Friday News Roundup — September 6, 2024
With Labor Day now passed, the most unprecedented presidential election in modern times is now sprinting to the November 5th finish line. The race has already witnessed the unexpected withdrawal of sitting President Joe Biden, the swift coronation of his Vice President Kamala Harris, and a near-miss assassination attempt on former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump. Both campaigns are now preparing for next Tuesday’s big debate between Harris and Trump, the only one they have scheduled to date, with most polls showing a statistical dead heat in a race that will likely be decided in an evenly divided nation by a tiny fraction of the electorate in a handful of swing states.
Given that Biden’s disastrous performance in a June 27 debate with Trump prompted his withdrawal, all eyes will be focused on the two candidates’ performance on September 10th. Past debates suggest that Trump will be aggressive and keep the fact checkers busy, but Harris is less known as a debater. Democrats will be looking for the former federal prosecutor to hold her own in the inevitable jousting, and effectively prosecute their case.
Recent events have only underscored the profound stakes in this presidential race. The nation was shocked by yet another school shooting this week, this time at a Georgia high school that killed four people, including two teachers and two young teenagers, highlighting the candidates’ different approach to gun control. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that employers added just 142,000 jobs in August, a weaker than expected number, calling attention to voters’ top concern — an economy still struggling to shake off the post-pandemic after-effects of inflation and high interest rates.
In the Middle East, Israel’s nearly year-long war against Hamas in Gaza continues despite weeks of sputtering ceasefire talks, and massive protests in Israel after the death of six hostages at the hands of the terrorists this week. In Europe, Russia and Ukraine continue to launch devastating attacks on each other’s infrastructure, even as Russian forces make incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces continue their month-long offensive into Russia’s southern Kursk region. The eventual outcome of both major conflicts could be decisively impacted depending on the next occupant of the Oval Office.
This week CSPC President Glenn Nye analysed various levels of institutional response to a presidential attempt to overturn an election in a piece published in The Fulcrum. He details proposed reforms to the American electoral system to address the heightened state of political tribalism and bend the arc of our politics toward greater cooperation and efficacy.
James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at CSPC
Building the Cyber Workforce of Tomorrow
By Glenn Nye
The United States faces a significant and growing shortage of cybersecurity professionals. Despite the workforce growing by an estimated 10% in 2023, over four million positions remain unfilled. Put simply America does not have the workers it needs in the fields it needs them to maintain readiness in this era of strategic competition.
This week CSPC, in concert with Montreat College and the Carolina Cyber Network, welcomed three distinguished guests to discuss how the United States can build the cyber workforce it needs for the future: Mr. Daniel “Rags” Ragsdale, the Deputy Assistant National Cyber Director, White House Office of the National Cyber Director; Ms. Lynne Clark, Acting Chief, Center for Cybersecurity Education, Innovation and Outreach, National Security Agency; and Mr. Chris Cleary, former Department of the Navy Principal Cyber Advisor. They convened together with representatives from Congress and industry on Capitol Hill.
The group highlighted the importance of close collaboration between industry and academic centers of excellence to ensure the relevancy of curricula for today’s private sector needs. Education is a vital part of the equation, but the group noted that it is also about the importance of ethics and non-technical skills to help tomorrow’s cyber professionals enter the workforce and succeed. An overlooked challenge is the lack of teachers for cyber education — right now there are not enough teachers for students, let alone teachers to teach educators. With many entry-level positions requiring at least two years of experience, the group suggested that applied learning — or learn and earn programs — could bridge the gap and better prepare graduates for the workforce.
The Carolina Cyber Network’s model of close collaboration with and amongst local community colleges and universities in North Carolina offers one model for building America’s cyber workforce. This partnership of academia and industry is creating graduates who are better prepared for the workforce and at a quicker pace. As the panel noted, not all positions require a four-year degree. A two-year degree with continuous education is often precisely what is needed for many of the real-world positions industry aims to fill.
As the United States looks to better compete with China and defend against cyber attacks from multiple vectors, defending its own networks from adversary attacks, finding novel solutions to the workforce gaps that are emerging in cyber — and other industries — is as important as crafting sensible policies and buying the right technology.
Glenn Nye is President and CEO of CSPC
Democratic Resilience and the Call to Service
By Ethan Brown
The focus of policy scholarship in 2024 has largely been on the resilience of liberal democracy, and whether the same transnational superstructure is under attack from without, or is eroding/decaying from within. 2024 has been labeled a “super election year,” with more than half of the world’s electors casting their votes for their executive and representative governances.
In the United States, our own political system has faced no shortage of upheaval and continued partisanism, with the Presidential election splitting American voters sharply along party lines, and the forthcoming November election rapidly calcifying into a particularly critical one (albeit, every election seems to be “the most important of our lifetime” by common punditry).
Lost in the political discourse is the underlying issue which my research for the Center has focused on since the beginning of the year: the DoD’s recruiting crisis and personnel shortfalls as the world’s threats and instability continued to demand much of the American military enterprise. It started at the beginning of the year when, in response to some hyper-partisan rhetoric, I decried the notion that military wokeness is hurting recruiting, asserting instead that societal fatigue and ineffectual grand strategy has eroded public faith in the military as an institution of democracy. I dubbed this social phenomena “the Ghost of GWOT.”
In policy discourse, lawmakers and the electorate that places them in their seats of power shy away from complex explanations and comprehensive analysis. It’s a problem reflected in our increasing dependence on social media and information consumption in 15-second intervals. So when I address the issue of military recruiting and state that it’s societal fatigue after two decades of wayward strategy, and lost public faith in democratic institutions, it doesn’t land well. Policy has a tough time trying to apply simple, easily-conveyable solutions to a problem which permeates our society and has been building for decades.
Last week I spoke at the American Legion National Convention’s main stage to address the challenges of military recruiters engaging the next Generation of American to serve (the styled mohawk was actually quite a hit despite the older demographic of the majority of attendees, I might add). Several key issues were addressed, and many more were raised by convention attendees to me after the event. Among the topics broached were some compounding negatives:
Fewer Americans are qualified to serve (approximately 23% of target demographics — ages 17–25 — are even eligible based on physical fitness, existing legal, medical and psychological disqualifications), and fewer have a propensity to serve in the military
The broader American public is disinclined to see military service in a positive light, owing to negative depictions of service members and veterans in popular media
Most damning of all (by my judgment), is the politicization of the military and its role in a democracy.
Some positives should be noted, as well. Familial ties and heritage have become a core component of military enlistments and commissions, with the Navy’s enlistees hailing from military blood lines (77% from recent collated data). The Marine Corps and Army have made tremendous strides in advancing their recruiter talent pools, outreach, and streamlining technologies to improve their recruitment methodologies. Further, it should be noted that the main focus of the Legion’s national convention –the American Legion remains the biggest and most influential Veteran Support Organization (VSO)– has made national service and the recruiting issue one of its core missions moving forward. Many other organizations are following suit with one focus: reenergize American thought on how individuals can serve and make a difference in safeguarding our democracy and rebuilding faith in its institutions.
The military holds a key place in the sanctity of American democracy. As an apolitical institution, it serves as a lodestone for the health of our liberal ethos: charged with national defense against foreign threats, and uniquely non-existent in the political process. Until it is forcibly involved in the discourse surrounding our politics, at which point it becomes the most visible of institutions to suffer from an erosion of democracy. That trust which Americans place in the military –still the highest-rated institution in terms of trust from 2023 Gallup polls at around 60%– is the first indicator of democratic erosion. Samuel Huntington called this dynamic a “special relationship” between a state and its military in his seminal book “The Soldier and the State,” owing to the latters professionalization of violence to secure the nation-state. Further, Huntington identified that dynamic between a military and the state architecture as a “sacred responsibility” that one would provide to support the other, without either function overriding or undermining its partner.
But in our volatile society and the gravity of our political process, the lost trust of the American public in the military as a result of politicization and the blurred lines between the defense enterprises special responsibility to the state, it is indisputable that such dynamics will lead to a lessening of willing applicants to serve.
That degradation of Americans who wish to contribute to ensuring democratic resilience will be the litmus test for how long our system endures. And it is upon all of us as American citizens to contribute to the discussion on protecting our democracy and ensuring that the public retains faith in critical institutions like the military. This starts with redressing stigmas associated with service: overcoming the broken veteran perception that is often affiliated with enlistment (homelessness, substance abuse, suicide and lifecyle management by communities), as well as seeking and promoting those success stories of service members and veterans in their communities writ large. It requires that we invest our time and energies into finding and participating in productive discourse, and not advancing division based on political dogmas. It requires that we hold our leaders accountable at the voting booth when their actions erode the efficacy of our democratic process. It is a burden, and indeed a responsibility, which we all bear in order to ensure our democracy continues to thrive.
It is much more than that, and the health and readiness of our military is but a small portion of democratic resilience, but arguably a most critical one. While this blog is too brief a platform to address the myriad issues associated with military recruiting and democratic resilience (I’ve addressed these concerns here, for continued reading), it is a viable means to remind that democratic resilience begins with each individual. Those individual actions have a direct impact on massive components of our society like the military.
Ethan Brown is a Senior Fellow at CSPC.