Sea Control - Sea Control 259 - Sea State with Madison Sargeant and Yash Khatavkar

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Links1. Sea State Newsletter

Hey folks, Sherrod here. I've talked about our feed, I'll keep talking about it. There are two existing Seat Control feeds out there. The current one is labeled simply Seat Control and includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. We're working on a new logo, so once that's finished, we'll finally have a better differentiator for you. But for right now, Seat Control, Simsex Flagship Podcast, that's where you want to be.

Please rate and review the new feed as well. Today we have a couple new voices representing the Joppa, Madison Sargent, and Yash Katowker. They are two of the many junior officers behind the new newsletter, Sea States, and they're going to tell us all about it. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. Don't miss everything going on over at the website, simsec.org. The final call for articles for Project Trident just went live. We're partnering with Lockheed Martin and Naval Warfare Studies Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School for Emerging Technologies.

We've also partnered with Transcom for a series of articles on strategic sea lift. We're eagerly anticipating that, as well as an accompanying podcast in the next few weeks. And that's all over at SimSec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. I shouldn't go now.

Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today I'm joined by Madison Sargent and Yash Katowker, two of the brains behind the Sea State newsletter, the new letter by and for junior officers in the Naval Services. You can subscribe by visiting www.seastate.news. We'll have a link to that in our show notes as well if you need to find it. Madison, Yash, thanks for joining us. As a reminder, our opinions are our own and not representative of any institution

with which we might otherwise be associated. Madison, would you mind telling the listeners a bit about yourself? Yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Madison Sargent, and I'm currently a senior at Boston University studying international relations and statistical methods. I'm commissioning as a surface warfare officer this month, but I'm going to spend the next year or so at Columbia University pursuing a master's in Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies. Thank you very much. And then, Yash, how about you? Yeah. So my name's Yash Katowker. I graduated from the Naval Academy back in 2019 and then

went and got my master's at Stanford in aeronautics and astronautics. Graduated in 2020 and then started flight training. So right now I'm just a flight student. Hey, there is no such thing as just a flight student. That's what all the pilots tell me. But Madison, I'll start with you. What is Seastate? I gave a brief description of my owner, but tell me how you two of his creators see it. And Yasha, I'll come back to you after we get Madison's answer. Seastate to me is an outlet for busy midshipmen and junior officers that want to stay sharp on what's happening in the world. At least from my perspective as a midshipman, its purview goes beyond the traditional briefs that are given at Leadership Lab, which are competing with a million other GMTs and tasks

that need to be completed at the same time. Thanks. And Yash, how about from your perspective? Yeah. So C-State, it's a newsletter by junior officers and future junior officers for other junior officers and future junior officers. So it's basically a collection of news, a collection of articles, podcast recommendations, books, all things that the creators or the contributors feel is useful for a junior officer to know, learn about, or maybe explore some topics and maybe even spark some discussions that they can think about and hopefully help enhance their career and enhance their personal growth as well. I guess I should have started this. Madison, can you tell me a little bit about the origin of C-State and how it came to be? What was the

Genesis? Yeah. So I received a Twitter DM from Thomas. I'm going to pronounce his name wrong. Krasikin? Krasikin? Okay. Yes. From Thomas asking me if I was interested in writing about international affairs and kind of what's going on in the world for a newsletter that he had an idea about that was going to be created by junior officers for junior officers. And so it's his little his his project is where it originates from but you know the idea was that junior officers focus so much on you know leading sailors um and then and then for the marines that are are on our staff as well leading marines um and getting qualified and so because of that there's an important part of an officer's education which is going to be you know understanding the world

understanding policy and how that directly impacts our jobs that, you know, unfortunately is put on the back burner. And so, of course, this doesn't, C-State doesn't fill that role completely, but it is a way into that world for junior officers and future junior officers that are very busy. And I think that was kind of the vision with it. And that's what attracted the people that we have on staff now to participate and contribute to it as well. And Yash, why do you think it's necessary, but what gap is it filling you? Yeah. So one thing that I see, especially, especially because I'm a very early junior officer, I see a lot of me and my peers, we're just so busy with our responsibilities. My friends and I were either working to learn

to fly a plane or become a useful part of a ship or submarine. And that is really time consuming, not to mention the responsibility of leading a division for the people like the SWOs and submarine officers who are out there doing that right now while they're learning. So there's a tremendous amount of time and responsibility in being a junior officer. And it gets really hard to distill the information and all the different things going on in the world that are relevant to your life. You might not easily find out information about, for example, fishing vessels off the Philippines, but that might be crucial to what you're doing if you're in a destroyer out in that area. So I think it's really important for junior officers to learn about what they're doing

and why they're on their ship, why they're on their submarine, what role they're filling in our national security strategy, why it's important and basically be able to form their own thoughts and opinions on these topics. So that's what I think the newsletter really fills for junior officers. I think that's why it's useful. Madison, I'm going to come to you for the next question. How do you decide what goes into an edition of C-State? Yeah. So one of the great things about C-State is that much of the newsletter discussion is left up to the individual JOs, midshipmen that are contributing for that week. So there's a lot of leniency. And the reason why we did that was because we wanted to get a decent sampling of what

real junior officers care about and think is important. So it's, you know, pretty much full autonomy. If I want to write about what's happening in Ukraine that week, you know, and I'm tasked with writing about global politics, then I can write about that. And someone else wants to write about, you know, changes to, you know, personnel regulations within the Department of Defense, they can write about that as well. Yeah, I've also seen some opinion writing, which I think Madison's last answer is kind of getting at, how do you decide who's going to write? What's your editorial process? Right. So we basically open every newsletter with a lead. So it's about 300, 400 words written by whoever the lead writer is that week. And they can write it on any topic

they want. They can basically pick anything they're interested in, anything they saw on the news, any thoughts they have, and they can write about it. And so the way we decide who writes that is we sort of just ask each other who's interested. We all say if we're interested in writing a lead or not. And then we just sort of randomly rotate and pick through just to give everyone a chance to get this sort of sampling of junior officer voices or midshipman voices or cadet voices just to see what's on people's minds and then we'll go through we'll just edit it for clarity sometimes but we'll try and keep what the author really intended and get their voice shining through now let me ask uh this this isn't our list of questions here but do you take

submissions from outside of your circle there too i assume you know if ensign or midshipman wanted to submit something to you you all would be open to that yes yeah so uh actually really recently we had a really good one written by i don't want to butcher his name mark folsey i believe uh i've only ever seen it written but he was a former war of afghanistan veteran and so when the government announced that we were withdrawing troops from afghanistan we really wanted to hear a voice of someone who'd actually been there and a lot of the current junior officers on our team uh you know we just commissioned we didn't really deploy to afghanistan so we wanted an outside voice in that case so um he wrote up a pretty good kind of summary of some of his

thoughts and emotions kind of seeing this war that he fought and come to a close and so that's one example where we might bring in a guest and of course if someone's interested they're always welcome to um basically talk to us uh see what they want to write about and we can talk to them about maybe getting it put in. Madison, what's been the response today? Yeah, so right now we have a little over 350 subscribers and we have received some really great feedback, you know, from JOs around the fleet, but also I have received personal messages from midshipmen that are, you know, think it's a really great idea and they're really glad that we're doing this. Of course, we're definitely looking to continue expanding and spreading the word through interviews like

this. So, you know, hopefully we have some more junior officers and midshipmen and cadets that get on board with us. Yeah, absolutely. And that's part of why we're doing this podcast, too, is to help you expand your reach a little bit. So, Yash, I'll ask you first, and then I'll come back to you, Madison, with the same question. Yash, what are some of the favorite topics that you've been able to address thus far? Yeah, so some of the favorite topics that I've really seen have been some of the bigger things in news. So, for example, when the war in Afghanistan, when we announced that we were drawing troops, I thought it was really interesting to see basically some of the different analysis thoughts and takeaways on that, just because that's been

something that's pretty much been going on my whole life, as far as I can remember. And that was a pretty major event to see. I think also recently, it's interesting to see some of the new developments, for example, some of the discussions about taking the responsibility and power to investigate and prosecute sexual assaults from commanders and putting in the hands of an independent body that's that's something that's that could be momentous for something that i've also seen the military struggle with a lot for the last few years um so i'm like really interested to see how that'll turn out and what sort of implications that might have and what some analysis is going on about that topic it's madison then the same question to you what's

what are your favorite topics that you've been able to cover outside of your own of course Yeah, of course, I'm, I'm very interested in seeing things like the policy changes that are relevant to personnel, because I think that's often overlooked, you know, for people that are, you know, maybe not within the military world, but are very fascinated by the military world. So it's interesting to be on a team that's documenting those changes kind of in real time. And I know you said not including my own topics, but being the Eurasianist that I am, of course, I'm getting my master's in those topics. I have really appreciated having the outlet and the opportunity to write about things that are happening in the Black Sea, in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, of course, and their relevance to our fleet. Madison, I'm going to come back to you. Do you have a list of white whales that you're hoping to address that these are kind of like dream topics that you really want to cover with a specific person or just cover them yourself? Yeah, so something I'd be really interesting, really interested in discussing is naval and but, you know, in a in a wider scope, the strategic doctrine of near peer competitors, such as Russia and China, because it's something and again, I'm speaking from the midshipmen perspective that, you know, it's neglected, but it is still immediately relevant to our relationship vis-a-vis these states and, you know, increasingly relevant to the deployments that that, you know, the incoming class of ensigns, my class is going to be working on. on. Yash, how about you? So some of the things that I'd really like to see are some of the things that don't really make the normal news cycles. For example, about 30 years ago, I don't think most of us would have considered the fact that the Taliban would be such a huge part of our

national security challenges over the next couple of decades, but they ended up being that way. So I'm kind of curious to see what are the things happening in the world right now that are going to grow and become some of the challenges we're going to face in the future. Some of the things we're going to have to spend a lot of time really worrying about if we are in national security. So I'd really like to see a lot of these small topics, these things that don't really get covered a lot in our normal news sources, get talked about a little bit more in our newsletter if they could be relevant to our lives in the future. So Madison, I'll come back to you. You recently added a financial section, financial advice section in the last edition of the

newsletter, which, I mean, I appreciate it now as a commander. I really would have appreciated it as an ensign, but having somebody to steer me through financial management decisions, even if it's just to give me a tip to go research something else on my own. Do you have any other sections that you all are talking about adding to the newsletter as you help people, guide people through the early part of their careers? I am not sure. I'm not privy to those conversations if they're happening. I think right now we're just focusing on perfecting, streamlining what we have going on right now. I mean, the financial section obviously is very beneficial for junior officers, and especially when you're leading enlisted sailors who might

not have, they might have the same amount of knowledge as a junior officer, which like many junior officers, it's hardly anything, um, or, or less than that. So I think that we, you know, that was kind of something that was pertinent to add. Um, but right now I'm, I'm not sure where we're talking about anything else. Yeah. I should have any insight into that. Go ahead. Oh yeah. I was going to say, I do have something. Uh, so one thing we are working on right now is some special additions. So a few of us are interested in pursuing some of our own white whales going back to that some topics that we really want to dive deep into so for example one of the people on the team really wants to look at chemical weapons and sort of the

challenges we're going to face in the future so in a special edition we're looking to bring on maybe some guest contributors who know a little bit more about those topics in particular a few members from our team who are really interested in the subject and get together a good source or a good list of information, some news articles, some other things that a junior officer could look at who's interested in some of these topics. So we're looking at rolling out the special editions in the next few months or so, but I think there'll be like a really good way for someone who's interested in something more specific or really wants to take a deep dive into the topic to learn more about it. All right. Yeah. We're down to like the

final couple of questions here. We've hinted at this before, but the time constraints on a junior officer, given everything that you have to do to just become proficient at your job, as well as learn by doing the leadership piece, how are you going to balance your jobs with this? Yeah. So the real key to this is being able to have a whole team and not be responsible for too much as an individual so we have a lot of really motivated individuals a lot of great officers and we basically work it so that each of us doesn't have to lift the whole bar each of us just has to do a very light lift to help get the bar up so we really communicate with each other we make sure if we've got something going on that's going to take up a lot of time that maybe

We just take a week off and some of the other team members fill our role for that week. And the real key is we always have to prioritize our jobs as officers. That's the responsibility we have. We have a responsibility to our sailors. We have a responsibility to become effective at whatever we're doing in the military. So at the end of the day, we basically understand and we work together to make sure that we're able to prioritize that and not have this be a huge time constraint on all of us. Madison, how about the future service warfare officer perspective on balancing? Yeah, I think it is very similar to what has already been said. You know, I the week that I was doing my thesis defense, I you know, I didn't contribute that week and it was completely fine.

Someone else just filled the role. We have a pretty sizable staff right now. So there is enough, you know, no one is overburdened with responsibility. and it's a really it works really well for us at this time so so let me ask a final question that's on the list here is what are you guys going to do when you become lieutenants and you're no longer the uh the junior officers like Madison is a SWO when you're a SWO lieutenant and you're a department head that's when you're kind of them and no longer us it's a little bit different in the aviation community have you guys thought that far ahead about how you're going to manage the transition we will pass the torch as you should yeah we have we have a lot of really motivated people at

basically every rank from you know midshipmen all the way up to lieutenants so some junior officer lieutenants so we we basically have it set up so that as people leave as people are no longer junior officers or you know as people deploy and become unavailable because they're underwater for six months at a time or something um we can pass on some of those responsibilities to the people who are rising up below us. And Yash, I'm going to ask you to close out with, is there an email address where folks who want to submit can submit pieces to you? Yeah, so it's cstate, S-E-A-S-T-A-T-E dot news at gmail.com.

Great, thank you. That is all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Yash Katalker and Madison Sargent. Yash, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Yeah, so I'm always willing to connect with people who are interested in getting in touch on LinkedIn. At the moment, I'm just going to be working on learning to fly a plane because I'd like to become good at that. I'm going to be doing it for at least the next 10 years. But I'll also be working with C-State. I'll be working on refining the product, growing the product, and hopefully getting it out to more junior officers and making it a more useful part of their news experience. Thank you very much for coming on today. Madison, same questions to you. Where can we find you and what's your next product? Yeah, so I am quite active on Twitter. It's going to be at Sergeant Madison and that's S-A-R-G-E-A-N-T. I'm not an E5, so it's not going to be spelt like that. I just finished with finals yesterday, so I'm going to take a breather for probably a couple of hours and then I'll get bored and start working on some research.

What I'm really interested in researching right now is, you know, what has driven changes in Polish military doctrine and Polish defense spending, which is very like niche and boring, probably, but doing that and then hopefully R-ing for a Navy historian down at NHHC this summer. Thank you both again for joining me. To our listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Thank you for having us. Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon