Something is changing in our country, and most
people feel it before they can explain it. Today
on the Steady State Sentinel, we're joined by
Russ Travers, one of the most experienced intelligence
and counterintelligence officials of his generation.
Over a career spanning roughly 45 years in the
intelligence community, he served in senior roles
across the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint
Staff, National Intelligence Council, the National
Security Council, and the National Counterterrorism
Center. He helped build the post -9 -11 counterterrorism
architecture. He later served as acting director
of the NCTC and in the Biden administration as
deputy homeland security advisor. And he also
has a new book coming out, Common Sense Take
Two, which we're going to discuss. Russ has also
been a serious writer and critic of the intelligence
system. His 1997 essay, The Coming Intelligence
Failure, written inside the Intelligence Communities
magazine, warned of that dysfunction, budget
pressures, and the bureaucratic habits that leave
the country vulnerable to surprise. Got that
right. And he has obviously written on many matters
since. So, Russ, welcome and glad to have you
here. Well, it's great to be with you, John.
Thanks very much. Of course. Let's talk a little
bit about you and then we'll get into talking
about the book and what's going on nowadays.
But you began your career in Army Intelligence
in the late 1970s and later served across DIA,
the Joint Staff, NSC, ATC. So looking back, what
problem in the national security system kept
recurring no matter where you sat? Well, I mean,
the system was designed. for a world that existed
75 years ago with the National Security Act.
And I came in as a Soviet military analyst. That
was the problem at the time. Very quickly, I
think, as a result of the forces of globalization,
problems weren't purely military anymore. They
were almost by definition interagency. uh department
and adc equities were confronted with with all
problems of any consequence and we simply weren't
structured for that and so as you suggested over
the last 20 or so of years of my career i was
primarily focused on interagency organizations
whether it was the nic or nctc or the national
security council because i just i very much believe
that if if we're going to get this right we have
to do it in kind of a whole of government fashion
We just don't do that very well. Well, I think
sadly that's true. So I mentioned your piece,
your 1997 piece written before 9 -11, where you
argued that the system was dysfunctional enough
that failure was essentially guaranteed. And
it turned out to be right. Obviously, 9 -11 came
not long after that. What did you see then that
others are missing? What were the key things
that suggested that warning wasn't functional
properly? Well, I mean, honestly, I don't think
it was just me. I think that the bowels of the
intel community, there was a kind of a pretty
widely held perception that we were not on the
right track. You remember that this was the time
of the peace dividend. And rather than address
kind of the constellation of organizations and
authorities, we just tried to salami slice the
community. In particular, we focused on trying
to divide the labor. CIA would do political and
econ. DIA would do defense and so forth. And
unfortunately, the world doesn't operate that
way. I mean, every problem is a combination of
political, economic, and sociological, military,
and technical. And if we don't have an ability
to fuse those issues, we're going to get it wrong.
And we clearly did. Well. Thank you for writing
that. People should have paid more attention,
obviously. But yeah, we were more interested
in saving money at that time than we were of
dealing with systemic problems. So you spent
much of your career then subsequently on counterterrorism
and counterterrorism issues. And so, as you know,
Sebastian Gorka just presented the Trump administration's
latest 2026 U .S. counterterrorism strategy,
identifying violent left -wing extremists like
Antifa as the critical terrorist threat category.
It focuses on like radically pro -transgender
groups and others. You've been working on counterterrorism
and you've been remarking on counterterrorism
lately. I think your discussion amongst others
is far more complex than the Trump administration
sort of view of things. How can professionals
and practitioners who do their job and see how
complex it is on the ground deal with a system
where their leaders don't want to hear? That
complexity, like what's your what's your take
on all of this? Well, I read the document when
it came out and was just shaking my head, as
I think virtually all professional counterterrorism
individuals are. I mean, there is certainly left
wing terrorism to be dealt with, but to basically
ignore right wing terrorism or to essentially
dismiss Africa, for instance, because it's not.
America first. The notion, again, back to my
point about globalization, things in Africa don't
stay in Africa, as we're seeing with Ebola. We're
going to see with terrorism as well. And unfortunately,
if you've got an administration that doesn't
understand the way the world works, we're going
to go through some very difficult times, less
than until that perspective changes. That's why
elections are important. Well, and they're also
pulling resources from areas that are of importance
to try to fit an ideological or whatever the
right term is, or partisan view of the world.
And as you talked about in many of your writings,
career civil servants, intelligence practitioners,
we have to deal with the world as it is. And
if your leaders are telling you, no, it's this
way. I don't know how we operate in that post
-truth environment if you're an intelligence
officer. Yeah, I mean, I think there has always
been almost a, by definition, tension between
an intel community that tries to be impartial
and objective and a policy community that comes
in with pretty strongly held opinions, be they
Democrat or Republican. This one's different,
for sure. I've never seen an intel community
just... completely dismissed the way this one
has. And that's just extraordinarily dangerous.
Well, let's say Congress gets its act together
and they're going to rewrite the national security
architecture for the next 25 years. What would
you preserve from the post 9 -11 era? What would
you dismantle? Like you were looking at it in
the late 1990s and you give some very thoughtful
comments about it. What would you do if... Serious
people came to you and said, what does the intelligence
community need to move forward in this century?
So I guess my own view would be that we will
be judged by whether or not we deal well with
the downsides of globalization. And for me, that
means problem sets that transcend the equities
of any particular department or agency. The answer,
I think, has to be, how do we figure out how
to do all of government, all of society, and
when appropriate, whole of world -ish problems
and sort of responses to problems? And so the
National Security Council, for me, is a big deal.
People like to trash it as micromanaging. That's
not my perspective. I haven't seen it. Similarly,
I thought that the National Security Council...
terrorism sculpture was the right answer to deal
with the terrorism problem. John Brennan, when
he stood it up, said that at some point the U
.S. government would take its eye off of terrorism
because it was no longer the number one priority
and we needed someplace that would be worrying
the problem 24 -7. Well, I think that's what
happened in 2017 -19 and unfortunately we...
cut NCTC because the departments and agencies
wanted to preserve resources. I think that was
the wrong answer. If I were working for a day,
I would invest in NCTC in a big way. But I would
also take a hard look at how does this country
deal with transnational organized crime, which
has far more impact on people's lives than terrorism
ever will. We don't do it very well. We're extraordinarily
balkanized. So I would have a transnational crime
center. We look at cyber, the notion that, you
know, appoint a cyber director at the White House
level and everything's going to get fixed is
crazy. There are still all kinds of issues between
CISA and the Bureau and NSA. How do you work
that in a way that is going to be whole of government?
But, oh, by the way, most of this effort is actually
done in the private sector. So now you've got
to think about how you bring the government and
the private sector together. We don't do that
at all. I tried to bring private sector individuals
into NCPC, and the lawyers wouldn't let us do
it because we'd be giving an advantage to one
sector over another. Okay, it's a hard problem,
but we have to be able to address it, I think.
Let's talk about your book a little bit. And
we'll use that to discuss some of the things
that are happening now. So your book consciously
models itself on Thomas Paine's Common Sense,
right? Because you believe we're at a decisive
civil moment. I do. And you address the book
to the exhausted majority, and I agree with that.
Who exactly are you trying to reach, and what
do you hope they do differently after reading
it? So, as you say, when Thomas Paine wrote Common
Sense, he wasn't writing for... convinced revolutionaries
or confirmed loyalists. He was writing for what
historians believe was at least a plurality,
if not a majority of the colonists who were very
uncertain about what the future held and what
form of government. They were still British citizens,
but they were aggrieved. How did they fix it?
And Paine, in a sense, catalyzed the revolution
by convincing the middle. that they needed to
engage with the revolution. I kind of think we're
at the same point. A public policy group called
More in Common coined the phrase exhausted majority
six, seven, eight years ago, I think. And their
polling data showed that it was about 67 % of
the American public. Neither extreme left, neither
extreme right. extraordinarily frustrated with
our government. The polarization is maddening.
They want the country to work for as many people
as it can, as well as it can. And it's not. And
so what I try to do in a relatively straightforward,
non -academic fashion is examine the problem
sets and lay out not only the near -term. but
also some of the longer term systemic issues
that we're going to have to address if we're
going to fix this. And in the book, you also
argue that, you know, defeating MAGA or Trumpism
is necessary, but not sufficient. Like the problems
are systemic. They need more systemic answers.
And what are the deeper problems that would remain
even after, say, an electoral defeat? You cite
the failure of government, you just mentioned,
to do these things. I mean, I think I came like
you from institutional work, and I thought our
institutions took their jobs very seriously and
did a good job largely. But this sort of back
on, quote unquote, the deep state, there's a
lot of Americans who believe that now. So what
do we do if Donald Trump loses their stillness
view out there that the institutions are part
of the problem when you and I think that they
are not necessarily part of the problem? Well,
there's certainly a lot of good in the civil
service. And for instance, when I got fired the
first time, I took issue with the notion of a
deep state because that just wasn't what I had
seen over my career. If we go back to the beginning
of our careers, that's about the point when faith
in institutions across the population started
to decline. It's been going down for 50 years.
Increasingly, the Congress is not able to deliver
on the problems that Americans are most concerned
about. And so in a almost perverse way, Mr. Trump
was useful in that he shed light on problems
that have existed for a very long time. Some
of these go back to the challenges of democracy
250 years ago and the gerrymandering system.
early 19th century. And we've always had a bent
conspiracy theory component of our population.
And over time, I think our institutions have
come under pressure. We get back to the point
of a government that was formed 250 years ago
may not be ideal for dealing with the world in
the 21st century. And so... You get back to the
point about the civil service, in which I believe
in passionately. It's not perfect, for sure.
But most of us are not narcissistic. We took
an oath in the Constitution that we believed.
We came to work wanting to do good and wanting
to do well. And it's not to say that there isn't
waste, that there aren't bad actors. But the
civil service has worked. Tremendous damage.
I mean, 300 ,000 odd people have left. Millions
of person years have left the government and
the expertise. And that's going to come back
to haunt us. And so you start thinking about
how do you fix that? All right. If you want a
functional civil service that's reformed, you
need Congress. If you need Congress to work,
you've got to diminish. You're going to diminish
polarization. That's really need to be done at
the state level because that's who sends people
to Congress. You want serious people in Congress.
You're going to need to deal with electoral reforms
at the state level. You're going to need to deal
with education of our population. And so you
pull on one problem and you just uncover all
kinds of additional ones. I think one of the
key themes in the book is that this stuff is
all interrelated. And if we don't deal with it
holistically, we're going to have a problem.
And so when we talk about the failure of institutions,
I think you're meaning large institutions like
Congress. Because essentially, in my view, it's
a failure of leadership. But institutions in
the sense of the EPA and the CIA and the State
Department, I think have been... If Americans
knew about what good work has been done, our
health is far better than it's been. You know,
life, our lives are longer. You know, it's a
healthier air we breathe, safer water we drink.
You know, we've saved the world from lots of
tremendous disasters around the world. You know,
and so in some ways our institutions have worked
very well, whereas our leadership, our political
leadership. I think, hasn't and often even uses
those institutions as someone to blame. That's
the deep state game, right? Well, it's not us.
It's these, you know, unelected bureaucrats that
are a problem. But the unelected bureaucrats
have actually done a pretty good job over the
last 50 years. Yeah, I mean, like you, I mean,
I worked for eight presidents, four Democrat,
four Republican. It didn't matter. We were all
trying to fulfill whatever the elected administration
in this country wanted to do. And some of us
are Democrats, some of us are Republicans, some
of us are independent. And just it did not matter.
And so you're quite right. And it's an important
clarification. When I talk institutions, I mean
things like the Congress. I do think there are
challenges in the executive branch, to be sure.
I would consider our educational system as an
institution that needs to be fixed. The Supreme
Court is a problem in this environment. And so
there are many reforms that need to occur. And
I would argue the civil service, I mean, the
Pencil Act is, I mean, it's 100 years old. It
probably needs to be updated. But as a general
proposition, we absolutely need an impartial
civil service to make government work. You just
mentioned that, like, all of these things are
interconnected so that, you know, if... You know,
for the institution to get fixed, you have to
have Congress, but Congress needs others. And
so for real democratic renewal, there are repairs
that need to be made. You talk about civic atrophy.
So it sounds to me in a certain sense that, you
know, evolving these from the top down aren't
necessarily the answer. Like, we actually need,
you know, things to also work from the bottom
up. You know, education, civic understanding,
civic education, these type of things so that...
They work in concert with each other because
you can fix one or two of these institutions.
It's not going to work its way through the whole
system. That is exactly right. And a hundred
years ago, Dewey and Littman debated about how
things get done in democracies. And Littman was
very much a fan of having a really strong elite
that was going to run the country. And Dewey
thought we needed to have really bright. people
that were educated that could inform sort of
their leaders. Well, in reality, it's both. And
so there's going to be some top down for sure,
a role for the elite. But if we don't get the
American public, again, the exhausted majority
to care about what's going on in this country
and to engage in ways that they can address problems,
we're going to be in a world of hurt. How do
you, the book points out so many of these challenges
and it looks almost daunting, but how do you
remain optimistic in this era of nowadays with
turbocharged AI and gerrymandering and conspiracy
thinking and intellectualism and economic inequality,
all the declining trust, you mentioned all these
kinds of things, but the book posits sort of,
you know, an optimistic view that. And you often
you suggest, I think, in the book, if I read
it correctly, that sort of this policy overreach
of this administration, the moral overreach of
this administration, Christian nationalism, overattack
on immigration, militarized politics. You suggest
they're likely to alienate much of this exhausted
majority and that things are likely to get better.
I hope you're right. What's your take on that?
I think the polling data is just unequivocal
that that the overreach has caused. a substantial
portion of the people that voted for Mr. Trump.
And, you know, again, the polling data would
suggest that roughly half the Republican Party
is MAGA. The other 30, 40 million people that
voted for him is some for sure Republicans, a
lot of independents that were put off by some
of President Biden's actions. They're the ones,
I think, that fall within the category of the
exhausted majority that are turning away from
President Trump. And as I say in the book, if
he had focused on immigration policy solely the
truly worst of the worst, he would have had the
bulk of the American public on board with him.
But separating families and this mass deportation
of individuals who have done absolutely nothing
wrong except cross the border, absolutely a violation,
but they have not conducted a crime in the United
States. And so I do think the elections will
be somewhat self -correcting. And then, as you
say, the key is that's going to be necessary,
but not sufficient. What I hope is going to happen
is that you will have people interested in taking
a hard look at what do we need to do to address
these issues. It's going to be, in my opinion,
much broader than a Project 2029. There has to
be that kind of focus on the excesses of the
Trump administration. But the problems, as we've
talked, are much, much deeper. That gets to kind
of a willingness to engage over the long term
in these systemic problems. And the reason I
guess I'm optimistic is because I do have faith
in the American public. I mean, I think that
to More in Common's credit, most Americans are
not polarized. Most Americans care about their
families and their communities. They want to
live in a good country. On the other hand. I
can get pretty pessimistic at times because it's
daunting to think about keeping people engaged
for the long term and addressing interests that
are going to be countered by a lot of money and
a lot of power and the sort of technological
advances that you alluded to that are occurring
much faster than policy and law can talk with.
So, Annette, am I... Do I think we're going to
have a better life for our kids? I'm not convinced
of that. And that's very sad and discouraging.
But, you know, you've got to have hope. Yeah,
I mean, you talk about faith in the public. And
I grew up in that system, too, believing that,
wanting to do it. But there is a large subset
of Americans who don't want the things that you're
suggesting. And that subset who has power wants
to rig the system so that. There isn't a chance
for these kind of reforms and things you're talking
about. So, you know, you see people talk about
this in the space now. It's like, how far do
you go to fight against what you think is a tyranny
or what have you? And like, do you, you know,
if one side is gerrymandering, then you have
to gerrymander. Like, at what point does that
solve itself, if it does? For me, Congress is
the hinge that we need. a Congress that can deal
with sort of money and politics, accepting that
you can only go so far with Supreme Court decisions.
We need a legislature that can deal with proper
regulation of AI and technology and privacy bill
of rights and all of those sorts of things, which
are just, it seems to me, incomprehensible now,
which is a huge worry. But in order to get the
kind of Congress that is going to be able to
do this sort of thing, you've got to send serious
legislators to Washington or to state capitals.
And now you're back to that complicated array
of courses. So you don't do that if you don't
fix the primary system within the states. And
you're not going to fix the primary situation
in the states if you don't have people engaging.
People aren't going to engage if they don't see
what's at stake. And so that's an education issue.
So all of these, for me, upstream issues from
Congress are going to have to be addressed. And
only after we start to see a critical mass of
congressional representatives interested in government,
not performative policy, that we start working
on these really hard issues of health care and
everything along those lines. Don't you see it
going? other way. I mean, just in the last couple
of days, there's been primaries where what I
would consider almost radical right wing Republicans
are losing to farther right wing people that
Trump wants to push. And so if you're looking
for more sensible people to come into Congress
to help fix it, I don't see that happening. Do
you believe like one of the things some people
have talked about is. In the massive complexity
of our huge country, we have very few legislators.
Like, should we have actually more congressmen
in smaller communities that have sort of real
elections around real issues that deal with that
community rather than what we have now, which
is essentially almost so many of these congressional
districts are nationalized. They're fighting
national issues at the, you know, what Trump
wants. In fact, they should be working on what...
what matters to their smaller communities. Yeah.
And I mean, I do think what you're going, maybe
it's, hope it's not a plan, but I do think you're
going to see a pretty significant recoil in the
fall with the midterms. And we'll see. I mean,
my guess is that the numbers would suggest that
the gerrymandered districts on behalf of President
Trump are probably not going to carry the day
if the Democrats can get their act together.
So let's assume that happens. Then you have very
smart people. I mean, Danielle Allen, I think,
is brilliant. I mean, she's been arguing for
an increased size of the Congress for a very
long time and has worked through how that could
happen. You have many different suggestions on
rank choice voting and multi -member districts
and so forth at the state level. But that's only
going to happen if people bring to bear practice.
on their state representatives. And so, again,
these things have to be sequenced properly, but
you can at least see a way forward that it can
work. Well, part of the problem of our system
is that automatically weakens rural states and
like the electoral college, like if you want
more congresspeople, that means you're actually
benefiting places that have larger populations.
Therefore, these rural states are going to try
to fight against it. And they have unusual power
in our system because they have two senators
when they don't have a population. So I don't
mean to suggest these things can't be fixed,
but there are a lot of challenges in the way,
let's put it that way. No question whatsoever.
But again, if you put your faith, I've got relatives
around in Minnesota and Arkansas that live in
cities and live in rural. I don't hear them lambasting
sort of their democratic republic. I mean, they're
very tied to their way of life and whatever their
religious bent is and whatever their small government
bent is, they just want things to work. And so
if you kind of put your faith in the American
public along those lines, then maybe there's
a way forward. If not, I don't know what the
forcing function is. I think part of the problem
you probably agree is... at least in my lifetime,
the news has become more of like a entertainment
source. So like, you know, obviously it's become
much more partisan. People watch whatever it
is, Fox News or other things. And they're just,
they're fed a certain view. And that is a view
that gets people upset and rage. And it's entertaining
in a sense. And the same is happening on our
social media. You sign into things that sort
of fit what you want to keep you worked up. And
so I don't know how we get out of that. You know,
when you and I grew up, there was, you know.
three channels and they pretty much said the
same thing. And it's different now. You can find
your own little view of the world and that to
keep the clicks going to make their money, they
need to keep you angry. And I don't know how
we come out of that part of it. Yeah. And people
far smarter than me have dealt with this at length.
I mean, I do think part of the answer is the
focus on local news. I mean, when I grew up in
the very northern part of New York State, we
had the St. Lawrence Plain Dealer, which had
a bunch of local reporters and they focused on
what was going on in Canton, New York. And there
was a way of holding people accountable. Well,
that paper went out of business a few years ago
and came back. I think they have like one reporter
now. And there are interesting experiments, I
think, going on. kind of public, private, nonprofit
organizations that are publishing papers. Texas
Tribune sort of led the way. But even ProPublica,
a wonderful research effort that is in partnership
with local news to try to hold local representatives
accountable and trace the money and explain to
people what's going on at a local level. And
we do need people to get out of this sort of
constant focus on what the focus is at the national
level. And things do percolate up, as you said,
below, from below. Long term effort. But I forget
the statistics, but the numbers of newspapers
that are going out of business every year, astronomical.
Yeah, that's part of the civic education thing.
I knew I liked you, but the upstate New York
makes it even. Clear to me. I'm from upstate
New York as well. My father's from up near there.
He's from Governor, which is up near. Really?
Went to school in Potsdam. I grew up in Cortland,
Finger Lakes region, so there quite a bit. So
listen, you've been generous with your time.
I don't want to keep you too long, but let me
pull you back to sort of your experience in the
intelligence community a little bit. Like, well,
the intelligence community now is dealing with
a variety, you know, it's dealing with these
partisan issues that are pushing down on them.
We've seen that through. DNI and other places,
but they're also dealing with real serious problems
with AI, ubiquitous commercial data, encrypted
platforms. You know, I worked overseas trying
to, you know, run spies. Nowadays, you know,
the number of cameras, the ability of big data
to track at what everybody's doing. Open source
intelligence is both a challenge and a good thing
for probably for the intelligence community,
but the enormous scale of these things. What
does a new intelligence revolution? look like?
Are we just dealing with the same kind of thing,
but just faster? Or is there something new that
the intelligence community has to get its hands
around? You know, when I was the acting director
of NCTC, I was very much of the view that machine
learning and artificial intelligence were an
imperative, not a nice to have, because the amount
of information that comes in is just, it was
just growing logarithmically. That said, I have
tremendous concerns right now about what data
we're bringing in and how we're using it. When
we started teaching NCTC 20 years ago, there
was something called total information awareness.
It was being pushed by a guy named John Poindexter,
who was with DARPA. And he was making the argument
that you need a really big haystack so you can
find the next terrorist. Well, his haystack envisioned
things like... U .S. person's medical records.
And it was just completely beyond the pale. And
across the political spectrum, he got panned
and Tia was killed. Well, if you were to go in
right now and ask Claude or Chad GPT, what are
the potential invasions of privacy now compared
to Tia? It's night and day. I mean, we are...
We are surrendering our privacy. And if that's
what Americans want to do, that's fine. From
an Intel community perspective, I think we need
to take a really hard look at 3333. I worry that
the Intel community under the rubric of open
source could be bringing in collateral telemetry
data and ad tech data, which frankly is far more
revelatory than FISA. ever will be and um it
is this what you want our community to do i mean
this is u .s person's data coming into the intel
community because it's collected by a contractor
and sold to the government and this is what you're
seeing now with um maven and raven and the different
efforts part of DOD and DHS to do targeting overseas.
That's one thing. To track down people in the
United States. Maybe that's another. Just really
hard questions as we've seen the blurring of
foreign and domestic. And for people like you
and me that grew up as foreign intelligence officers,
we need to be really careful about what we do.
And I wish that the policy, legal, privacy, operational,
technical equities. were being weighed by the
Congress far more statistically than they are.
I can see why there has always been a problem
with just the sheer amount of data and not as
many analysts to look at that. And so I can see
nowadays the speed of AI and stuff, the stuff
that's, say, collected by NSA. So they're collecting
more information every day than any human could
ever look at or any hundreds or thousands of
humans could ever look at. And I can see if you're
a customer, you're in the... general you're out
in the field, there's a quicker way for you,
for the system and not to say, you need this
information to operate on. And from my time and
your time too, there's always been customers,
meaning policymakers or others that want to be
their own analyst, right? And so they're like,
cut out the analytic part, just give me the raw
data and I'll make decisions based on it. And
I worry a little bit about this is the speed
is good. Like, so all that NSA material that
just sits there and nobody can see, users can
now see that and act on it, but there's not anything
in between that's saying. hey, this actually
doesn't fit with what we're seeing in other places,
or there's a problem with this data set, or these
people that are putting out this information,
some of them are giving disinformation for their
own domestic reasons to go after people you're
operating on. So the analytic cadre, who is usually
that place in between collection and giving it
to policymakers, they worry that the policymakers
are going to want to say, stop, stop. analyzing
stuff, let me make my own decisions. Well, I
mean, I think you've basically seen that with
the president of the United States, who has talked
about taking the intel community to school because
he did not agree with the conclusions that the
community was providing in the first administration.
And then in the second administration, he goes
or Tulsi Grabber goes so far as to fire. senior
analytic types who were providing information
that were out of step with his views on Venezuela.
So your point is very well taken. So again, Russ,
so glad to have you. You've been generous with
your time. We may want to have you on. I would
encourage people to read the book. Can you tell
us a little bit about what you're working on
now and when the book might be coming out? So
I actually thought the book was going to be out
this week. I got the final proofs yesterday.
It'll probably be available either next week
or the week after. So for me, the book is it's
kind of an anchor for the ideas. I mean, lots
of people disagree. I would just hope that we
could have an adult conversation about what do
we want out of our democracy and how are we going
to get there? Like forever in this country, reasonable
people will differ and will argue. We're just
not having that conversation right now. These
are important issues and thank you for bringing
them up with us. And I encourage people to follow
your writing and read the book when it comes
out. So for our listeners, thank you very much.
If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe
to the Steady State Sentinel and follow other
Steady State content. And if you can give us
a review on Google, that would be really helpful.
So again. Thank you. Stay informed and keep following
the SteadyState Sentinel. This is John Seifer.
Thank you for listening to the SteadyState Sentinel
podcast. Don't miss out on more insights and
exposes from America's premier global security
experts. Also, subscribe to our Substack at substack
.com slash at SteadyState1 and follow our social
media and join us right here next week for another
exciting edition. The Steady State is a nonprofit
organization working to sustain our democracy
and national security. Join us and support our
mission by visiting www .thesteadysate .org.