Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession

[@wkiernan]

"You men act like you're telling me the truth, and I'll act like I believe you." "Yes, sir."

[@davidjulitz7446]

This is an issue in the whole society, dumb requirements are everywhere, and everyone is choosing lies to shortcut things. The army is just a mirror of society and business-as-usual things. Very nice and eye-opening talk.

[@seamusbrown3171]

History knows of only one pure democracy that waged a failed war in Sicily and wound up conquered by the rule by force and indiscriminate violence against their Hoplite slaves that was Sparta. Many Leaders in a republic or democracy have made unverifiable claims (also known as conjecture promoted by the lie of feigned certainty transformed into rhetorical persuasion). In the Greek case, the conjecture concerned intent and plans of the Persian Emperor who promoted himself as a god. If Xerces had succeeded, Europe would have begun adopting the same destructively paranoids and brutal rule or die dynamic that prevented the formation of the strong middle classes that pre-20th century Asia deprived itself of. Themistocles insisted on the expansion of the Athenian Navy that was instrumental at preventing Persian rule in Greece culminating in decisive victories by sea at the Straits of Salamis and decisively on land at the Battle of Plataea. But, how he predicted the Persian invasion is not known. But, is an instinct that cannot be rationally justified based on fact a lie or is it a mysterious aspect of human intelligence that quite naturally must anticipate and prepare for very real threat to survive. The truth is in any competitive arena including warfare, absolute certainty is very rare. That's why humans developed instinct, intuition and faith. Because in the long term, uncertainty is the norm whenever there is competitive conflict between near equal contenders. That said, as the son of a PO1 US Navy, I must point out that a free Europe may not have happened if the Greeks hadn't started out as an eastern Mediterranean tribe of sea faring pirates. Without seafaring ships and their crews centuries before the dawn of the Christian era, the revolutionary idea of citizen rule and the subsequent Greek and Roman disdain for tyranny may never have been take seriously by Northern Europeans. Europe may well have been stuck with only monarchy, feudalism and empire, the ancient progenitors of America's greatest post-cold war enemy, the globalist self-worshipping pedophile, perversion and anti-human, anti-family promoting Davos frequenting globalist left that always seems to predict and promote (likely by direct management) the next maniacally evil anti-American anti-liberty mass delusional self-destructive fallacy designed to bring about human ruin, extinction and technological replacement using automation, robotics and machine learning that the American left and hijacked democrat party seem hellbent on openly bringing to demonically evil fruition. They are so confident, they have abandoned their traditional artful deceptions, yet our own military FAILS consistently to recognize America's most existential of enemies foreign and domestic likely due to infiltration. What good is a military that refuses or fails to recognize its most existential enemy while allowing itself to be used by corrupt politicians for personal enrichment? About as good as the standing army that allowed the huns to sack Rome when they refused to be happy with concessions allowing them to settle in Gaul in exchange for military service the Romans had grown incapable of providing itself over its vast yet doomed western Empire, leaving them conquered in Italy and confined as a sovereign state to Byzantium (modern Turkey) for the remaining centuries of Roman imperialism before Moorish gunpowder rendered the immense concrete fortresses and cisterns of Constantinople indefensible. How Turkish dominance of Constantinople, which lies on the western shore opposite Pelopennesia, stands to this day through two World Wars and one Turkish defeat boggles my mind? You'd think the treaty that ended World War I would have made Constantinople European again. Can someone explain this to me? It should have been a lot easier than the Charge of the Light Brigade to make Constantinople Christian again after victory in World War I.

[@FBH991]

a lot of it is also just blame-shifting. Like, I remember a friend of mine worked in a coffee shop, and they had to fill out a log book about how they'd done safety stuff. Obviously, it was impossible to actually operate the shop the way the book required, but by making it a requirement corporation shifted responsibility to the employees.

[@dejjal8683]

My first taste of fudging during training came after I got to my first unit. We were qualifying on our rifles and our LT emphatically states "We ain't leaving until everyone qualifies expert." 15:00 comes around and the same LT, in the same tone of voice, says "Fuck this, we're going home."

[@KunalLal1984]

Hackworth talked about this ballooning in the Vietnam era.

[@zacharybigger4144]

The sarcastic part of me kind of wants to say that this should be REQUIRED TRAINING for senior leaders 🤣🤣🤣

[@ssgus3682]

Periodic health assessment. Q) How much do you drink? Everyone lies on that question. 1or 2 drinks monthly

[@kristischreckengost7631]

If you tell the truth to a weak leader, they will end you. I've seen so many great Soldiers get out because they were either driven out or got disgusted. Anyone over E8 or O6 was suspect.

[@MothaLuva]

Happened to me too. Once in the Army (though not the US. But don’t expect that other armies are different) roughly 40 years ago, twice on the job, 10 years and 6 years ago. That’s the way how to finish with society.

[@seamusbrown3171]

Losing your career standing up for the truth is heroism not tragedy. Sometimes heroism has consequences. But to a true warrior, the sacrifice can often be right and necessary in the prevention of self-inflicted disaster in the ranks.

[@joeadams1225]

I got out in 1975 and still have my Clipboard, Use it every day !

[@charlesharrison5398]

When I was a Platoon Leader my Company Commander and First Sergeant constantly lied to Soldiers, as if the Soldiers were too ignorant to talk and figure out the lies.

[@ulfpe]

This is really a general problem, it's the same in industry.

[@imortalones]

Disagree businesses most certainly are able to calculate what is successful and what isn't when the armies of the world just ignore their mistakes.

[@LOLHAMMER45678]

@@imortalones It works that way in small companies, but any large organization that includes people who are trying to get up the career ladder will have this problem, big companies included

[@czdaniel1]

@@LOLHAMMER45678 -- I was listening to a rather activist investor talking about the problems with corporate leadership _(So the following is part of his professional spiel)._ He says CEOs are inherently stupid by nature because the type of person selected by corporate board-members is the always upbeat frat-house dude-bro. He's the kind of guy you constantly find downstairs, he's sitting around the common area wanting to connect with people and he will tell you exactly what you wanna hear. If you just broke up with your girl, "Oh well she's yadda, yadda, yadda so you're better off leaving her behind!" --And that's the guy who gets picked by the board to manage corporations: people who want to get along, inherently affraid of rocking the boat, and will tell you exactly what you wanna hear to keep you happy. [And of course this premise is used for publicly justifying his investor activism and hedging]

[@richardjohnson2884]

I've been a soldier, a cop, an academic, and worked in a hospital. Saw the same in ALL of these institutions.

[@seamusbrown3171]

Cultural corporate adoption and obedience to destructive anti-American globalist weapons of ideology like political correctness, promotion of transgender childhood mutilation literally decades before puberty (How can you or anyone else be certain of homosexuality when your body isn't producing adult hormones yet because you were only a toddler just 1-2 years before getting sucked in to America's federal education enforced institutionalized self-sterilization financed, promoted and encouraged by foreign and domestic globalists. Americas true enemies are intent on destroying liberty and replacing it with technologically enforced post-human feudalism that replaces all of us with machine learning, automation and robotics. It is either the technocratic elite or the American citizen that will emerge by the end of the 21st century, and permitting the foreign originating modern leftist cult of death to bring back the same unsustainably artificial socialist/communist/fascist mind rape that literally mass murdered 100+ million hastily condemned fellow countryman in places like Cambodia, China, North Korea, virtually every place the doomed theory of class struggle and the liberation of the proletariat from feudal exploitation. American liberty once restored was proven far superior to the fiction of collectivism last century. Instead of confidently embracing American style liberty in the 21st century, we bankroll Chinese communist mass murderers, wage wars with no intention of victory solely for the benefit of the military industrial complex seeking to prove their products and launder tax money at the expense of 10s of thousands of American and millions of foreign lives. If we are liberating the Ukraine, why is the UK employing depleted Uranium tank munitions? Can't the heroes willing to die for this nation see that the mission has has diverged from their interests? I think it would be a whole lot smarter if America's fighting men traded centralized federal almost imperial service for their local state militias. State militias in New England founded during the French and Indian war evicted the most confident military of the time, the redcoats that were forced to flee Lexington and Concord. They nearly drove the regulars that stormed Bunker Hill in Charlestown back into the mouth of the Charles river before being forced to flee. One can serve your country at the state level with a clean conscience. Working to deprive Russia of the region of origin of the Russian people that is Ukraine, whose languages and cultures are virtually indiscernible from each other, the veritable Midwest in terms of food production for a nuclear armed nation of tundra and winters so brutal that they destroyed both the armies of Napoleon and Hitler, with growing seasons somewhere between 4-5 months out of 12. I challenge you to do some research regarding how the democrat party has capitalized on the fact that a only a sizeable minority of Ukrainians are ethnic Russian to turn the Ukraine into their own personal fiefdom of fraud using its remoteness to conceal bioweapons research, outsource American of jobs while leaking American technology, test hitherto experimental remote controlled drone weaponry, and IMHO definitively cover up their previous genocidal genetic mass murdering fraud that was COVID, kicked off by outsourcing what became illegal bioweapons research to China, the one nation in the world that actually believes they will first surpass, then replace and maybe even conquer the United States of America by or the turn of the 22nd century. Mark my words, they plan to make dollar worthless while offering CBDC digital command and controlled fake crypto currency that expires and can be frozen remotely as a mechanism of control by imposed impoverishment. The future will not be won conventionally like the past. The globalist are waging what they perceive as next generation warfare where control over the money, manufacturing, undermining of education, work ethic, sex for the purpose of reproduction, challenge necessary for skill creation, direct human interaction as opposed to fake socialist media, loyalty to America itself among the young are the targets, not armies and weapons (at least until they've sufficiently neutralized humanity as a threat). Their future armies will be manned by minimally human controlling, repairing, maintaining robots and drones. They don't care if you are rendered ineffective by suicidal obsession with gender and gayness. They need Americans fighting man wholly undermined in order to orchestrate as decisive a defeat of the human soldier so that no one questions the idea that human armies are doomed to obsolescence and defeat.

[@gazeboist4535]

Replace TRiPS with a rotating set of monthly 'do not be a fuckwit' fliers that soldiers are required to take when they leave and return when they get back.

[@joeadams1225]

I hated one-sided conversations ! There's alot of that around now days then I got imaginative.Carry a clipboard and look busy with a furrowed brow......everyone will leave you alone, even the Boss !

[@joeadams1225]

I'd never Lie to you unless it's " Absolutely Necessary"..........

[@Waltham1892]

The Army taught me to lie, starting in Basic Training. Drill Instructor: Don't you love PT in the freezing rain Private Waltham? Private Waltham: It sucks, Sargent. Drill Instructor: Say that again, Private Waltham? Private Waltham: Ummm, I love it Sargent. Drill Instructor: You should always love good training, Private.

[@legoworksstudios1]

Makes the hurt feel good! If I knew the Army operated like that I probably wouldn't have to worry about being the sick call ranger in basic since I couldn't run for shit and every attempt at sprinting had my leg joints cracking like a damn eggshell.

[@cladglas]

don't know if used recently, but, in the 80s european military personnel who wanted to go on strike, for whatever reason, would engage in 'work to rule'. strict adherence to every policy & regulation tended to effectively shut down routine operations.

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

That's actually awesome.

[@MothaLuva]

That’s how we created strikes in the company (not military). About 3 times afai remember…worked like a charm each time.

[@Alex-lg6nz]

Aka Italian Strike aka Malicious Compliance.

[@cladglas]

@@Alex-lg6nz i first heard about when spanish AF was doing it.

[@alexanderwaite9403]

The culture of lying that is inbedded throughout the Army culture as shown in this report had lead to military and diplomatic disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan because we in the Army lied about the capability of both the Iraqi and Afghan armies that was supplied and trained by the US military. I remember being on MiTTs and thinking that almost none of the Iraqis I was training was worth a damn because we were trying to make them US Soldiers and they were failing but the reverse was true we were failing the Iraqi forces because we were forcing them to be something they couldn't be. We in the Army massively compounded the problem by not being honest because nobody wanted to get nuked by tailing the Brigade or Division commanders that the MiTT was failing because you would have been fired and somebody else would be the yes man. This lead to us marking time to get the hell out of Iraq before the crap hit the fan. I am speaking for myself when I left Iraq in 2010 I knew the Iraqi Army was going to fold within 6 months of the US leaving and ISIS then cleaned the Iraqis collective clocks. The same thing happened in Iraq. This corrosive culture needs to stop or it is going to get much worse.

[@Chiller01]

Really good example. There are real world consequences to this culture.

[@daviddevault8700]

The West German military was initially composed of a back bone of military professionals from the SS, and German Army. Debathification meant it couldn't work because it denied you those professionals

[@moodswingy1973]

YEP. I remember this well (mid nineties). If you were a young officer wanting to get ahead, you lied in your reports. The honest officers simply could not compete with officers willing to lie. Show me an O-4 and above and I'll show you an officer who habitually lied about unit readiness.

[@edwardyost915]

I would agree that the trust in overall leadership has diminished. However, the reliance on checklists and paperwork that has signatures, I believe, is more about legal protections than anything else. In a court, they are not going to be swayed by a statement that we 'trust our leaders' to manage situations. They are going to require absolute documented proof (i.e., checklists) that demonstrate that someone did what they were supposed to do. Failing to gather that documentation, even though you know it is likely untrue in some or many circumstances leaves you vulnerable to claims, lawsuits, and career killing blame.

[@zacharybigger4144]

Dr Wong, I hate to say it, but years after this video came out, and even more years after the publication of your study, nothing has changed. Arguably, it's gotten worse. We have failed in our duty as stewards of the warrior profession.

[@yosomitesam999]

"People Don't Fail, Systems Fail" a sign in a Quality Engineer's office where I work So there are more and more systems to avoid "failure".

[@MothaLuva]

Yes. And thus create situations where they fail much more efficiently, for other reasons.

[@akiradelaine1620]

Make it impossible to answer 100%, if all boxes are ticked, put up a prompt asking wich field is the weakest compaired

[@davidjohnjrlindstedt9555]

Cooperate to Graduate.....and when there is a training mishap, accident, or Soldier death or injury pray to the Lord above that the 15-6 investigator, IG or CID Special Agent all have drank the "Kool Aid" and the liability to the Army is minimal so the "Army Keeps Rolling Along"! This ends, when we treat adults like adults and understand that the UCMJ answers all your questions. Redundant reporting requirements, foolish online training kills moral, wastes valuable training time and negatively impacts retention. Further, those skilled at "metric management" move up and those that tell it like it is move on.

[@sce2aux464]

The 'U.S. military’s marathon, 30-year, single-elimination, suck-up tournament' or 'How America selects its generals' by John T. Reed johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/60879683-the-u-s-military-s-marathon-30-year-single-elimination-suck-up-tournament-or-how-america-selects-its-generals

[@MothaLuva]

Coming next: Lying to Everyone - professional Dishonesty in the Army

[@danhudson4369]

how many times must we relearn that micromanagement is bad?

[@m.abdulmajeed629]

Loved the research and presentation.

[@Purplexity-ww8nb]

The bane of any bureaucracy ... justify your existence by demanding increasing requirements for your underlings, therefore growing your own self importance until the entire administrative infrastructure collapses into itself.

[@czdaniel1]

The singularity will coalesce around reams & paperclips.... So much paper & ink filed that not even light can escape

[@Shjandy]

Yeah the army got rid of trips. Now units are having soldiers build a whole PowerPoint presentation for a travel plan just to go on block leave. In other news, water is wet

[@Chiller01]

It’s too bad this only has 20,000 views.

[@TomTom-rh5gk]

It is because of an over reaction to accidents.

[@RemoteViewr1]

So top dogs cannot bear to hear the truth. Time for a heart to heart.

[@czdaniel1]

An engineer would say the Army adopted & implemented a poorly designed bureaucratic system for guiding certain human behaviors & behavioral habbits. My thought is that maybe base commanders should get more administrative freedom to abandon the documentation requirements unless an affected Resources-Subject-to-Documentation is being consumed or expended at rates outside of a specified reasonable-band. ie: exorcise discretion but temporarily re-introduce the documentation of justifications for certain resources when they are found to be disappearing or expended on a base at uncommonly high rates. This provides a balance of interests in accordance to their immediate needs, and while still maintaining the ability of Army administrators to influence behavior and provide guidance on the desired purpose of the allocated resources & privileges that have been subject to the reporting requirements commonly driving people to lie in order to expedite more of the resource or privileges.

[@TickledFunnyBone]

Hierarchical chains are of doers and thinkers. The newbies are the doers the middle ground are in between and the higher ups (commonly called) are the thinkers. One thinks, one does.

[@peter2679]

It’s called empire building.

[@gazeboist4535]

Starts around 2:10.

[@daviddevault8700]

Every leader call out one subordinate on a lie, then kindly ask for the truth and help with a solution. Then tell an unpleasant truth to your boss. Now pull out your dog tags, look at your Army Values if your in another branch you have the same thing just worded differently. I don't have mine but I remember integrity, moral courage, self-less service.

[@YoureSoVane]

Everyone wants to add a new band-aid and get the gold star, but no one wants to rethink the system as a whole. Good design is intuitive, clear, and as little design as possible. Adding systems to fill holes doesn't fix the source of the holes.

[@DwarfElvishDiplomacy]

This isnt military specific, its what happenes when you gamify big systems. Check all the boxes, get more points for promotion

[@johnnydavis5896]

Correct leaders are the solution but leaders are risky. DOD does not allow leaders to take risks and by doing so they crush real leadership.

[@MothaLuva]

28:23 Exactly. And it’s not exclusive to the Army. The problem is that we have a criminal law, political, government and judicial system. So, where in that equation does someone expect truth and honesty?

[@northwesttravels7234]

The leaders that accepted lies probably got to their position by lying. In the industry that I was in, it was rare to get promoted by ever telling the truth. Corporations often set bad examples by openly telling lies and forcing employees to sign ethics pledges that they would be fired for if they followed.

[@northwesttravels7234]

My contention for most policy training was that if it is longer than one page, few will follow it. We had 40-50 slide CBTs and my brain would zone out. I assumed that it all went through corporate legal dept so they could blame the "rogue" employee for an obscure violation in a verbose document.

[@douglasscottmccarronindiemovie]

You do need Congress to step in because you don't handle it.

[@bobbinsthethird]

So what will Congress teach the Military about telling the truth?

[@andypotanin]

When I was in the Marines, my boss (a sh*t bag Comm Chief) didn't want to account for a bunch of equipment and instructed about a dozen of our Marines to load up all the equipment into his trailer so that it wouldn't "interfere" with some inspection he was responsible for. His plan fell apart when one of those Marines called CID on him and they caught him on the way to his house with the trailer. Nothing ever happened to him, but I was really proud of my guys for calling it in.

[@thisguy7083]

The gentleman at 1:14:00 into the vid hit the nail on the head I think

[@davidjarkeld2333]

8:34 You don't have to be in a uniform to be insulted if you are accused of being a liar

[@andypotanin]

yeh, "you calling me a liar?" is a pretty universal retort for a reason

[@emceha]

After long long talk about dishonesty, he lied to audience AND himself. “Army is different”. No it’s not, that’s the problem. It’s even worse, personal ambitions and careers, combined with stiff hierarchy and discipline leads to massive coverups. If he was honest, he would call for more independent oversight.

[@rivco5008]

If all this was true then, and is still true today, or worse, then this army's only hope is that an enemy army is even more corrupt.

[@olegbuzmakov8169]

That's exactly what we are told by senior officers in the Russian army: " Many things they have in the US army are just on paper and non-operational."

[@howmuchmorecanItake]

Boy did this comment age like fine wine

[@TickledFunnyBone]

I Love this!

[@dave623]

"I cannot tell a lie." Gen. George Washington

[@adaml83]

Actually, that was a lie... primarily by Mason Locke Weems.

[@andypotanin]

@@adaml83 I bet you're great at parties. At least at the kind of parties I like.

[@seppshlllearningcenter419]

I am predisposed to the same ailment. It is cancerous to relationships, from personal to profession. Truth does not serve well in an empire of lies.

[@LavenderSystem69]

Shit, let's talk about all the times we borrowed vehicles from other companies and battalions that most of us weren't licensed on, by having them dispatched to our master drivers who had just licensed themselves on EVERYTHING without taking the necessary training, because the mission must continue even if literally every last truck the company has is deadlined. Let's talk about caging brakes to avoid having to deadline trailers with inoperative air systems because ODA WXYZ *_NEEDS_* that ammo time fucking now. Let's talk about fudging shipping documents at midnight in the middle of a JI so that we can fit all of a team's gear onto as few pallets as possible and then go home, even if that means blatantly misclassifying hazmat. Let's talk about "NCO business" (doing sketchy, potentially illegal shit behind your officer counterparts' backs so that they can have plausible deniability and just reap the benefits of the mission being completed without a second thought). This organization has more issues than we're willing to admit

[@longaugust]

I’ll take “good idea fairy” for $100 Alex

[@brucenadeau2172]

he is wrong congress should fix the problem

[@dr.barrycohn5461]

Too bad ta mike wasn't passed around for the questioning audience.

[@craigcrissman4651]

Someone didn't watch passed the first 5 minutes

[@DwarfElvishDiplomacy]

This was 5 years ago badumm tzz

[@lukewarme9121]

I’d NEVER join the military today. It’s gone done gay.

[@czdaniel1]

@42:58 -- Hahahahahhaha Good one! Gotta save that joke for a dinner a party 42:58

[@barryromano0451]

This dude is like the Andrew Yang of the Army.

[@MothaLuva]

24:58 If I ticked „yes“ there I even wouldn’t have lied. If I ever have a firstborn child they can have it. Another problem solution, I could start for example with the secondborn child first and save the firstborn for later. I can totally confuse the system if I have my 3rd child before the first two.