From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller [00:00:09]:
Welcome to From the Crows' Nest, our AOC members only and subscriber edition. I am your host, Ken Miller, Director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. It's great to be here with you again today. Thanks for listening. I want to welcome those who are in our live virtual studio audience today. As a reminder, you can see us, but we can't see you. So please use the chat function to introduce yourself, ask questions, comments, suggest topics. I mean, we're open for anything right now.

Ken Miller [00:00:40]:
We don't give names out on the air, so feel free to either use your name or you can make your name up. You know, whichever makes you feel best. But please take the time to contribute your thoughts and questions to today's show. Before I introduce my guest today or my guest co host today, I want to mention that of course March is Women's History Month. Each year we highlight the accomplishments and contributions of women in ew. We actually do this throughout the entire year, but March is the national month for it. So throughout the show or throughout. So throughout the show, please use the ch.

Ken Miller [00:01:17]:
Please use this chance to share your thoughts on influential women in EW or in your life that you know have. Have helped move the community, the EW community forward. And of course, from the Crow's Nest show, each show this month, we will have. We will be featuring women leaders in our community. We have some great shows planned. So let's get to it. My guest today and co host for today is retired US army colonel, small businesswoman, subject matter expert, and congressional candidate. Former congressional candidate for the first district of North Carolina, Lori Mo Buckout.

Ken Miller [00:01:57]:
The list. The list of your accomplishments just keeps going. Lori. So she is. She is one of my favorite leaders in our community. And it's been an honor to know her now, I think, for about 15 years. So thank you so much for taking time to join me on the show. How are you doing?

Laurie Buckhout [00:02:12]:
I'm doing great. It is so good to see you again. Like I said earlier, I like you rocking the beard. That's a great look. And yeah, I mean, it's great to be back. I've missed the community. I kind of went into semi retirement down here in North Carolina when we moved and I sold my business. I really miss the gang.

Laurie Buckhout [00:02:32]:
I miss electronic warfare. I miss cyberspace. And it's great to be back. Thank you so much for having me on.

Ken Miller [00:02:39]:
Fortunately, in our community, we don't really let people retire, so we just keep kind of finding out where you move to and we'll track you down. And find a way to bring you back into the fold. But, you know, it's. It's great to kind, you know, keep in touch with you. I obviously follow everywhere you've been going here in the recent years, and, you know, I. I just greatly appreciate all that you bring to the table. So just to kind of get started as we, you know, as our audience, let me open up the chat, actually, so I can actually see who. Anyone who does message in.

Ken Miller [00:03:13]:
But, you know, as audience participants, you know, think about what questions they want to ask. Just to kind of kick things off. We're going to start recent. Kind of the elephant in the room. You and I both, you know, we both met Obviously, through the AOC back down in DC. You were the Director of Army EW back in 20 2006. 7, 8. Somewhere around there, back in the Mesozoic.

Ken Miller [00:03:40]:
It feels like forever ago, but D.C. is a unique place. I lived there for 25 years. I always say that. It's like, it's a place where many people live the worst versions of themselves and are proud of it. And it's also where Congress, obviously, with Congress. So talk to us. Can you share a little bit about your experience as a congressional candidate, kind of what you wanted to bring to the table and kind of what that experience was? Because I think a lot of times we don't get a chance to really understand.

Ken Miller [00:04:13]:
A lot of people don't understand what goes into a congressional campaign. The work, the challenges. Is there anything that you like? What was your kind of takeaway in terms of that experience?

Laurie Buckhout [00:04:24]:
Okay, so. So, you know, I've done a couple things in my life. You know, a year in Iraq during the ground war, which was. It was crazy with the war, the big fobs and stuff set up, and I mean, it was just all nastiness and craziness and. And fire coming all the time. Started a small business, ran it, sold it, gave birth to two kids, one with no pain medication. You know, grew up on a farm with cattle and worked. Pretty much worked my whole life.

Laurie Buckhout [00:04:55]:
Right. My husband remarked, after watching me go through all of these things in my life, we've been married over 30 years. He goes, I've never seen it work that hard. I had never worked that hard. So it was a huge district. It's 22 counties. It's also the poorest district in the state and the 15th poorest district in the state, excuse me, in the country, from the bottom. So it had a lot of challenges.

Laurie Buckhout [00:05:20]:
And as a new candidate, I really had to get out there and meet everybody. The rewards were immense. It very much reminded me of leading troops and being a soldiering. And my experience with soldiering was a whole lot of side by side work. You're never in front as some sort of a, you know, gilded statue. You're, you're down there with the troops working. And I found that especially true with communications. Folks had so much to learn from so many of my troops.

Laurie Buckhout [00:05:51]:
I learned so much from so many of the citizens of this district. So incredibly rewarding. So that's what you see on the ground. It's a very intimate fight. And then up in Congress, it's also intimate, depending on the caucus that you're in, Democrat or Republican. I happen to be in a Republican caucus. It's very close, it's very friendly, it's very collegial. They want you there.

Laurie Buckhout [00:06:13]:
Most of them want you there. There are a few wackos in either caucus who are all about themselves, all about their own money because that's a very expensive thing to do. But most of them want you there because you bring another vote for, for your side, if you will. Some are more bipartisan than others. You see every flavor of, in my case, Republican because you see every flavor across America of kinds of districts. Some are just toss up districts, some are very hard read. Some are all about gun rights and some are all about, you know, homeowners associations. So you see that reflection and it's a microcosm of America reflected in elected individuals.

Laurie Buckhout [00:06:59]:
Really a tremendous learning process and reminded me very much of the military. It's a big melting pot. You see people from all over. They are reflecting their individual family circumstances, their neighborhoods, their states, their locales. It's a whole lot like that. And that sense of collegiality is very much the same as well. But I've never worked harder. Hard, hard work.

Ken Miller [00:07:22]:
Yeah, it's really, it's a really interesting animal because I, you know, I've been touching on congressional stuff for about almost 25 plus years and you know, ransom campaigns and everything. So you kind of see it from both sides. So many good people in D.C. that when you, it's a shame sometimes that they are not the ones that get elevated and highlighted in terms of the work that they're trying to do oftentimes just on the behalf of their district, you know, and it's, it's, there's a lot of good there. It's just that, you know, sometimes I think when you get into the politics of D.C. and, and Congress, it just, there's, it's just a really interesting and quite frankly unique place to, to live and work. And, and of course a lot of the members, they come back and forth to the district, so they, there's a lot of influence from around the country coming in like you know, co other staff that you're working with from other parts of the country. So it's a great experience.

Ken Miller [00:08:21]:
But you know, we, we were, we were all pulling for you and, and we look forward to the next chapter. And, and, and I, and I know that obviously you'll, you'll succeed and excel, whatever that is, even if it's going on vacations, which you is well deserved. So appreciate that.

Laurie Buckhout [00:08:40]:
So I had a couple of those. It was pretty awesome.

Ken Miller [00:08:42]:
Yeah, I can imagine. So just I wanted to kind of spend a few moments just kind of talking a little bit about your, your, your career, where it's taken you. I remember we had numerous conversations back in my first stint with the aoc. Like I said, it's probably about the same time you took over the, the Army EW mission. I don't know what you call the, I forget the, the actual name of your. The Army EW Directorate.

Laurie Buckhout [00:09:18]:
Directorate, yeah. Division.

Ken Miller [00:09:21]:
Division. Okay.

Laurie Buckhout [00:09:21]:
Yeah, Diff.

Ken Miller [00:09:23]:
So talk a little, talk to us a little bit, you know, from your EW expertise. You know, talk to us a little bit about coming into that position and what it meant for army ew because, and, and I think, you know, obviously a follow up question and discussion is going to be what has really changed time. There's been a lot that has changed and then there's still other things that we need to continue to work on. So just as a way of kind of introducing where we're at as a community, be interested in your thoughts about how, how what was it like to move into this position in, to, to lead the EW Division for the army and what it meant for you and your career as well as just kind of who you are as a person.

Laurie Buckhout [00:10:09]:
I came in smack dab in the middle of rice bowls. I had spent two years in the Pentagon before that. Most of my time in tactical units and I went to the Joint Staff right out of Iraq and battalion command, so was not an experienced Pentagon leader. The Joint Staff gave me a couple years to understand the Pentagon and it really does take months and years to understand, especially the budgeting process, all the organization with osd, with the services, all the side parts there, the combatant commands, the whole nine yards. Understanding how they all work together and the authorities on each and how to be a really, really Good staff officer. One of the things that my dad taught me very early on, as a retired colonel himself, was that a good staff officer never takes no for an answer. So I was hired, if you will, out of the Joint Staff. I just gotten promoted to Colonel and I declined the War College.

Laurie Buckhout [00:11:04]:
I didn't want to go because they wanted to send me to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And I had two little boys who were in great schools and I was not going to be separated from them again. So I declined. A whole lot of shock happened then, oh, she's declining the War College, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, what are you going to do to me? Because I was blessed to already had gotten two master's degrees through the GI Bill. I went at night. And then one year when I went to Commanding General Staff College, I doubled up. I got two degrees while I was there, going at nights, weekends, and then my regular classes.

Laurie Buckhout [00:11:34]:
So it's not like I needed another degree. And I said, okay, I'm going to decline. So at that point I had briefed a couple times on counter IED and electronic warfare stuff and I was learning a lot about that because I had a spectrum background already. I was one of the very few signal officers who had that spectrum background because I went to the last class, which was a six month course as a second lieutenant on radio systems, RF engineering, antenna wave theory, wave propagation, et cetera. So I understood the spectrum like very few commissioned officers did. So anyway, IEDs were kicking up. I happened to work for an EA6B guy, a Navy guy in the Joint Staff in 06. So he and I started looking at the problem from our two vantage points.

Laurie Buckhout [00:12:25]:
Me as a ground combatant, understanding the spectrum and as a single battalion commander, very much understanding all the emitters and collectors that are in a battle space. Because as a battalion commander with, you know, teams, about 40 teams spread out all over Iraq, embedded with different types of combat and non combat units, you have to understand what their needs were. Some of them were, for instance, we had to have near real time video for one of the caches of combat support hospitals. So we had to have really good data, really reliable communications, always going into that hospital because they were doing telemedicine, they're trying to piece soldiers back together and they needed real time information. So they had one need, right? Your intel units have another need. Then you look at all the emitters out there that individual soldiers carry, that are radars, there's all sorts of stuff. And you need to make sure that you're not interfering with those. When you're doing your communications.

Laurie Buckhout [00:13:22]:
So between that looking at how roadside bombs were being triggered and blown up and me understanding the spectral battle space around those things, and then you bring in this Navy captain who flew EA6BS, which are jammers. So. And they're mostly for suppression of enemy air defenses, et cetera. But we worked out ways to repurpose those to do pre detonation to, you know, to jam the signal going to the bombs that would blow them up that were killing our troops. We briefed at one point General Peter Pace, who was chairman Joint Chiefs. In that room when he was being briefed was the Vice chief of staff of the Army, Dick Cody, who was four star. And so when I was determined I wasn't going to go to war college, I said I'm not going to do it. The deputy of the J6 said to me was an army two star.

Laurie Buckhout [00:14:17]:
Dennis Moran says, we just got a request to have you come over to the army and start to figure out this EW counter IED stuff for them. I said, who'd that come from? He said, General Cody today is one of my greatest mentors and I talk to him regularly and he's just amazing, still flying helicopters. And I said okay. So I went over there, but here's what I interrupted. I know this is a long diatribe, but I, but I really went in the middle of three rice bowls. I went into the middle of the intel rice bowl which is they want to keep it here. I went into the middle of the signal rice bowl which is they want to keep their signal folks. And then I went into the middle of the field artillery rice bowl because electronic attack is fires.

Laurie Buckhout [00:15:00]:
So General Cody's direction was set this up as fires because that's how we saw it from a attack helicopters guy's perspective, fires, attack helicopters, et cetera. So went out and spoke to the, the guy out at Leavenworth who was sort of running all those trade off things and that was General Petraeus. I knew Petraeus from Iraq. He was commanding the 101st out there and got to know him. And I said, hey, the Vice wants to put it at, at Fort Sill and make it artillery. What do you think? He goes, let's split the baby. So he split electronic attack at Fort Sill, electronic protect at Fort Gordon and electronic support and SIGINT at Fort Huachuca, home of the intel. So that's what I walked into and it's kind of been a food fight since then.

Ken Miller [00:15:49]:
So a couple, a couple of follow up questions, you Know, one of the challenges that I've seen as I engage military leaders and, you know, officers and agencies and so forth is you mentioned the rice bowls and, and they all have their, their proceed, their policies, procedures in place and everything. All that's, you know, you. We can talk, we can talk a lot about that. But the frustrating thing I often run into is the assumptions one rice bowl will errantly make about another rice bowl because they don't quite understand what's going on. And I always, I've used in the past, I was watching a number of years ago, I was watching a trial or like a, a, a war game. And the assumption was from one service was that the assets of another service would be present and effective in everything that they need to do in the spectrum. And it allows them then to, to accomplish a mission. And so it's, you're just.

Ken Miller [00:16:57]:
And you sit back and like, well, but yet if you asked that other equity about that assumption, they're like, no, we can't be there. We can't. We can't secure the spectrum. So that assumption is wrong. So how do you, in that position where you're going in the middle of these race poles, how do you go about making sure, hey, we all do have different missions, but we all need to be aligned in our assumptions of what the other is doing so that we understand the complexity of the spectrum.

Laurie Buckhout [00:17:28]:
I really started some big collaboration. I started, you know, collaborative meetings, creating policy. You need leadership. I really hate bureaucracy. But sometimes, you know, especially in the military, where things are just so ingrained over decades of doing something a certain way, and the army especially brings folks up in a certain capability field, mos, whatever you want to call it, and it becomes very insular. Sometimes that's good because you can become really, really good at your craft. There was a time a couple decades ago when the army was going through a downsizing, rif, all that kind of stuff, where the chief of staff of the army came out and said, every soldier needs to be a pentathlete, meaning you gotta be good at everything. It's not realistic.

Laurie Buckhout [00:18:16]:
So being able to have real subject matter experts is a good thing. But we had to bring about tools and myself in the G3 of the army, meaning you could have tasking authority, you could tell people in the army what to do because you had the G3 sign off on it. And his authority came right from the chief staff of the Army. So it enabled pushing people together and making them collaborate. And there it was a lot of broken hearts and a Lot of gnashing and wailing and tearing of hair and clothing for the first couple of years. It became much better as things went on. Not sure it's still all fixed. I think it's getting better and I'm not sure, but I know there's somebody in the chat right there.

Laurie Buckhout [00:19:00]:
I think there still might be a little bit of a leadership vacuum across the services writ large to force that company collaboration. I know there's the EW XCOM at OSD level. Not sure what the authorities are on that. I think that's more of a talking space, if you will. So I'm not sure the authorities are still there for collaboration, for spectrum management tools, for, you know, attack authorities, all that sort of thing. I'm not sure that there is still. That there is enough of a head of the beast to force collaboration because it does need to be forced. That's just how life is.

Ken Miller [00:19:41]:
We have someone from our audience, they, they say thank, thank you for your inspirational dedication and service to our country. I think we all share that opinion. And in your opinion, what is the most significant need the EW community is currently facing and what strategy would you suggest to meet them?

Laurie Buckhout [00:20:02]:
You know, asked this years ago at a conference, I said it was electronic attack. I'm not quite sure. I think that is. That's a huge problem. I mean, you look at what's going on in Ukraine and Russia right now, that's a huge problem. And by the way, one of the biggest providers of drones to Russia is through Iran, which, you know, those of us in the know raised Iran as a red flag on the, on the EW field years ago. I was told I was dangerous for bringing that up and hey, that's fine with me. Call me dangerous, but listen while you do it because truth, truth should be dangerous.

Laurie Buckhout [00:20:43]:
Bingo. So, so anyway though, I would. I think I'm going to go back to spectrum management and spectrum management tools. We created the requirement in 2007. It was signed off in 2007 as a joint requirement for spectrum management tools. I had been working with the Joint ID Defeat organization before that, myself and my team to get funding for some of the tools that were out there. The Marines were using a tool then, the army was using a tool. None of it was compatible with airborne Systems, you know, Link 16, that sort of thing.

Laurie Buckhout [00:21:20]:
But it was a start and I see we're still stumbling around on that and that's frustrating and I'm not quite sure who is leading that at the DoD level and making sure that everyone's playing Together. So I think I would say spectrum management trumps everything because if you don't know what's on your battle space, you can't say we need more ea, we need more ep, we need more hardening protection because you don't know what's out there.

Ken Miller [00:21:50]:
You mentioned earlier in one of your responses about when you were on the ground over in Iraq and you know, trying to figure out the IED problem, or maybe it was over when you're at a. You were already back here when you taught we were working on the issue. You meant, you mentioned how there was a lot of competing users in the spectrum. There's a little, little bit of, there was a lot of congestion, obviously. Was that somewhat of a surprise to the, for the fighting force, the joint force over in that how complicated the spectrum actually was? Did we have an oversimplified version then? Um, and I, I ask you that because when we, I agree with you with spectrum management. It's, it's. There doesn't seem to be that leadership out there for that. But we know now how complex and chaotic the spectrum is.

Ken Miller [00:22:57]:
So not having a Solution back in 2006, an immediate answer back, that's one thing. But not having the solution now when we know what the problem is, I think is a much graver danger. Want to get your thoughts on that? In terms of how our thinking maybe has been adjusted from the time that you were over in Iraq to now in terms of what the spectrum is like as an operating, as a maneuver.

Laurie Buckhout [00:23:22]:
Space, you know, until combat leaders want to understand it and take it and take it seriously, it's going to continue to be treated as kind of a cottage industry, one of the G3s of the army, he's like, you know, you're really geeky, but I really appreciate you making us understand this. And I'm like, well, okay, I've been shot at and so have you. And we probably need to be rethinking that because frankly, you look at what's going on in Russia and Ukraine right now and you look at who is supplying who with drones, you look at all the mysterious drones we had off the east coast and stuff recently, UAS capabilities, EW capabilities, all these sort of small scale non kinetics are all of a sudden large scale now. So you continue to have senior commanders who are commanding armies, are commanding the army, the Navy, they're commanding combatant commands, not understand the physics behind this. And it's not brain surgery. I mean, I have an English undergrad and for me I just soaked it up very quickly. You just have to think about it and have somebody make it important. I think it was commander General Bruce Clark back in the day said a unit only does does those things well that the commander inspects, meaning commanders need to make sure that they're interested in something before it happens.

Laurie Buckhout [00:24:46]:
Well, and that's the same thing about the spectrum. It's the same thing about ew. Most commanders still don't understand it. They're saying EW more and more often. They equate it to cyber and they don't understand the different effects. They're beginning to, but until it becomes important to somebody who's in a major command position. And you know, I talked about the stovepipes and how we train people. Officers are trained in a certain way to focus on certain things.

Laurie Buckhout [00:25:16]:
If they don't have that broadened and that perspective broadened to understand how non kinetics are becoming the most incredibly dangerous wave of the future, then we're going to stay ignorant and we're going to stay at a point where we're not realizing the best we can do. It frustrated me greatly with this whole thing with Iraq and counter IEDs. How many soldiers died needlessly because commanders were not trained? We didn't have ewos. We didn't have folks who understood the spectrum. In complex terrain, we were fielding different types of jammers for the different forces. The Marine Corps and the army jammers jammed each other. They had to stay out of the same battle space because they would jam each other and ignore the ID that was blowing them up. You know, nonsense like that was, you know, causing fatalities.

Laurie Buckhout [00:26:11]:
And again, it's not brain surgery. It's just something that you, you have to want to fix. So it's still a problem. It's still a problem.

Ken Miller [00:26:21]:
So with fixing, fixing MSO moving forward, I want to kind of talk a little bit about where we're at today. You know, we obviously have a new administration, a new Congress. You know, I think, actually, I think his President Trump's. It's not a State of the Union, it's a address to the joint session or whatever they're calling it this year because of the new administration. But I think that's going on tonight, if I'm not mistaken. So I'm sure that there'll be some interesting insight into foreign policy, military security matters. We're at war in, in Ukraine. It's not just Ukraine against Russia.

Ken Miller [00:26:59]:
It us is right there because we're, we've provided so much money and weapons and stuff over the, over the last couple years. So we're at war. We're over there. We have obviously there's Iran, there's the Middle East, Israel, Indo, Paycom and China. And honestly, you don't take your mind, don't take your eye off of South America, you know, Venezuela. They, you know, what happens if they attack their neighbors, Guyana and, and, and, and cause regional instability? And what does that mean for US Security, especially with their cooperation with China? So there's, it's not just all of our fights aren't just always over there. They're actually much closer to home. And so it's been.

Ken Miller [00:27:45]:
One of the things I've always mentioned was when we're talking about security matters, military operations, it has to start and stop with our understanding of the spectrum. That's where it's going to be won or lost. Because if we don't have that ability to project or achieve or sustain superiority at a time, place and duration of our choosing, we're not going to be able to be successful in these operations. So what are your, some of your thoughts in terms of, from an EW perspective? Obviously we could talk, we could talk from many different perspectives on this, but what, from an EW perspective, what are your thoughts about how do we make sure that we are prepared for the current fights as well as those that are surely on the horizon as consequence for whatever path we choose, there's always going to be conflict in the world. So how do we reform our military? What do we need to kind of do to, to elevate the EW or this mso? Elevate the MSO problem to the level where we have the leaders that want to take care of it and get it right.

Laurie Buckhout [00:29:03]:
That's the, that's the $100,000 question, isn't it? Preparing the army and rebuilding the military, if you will, not just the army, but rebuilding our military to face 21st century threats. We've always had a challenge with that. We're always fighting yesterday's war. I think we have some interesting characters in place right now though. You have Congressman Mike Waltz, who is now director of the National Security Council. Very savvy, savvy cyber guy, non kinetic guy. He's a special operator. He was a, he was a soft guy.

Laurie Buckhout [00:29:40]:
And so they have a little bit of a way to think differently than your average mainstream kinetic warrior. I think you're seeing that in some of the cyber leadership they're putting into place. The Director of Policy at OSD is looking to be the guy who wrote a book called the Strategy of Denial, which deals. And it's a great book, but it mostly deals with focusing on China as our primary threat. Now, that's, of course, I mean, it's a book. It's not just one statement. But if I could boil it down, that's a start to the mission statement in the book. And I do think that China is the most dangerous threat right now.

Laurie Buckhout [00:30:23]:
And I think that's a start. I think it has to take place at the very upper echelons of the Department of Defense. Too often we have taken a look from the services, and the services look bottom up on what they need for the future. That's a great thing to do. It is wonderful to have. I remember having some really great folks write the Army's future strategy from the ground up. Okay, what does a platoon need to do? What does a company need to do? How are we going to fight this? How are we going to support our artillery, guys? How are we going to support the cyber fight? But it's in the vacuum of a greater strategy that defines who is the real global threat to the United States, not just militarily, but economically, culturally, in other domains as well. So I think it does start at policy.

Laurie Buckhout [00:31:19]:
I think we're getting some savvy folks up there who understand non kinetics, they certainly understand cyber, and they're getting to understand ew. And I think that's going to change a lot of things. We want to clean up acquisition, of course, everybody wants to clean up acquisition. I'm not sure the people who are going to try to do it know how hard it is because everyone tries to do it. But, you know, hey, I think we are going to have major changes at the top driving big policy and big strategy. That should change how we fight. Now, just very quickly, I know a man's here forever. Our national military strategy, our national security strategy.

Laurie Buckhout [00:32:01]:
The national security strategy is going to be the pivotal document that is going to drive everything else. And I think we're going to see some big changes come into the ball.

Ken Miller [00:32:12]:
How can I say this when I look at the current administration, what President Trump and this team is bringing. One of the things I've always said, when it gets into foreign policy, especially in security policy, you have to affect your adversaries, risk equations, how they handle risk. The riskier you can make things, the more costly you can make things, and the more time it takes for your adversary to react. In order to change a risk equation, you have to disrupt something. You have to make them unsure about where you're coming from. And I Do I, I've often said, you know, even, even if I disagree with a policy like the disruption and the, it's, it there, there's a, there's a good approach there that has, that is important, I think, in today's world because I think one of the challenges that we actually do have from a military standpoint is we're very, we can be very predictable even when we're, when we're deployed how, you know, it's very easy to get trapped into doing the same thing over and over again and, and, and, and, and, and becoming where our adversary can anticipate exactly what we're going to do and that makes it easier for them. And so I do actually applaud from that perspective. I applaud the administration for what they're doing and the new ideas.

Ken Miller [00:33:41]:
There's a lot of outside the box thinking and almost every week there's something else. I'm like, oh, I haven't thought about it that way. And I enjoy that because it is very refreshing. I think it's from an MSO perspective that is like you mentioned Congressman, former Congressman Waltz, there's, you know, Tulsi Gabbard and Director DNI and a lot of other people that are very good at looking at the problem from a different perspective and coming up with a different approach and just making sure that not everyone has to know exactly what the next step is. So I do, I do think that that's, it's an interesting thing to watch. Another, I want to get to another audience question here. It says with the executive orders, with credit card freezes and stopping of conferences attendance and stuff, how can you talk a little bit about. So the question is basically President Trump did an executive order, I guess last week, basically freezing a lot of attendance to conferences and so forth and travel in this world of military, obviously, in fact, you mentioned it when the army like split the baby, like we, we're going to move the army into three different locations around the country for ew, the information exchange that has to happen is very important in the, in the defense sector and, and we're all dispersed somewhere.

Ken Miller [00:35:10]:
How important is that collaboration to facilitate it to, how important is it to facilitate that collaboration? Do you see those inabilities to travel to, you know, go different places from a, from a active duty government perspective for these information exchanges, conferences, whatever you want to call them? Is that, do you see that as, as how does that change the challenge of collaboration between industry and military?

Laurie Buckhout [00:35:40]:
You know, it is problematic, frankly. But I think it's, I think it's a temporary measure. You know, it's like, it's like walking in and seeing your college age kid going crazy with the, with the, with the credit card you may have gave him just to use for emergencies, right? You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm cutting up all your spending. All right, we got to get this under control. Let's see what you spent. What do you, what do you mean about this? What do you mean about that? I mean, and going through it with a fine tooth comb. I think that's what DOGE is doing in a lot of organizations right now.

Laurie Buckhout [00:36:14]:
And frankly, they're finding a whole lot of sketchy stuff. They really, you know, I spent. Spent almost 40 years, about 30 in the military and then 10 in private industry working, working with that. And there's a whole lot of waste, fraud, abuse. I mean, a ton of it. Part of it, of course, is the budgeting process, which is a real pain in the butt. And that is if you don't spend it this year, you don't get it next year, right? So, you know, as you're a young officer, you're. You're frantically buying stuff.

Laurie Buckhout [00:36:42]:
It's like, okay, we'll get, we'll get baseball bats, you know, something for activities of recreation. I mean, we got all the parts we can buy, so what do we buy? So it doesn't encourage thrift. A lot of these conferences can be boondoggles, and unfortunately, it's given the rest of the folks who are traveling for good reasons a bad name. But I think it'll come back. I think this is just the stopping of the egregious spending because it's definitely out there and we've all seen it. If you spent five minutes inside the government. So in my mind, it's a temporary measure. We do need to collaborate.

Laurie Buckhout [00:37:19]:
But, hey, you know, I ran a whole business basically from my house. I never had an office, headquarters for my business, and it did pretty darn well because of what, you know, Ken, you and I were talking about together earlier. It's like we live, we live on these. I can do spreadsheets on my phone if I need to, but, you know, it's 2025, so there's a whole lot better ways to collaborate day to day, you know, digitally. But I still think we have to be able to get back together again in person. It. It drives things a long way.

Ken Miller [00:37:54]:
So I, you know, I would be remiss if we, we didn't talk a little bit about, you know, obviously, Women's History Month and and the influence of, of women in ew. I just wanted to ask you a little. I mean, obviously you follow your career, and I think one of the things that is so impressed, I've always been impressed with, with following your career is. And this. You know, I don't, I don't mean to put you on the spot on this, but, like, when you came to the Army EW division, you were the first, at least the first person to really. And you came in and you took charge and got stuff done. You then started Corvus and you started other businesses and everything you touch succeeds, which is incredible to me. And talk to me a little bit about, from a, from your, as a woman, what does that mean for.

Ken Miller [00:38:50]:
To, to be able to go in. Like, obviously you have people that you have mentored you and you mentor. Probably there's a lot of people that learn from you, too, as a woman in the army and in your career, being such a leader, what does that mean to you? And in terms of other women out there that are looking to advance their.

Laurie Buckhout [00:39:15]:
Careers, you know, that's really kind and thank you so much. And obviously not everything I touches succeeds. Succeeds. I just lost a congressional race.

Ken Miller [00:39:26]:
I'll say that you actually did succeed in your congressional race in that regard. Yes. Because, like, I remember I had you on the show in the spring, I think it was before the primary. And it was the best conversation because you were like, in between different campaign primary events and meetings, and you were like, scrambling, getting ready, and it was on the phone and, and. But you took a race that was almost not. Was not even on anybody's watch list, and made it extremely close to a point that I think that it shows exactly where we are as a country, the dissatisfaction of how things are run, the need for fresh ideas for fresh people in D.C. and yeah, the final vote was just a little bit short because of certain factors, but you actually succeeded very well in that campaign. And so I just, I'll challenge it, because I can't.

Ken Miller [00:40:28]:
I'm not going to sit here and say that you lost. I can't say that.

Laurie Buckhout [00:40:31]:
Well, you know, thank you for that. I will say what was interesting is that the opposition party spent more against me than on any other race in the United States. My congressional race turned out to be the most expensive race congressionally in America. And so, you know, I made him. Hey, I made him work hard for that, for that win. And I'm happy about that. But. But, you know, as far as, as a woman succeeding writ large, I think my parents taught Me early on to push through fear.

Laurie Buckhout [00:41:09]:
So many, you know, men and women, so many people, you know, kids, teenagers, have. Have an inferiority complex or they have this feeling, whereas, you know, I'm not good enough and imposter syndrome, right? And. And I like people who feel that because they're humble. And frankly, I've always felt that. I always have imposter syndrome. Anytime I walk in someplace, I'm like, whoa, wait a second, they're calling me ma'am, or whatever. It's still, you know, to this day. It is, it is.

Laurie Buckhout [00:41:37]:
It's kind of funny to me. I kind of laugh at myself about it. But pushing through fear is probably the most important thing you can do in life because you can have fear of success, you can have fear of confrontation, you can have physical fear of being shot at and stuff like that. Fear of leading people, fear of being laughed at, fear of everything. There's always something to be fearful of, I think. And I think pushing through that, and my parents teaching me to push through that and learn the so what? What's the worst that can happen Thing. And it was. It was amazing learning to do that.

Laurie Buckhout [00:42:13]:
I will say that I was commissioned in 1984 and went to tactical units and infantry division. It wasn't friendly. It was not friendly at all. There were no female mentors. The few that were kind of floating around out there, they kept it themselves. They didn't want to help anybody out because they didn't want to be seen, you know, not being one of the guys. So it was. It was.

Laurie Buckhout [00:42:35]:
Hostile is the wrong word. But it was a tough environment. It wasn't welcoming. So you learn to come in tough. And I think that's what I did with the EW division. Come in tough. Same thing, starting a business. Come in tough.

Laurie Buckhout [00:42:49]:
The nicest thing somebody, some stranger said about me on the Internet was during the. During the election or during the campaign. A friend of mine that I met in the Pentagon was saying, hey, you know, go Laurie. On my public page. Somebody popped on there who knew that guy, but not me, and said, do you know her? And he says, yeah, we used to work together. And he goes, yeah, I met her during a business deal, and, man, she's tough. And I mean, well, yeah, you know, you gotta be. You're fighting for your people, you're fighting for business, you're fighting for your people's jobs.

Laurie Buckhout [00:43:22]:
And that's how it goes. So again, pushing through fear. Every time you're got your, you know, your guts in a knot, getting ready to go into A meeting or something, just dealing with it and pushing through it. Women were not friendly back in the 80s. They weren't helping each other out. And what I found when I started to command women as a platoon leader, especially as a company commander, was not picking anybody out for special treatment, but just getting things out of the way. One of the things that happened a lot in the army in the old days was that women were assigned to be adjutants and work at office jobs. Or I had a platoon sergeant who wanted to make one of our female soldiers who was a communication specialist, you know, working on multichannel microwave systems, wanted to make her into the company clerk.

Laurie Buckhout [00:44:11]:
She sit there and take notes and, you know, collect. I'm like, no, she was trained, she enlisted to become a multichannel operator. And we're going to make her the best damn multichannel operator out there. She can be a clerk. And so it wasn't about giving anyone special treatment, it was about not giving anyone special treatment. So for me, that's the kind of the idea of Women's History Month is I never won any contract, by the way, as a businesswoman with a woman, woman owned small business set aside. I was brought on to support big businesses because we were good at what we did. Not because of me, but because of who I hired, men and women.

Laurie Buckhout [00:44:48]:
So somebody asked me once at some women's history thing, what can we, as it was a young man, what can we as men do to make, you know, do to make women more successful? And my comment was just, just, just kind of get out of the way. Don't, you know, you don't, like, we don't need you to carry anybody. We, you know, I don't need you to carry me, but if you could remove the artificial impediments, stop trying to make me serve coffee and just let me do my job, you know, and stop trying to look up my skirt. Everything's cool. And, and that's how I feel today. Just let everyone do their job. Color, religion, you know, race, gender. Just let everyone do their job.

Ken Miller [00:45:28]:
Do you, do you feel like there has been, you know, you mentioned in, in the 80s, you know, women didn't support each other, but you started to see that change, you know, as you were coming through here in 2025. Do you feel like, I mean, there's always need for more mentorship working to get, you know, like under working together? Do you feel like there's been some. We're in a better spot now in terms of particularly women coming in the military and coming up getting that Mentorship, getting that support that they need versus how it was, you know, 10, 30, 20, 30 years ago.

Laurie Buckhout [00:46:08]:
You know, I think people care a whole lot less about anything that artificially defines you as a soldier or an airman or a sailor or any of those sorts of things, or as an executive or as a government worker. I think they care a lot less, or I want them to care a lot less about the adjectives. She's a female soldier. She's a, you know, she's a Muslim sailor. I mean, all these adjectives, it is nice to see those disappear. I think people of this generation, the younger you get, the less they care. I talk to my kids about it. They're like, we don't care.

Laurie Buckhout [00:46:44]:
We don't even really notice, you know, a color or, you know, sexual orientation, that nobody really cares. And it's nice to see that. So I don't want to see a backlash of folks who, Who. Who are trying to push back against women serving here or women not serving here. I think it's become an artificial problem. And the more we push gender forward, when gender is not needed to push forward. I love getting rid of adjectives. I really do.

Laurie Buckhout [00:47:24]:
I love to say, that's a sailor over there, and that sailor needs to come do this job right now, period.

Ken Miller [00:47:31]:
Well, Laurie, we're approaching the end of our time, so I wanted to. To thank you once again for joining me here on the show. Really good thoughts. As we were catching up, I mentioned I'm the father of three girls, and so I'm always looking for role models and examples to show them of people who, as you mentioned and the audience liked, push through the fear. Everything that you're going to confront in life, you have to push through it and be strong and give them examples of success that they can either mirror or engage to learn from. And you're certainly one of those women that I have, you know, always. I've talked to my girls about. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to have Lori Buckhead on my podcast.

Ken Miller [00:48:23]:
And they're like, what's a podcast? But then I, I talk to them a little bit about it, and I put. I. I have them set up with the microphone and the earphones at home so they can practice their podcasting with me. And. But, you know, I'm always looking for that. So I really appreciate everything you've done. And just generally, from a professional standpoint, Laurie, you. You have.

Ken Miller [00:48:43]:
We've known each other for a long time. You've always just championed the right causes and worked hard And I really appreciate it. And our community is so much better off today because of your direct influence and work. And I really appreciate that.

Laurie Buckhout [00:48:58]:
Well, Ken, right back at you. And I know we're running out of time, but my dad was my greatest champion, and it looks like you are your girl's greatest champion. And having a strong father figure makes strong women. It really, really does. So I can't emphasize that enough. So good on you. It is great to be back. You know, I miss the community.

Laurie Buckhout [00:49:18]:
So we'll see what happens, you know, the next few weeks as far as my future goes. And hope I get a chance to see you guys again soon. And thank you so much for having me on. Love it.

Ken Miller [00:49:29]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much. All right, well, that will conclude this episode of from the Crow's Nest. I want to thank my special guest, Lori Buckhout for joining me here on the show. As always, don't or as always, please take a moment to review, share, subscribe to this podcast. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners. And one note is that we are all we are. We are currently doing a listener survey for our podcast and and you can get a link to that survey through the show Notes.

Ken Miller [00:49:59]:
Please take a moment to fill that listener survey out. Let us know how we're doing. Let us know what we can improve. We always want to respond to our listeners. And as an added bonus, if you take the survey and you complete the survey, you will be eligible to receive a free from the Crow's Nest podcast T shirt while supplies last. So please, please take a moment to do that. Help us. Help us create the best show possible for our community and for those out there interested in this topic.

Ken Miller [00:50:30]:
That's it for today. Thanks for listening.