During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) talked about standards for military recruitment.
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00:00Thank you. And Senator Cotton, you're next.
00:04Mr. Tata, you mentioned that the recruiting and retention crisis has improved somewhat over the first 100 days of the Trump administration,
00:11and that's a great credit to the president, to the secretary of defense.
00:14It's still not quite where we need it to get, though, after years of decline under President Biden.
00:21One thing that I think has been a challenge is that we're not fishing in a big enough pond.
00:26And the military often cites the standards that exclude many, maybe most, young Americans from service,
00:35like academic standards, health conditions, and other requirements.
00:38Obviously, some of those are serious.
00:40We can't have people with serious psychiatric illnesses or academic deficiencies in the military.
00:47But I do think we've gotten a little bit too strict on these things,
00:50especially in certain anecdotes I've come across or members of this committee have as well.
00:54You know, a young man who was prescribed antidepressants when he was in his early teens
00:59because his parents were going through a divorce and hasn't been on them for six or seven years,
01:02or someone who maybe injured a hip or a knee playing junior high sports
01:07and six years later is disqualified from the military because of that,
01:11after which they continue to play sports at the high school level as well.
01:16Do you agree that we should try to find ways to expand the eligibility pool
01:19so our recruiters can be fishing in a bigger pond?
01:23Senator, I do.
01:23Yeah, thank you for that.
01:27One challenge here is the Genesis program,
01:29which I know has done a lot to help our military get a better picture
01:33and catch all of the records that recruits have.
01:40But also, I do think by exposing some of these things that are fairly trivial or very old
01:47and haven't led young men and women from leading a full and complete life that take them to service,
01:51is that it makes it harder for them to get in and the waiver process is very complicated.
01:57Do you think we need to take a look at pushing that waiver authority down,
02:01pushing it down into the chain of command and recruiting battalions to make it easier for people
02:05with these conditions that clearly don't impair their military service to get promptly onboarded into the recruiting process
02:17and then ultimately into basic training so they're not sitting on the sidelines for 60, 90, 120 days
02:23and finding other jobs elsewhere?
02:26Senator, I do.
02:27Anything we can do to speed up that process is good.
02:29And then finally, some of my old friends who have served in recruiting battalion headquarters
02:36speak of the doctors at the MEPS around the country as seemingly being paid on commission
02:42by how many recruits they can disqualify from serving.
02:46Do you think we should take a look at the incentives that the doctors have at our MEPS stations
02:50and also whether we have the right number of providers at all those stations to move all those recruits along
02:58so when a young man or woman expresses interest in serving,
03:01we're getting them promptly through the process and hopefully getting them to their shift date?
03:06Senator, I agree with you.
03:09Ms. Sutton, 30 years ago at the dawn of the internet,
03:13there was lots of rosy, optimistic thinking about how it was going to revolutionize the way human beings live
03:21and we're going to connect the world and there were going to be no borders or boundaries
03:24and it was going to help us bridge our differences.
03:27And 30 years later, it certainly has done a lot to improve the way we live.
03:30It's kept families connected across long distances and helped people reconnect with classmates
03:35and get telehealth that otherwise might not have been able to receive.
03:43But there's also a lot of things like sexual exploitation and money laundering and fraud on the internet as well.
03:49So is it safe to say 30 years on that human nature is the same wherever we find it
03:55and the greatness and the frailties in the real world, human virtue and vice in the real world,
04:00we see reflected in the cyber world as well?
04:02Senator, I think that's a fair characterization.
04:06I think so too.
04:07So isn't it probably fair to say that strategic concepts like deterrence and escalation
04:13that operate on the real world battlefield also play out the same way in the cyber world?
04:19I couldn't agree with you more.
04:21And do you think we've done enough over the last four years to deter our adversaries
04:25like China and Russia and Iran and North Korea
04:29by being essentially in a defensive crouch in the cyber world
04:33and not developing offensive plans and capabilities that can hold at risk the things that they hold most dear?
04:40Senator, when I led a red team at Sandia, we had a common phrase that said,
04:45the defender has to be wrong every time.
04:47The adversary only has to be right once.
04:50I think that goes to show that while we need strong defenses,
04:54we are not going to deter the adversary with defenses only
04:57and that if confirmed, I will work to strengthen our offensive cyber capabilities
05:02to ensure the president has the options he needs to respond to this growing threat.
05:07I appreciate that.
05:08I couldn't agree more.
05:09And I think it's so vital that the world knows
05:13that whatever any country can do to us in the cyber world,
05:16we can do as much and more to them as well.