Bonus Blog #1 - General Cartwright

I had the opportunity to listen the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright speaks when he came to Penn State last month. During his speech General Cartwright covered a wide range of issues ranging from why we are in Iraq to the innovations within the Department of Defense. I would like to thank General Cartwright for speaking at Penn State because it was insightful to be able to listen to a speaker of his caliber.

In the beginning of his speech, General Cartwright covered the issues facing the United States in the next fifty years. He stated that even if we shut down the Department of Defense, the savings would not pay off the national debt. The United States must make careful decisions within the next few years, as the decisions we make now will affect us 50 years from now. As a nation, we must decide if we want to engage or disengage from the world. The United States also make the tough decisions regarding our domestic costs versus our continued spending on national security. As a nation, we cannot pay for both and must make the tough decisions.

Perhaps the most insightful part of the speech was the discussion of innovation within the Department of Defense. General Cartwright identified three areas that the DoD is focusing many innovation efforts on. Currently, the DOD is placing a heavy focus on speed, unmanned vehicles and medicine.

The area identified by General Cartwright is researching ways to improve the speed of our military vehicles. The Department of Defense is working to take speeds to the next level. The goal is to be anywhere in the world in less than an hour. If we are able to take speed to the next level, we will no longer to have bases all across the word.

The second area the DOD is focusing on is improving and developing new Unmanned Vehicles. The goal of these programs is to get the pilots out of the vehicles eventually. Knowing many people within AFROTC, I could just imagine the look of horror upon hearing this news. By getting the pilots out of the vehicles, you can utilize the planes to the fullest capacity possible. The human body can only take so much, but remotely piloted vehicles do not face similar problems. General Cartwright also stressed that these unmanned vehicles are much cheaper than traditional aircraft. For the cost of one F-22, you could have an entire squadron of Predators.

Finally, the last area of focus for DOD innovation is Medicine. In the current conflicts, there is a 98% survival rate because of the advances made in medicine. Many advances within the field of medicine have come within the field of prosthetics.  Current DOD innovations focus on the continual improvement of prosthetics. General Cartwright discussed that the next area the DOD is researching is how to merge prosthetics with the human brain. He mentioned one experiment where researchers merged a chip with the test subject's brain. Researchers discovered that the brain could not tell the difference between the prosthetic and the real thing. 

It was certainly worthwhile to listen to General Cartwright speak at Penn State. Listening to the various efforts by the Department of Defense was fascinating. It will be interesting to see what innovations and research comes out of Department of Defense funded research in the next few years.

Required #4 (Late) - Think Tanks

Writing this blog entry months after it was originally due it is interesting to compare my thoughts on think tanks to what I now know. Before taking this class, I had some a vague idea of the role of think tanks in shaping American public policy. This summer I interned at the Peacekeeping Stability Operations Institute at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA. Depending on who you talk to PKSOI is either a governmental think tank or a research center.  Either way, PKSOI plays a role in shaping future Army doctrine. During my internship, I had the opportunity to attend two different RAND briefings. These experiences helped shape my earliest experiences and knowledge with think tanks in America.

At the beginning of the semester, I viewed think tanks as these organizations that conducted research and wrote these long documents publishing the details of their research. After this semester, I have to come to realize that think tanks actually play a much larger role in shaping public policy in America. Along with these publications, think tanks present to members of Congress and other decision makers. Before our trip to CSIS, I did not realize how common it was for members of think tanks to rotate between jobs in the government and think tanks. This familiarity within the government allows think tanks to help shape policy even more than I had thought possible.

One of the biggest concerns I see going into the future for think tanks is the rise of partisanship.  Ideally, think tanks would remain bipartisan and look at the issues and work to determine what is in the best interests in the United States as a whole. Instead, some think tanks are switching to a more partisanship focus. Instead of working to look at all of the issues, they focus on promoting policy options that their donors support. This can create a conflict of interests for researchers who may avoid publishing research that runs contradictory to the think tanks partisan views. 

If more think tanks switch towards partisan politics, it weakens the credibility of the community as a whole. Policy makers, who are undecided on an issue, could now be hesitant to consult a think tank for further information if they know all they are going to receive is partisan information. This not only weakens think tanks, but also harms the American people. I would much rather have my Congressional Representatives made informed decisions on the most pressing issues facing America. 

This is not to say that all thinks are moving towards partisan politics. During our trip to CSIS, they made it clear that they were a bi-partisan think tank. Almost every speaker mentioned it at least once that CSIS explored both sides of the issue. More think tanks should follow the model of CSIS and move towards bipartisanship. For some think tanks, I recognize that this is not entirely feasible, but they should at least mention potential negatives associated with their idea. I do not really expect a Libertarian think to come out and explore the benefits of socialism, but they should at least recognize pitfalls of Libertarianism.   

Inspired #8 - Class Wrapup

 As the semester ends, now is the perfect time to summarize my feelings on IST 445H - Globalization, Trends, and World Issues. When I originally signed up for this class, I had no clue what I had just registered to take. All I knew was that we would be going to Washington D.C. later in the semester. Since I am not in the Schreyer's Honor College, I was initially hesitant to take an honors designated course. In the end, I am glad that I signed up for this class despite not it counting for anything within the Security and Risk Analysis degree requirements. I learned more in this class about public policy, than any other class I have taken so far at Penn State. After this class, I am definitely interested in potentially working in the public policy field. I think that more students within SRA would benefit if they could take this class for Support of Option credit. 

The readings throughout the semester were certainly interesting and insightful if not frustrating at times.  While heavily criticized by the class, Thomas Friedman and The World is Flat set the mood for future discussions within the class. From reading Freidman, we were able to see an idealistic perspective on technology and policy. Friedman believes that technology is the solution to the world's problems and globalization will save the world. While I did not always agree with Friedman, I can at least understand where he is coming from.

Following weeks of Friedman, we moved into two weeks discussing what think tanks actually are. This was an insightful two weeks, but felt out of place in the semester. From what I understand the trip to CSIS normally occurs in October and not late November. Normally, the trip to Washington D.C. follows the discussion of what think tanks actually are.  While out of place this year, these two weeks were great at clarifying what think tanks actually do. Prior to this week, as a class we lacked a general definition of what a think tank actually does. In those two weeks, we were able to definitely give a much better idea of what think tanks do.

Following the discussion of think tanks, we switched gears to my favorite topic of the semester, The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov. Unlike Friedman, Morozov takes a contrarian view on the role of technology going into the future. I really enjoyed this section of the class, as Morozov repeatedly destroyed Friedman throughout his book. As a Security and Risk Analysis major, it was interesting to look at Morozov analyze many of the issues that we have talked about in our classes. You can use technology for good, but for every "good" use, someone else is thinking of ways to use it for nefarious purposes.

In conclusion, I learned more in this class than in some of the classes I am required to take for my major despite this class not counting for anything. Through discussions with both Dr. Tapia and other students, I was able to look at the issues from different perspectives than before. I would recommend that anybody interested in working in the public policy community take this class in the future as the experiences in this class cannot be replicated anywhere else at Penn State.

Inspired #7 - Group Project

Working on this group project has definitely been an interesting, rewarding and tiring experience. Every Sunday we were in the IST building for 2-3 hours at a time to write at least 500 words. The final Sunday we spent 8 hours finishing our paper. All the time spent was definitely worth it as we had a sense of accomplishment when we finally turned in the paper. The highlight of the project definitely had to be when we found out we discovered that we were only required to write at least 5,000 words not the 10,000 we thought. 

Going into this project, I only had a rudimentary understanding of the Mexican drug cartels. I knew that they were growing in that power and that they were causing major problems within in Mexico. After this project however, I have a much better understanding of the severity of the problems in Mexico. The cartels effectively own North Mexico and are slowly unraveling Mexican sovereignty. It will not be long before Mexico is a failed-state as the government is unable to combat the cartels.

One of the issues that we struggled with throughout the project was the constraints of the assignment for our topic. For the assignment, we were to discuss only the international policies associated with our topic. For our topic, this proved difficult, as significant reforms are needed domestically if we wish to combat the threat of the cartels. During the presentation, we found ourselves in the awkward position as the judges absolutely hammered us on failing to address domestic issues in our policy presentation. Without coming out and outright saying that we could not address those issues, it was difficult to answer the questions. The difficult questions did teach me an important going into the future; never fail to address the obvious solution. 

This policy project, definitely gave us insight into what actually happens at thinks tanks like the Center for Strategic and International solutions. Think tasks work to solve the difficult questions that do not have a simple solution. If the easy solutions existed, policy makers would not think tanks to help solve the problems. I wish that Scott had been able to come up from CSIS to give us his impressions on our project from the think tanks perspective. Unfortunately, he had another appointment and was unable to make it up to Penn State to listen to our presentations.

In conclusion, this project was definitely worth the amount of work that our group put in over the last parts of the semester. It is was interesting to look at how far we had come as a group from the first problem identification portion that we turned in that first week. Since that first week, we identified the issue and created a reasonable international solution to combat the drug cartels. While we should have at least identified the obvious domestic solutions, we created a potential solution internationally that can help Mexico in the long run. The experiences gained this semester will be beneficial going into the future as I explore potential careers in the field of public policy.

Inspired #6 - Jerry Sandusky Abuse Scandal

The past month will perhaps have been the strangest month I ever live. When I woke up on November 4 2011, I did not expect the future of Penn State to change radically in front of my eyes. Since it was our bye week, I was planning to watch the other teams across the college football landscape. Instead, the news came out that former Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky was now facing over 40+ charges of sex crimes with young boys.  Along two with Sandusky, two prominent members of the Penn State faced charges of perjury based on testimony made during the grand jury. After reading the grand jury, I felt physically ill as I read of the stories of abuse these boys allegedly faced from Sandusky. Reading that report, I knew that things would never be the same in Happy Valley.

 The story quickly spread like wildfire across the various news sites and social media services across the world. Just hours, after the story broke in the United States, I knew people in Australia asking what is going on at Penn State. The lead story of NBC nightly news that evening was the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal. In the week that followed, I saw at least 10 to 15 news vans parked outside of Beaver Stadium each morning. ESPN effectively covered the scandal 24/7 during that immediate week following the release of the charges.

On Wednesday November 8, 2011, the Pennsylvania State Board of Trustees decided to fire Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier for their actions in the cover up. Within minutes of the Board of Trustees announcement thousands of students flocked to Beaver Canyon. For the first few hours, the gathered students remained peaceful and somber. Around midnight, the situation took a turn for the worse as the behavior shifted from peaceful to violent. Students overturned a news van and pulled out light posts along Beaver Canyon. Eventually, the police were able to gain control of the situation and dispersed the crowd.

As a student at Penn State, I have had difficulty understanding the actions taken by all of those involved in the cover up. I am waiting to withhold complete judgment until all of the facts come out during the trial, the facts as known are damning for all of those involved. How can Coach Paterno who has made a career requiring football players to do more than the minimum, just do the minimum when told of these serious allegations? How did Penn State benefit from covering up these serious allegations? Why did it take so long for Penn State, outside of Graham Spanier, to respond following the indictments?

For better or worse, this scandal has revealed the power of the media to shape the scandal in this new digital age. Since the scandal, I have read many "facts" being reported by the media on various social media sites. Some of these so-called facts went so far beyond the truth of the situation that I became angered at the lack of journalistic integrity. I am sorry, but starting a rumor that the Second Mile is prostituting young boys to rich donors is despicable. The fact that multiple news sites picked up this story without a repeatable source displays the slow decay of journalistic integrity within the industry.

The actions of the leaders at Penn State in the immediate aftermath of the scandal will become a case study in what not to do in the digital age. The only statement to come out of Penn State in the initial aftermath was the misguided statement from then President Graham Spanier. Perhaps if Penn State had reacted in the immediate aftermath, they could have changed the story told by the media. Instead, the media had free-reign to report the story in ways that sold newspapers and got television viewers. By the time Penn State reacted, it was too late to change the presentment of the story told by the national media. In the digital age, organizations and people must react quickly to stay on top of how the media presents the story. 

This scandal will hang over Penn State for the years to come until the trial and subsequent lawsuits are settled. Unfortunately, those not involved in the scandal will end up paying the most, as the scandal continues to loom overhead. The actions of a few do not define the masses. Going into the future my only hope is that the alleged victims of sexual abuse will obtain a sense of closure should Jerry Sandusky be found guilty of these alleged despicable crimes.