Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Making Room for Women in National Security with Lindsay Rodman

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

In this episode, Sharon sits down with Lindsay Rodman, Executive Director of The Leadership Council for Women in National Security, to discuss her diplomatic career in military service and national security. Lindsay Rodman is a Harvard Law School graduate and a United States Marine Corps veteran whose career in national security is distinguished by service in the military, White House, Pentagon, and more. Lindsay and Sharon discuss misconceptions of national security, cyber threats faced by the United States, life as a woman in the military, fostering inclusion in democracy, and breaking stigmas about veterans. Listen to learn what you can do to support American veterans, understand how national security contributes to your everyday comfort, and what effective national leadership looks like. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. So excited you're here today. I am chatting with Lindsay Rodman. Lindsay is just an extraordinary person. She went to Harvard Law School, and then after working in a law firm for a period of time, she decided to join the Marine Corps. And she has worked on matters of national security and in the military justice system for a long time. And her perspective is absolutely so needed and so fascinating. We cover so much ground in this interview. We're talking all about veterans, but also about national security matters, also about the military justice system. You are definitely going to learn some good stuff in this episode. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me. I am very excited to chat with you today. Thanks for having me. Tell all of us a little bit more about your background and about what you do now, because I really think lending some context to why we're chatting will be super helpful for people. Yeah. So I had the very fortunate opportunity after I went to undergrad at Duke to go to Harvard Law School. And from there, I sort of knew that I could do basically anything I wanted within reason. And after being at a law firm for a year, I decided to join the

Marine Corps. And I served for eight years on active duty. I served in Okinawa as a criminal defense attorney. So defending Marines at court martial, kind of like A Few Good Men, if you remember that movie. And then I deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 as the operational law attorney for 1st Marine Division Forward, which was a ground combat element for the Marine Corps in the Southwest region of Afghanistan. And then came back to Washington, D.C., where I served in the Pentagon in a couple of different roles at headquarters Marine Corps, working with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And then I was selected as a White House fellow, which was a really amazing opportunity to go over to the

White House and serve on the National Security Council staff. And then I got married and the Marine Corps is not great about keeping people where they want to live in the long term. So in order to facilitate sort of my future life and be able to be in the same place as my spouse and have kids and all that, I decided to stay put and transitioned into the Obama administration as a political appointee and worked in the Pentagon as a senior advisor in the policy shop and doing work in personnel readiness. And then as the Obama administration was ending, I moved to Canada for a couple of years with my husband, worked at think tanks. And then when we came back to the United States, I wanted to move into the nonprofit work. I had done so much mission-oriented work

on the national security side that even if I wasn't in government, I really wanted to be working in roles that were about public service and public-oriented. So I worked at a veterans nonprofit. And then I had the incredible opportunity when a new organization was founded called the Leadership Council for Women in National Security to move over to that role. So I now serve as the executive director of a nonprofit composed of really wonderful, prominent national security leaders who believe that having women in leadership is important and will help lend to the diversity that we need and the sort of the right leadership teams that will help us avoid groupthink and achieve better national security outcomes. Oh my gosh, that is a circuitous life path. It's a lot. I would love to

hear more though about after going to law school and getting a job at a law firm, what was it that made you feel like, you know, what is the right move for me is the Marine Corps. Yeah. You know, I get this question a lot and I'm afraid that I don't have that wonderful silver bullet answer that satisfies people's need to understand that because I know for other people, it's a choice that doesn't make any sense for me. It made perfect sense. I was really intrigued by the national security world in general. I think as a little kid growing up in, you know, more Cold War times in the 80s and really, really early 90s, you know, all the James Bond movies and all the sort of what I thought was our coolest pop culture was about being an international person of mystery

and going abroad. So that stuff all really motivated me to think like, wow, I bet there are some really cool jobs that are meaningful and help the United States, but also would really be interesting and sort of energizing and fulfilling in the future. So I was always geared towards those kinds of jobs. And I really did not think that in the long-term working at a law firm was going to be a good fit for me. And it's not a good fit for a lot of people. It is a great fit for a lot of people. I had a wonderful time at the law firm. It just wasn't what I wanted to be doing in the long term. I wanted something a little more adventure seeking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it really was also just about public service and about thinking about the type of career that would give me a really strong education in national

security broadly. Right. So like, if I think about what I wanted more senior national security leaders to have in their experience tool belt, military service was one of those things. So I sort of thought, okay, like if I aspire to be a leader at some point, then I should do this earlier on in my career. So in the Marine Corps in particular, I actually get this question from a lot of male Marines. You know, they're just like, why are you here? And for them, it's really important that I tell them the exact same thing, which is that I'm here for the exact same reasons you're here. And so I think we sort of assume that like male and female brains are so different that like just because they want to join the Marine Corps, like why would a girl want to join the Marine Corps?

I think for me, it was the same as, you know, a lot of their interest in doing something meaningful, noble service to country, having a job that has a certain physicality to it, which was fun for me because I was an athlete. You know, all of that was part of the motivation. And I think ultimately also because I'm a woman, when I was thinking about that sort of credentialing and I was like, okay, well, if I'm going to go do this military thing, which is like the one that's really going to raise some eyebrows and like, you know, stop people in their tracks and not have people question my national security credentials. So the Marine Corps became kind of the obvious. But things I was wondering about too, it was why the Marine Corps, not another branch of the military and also why not like the CIA? I did actually look into those jobs. And when I was graduated from college, that was my plan. And I was sort of in process, but I got into Harvard Law School and I kind of had to choose

and there was a little fork in the road there. And I tell that story knowing that having your dream job and having your dream school offer you positions was a wonderful position to be in. It was stressful at the time though, because I was like, I didn't want to make the wrong choice. So instead of going that direction, I went to DIA. I did an internship with the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is a different agency that works mostly with the Department of Defense, but doing similar types of analysis. And I worked in the Pentagon. That was my first exposure to any of this stuff. It was very scary, but also very exciting and very interesting all at the same time when I was 22.

And I realized there were kind of different work cultures in the intelligence community and in the military community. I just found that it was a better personality fit for me. Like, I kind of thought the military guys were funnier than the intel guys. And I'm sure for some people, they're like, oh, no, the intel guys are way funnier than the military guys. Well, you kind of find your people. And then I went to grad school and over that time refined the plan from there. OK, going back to your point of like, I want to be an international person of mystery, you know, like that idea that national security and all of the different intelligence agencies and members of the intelligence community,

what even is the intelligence community? So I would love to have your perspective, maybe just a really simple explanation of what goes into making up the intelligence community in the United States. Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that question because so often when we talk about the national security world and workforce, people just are thinking about people in military uniforms. And I have so many incredible friends and colleagues who don't wear a uniform and then therefore don't get that national appreciation for the amount of sacrifice and important work that they do to keep us all safe every day.

And sometimes, you know, I look back on their careers and my career and I'm like, they do a lot. And it's not just the intelligence community. We've got, you know, civilians serving in the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the folks doing international development work, which is so critical to, you know to our broader foreign policy efforts. And then you've got contractors who are kind of sitting alongside them, but not getting the same recognition. So there's a lot of folks working really hard on these really noble missions beyond just the military. But focusing on the intelligence community, it is much bigger than you would think it is. And yeah, there is CIA, which is the main sort of focal point of the intelligence community. There is an office of the director of national intelligence, which is kind of like an umbrella

above all the other intelligence agencies. But the director of central intelligence is a really sort of powerful national security leader in the US. And that's where we do all of the human intelligence of the spying, right? So when you think about people going abroad and recruiting spies, that is something that CIA does. And there was actually some news this week about CIA and about the fact that their jobs are getting much, much harder these days because of the way that technology is improving. The ways that you were able to hide aren't really available anymore. If you're trying to spy in China, where there are cameras everywhere and the government has a really great surveillance apparatus, you are doing something extremely risky. And anyone else that you ask to do that along with you, so for example,

Chinese nationals who you're asking to help by giving you information and stuff like that, that is a very risky job. Frankly, much more risky probably than most of what I encountered during my entire Marine Corps career. So it's something that I think we don't talk a lot about because we don't want to give away their secrets, of course, but super important and that we should be acknowledging and thinking about as we think about what it takes to keep the United States safe and prosperous. There are intelligence agencies, there's the National Security Agency. So that's all the satellites and the listening to other folks. There is the FBI, which has an intelligence component as well, that has an investigatory component. Of course,

if I go down the list, I'm going to miss ones. And then I forgot their agency, but there are 17 of them. So it is quite a lot. Yeah, it is. And one of the things that I found interesting was we had a discussion on my platform a while ago about does anybody here work in the intelligence community, like without giving away necessarily what you're working on or whatever. And the number of people who had significant others or they themselves worked as drone operators. That was fascinating. I'm like, I did not know that there were a hundred drone operators in this community working for national security purposes. I found that super interesting, an area that I know very little about. We always think about it as like the spying and it is a form of spying, but it's not the same as just like pass us your secrets in a peanut butter sandwich.

Yeah. So, you know, my husband used to work at the national geospatial intelligence agency and they do overhead satellite imagery and they also do all the charts and maps that we need just to literally be able to drive down the street where we're going and know where the mountains are and know where the rivers are. It really important component of it. That's, you know, for some of the secret stuff, of course, like, you know, we need to be able to take satellite pictures in lots of places, but there's so much just about our American

way of life that we depend on the same kind of imagery and mapping for that we wouldn't have without some of these agencies. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So interesting. What do you feel like are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about national security? Well, the biggest one that comes to mind is that people don't think about it on a day-to-day basis. And that means it's working, right? Because if you think about other countries where security is not

a daily assumption that people can make about, you know, how they're free to walk down the street and go about their daily lives. But the problem there is that people think it's therefore not important or that they don't prioritize it. So it's the type of thing that you only hear about national security most often and sort of broader American public. I live in national security land where we talk about it all the time, but in terms of the broader American public, you only hear about it when there are major crises or major mistakes or when people are truly scared. And that's important. I mean, of course, when there are crises, we want national attention to them. But when it comes to, for example, broader federal elections, you don't often hear people harping on foreign policy or national security issues as

being the most important. We usually focus on domestic issues. It's not that I think that's inappropriate, but sometimes it is a little concerning to me that we skip over the foreign policy stuff as if it isn't important, because it's so integral to allowing and freeing us up to focus on some of those domestic concerns. For example, if we think about early COVID days, and even now, like all of the supply chains and our ability to just get the stuff that we're all used to having in order to feel comfortable and normal. They're all disrupted in part because we had to stop international travel and our ability to operate internationally.

And our national security apparatus is about facilitating all of that. That's so interesting. So basically what I'm hearing you say is that the fact that you don't think it's important is an indication that we are doing our jobs well. Yeah. Like if you did think it was on a daily basis, that this was radically affecting your life, chances are good that we would be dropping the ball out there on a daily basis. And the fact that you don't notice us means that things are working as they should. Yeah. I mean, there's certainly not everything's working great in national security, but baseline, right. And there is kind of an increasing trend that people are

becoming less and less interested in the national security stuff. So I do fear that we're getting to the point that lack of interest is going to really affect our broader prosperity and our ability to kind of function well as a society. And, you know, I know that your podcast has helped address, and a lot of people are very concerned these days, just about our general ability to function as a democracy and, you know, sort of the seams coming undone a little bit. And this is a big part of it. I would love to hear you say more about that. I would love for you to sort of paint a picture for people about why it's so important. Why should we care? Yeah. So this is like where I start to get scary and, you know, national security ultimately is about preventing threats to the United States and to our way of life from having any sort of effect on Americans. You know, there are really

big existential threats out there that thankfully we have so far been able to stave off. And when I'm talking about those, I'm talking about Cold War era type nuclear threats. There was a time when Americans were truly concerned that there was a real threat from Russia and Russia does not like us right now. And they have exactly the same capabilities that they had before. And our relationship is getting worse, not better. I don't want to be alarmist or paint a picture like, you know, the Russian fingers on the button tomorrow. But the truth is that we don't have a plan or a path to make things better with the Russians. And so like, we sort of got it to okay. And now we're on a backslide. And I don't know where that's going to end, right? So I think we do need to be a little concerned about that. I'm sure folks have heard a

lot about China, China, China, China. You know, there is a way that we can think about a rising China and rising American prosperity. We can have both. I don't think that we need to choose. It's not sort of a, in the cold war, there was this model where it was either the Russia or Soviets was on top or the Americans were on top of the zero sum game. And so we were really at odds with each other. We have a very different scenario now where we are very dependent on China. And if China were to collapse tomorrow, we would feel it really hard because, oh, gosh, economies are intertwined. Yeah, we don't wish that in the same way that we kind of wish during the Cold War and we celebrated when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union fell apart. That was stating for many folks in the Soviet Union. I think ultimately it led to more prosperity, but that was a scary time for them. But we were kind of celebrating that because it seemed like

the threat was over. So that's something that I think we kind of need to keep in mind. At the same time, our relationship with China is not great and it's also not really getting better. So we're also on a backslide there. And they have the capability, again, militarily, you know, I think we do everything we can in the U.S. military. And I want to clarify that as I'm talking, I'm not speaking on behalf of the Marine Corps, the Department of Defense. This is just my own personal comments. But, you know, the U.S. does everything it can to maintain what they call that military edge to make sure that we have faith that our military is better than those other militaries. But if you think about, you know, sort of like a basketball game or a football game or something like that, you could have a better team and play a worse team.

And the worst team sometimes wins. Right. And so, like, we do not want to be playing the game. We don't want to be on the field. That's right. It's important the game never even begins. Yeah, right. So we want to be doing everything we can diplomatically in terms of our foreign policy to never get there and to be thinking about ways, thinking creatively, taking advantage of the broad talent in the United States. I mean, we have people from

everywhere in this country, which is such an advantage to sort of think through, like, how can we start working through institutions that exist, build new institutions, build new partnerships, talks to new people, come up with new approaches that will kind of stop that backslide with these major potential threats and build back to a place where we're sort of the trajectory is in a more lean direction. Do you view Russia and China as bigger immediate threats to the United States than state-sponsored terror? Yes. And you know what's so interesting about that question? I don't know if you or your listeners will remember, but when Mitt Romney was running for president, he said during one of the presidential debates, he was asked, the throes of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and kind of talking through all these problems.

And he said, Russia. He was sort of laughed off the stage. Everyone was like, what is he talking about? And, you know, I think he's been proven right. I don't think the threat of state sponsored terrorism has gone anywhere. It still exists. And certainly non-state sponsored terrorism. still exists. And certainly non-state sponsored terrorism. So like the ISIS folks is also a threat as well as, you know, Hezbollah and Iranian backed terrorism threats and other threats of that sort. So both state and non-state sponsored terrorism still provides a threat, but I don't see those very serious threats that we want to combat. So people should be scared of that too,

if we're doing the fear monitoring thing today. But another attack like that doesn't threaten the United States existentially. You know, again, like, I don't want to get too hyperbolic, but the threat from China and Russia is existential. They really do have the ability to do damage to us on a scale that none of those groups has. The way that they can economize that threat, right, the way that they could have maximum impact is perhaps through cyber means, right? So that's why we get really concerned and talk about critical infrastructure and building our critical infrastructure in a way that is better than it is now. We, you know,

on the domestic side, we complain that it's crumbling, but a lot of those efforts are also about making sure that they can withstand attack so that if someone were to target them, that we would be okay. Literally the infrastructure, not just physical infrastructure, but like the cyber infrastructure, all of that kind of stuff. We think of it like eating our vegetables, but in reality, we have nothing if we don't have that basic level of infrastructure in place. Yeah. Another weird personal fact about me, I have no sweet tooth. You're like all vegetables. Yeah. I'm not like a super healthy eater person. Like I, but I just, I have no sweet tooth. I love- You're like all vegetables? Yeah. I'm not like a super healthy eater person, but I really do like vegetables. You need those

people. That's your national security workforce. They're the people who maybe they don't have a sweet tooth. Maybe they really like their vegetables, but you need those people. You need somebody who's like, actually, no, I don't care about your vanity projects. What we need is infrastructure, even though nobody else cares about it. We need people like you. And we need some people who are like, let's build a monument. You know, we need those people too, but somebody has to care and somebody has to have the knowledge because most of us frankly won't. Yeah. I mean, everyone plays their part. Another thing that's been so, I think, incredible about the COVID pandemic, not that it's a good thing at all, is that we've come to recognize all of the people who are doing

the work that we were blind to before, right? Like the military, I think we've done a lot to improve how people appreciate the work that the military does. But then, like I was saying earlier, we don't see the people who don't wear the uniforms as much. And similarly, we don't see the people who are those essential workers that we've now come to realize that we need to celebrate a little bit more because they're doing so much of that work that we all need to facilitate what we do. Right. And now I run a nonprofit, which I absolutely love, but that feels like a luxury, right? Like to be able to have nonprofits and advocacy and trying to make things better at the margins because we have our basic needs. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the

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Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I have one more question about national security, and then I want to talk a little bit more about the military. But I would love to hear more about what you view as women's role in national security. Obviously, this is an issue you care deeply about. And can you tell us more about why it's important for women to have a seat at the table on this topic? Yes. Thank you for asking. So one problem is just sort of a fairness-based argument that we've been working on pipeline development and, you know, eliminating sexual assault and sexual harassment and improving inclusion across the board for decades and decades. And you still don't see women represented in leadership at the top. And if those efforts had been working,

because we've been doing them for so long, the people who are sort of my age and older would be in the leaders at this point. So we're not seeing that. We just don't see women represented in as good numbers as they probably should be. And then the second problem is that we are not convinced that because there's really very little diversity at the top and it's all kind of a who knows who insider folks like the person who had that job the last time gets it back this time. There's a fear that there might be some groupthink and that we're not getting that diversity of thought and those new ideas and that fresh perspective in national security leadership. I've sort of been presenting some of the bigger threats that we face these days.

You really don't want the person who's been there some of the bigger threats that we face these days. You really don't want the person who's been there forever doing the same thing, that lack of fresh perspective in those rooms. You want a table that is populated with really smart people, really capable from all different perspectives who are kind of coming at the problem from different angles and suggesting things and then have that sort of best ideas rise to the top kind of scenario. And so in order to do both, create a more diverse workforce, but also improve national security decision-making, we, the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, advocates for better gender representation and leadership.

But we also focus on all kinds of diversity. So our primary mission is about gender, but of course we want to see better representation of women of color, not just white women, of LGBTQ women, people with disabilities. There's really not a very strong representation of people with disabilities in the national security workforce because there's a real bias towards able-bodied people in the way that people characterize those kinds of jobs in their head. And it's not particularly necessary. And so it's really served to exclude some wonderful people who would be a great boon to our national security workforce. So that's our mission. And it's that idea of, I mean, I kind of call it like three L's, right? So you want to level playing field. You want your government to be fair and give everyone an equal chance. You want a government that looks like America. This is a democracy. So if you just see a bunch

of white dudes at the top, it's sort of like, are they fairly representing all the interests of the United States? It sort of makes it look like you're not choosing for who's the most talented or effective. It makes it look like you're maybe some other factors are at play about what enables people to get into those roles. And then you want good leadership. Again, like this sort of a question about making sure that everyone has an equal chance of leading up to those roles and then never quite happens as planned. You have the kind of meritocracy where the best and most talented people really do rise to the top. I love what you're saying too, because I think these ideas apply to American government as a whole and not just national security, not just military leadership, but that everyone deserves a seat

at the table. Like all groups need to be represented. We're not making decisions just based on this one little group because group think, I mean, I've said this on my platform many times that same thinking is actually very dangerous because as soon as that little toe starts stepping off the path and you don't even realize that you are heading in the majorly wrong direction until it is sometimes too late and you look back and you're like, what has happened? That that same thinking is actually dangerous from a variety of perspectives. It's dangerous to a democracy. It's dangerous for national security.

It's just dangerous for our own intellectual development if we never have our ideas challenged or we never have to think more deeply about why we believe what we believe. But hearing from everybody and having the best ideas rising to the top and that everybody includes people from all walks of life and people from all different belief backgrounds, not just people who are aligned politically with the current president, or not just people who went to a certain university, not just people of a certain gender, race, et cetera, et cetera. And that we are all better for having all of those people at the table and listening to all of the ideas and having the best ideas rise to the top. I absolutely love that so much. One of the things that was incredible for me joining the military. So the military, sometimes, sometimes the idea of being

special or having your own ideas is not mild upon the military, but it really is a cross-section of the United States. And so you really do, especially at the lower ranks, I'd say at the higher ranks, you kind of start selecting for specific types of people a little bit, unfortunately, but I made friends from every part of the United States, from every background, from every ethnicity, every religion. And, you know, there's certain concentrations, but really it was much more diverse, frankly, than any of the schools I'd been to previously, even though I'd gone to big national universities for undergrad and graduate school, because there was also like a class disparity that we never talked about in the U S right. So people who, you know, might've been white, but grew up in Amish country

in Western Pennsylvania. Like I didn't come across that naturally necessarily, but yeah, that was one really great thing about the military. Military is a great equalizer, right? Ultimately then the Marine Corps says, okay, go run three miles. I don't care where you went to school. That's right. I would also love to hear more from your perspective about some other veterans issues. I've had a lot of people say, or a lot of people asking about things like burn pits and veterans benefits and how we can improve the situation. Well, first of all, people who are not familiar with burn pits, can you tell us a little bit more about that and why that has become an issue that people are talking about? Yes. So, and thank you for asking about this because it's actually really encouraging that this is getting some more attention these days.

Really the advocacy of Jon Stewart is to be thanked for a lot of the public acknowledgement of this problem because it took a long time for it to start to get some traction. And then people like you asking these questions is going to, I hope, be really helpful. So a burn pit is, for folks who are not familiar. Imagine that you are living as you do at home, right? So like you're doing all the same stuff that you need to do. You're working on your computer, you're printing, you're eating, you're sleeping, you're going to the bathroom, all that stuff, but you don't have sanitation department. So instead right outside your house, which is now a tent and doesn't have walls, you just throw it in a hole and you light it on fire every night. So that includes any chemicals used for cleaning, any batteries that you needed to be using,

human waste, right? So like all of that is there and you throw it in a hole and you light it on fire and you breathe it all night long while you're sleeping. So imagine that you did that for six months or a year, however long you were deployed. This was the main means of waste disposal for U.S. forces deployed overseas during the more recent conflicts. And it's kind of funny because it wasn't questioned for a while that that probably doesn't make any sense and it's like a terrible idea, but there was big contractors who insisted this was like the right way to do waste disposal. I am not a waste disposal logistics expert person, so I don't know what the right solution is there, but I do know that a lot of military service members were coming back and then complaining of weird illnesses, including respiratory illnesses, including potentially some cancers.

then complaining of weird illnesses, including respiratory illnesses, including potentially some cancers. And so there was this idea of like, yeah, if you sleep next to that every night and you breathe all of that disgusting stuff, it's probably not going to be good for your body. And we probably are going to see some people develop some illnesses. And I referenced Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart was a real champion of the 9-11 first responders and the post 9-11 illnesses that they all got from breathing what happened when the Twin Towers collapsed. And so he became energized about this issue because he saw that it was a really similar problem, right?

Everything that was in the Twin Towers when they fell down got breathed in by the first responders in Lower Manhattan. And so similarly, right, like it wasn't the Twin Towers collapsing, but it was little bases at a time, that same idea of just absolutely everything that's breathed in by your body and our bodies aren't meant to process that very well. What do you feel like the United States could be doing better when it comes to veterans? Well, one thing, you know, again, this comes from my personal experience, and I've mentioned this a little bit, is sort of thinking about veterans as people who've all had this really interesting and different work experience, but not a type of person. Right. So, like, I don't feel like I'm the type of person who joins the Marine Corps because I think we've established I'm not really like the type of person who joins the Marine Corps, except I did. And it was great. And it had its terrible moments too, but I'm proud of it. And then I come away from that and people perceive

me to be a type of person. And that's weird because I'm like, no, I just, I had this weird job and I've had lots of friends with very strange jobs, right? Like, and this was just my version of the weird job that I did when I was in my twenties and early thirties. And that's not to say that military service isn't important or worthy of being celebrated or anything like that. But when we start mushing everyone together into one category, then you presume that there are one size fits all solutions that are going to be best for dealing with certain problems. And one thing that we found in particular, especially with dealing with suicide issues, is that it's another area where there's really not going to be a silver

bullet solution. And what suicide is really about is it's about loss of hope. It's about people who have gotten to the point that they have so much despair about their current circumstances that they see suicide as a viable option or as an option worth considering. And the goal in addressing that problem and real epidemic, it's really become an American epidemic beyond just veterans, but the rate among veterans has been increasing over time. And it used to be so much lower than the American populace. And now it's caught up or even ahead, depending on which sector of the population you look at. So that's another trend that's just going in the wrong direction. And so initially there was an attempt to kind of figure out like, what can we do? What is the thing

we can do to fight this problem? You're going to have to think about individuals as people and think about what is leading to despair in this individual person's life and how do we get them out of it? And so you're actually going to need a huge menu of options that appeal to different people in terms of, yeah, that works for me. And so one of the things that's actually started helping, I think, although, you know, we're sort of evidence-based care is a really important thing. And I don't know where the state of gathering evidence is on this, but there was a real proliferation of different therapies for different people. So you've got folks who go on these outdoors trips and sort of like, you know, getting into being a naturalist in nature has been really,

really helpful. There's equine therapy. I'll be honest, equine therapy is never going to be the answer for me, right? Like I have no interest in horses, but it really has helped some people. And there's a sense of like, why are we throwing money at equine therapy? That's so crazy. And it's like, no, it works really well for some people. So let's put some money towards that. It's not going to work for everyone. And then let's see what might work for other people as well. And I think taking an approach that recognizes that we're just dealing with individual people and we're not dealing with a cohort that has this thing in common that if we just fix that one thing, we'll fix them. I think that's going to be a better approach. That we need a, like you said, a full menu of options and not just,

well, we opened this center where veterans can play ping pong with each other and now they won't commit suicide. Right. Just to illustrate the idea that like, just like civilian humans, there is no one size fits all. They come from such a broad variety of backgrounds, et cetera. And they have sacrificed incredibly for our own national security that they're worth investing in when we have asked them to take on these experiences that many of us would not be willing to sign up for. Oh, absolutely. I mean, so I think I gave away right at the beginning that I've had an incredibly privileged sort of early life. I got to go to some of the best schools in the country and I met the smartest people I know in the Marine Corps. Despite sort of what the schools I went to and whatnot,

the talent and the ability that folks have is just incredible. And when you think about what it takes to be a Marine, it's not just about being smart, which there were just incredibly smart people there, but they also have to be good athletes. They also have to want to sort of serve in a noble profession, right? Like they're naturally sort of inclined towards service towards others in a way that, you know, not everyone has. And so, yeah, like you take America's best, but I really do believe that. I mean, so many people that I serve with were just such incredible people. It's, I do think there's a perception that after you come out of military service and somehow that there are people who really do suffer because of their military service. And that certainly does happen, but

there's a whole diversity of experiences and those people don't, they're not any less talented because they serve in the military, right? They're arguably more talented because they're just as talented as they were, plus they have additional experience. So taking, you know, a more, a real sort of valuing of their experience approach to how we rehabilitate folks who need the rehabilitation, or at least would benefit from it, is really helpful. And that's also something that I think is hard for veterans is sort of saying, like, what are your needs? Like, would you be better off if you had this? Great. Let's see if we can get you there. And I think that can be really helpful. But yes, it's an investment, right? You're taking these incredibly

talented people who've made this wonderful choice to serve in the military and making sure that they continue to be productive members of society to the greatest extent possible. Like that strikes me as a no-brainer in terms of investment. And then there's also just the moral question. Like we ask them to do this thing and then we promise them we would take care of them. Keep your promise. I have just a couple more questions, even though I could pick your brain for many more hours. You know, like I talk a lot about the American legal system, but a lot of people want to ask me questions about the military legal system. Okay. Like my expertise on the military legal system is none. So can you give us a couple bullet points of the differences between the civilian legal system and the military legal system?

Sure. So the military justice system used to be a way that commanders could deal with discipline in the unit. And they would take three officers, set up a board. It was 100% a kangaroo court. They would decide what they thought was right. And the penalties could be as severe as death. In the first half of the 20th century, we had many hundreds, I believe, if not more people die by execution in the U.S. military because of their disciplinary problems, right? This is something that we never talked about, but like super crazy. Then after World War II, there was an effort to really professionalize the military justice system and make it seem more fair because everyone sort of looked at that and was like, that's not right. And so even though it is very important for commanders to be able to enforce discipline in the military, and that is just a cultural aspect of being in the military

and being effective as an organization, that's going to be different than your standard corporate workplace. You still wanted to have certain protections to make sure that like three random officers who didn't eat enough breakfast and are in a bad mood don't send someone to death, right? So we want to move away from that. So they set up the Uniform Code of Military Justice as we currently think of it, and the U.S. court-martial system. And over time since 1950 through 2016 was the latest really big congressional effort to overhaul the military justice system. You've seen it slowly evolve so that it looks almost exactly like the civilian court system. One of the things that is the biggest difference between the two is that the military justice system is still a tool of the commander, right? So there's no like courthouse with a judge just

sitting there waiting to try cases. I mean, there kind of is, but not technically as a legal matter. The way that a military case comes about is that a commander decides to charge someone. So there isn't like an independent police force or anything like that. It's about the commander trying to instill discipline in that military unit and say, there are people who are behaving in a way that's inappropriate or problematic that violates our code. So I want to charge you and then bring you in front of a court. And then the commander appoints a judge. And so instead of those three random officers who could have been anyone, now we have military judges.

We have trained military judges who are judge advocates who've gone to special schools and have experience who do the military judge thing. And so they stand up the court that way. So one thing that I think a lot of folks have talked a lot about is this idea of like, why is the commander deciding who gets charged in these cases, right? This is the thing that people talk a lot about. That's why, because that's actually the whole system. The whole system is, that's like the genesis of the whole thing. It's based around this idea of the commander's disciplinary tool. Now we've evolved enough, right? Like we

are at the point that there are ways that we could do work around. So I'm not going to take positions on legislation or anything like that here, but either way, if they were to sort of try to have independent lawyers advise a separate commander to have a court instead of the commander who's overseeing this one unit, we can make it work either way. But that's kind of the justification for why things are the way that they are. The rules are all the same. So, you know, I went to a normal law school and I went to Harvard law school. I learned the law and then I took the bar and then using those rules, you know, the rules of evidence and all of that, I practiced in the court martial system. It's a

little bit different, but it looks so similar that you don't, you don't need a lot of education on top of the normal American civilian legal system to be able to do it. There have been a lot of Americans who believe that the military is about to arrest and court-martial 90% of the United States civilian government. Like, have you heard these things? No, they are? That's not going to happen, guys. This is like a whole QAnon theory that there's a great reset coming. And the great reset is massive court-martials. Literally, the military will show up. They will arrest almost everyone in Congress, almost everybody who works for the federal government. They will all be arrested.

They will be court-martialed. So there's a couple of things that are possible. One is that there's this thing called posse comitatus that forbids the military from doing law enforcement in the United States. So all military members have been taught from day one that you can't do law enforcement in the United States. So unless it's like on base and it's a specific military police officer who's like just taking care of on base, military officers won't do it and don't know how to do it. It's not what we do as a profession, arresting folks. And courts martial have no jurisdiction over civilians. So if you got in front of a military judge, the military judge would throw the case out immediately because they would say like, I don't understand why we're here

right now. There's no case to be brought. I don't have jurisdiction over this person. I have jurisdiction over military members and in very specific circumstances, contractors or civilians accompanying the force deployed overseas. So if you're in Arkansas right now or wherever, yeah, the military judge is just going to throw that case out. Not that we're ever going to get there, but yeah, that's not, there's no. I've tried to explain this so many times to people, like they don't have, there's no jurisdiction for the military justice system over just somebody who works in the White House communications office. Like they're really busy with really important cases, legal advice to commanders having to do with all sorts of things.

I don't actually try a lot of cases at court martial anymore, but I, in my reserve capacity, I advise on international operational law and the laws of things. I don't actually try a lot of cases at court-martial anymore, but in my reserve capacity, I advise on international operational law and the laws of war, and there's a lot of work. As a reservist, I have been actually working all morning wearing my uniform because there's just a lot to do. So fear not, there is no capacity to do this. Can the military court-martial a president as the commander-in-chief of the military? I think this is a distinction that some people wrestle with is that the commander-in-chief of the military is a constitutional designation. It does not mean they are in the military. Right. Yeah, no, we could not court-martial the president because one of the rules at court-martial is that you have

a military judge, but you also have a jury and and the jury has to be superior officers. So if you ever have a general officer getting tried, it's really stressful because you have to find general officers who are going to sit on a jury for that period of time. So it's really hard. So there's no one who outranks the president. So you really couldn't assemble a court-martial to try the president. I did not know that. And then there wouldn't be anyone to charge the president because, I said, it's the commander in chief. So the president would have to court martial himself, I guess. And seat a jury of people that are above him.

And how is that possible? There's no one who outranks the commander in chief. That's the whole point of being the commander in chief. So hence the name. Right. But also you're not in the military. Right. And not subject to jurisdiction.

So thank you for reiterating the points I have tried to make many times. You obviously have way more expertise in this matter than I do. So it is very good to hear that my understanding is correct. Yeah. It's fascinating that you're getting those questions. You know, part of me of course is dismayed, but it is also really interesting that people have taken interest in the military justice system because it is pretty niche. So it is for the win. It is interesting though. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay. Tell people just a little teeny bit more about how they could support your nonprofit organization. If they like your mission of wanting to see more women have a seat at the table on matters of national

security? How can people find your organization, find out more about it and support it if they want to? Thank you so much for asking that. So the leadership council for women in national security is a nonprofit organization. We have our five one C three status and through a fiscal sponsor. So if you are interested and willing, you can go to our website, which is lcwins.org. Check it out. We have webinars. We have a political appointments tracker where you can see all the people who are being appointed to the different national security positions. There are hundreds of them and who they are and what position they hold and how they rack and stack. We hope it's sort of a fun, interactive data visualization that you can play with. And then of course, there is the

donate tab that we hope you'll also check out and it's lcwins.org slash donate. Lizzie, this is just fascinating. You are just delightful to talk to and such a, have so much knowledge. I would love to have you back again someday someday just so we can continue this conversation because I am such a curious person to have so many things that I want to know the answer to, but I very much appreciate your time today. This was fantastic. Oh, I'd be so honored to come back. And this was so much fun. And we got to talk about such a wide range of topics. Absolutely. So many things to discuss. We're just barely scratching the surface. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.

I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.