commander of Air Force Recruiting Command (bio) to attend. Others, like enterprising Brigadier General Anne Gunter (bio) from the Air Force Reserve, pry their way into the meeting too. Thomas, though, is unique. Despite outreach over the prior 18 months from recently retired Air Force senior leaders including Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs GEN (r) Mark Welsh and Lt. Gen. (r) Gina Grosso to assist Thomas in course correcting the Air Force’s most-expensive, least-successful recruiting program in American history, Thomas shuns them all. Instead, Thomas criss-crosses America griping about the private sector’s allure (link), offering ominous warnings about personnel shortfalls (link), and flippantly burning taxpayer money by juicing enlistment bonuses to levels otherwise unseen in American history (link).
Unwelcomed Entrance
Engelbaum arrives late to the April 18th meeting, manufacturing an excuse to skip pleasantries. A Zoom screen dotted with Air Force officials stare blankly into their cameras at Dave Maloney, CEO of venture-backed Orchestra Macrosystems, a defense industry supplier in a unique position of holding unanimous bipartisan support from the Senate and House Armed Services Committees for a transformative, diversity-focused recruiting program.
Maloney, a former All-Academic SEC Conference student-athlete in the late 1990s, conceived software to offer, initially, the Army with market intelligence about America’s robust high school student-athlete population. While only 30% of America plays organized sports after the age of 13 (source), this market ($19.6B) still tops even the NFL ($15B). Why? America’s participation in organized sports is driven by a pursuit of a college scholarship (source).
Upon first learning of Orchestra’s software intelligence, Army senior leaders approach Maloney in October 2021 asking, “How would we use this?” The Army is flummoxed. Maloney suggests operationalizing this newfound intelligence by establishing a program to equitably sustain a high performing workforce. It’s a plan involving collegiate student-athletes and capitalizes on the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative (source), a landmark SCOTUS ruling (Alston vs. NCAA), and addresses The Heritage Foundation’s alarming research concerning eligibility for military service (source). Poignantly, Orchestra’s instruction manual is written in plain English. It is shared throughout Capitol Hill, and even secures backing from diametrically opposing politicians like Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Air Force leaders have yet to hear the pitch.
Engelbaum prods the contractor to “tell us what you’ve got”.
Maloney outlines Orchestra’s technology and the opportunity for the Air Force to annuitize (aka “happens every year guaranteed”) a funnel of digitally savvy and intrinsically motivated Americans, the kind capable of executing MDO, by shifting Air Force recruiting efforts and recruiting dollars away from its 50-year history of random acts inside America’s high school cafeterias and dilapidated strip malls. Instead, as Maloney explains, it is in the Air Force’s interest to support the perpetuation of collegiate sports programs aside from football and men’s basketball, all of which sit at the precipice of extinction, the result of skyrocketing costs of higher education (source) and a SCOTUS ruling in June 2021 (source) that neutered the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Cultivate more Adam Fishes!
Maloney underscores his point,
“Tell an American public saddled with $1.8T of student loan debt that the Air Force wants you to attend Ohio State, for example. Go for free. The Air Force will pay for it. This isn’t ROTC. Participate on OSU’s swimming team, an opportunity otherwise going away under the current business model for college sports. Earn a degree. Upon graduating, you’ll have a national service commitment. For some, that might mean working full-time at Tesla and devoting 1-weekend a month, 2-weeks a summer to support the Air Force Reserve as a data analyst. For others well-educated in the field, it might mean 4-years of full-time work supporting the Air Force’s global, complex logistical operations.”
Listeners jostle in their chairs. Zoom squares are aflutter. Maloney’s 3-minute overview concludes. Ed Thomas’ silence is deafening.
Mug Shots and Neck Tattoos
“First, we have standards,” says the agitated Brigadier General, Lisa Craig, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Air Force’s Recruiting Command (bio). “Collegiate student-athletes wouldn’t meet [Air Force] conduct standards. They get arrested.”
As the word arrested leaves her lips, Craig’s hands begin to rise. They converge around her neck. Craig’s fingertips gently tap her throat.
“And they have neck tattoos. We don’t allow that.”
Craig boils down NCAA Division 1’s population (less football & men’s basketball) of 156,795 racially diverse Americans (source), fifty-five percent (55%) of whom are women, all of whom graduate with higher grade-point-averages (source) and graduation rates (source) than their civilian peers to just 1 debilitating, racist stereotype.
Black. Reckless.
If it were the first time hearing such remarks from senior Caucasian leaders inside America’s military service branches, attendees may have been stunned. Nobody flinched. As recently as March 2nd, 2022, Craig’s Air Force colleague, Brigadier General Leslie Maher (bio) matter-of-factly offered on a Microsoft Teams video call with Orchestra’s leadership similar racist remarks about America’s collegiate student-athlete population.
Black. Reckless.
Maher’s statement was made in the presence of an all-white audience. Not so with Craig. She is brazen, unbothered by the presence of Major General Troy Dunn, a African American senior leader (bio), and Colonel Nashid Salahuddin (bio), an African American and Chief of Air National Guard Recruiting and Retention Division. In subsequent text messages (below), Salahuddin and Gunter confirm Craig’s brazenly racist – and factually incorrect – remarks.
A Debilitating Tradition
The Air Force summarily dismisses the changing landscape of collegiate sports (source). “[we would have] too many officers,” chides Engelbaum, a reference to the military’s tradition of segregating officers from non-officers primarily by a singular metric – college degree. It’s a tradition knee-capping America’s competent execution of MDO that harkens back to World War I (1914 - 1918) when the country sought to assemble a large, professionally run military and used a 4-year degree to distinguish personnel capable of leading others. In an era when less than 5% of the public earned a 4-year degree, this made some sense (source), yet in today’s world where forty percent (40%) earn a bachelor’s, it is befuddling if not damning. Could adhering to an outdated tradition weaken national security by stifling access and opportunity to higher education for an American public whose pursuit of a bachelor’s begets crippling debt (source)? Only if the Air Force has its way.
Intent on setting aside unconscionable traditions, Maloney turns to the issue of money. “We built a financial model ahead of a briefing with OUSD P&R (Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness). You [Air Force] won’t need any more money. In fact, this program saves billions. I’ll share it with you,” he offers.
Engelbaum & co. decline. Money is no object.
An efficient and equitable solution to identify, engage, and recruit citizens capable of executing MDO is viewed by senior leaders as a bridge too far, a bridge producing an Air Force too educated, (“We just need wrench turners,” says Engelbaum), too female, too black.
Readers versus Wrench Turners
On March 28th, the Department of Defense put forth to Congress its initial budget request for FY23 — $773B — the largest ever (source). The Air Force requests $234B, its largest ever by a margin of $22B (source). The Air Force asks American taxpayers to fork over $577M to fund hypersonic prototyping, $3.614B for ground based strategic deterrent, and $273.34M for artificial intelligence demonstration and validation, for example. Such requests dutifully reflect the Air Force’s commitment to MDO, yet warrant tough questions about personnel. Who will use these technical advancements in order to protect national interests at home and abroad?
Long term, there’s a right answer and short term there’s a pathway to it.
In 2021, the Air Force reported its active duty force included 64,936 officers, 266,451 enlisted, and 4,098 cadets (source). It’s a team American taxpayers have paid dearly to acquire, the result of Industrial Age efforts illogically employed with increasingly poor results. An untold percentage of those currently in uniform are ideally suited for the mission, no doubt. However, transformative change is desperately needed. Hallelujah! America’s social contract allows for bold leaders triangulating systemic issues like national security, education, and well-being to conjure profound solutions.
What will it take for our elected officials – all of us, in fact – to demand federal agencies led by DoD strengthen national security by broadening access and opportunity to higher education, and perpetuating the existence of collegiate sports in exchange for national service?
Accountability.
Let’s assume the Air Force employs Orchestra’s software and its associated program. Suddenly, for the first time since America’s advent of an all-volunteer force (1973), a military service branch has guaranteed its recruiting quota. Better yet, it’s an educated, physically ready, intrinsically motivated force. Not just this year. Every year. What effect does this have on military strategy and tactics? What effect does it have on career fields, especially those mission-critical career tracks like cybersecurity which the Air Force has historically fallen well-short of fulfilling?
These are just some of the foundational questions whose answers offer America, and the world, a much brighter future. Will the Air Force overcome those who stand in the way?