How the Trump administration's defense policies are affecting women in service
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This is On Point. I'm Magna Chakrabarty. Today we're joined by Kylan Hunter. She's the founder of the Women, Peace and Security Initiative and an adjunct political scientist at RAND. She's also a Marine Corps combat veteran with several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan where she served as an AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter attack pilot. Retired Major Hunter, welcome to On Point.

Thank you so much for having me. Let me start by asking you, when you hear the term warrior ethos, how would you define that? So the term warrior ethos is a term that has been used for millennia, really, to describe

talk about the principles, the morals, the standards for those in which that are charged to fight a nation's war that is there. So when we think about warrior ethos in a broad term, and this is something that as a Marine was a big part of my own life, that it's about embodying the core values of honor, courage, and commitment. It's about the...

respect that you have for your fellow comrades at arms. And it's about ensuring that good order and discipline prevail so that those who are asked to do incredibly, incredibly hard things can do so. But it is also unfortunately a term that sometimes gets

co-opted or used inappropriately. But broadly and largely, the warrior ethos is something that we should all, all of us who have fought and who are actively in the military, should aspire to. Do you mind if we spend a couple of minutes talking about how this ethos has flowed through your life and your service? I mean, how old were you when you decided to join the Marine Corps?

So when I decided to join the Marine Corps, I had just graduated from college. So I was in my early 20s. And it was, I don't come from a military background. It is not something that I had, frankly, spent much time thinking about in my previous life. And so when I went to officer candidate school, one of the key things that happens, whether it's at officer candidate school or boot camp or recruit training or in a ROTC type program is to

effectively break down the civilian life that you had had in order to rebuild people up as military leaders. And so for me, it was a...

a relearning of really what honor, courage and commitment meant. It was an embodiment of shared experiences with my fellow Marines. It was a way in which we created and really transmitted from one generation down to another a strong culture of honor. Yeah. And Major, why did you decide to join the Marine Corps?

I wanted to serve. I wanted a job that had real meaning to it. You know, I think like many people, when I was done with college, I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do. And when I learned about the opportunities that I could have with military service, it was something that was very attractive to me. And, you know, I felt called to want to give back to this country. Yeah.

And in those early years even of training, what was it like for you? I mean, obviously mentally and physically. And was there ever a moment where you didn't just think of yourself as a Marine, but maybe, I don't know, due to circumstances surrounding you, you thought of yourself as a woman in the Marine Corps? Yeah.

Absolutely. The training for any job in the military is hard and rigorous, and it should be. We are asking people to do hard things and high standards are required for that.

hard things. And so what? It was physically difficult. Not going to lie. Anyone who says that their training was easy is not telling you the truth. So it was physically difficult and it should be, again, to have those shared standards. Major, can I just jump in here? Because for the many, many, many Americans who have not been through this experience, I think...

specifics and stories really bring the experience to life. So was there like a, regarding the physical training, we'll talk about the mental in a minute, but was there like, do you have a story of a particular moment where you were like, yeah, this is really hard? Yeah.

So for me, when I was at Officer Candidate School, working through the obstacle course was incredibly, incredibly difficult for me. It was new ways of moving my body that I hadn't before. I could run really fast. That was something I had going to my advantage when I started Officer Candidate School, but I had not tried to do things like running.

Throwing my body over parallel bars or having to climb ropes multiple times in a row. And it was a new and very, very humbling experience for me to do so, as was hiking with a very laden pack, right? Carrying a lot of heavy stuff.

heavy stuff on my back, all of our gear that we had. These were things that I just hadn't been exposed to prior to showing up and were physically very, very difficult. And they required me doing some extra training, which is something that does happen often at these training times is when a

a physical or this can be a skill deficit, this can be an academic deficit, right? When there is something that an individual doesn't know. And for me, it was working on the obstacle course over and over and over again because it was something completely new, completely hard. There were times when it was very, very frustrating because I had been used to being able to do physical things

Yeah.

and not giving up in the face of adversity. So the difficulty and the continuing to have to work on learning these skills

is part of how we also instill a positive warrior ethos in people. I'm so glad you mentioned that, right? Because that gets to the rigorous mental training as well that goes on when a person decides to serve the United States through military service. But just to sort of, you know, be blunt about it, you were doing this training alongside men who were also there, right? And was there ever a time where they kind of looked at you and were like, maybe she doesn't belong here or no?

So during officer candidate school, we had an all woman platoon, but men and women trained side by side for our physical training. And for me personally, when I was there, I was, you know, I could keep up for the most part. I think it was when I got a little further along in some of the training and things became difficult for me and I had to

try things three, four times. There was one longer hike where I do remember some grumbling from some of my male counterparts that were there saying, oh, well, we need to help her out. Maybe she doesn't belong. I had gotten injured in the middle of a hike and there was a sense of, oh, well, maybe it's because you're a woman. But by and large, the attitude was if you could keep up,

then you were fine. And for most of the time, you know, the women that I trained alongside and I served alongside, you know, we met the standards that were set out for us. And as a result of that, created really good camaraderie with our male peers as well. Yeah. I appreciate your honesty on that because obviously we are talking with you today about

Because we want to understand more deeply why there's this major change from the current Secretary of Defense when it comes to his view on the warrior ethos and women in the military. And we'll talk about what Secretary Hegseth has said in just a minute. But I mentioned...

your deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Hunter. You were a helicopter attack pilot. Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of combat you saw or the situations you found yourself in having to fly a helicopter in those places?

So most of the work that we did flying helicopters, we did, we're an attack squadron. And the types of missions that we would be responsible for were everything from troops in contact. So if there were a, you know, a

uh, engagement between the enemy and us forces or Iraqi or Afghan and U S and enemy forces that, uh, the, the Cobras would respond to, to those as attack, um,

helicopters there. But a big part of our mission as well was also doing escorts for medevac aircraft. So when a medevac had to happen because those are unarmed aircraft, we would escort them as well as escorting convoys of our logistics and supply convoys to be on the lookout for any sort of ambush and IED. And it's really that last mission when we taught

about the importance of everybody serving, that it really is illuminated. So in the convoys, which were primarily logistics, supply, you'd often have engineers with them. These were units that had been mixed gendered for a really long time. We had women in the convoys and we actually saw unfortunate casualties of Marines.

Marines including women in the in the convoys there and it really illustrated how Blurred the front lines were in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, I think there's when people hear the term combat they typically think and

a very well-defined battlefield. They think about troops shooting at each other in very close contact. But I think what Iraq and Afghanistan really highlighted was that there was a

a blurred line in what combat is. And that was very, became very, very obvious. I mean, I had a misinterpretation, I think, of what combat was going to be before I deployed as well.

Well, Major Hunter, I just want to remind folks that at least in Iraq, more than 160 U.S. servicewomen were killed in Iraq and more than 1,000 wounded there. So the blurred lines, as you're mentioning, are laid bare in those numbers themselves.

But we're talking today about women in the United States military and specifically because of the new view that's brought to how women can serve in the military. That new view that's brought by the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. And we'll talk about what the secretary has said in just a moment. This is On Point. On Point.

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Let's listen to what Secretary Hegseth said a long time ago before he became head of the Defense Department. This is in June 2024 on the podcast The Ben Shapiro Show. And Pete Hegseth said this on an episode titled, quote, How the Military Went Woke. Women and men are different. Women shouldn't be in combat at all. Not at all. They're life givers, not life takers. I know a lot of wonderful soldiers, female soldiers who I've served with who are great.

but they shouldn't be in my infantry battalion. Not once. They could be medics or helicopter pilots or whatever, but they create all sorts of variables and complications that have nothing to do with being anti-woman, uh, and, and everything to do with having the most effective military you can. Major Hunter, are you a variable in a complication? I, I think what is an unfortunate that we, we see coming out in this rhetoric, but rhetoric in, um,

really across the political spectrum, is that emotion has way too often gotten in the way of what our rigorous research has told us about what military effectiveness actually is. And so in...

Language like we heard, we heard here, what we hear is emotionally based arguments and conversations that don't take into account the long trail of research that show that women can and are, can compete in for these very, very prestigious and highly prestigious

rigorous professions within the military, but are also very, very successful and effective at them. And so, you know, I think what in having these conversations, what is important is to bring things back to what the data and research tell us. And if we want to talk about women,

as variables, we can talk about them as variables of success as well. You know, I appreciate the delicacy with which you have to talk about this, but the Secretary himself is not, he's very indelicate in it, and he doesn't actually use a lot of numbers and data, just as you said. I mean, I

I spent the weekend looking over the book that he wrote called The War on Warriors, The Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. He's got a whole chapter in there, chapter five, The Deadly Obsession with Women Warriors. And here's some quotes. The gender integration of the military is a huge part of our modern confusions about the goals of war, in particular the choice to put women in combat roles.

And then he says, women bring life into the world. Their role in war is to make it a less deathly experience. And then he says, to create a society of warrior women, you must separate them first from men and then from the natural purpose of their core values.

Here's another one. There are examples in history of women in combat roles, but one is hard-pressed to find many outside of religious or mythical settings that have any close approximation to a positive military outcome. End quote. That's just a few. I mean, there's a whole chapter of his philosophy on women in this book. I just wonder your thoughts on how the person who wrote that

has taken those, it's the same person now who's leading the Department of Defense. Yeah, so I think it is always unfortunate when you have a brash comments and conversations leading what is a very delicate topic and conversation. War can sound like a very...

brash environment. However, it is a game of nuance if we think about modern warfare in particular. If we go back to looking at the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan,

The lines between combatant and civilian were very, very blurred. The technological advancements that happened just during the 20 years of that conflict were huge, which led to a need to really understand what new weapon systems were doing and where –

civilian versus combatant casualties were occurring, how we were engaging with the enemy. And so what I think all of this highlights is the importance to really take a clear-eyed and nuanced view at what war and what warfare is. There is, I think, an often

too touted misconception that the military or war is just about killing people and breaking things. I would argue military effectiveness is just as much about who isn't killed and how we are ensuring that we are being precise and calculated when killing needs to occur as it is about just making these brash statements that we're here to do violence. And

Where the research does go is that if you want to

avoid large scale mass killings, if you want to prevent conflict, which is something else that has been touted quite a bit by this administration. And I think it's a positive of saying we want to achieve peace through strength. We don't want to be engaging with the military as much as we need to. And the data very clearly point to that ensuring that 100 percent of your population are involved in conflict prevention to include

Part of the military's role is preventing conflict in some regions of the world. You need women as part of that. You need everybody as a part of that to ensure that you're not missing out on any key insights as to how to be as precise and effective as possible. Hmm.

Well, let's listen to something that the secretary said just last November in the Sean Ryan Show podcast where he said clearly – and again, this is more recent. This is just last November where he said he believed women should not be serving in combat roles.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more blowback on that already in the book, because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. Most of them actually are, a lot of them are pushed, I shouldn't say most, but many are pushed to

into a combat track because they're so highly capable. But if they had their first choice, it probably wouldn't be that. Okay, so that's Secretary Hegseth from November. One more quote from his book, The War on Warriors. He says, quote, I'm going to say something politically incorrect that is perfectly commonsensical observation. Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bike. We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units, end quote.

Well, I want to introduce Steve Bainon into the conversation now. He is the national security reporter at Military.com. He's also a veteran. He served in Afghanistan with more than a decade of experience as a cavalry scout. Steve, welcome to On Point.

Thank you for having me. Okay, so let's talk about the actual actions Secretary Hegseth has taken as the head of the Department of Defense. On April 29th, he wrote on X slash Twitter, quote, this morning I proudly ended the Women, Peace, and Security program inside the Department of Defense. Steve, can you explain to us what that program was?

That program was actually a first Trump administration program effectively to get more women into the national security space. That opens up things for studies and helps us understand the scope of the impact of women in warfare, rather. They're working it from a policy standpoint, serving themselves or the impact on civilians.

And this is just another thing Hexeth has done to – he's led his entire tenure so far on cultural grievances. He is in a culture war with military norms. This is –

coming on top of making deliberate recruiting efforts, changing who the DOD is reaching out to to join and also reducing women's visibility in various advertising campaigns the military does. So Steve, you said that this was the Women, Peace and Security Program. It was a DOD program from the first Trump administration. It was actually signed by the president himself, I believe. So the totality of the secretary's tweet then is

It goes on to say the WPS, quote, is yet another woke, divisive social justice Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops, distracting from our core task, war fighting, all in caps there. And then he goes on to say WPS is a United Nations program pushed by feminists and left wing activists. Politicians fawn over it. Troops hate it. Is there anything in those two sentences that is accurate? Yeah.

I don't think so. Um, I think you guys got into the, a little earlier that, uh, he Hexeth appears to make a lot of, uh, emotional based decisions, not a lot of, uh, decisions based on any sort of data. Um, and actually the most interesting point is, is a bit about saying that the troops hate it. Uh,

You know about it. I know about it. Your listeners that are very well read in know about this program. But it's a relatively obscure program that if you pulled the force, I would bet a large portion don't even know what this is necessarily. So that's sort of – he is assuming a lot about what the troops in the rank and file think. Yeah.

Well, Major Hunter, let me turn back to you because, again, I just want to emphasize that in the secretary's tweet, he erroneously called WPS a Biden era program. It was, again, signed by President Trump in 2017. The secretary later amended his message, I guess, saying that the Biden administration, quote, distorted and weaponized the Trump approved program. But let me ask you this.

Programs like Women, Peace and Security, did they serve an important purpose, you think, for the Defense Department in terms of getting more women into the national security space? And if so, why? So I think what's really important about the Women, Peace and Security program, and I think to echo Steve, I think if you asked the average soldier on the ground, like,

what is W what is women, peace and security? They would probably look at you a little bit sideways and it's like, that's a program we have. I think what's, uh, what's really important is that at its core, women, peace and security is an operational program. If we look at the women, peace and security act of 2017, which Trump signed during his first administration, it says that the general sense of, of Congress that's there is that, uh,

women are an essential part of understanding conflict and conflict prevention, and that it is essential to integrate the perspectives of everybody who may be impacted by conflict. And that includes those that may be actively participating, those that will be planning it, those that may be impacted by it, into the perspectives of how we actually conduct

military and other security operations. The State Department, the intelligence community, USAID, Homeland Security are also very, very essential as being part of this. And so if we think about it from an operational perspective, it has absolutely 100% benefited the Department of Defense as well as our other

national security enterprises that we have here. So again, state, homeland security, aid, these things all

benefited from the perspectives. And we can look at it in everything from the ability to engage with 100% of the population in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several of the other areas that we have been involved in conflict and contingency operations, as well as how we do things like disaster response and how

We respond to humanitarian crises that are occurring.

understanding the needs of 100% of the population, and that means also leveraging 100% of our populations, we have made our country more secure. And so I think it's really looking at this as not just putting female bodies into different positions. That alone doesn't constitute WPS. It is really how...

are women's perspectives brought into understanding how conflict is occurring and how to prevent it that has had a tremendous impact on the entirety of our national security apparatus. Well, Steve, the WPS cancellation did grab a lot of headlines. But as you're saying and as you've reported, it's sort of part of this broader discussion

Just completely different view of both what the U.S. military needs and what the secretary currently believes is ailing it. I mean, again, I'm just going to go quickly back to his book, The War on Warriors, where he says, quote, every unit knows that social justice, transgender, woke training is the top priority here.

Now, first of all, from your personal experience in the military, Steve, and also covering it for Military.com, is that true? No, not at all. And the issue we get into quickly with this is

Hexeth and various other cultural warriors on the right, they use this very imprecise language, woke and DEI. And I think it's almost like a Rorschach test. Everyone sees something different. Everyone has a different definition of what that is. And covering Hexeth and covering everything going on with the DOD, I think when they say that, they mean...

non-merit based promotions, putting people, filling quotas, putting people in positions that maybe didn't earn it just to check a block. And that just doesn't happen in the military. The military is very, very merit based. And for the promotion system, they have multiple checks and balances on that. There's no unit that says we want X percentage of this demographic in

and our formations um i'm sure you know the military is just like the american population i'm sure there's some people that that talk about it but the big issues troops talk about they talk about uh living conditions that that's the biggest issue in the force right now

And so overall, though, are those issues, do you think, as—I don't know, I'm not asking you to read the Secretary's mind, but in terms of his actions since January, are those sort of concrete issues as front and center to him as his war on quote-unquote wokeness?

No, it's actually interesting because what we found with the recruiting is women have actually been joining the ranks at a relatively flat rate, at least in the Army, the biggest part of the military. They join at about 10,000 each year for the past decade, and men have been less likely to.

to join the services in recent years. You guys did a really good series on men falling behind on education, and we're seeing that impact on recruiting, actually. Men are having a difficult time passing effectively the SAT-style entrance test to join the military. They're much more likely to be overweight and have criminal backgrounds. So while he's doing this culture war that disproportionately impacts women,

we're finding boys and young men are lower quality candidates overall. Okay, so Steve Bannon and Kylan Hunter, when we come back, we want to talk more about the long-term potential impacts of the moves or the perceptions that are coming out of the DOD now on the United States military. So that's in a moment. This is On Point.

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A couple of more comments from the secretary himself. And once again, this is from last November. He was on the Sean Ryan show. And here's what he said about his view of whether or not standards have been changed to accommodate women who want to serve in more combat facing roles.

I'm okay with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are for everybody. And if there's some, you know, hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion. But that is not what's happened. What has happened is the standards have lowered. In that same episode, he also added this.

As the disclaimer for everybody out there, and I'm not really in the disclaimer business, like we've all served with women and they're great. It's just our institutions don't have to incentivize that in places where traditionally, not traditionally, over human history, men in those positions are more capable.

So a couple of quick questions for both of you. Major Hunter, let me turn to you first. I mean, he's asserting there rather directly that standards have been lowered for women. Did you find that to be true in your experience? So absolutely not. And I think what's important to discuss here is that there are two different types of standards in the military. There is a

administrative, administrative physical fitness standard. And this is part of a overall health and wellbeing, uh, to which everything is age and gender norm. And this is a, a measure of just general health, um, that, um,

that people have because a healthy force is a better force for a whole wide range of issues. And then there's occupational standards and those are the standards and they are physical standards, they are academic standards, they are skill-based standards that are required to be a part of a particular occupation or institution in the military. And those haven't changed

or those have not been lowered, I should say, at all. And in some cases, the introduction of women to a career field set objective standards for the first time. If you go back to the 2015-2016 time period, then Secretary of the Navy testified in front of Congress that the removal of the women in ground combat exclusion meant that infantry units needed to develop

objective standards for the first time to go to infantry school, right? To start infantry school. Cause prior the standard had been, you're a male who has completed the basic training and then you can go to infantry officer course or the school of infantry for our enlisted Marines. But,

But there wasn't a set objective standard prior. The introduction of women and the NDAA mandate to set gender neutral standards meant that gender neutral standards were created. These standards should be based on what is required of a warfighter. And so there have been changes based on the changing nature of warfare, but they have not been

Yeah. So, Steve, let me try to pull together some of the threads here because Major Hunter has said so many interesting things throughout the course of our conversation.

I want to go back to something she said about this focus on the lethality part, the killing part of the United States military. Yes, that is part of what they do. But the overall swath of missions that the military engages in is so much broader. But Secretary Hegseth really seems to be focused on that sort of sharp end of the spear. Let's call it that.

And then but to provide a generous interpretation of the quotations that we just heard from the secretary here, you know, he's making the argument that in combat positions, historically, the killing positions, men have been, quote unquote, more capable of.

But I wonder if you think that he actually understands – and again, this is getting back to something Major Hunter said – about what combat is or has become in the recent military engagements that the United States has entered into. Because I remember covering, particularly in Iraq, that –

that many women were in combat positions, not only flying missions like Major Hunter, but for example, when they had to go door to door in places in Iraq, oftentimes an interpreter or they had to have a woman soldier with them because the women, the Iraqi women, wouldn't talk to any man. So that put those U.S. women in combat position. That's just like, as Major Hunter said, it's not something we ever imagined before. Right, and this just goes back to...

him using imprecise language a lot. And it's really hard to know what he's talking about when he says combat roles, combat units, because everyone would have a different definition of, of what he means, uh,

And you can have – people have had the intellectually honest conversations of should women be in the standard door-kicking infantry units? And it doesn't sound like that's the conversation he's having or if he is, it's not the intellectually honest version of it. It seems to be a much more greater cultural grievance against women as a whole or at least that is how I interpret it and a lot of my sources have interpreted it.

But what the secretary says, I'm sorry to interrupt you here, but I'm just going to state the obvious, right? The secretary of defense is a leader, a very, very important, not just practical leadership position, but should be leading the morale of all the services, leading sort of what the ethos, to use that word, is of the United States military. He's telegraphing something.

that could potentially have an impact on, let's get back to recruiting here for a second, on recruiting the next generation of people who would be willing to serve in the military. I mean, you've done so much coverage on this. Can you talk to me about some of the other, you know, changes? Like you've got some articles here about Army cuts outreach at girls' schools. They had dropped recruiting at a black engineering event. Like what's going on there?

Right. So part of Hexeth's crusade against quote-unquote DEI, the military, recruiting efforts that might have targeted specific demographics. So there was a black engineering conference in Baltimore in February. All the branches go to it. They set up – and mind you, these will be very high-end, high-quality recruits. These are engineers and engineers.

I don't think they go there for any sort of demographic check-the-box things. They go there because there's a big building full of engineers, and we need engineers in the military. They pulled out of that. They pulled out of various outreach efforts to all-girl schools. So they're not reaching out to these demographics anymore. This is a –

overt effort to shift who joins the military. And you'll see that in their marketing. They're not working on any sort of recruiting materials that highlight women or minorities either. They're just going to go back to a very like sledgehammer approach to recruiting versus anything that's targeted. Okay. I want to go back to something you said a little earlier, though. When it comes to recruiting, we have seen actually some good news on that

front, right? For many years of not reaching recruiting goals, the services have done so recently? Correct. And you'll see the Trump administration sort of spike the football on this, but the services did meet their recruiting goal last year, and this year is probably going to even outperform that year. But it's much on the coattails of various efforts the services have made. The biggest one

is this thing called the Future Soldier Prep Course. This is a pre-basic training course that takes people who are ineligible to serve, going back to what we were talking about, that SAT-style academic test everyone has to take to qualify for service. People are struggling with that test. You go to this course, and they sort of tutor you for that. Or if you're too overweight to serve,

You can go to this camp that effectively teaches you nutrition and workout and you lose weight and you move on to basic training. And they've also cut various red tape and have made it easier to join from an administrative standpoint. So that is how we are seeing those recruiting gains right now. But you had also said earlier, and I just want to be sure I heard you correctly, that women recruits were steady, right, versus the drop-off, the slow drop-off in men. Right.

Right, and this is the interesting data. We've heard so much about recruiting, recruiting issues, people don't want to join the military. When you actually look at the data broken down by gender, it hasn't affected women at all. It's been exclusively –

Men. And it's not a – I haven't seen a lot of data that suggests that there's a lower propensity to serve. The pool of people eligible to serve has gone way down. And a lot of this is due to an obesity epidemic and a lot of this is due to falling test scores. It's going back to that test, people having issues with reading, writing, and math.

And those academic issues in grade school disproportionately impact boys and young men. Okay, interesting. Well, Major Hunter, I'm actually also looking at some reporting from military.com that may indicate that perhaps we're seeing –

a slight shift in the attitude of American women about serving in the military, because this is from December of 2024. And it looks like the military's own Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies, or JAMRS, I don't know how to say that acronym properly, but the DOD's internal polling agency. Actually, Steve, how would you say that? Is it jammers? I don't...

Honestly, it's jammers. OK, OK, good. I didn't want to get it wrong. All the acronyms in the DOD, but that there's so many. They found that that from 2012 to 2019, 13 percent of young people between the ages of 16 to 21 said they could definitely or probably see themselves serving in the military. But after 2020, that dropped down to just 10 percent. And

And notably, they found that women in particular are beginning to lack the confidence to pursue military aspirations, even if they had them, that only 8% of young women said they were probably or definitely sure they could be in a war. I'm wondering what you think about that. And Major Hunter, that was for you. Yeah, go ahead. Sure.

So I think, A, I don't want to put thoughts in anyone's heads, right? So this is speculation, but informed speculation on it. I think there's a variety of things that are happening. If we look at just what else is happening in the world at this time, we saw COVID as a intervening variable, which changed educational outcomes. It also changed, I think, people's just sense of

what they could do in the world, right? So that's one sort of intervening variable that's there. But also we saw things like the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has, I think it created some...

Concerns in people's minds about where things are. I think there's also a bit of a national zeitgeist sense of what does the military really do right now? And we've seen rhetoric across the political spectrum that has sort of put an undue burden on the military for a lot of cultural conversations, which may be contributing to people's

Just sort of uneasiness, unsureness as to what the military might be about. I think what it shows is a need for some deeper qualitative dives into understanding the motivations of young people today as to why they would want to join the military as a career field that's there, particularly given the pretty big shifts in the national security conversations and just the

geopolitical makeup of the world that they would be walking into. Hmm.

Well, before we head to the last few minutes here of the conversation, I want to listen to something one of our listeners sent us. This is Peggy Carey in Montrose, Colorado. And she had a sister who was in the Marine Corps. And by the way, that sister served for many, many years. And Peggy says she graduated at the top of her class. And this was in the 1960s.

When she died, we had a military funeral and there were many, many soldiers there. My sister asked one of them, how did it feel being bossed around by a five-foot-tall, 90-pound woman? And the soldier said, was she short? They didn't see her that way. She was my hero and my daughter's hero and set really good examples for us not to fold in the face of adversity.

Steve, we've got about a minute left. I'm going to give the last minute to you here. What are the potential or are there, let me ask you this, are there discussions within the DOD at all or maybe people associated with it about the potential long term impacts of this sort of culture war that's going on for things like recruiting or the, you know, the future U.S. military?

Yeah, that is the biggest question I hear Pentagon staff talk about and other leaders across the administration. It's really hard to say because we're talking about all this and all those statements from Hexeth and his book, but does this rhetoric make it to the 17, 18, 19-year-old?

that may or may not join. I don't think they read military.com. I don't know if they listen to on point. I don't know if this stuff makes its way to the spaces where they consume media. So while this culture war is going on, I don't know if it's making its way to them to make a decision to join or not.

Yeah, we'll see. I can tell you to listen to podcasts and they should add On Point to their list of podcasts they listen to. They should. I highly recommend it. Because you get to hear wonderful people like Steve Bainon from Military.com. And Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And Major Kylan Hunter, founder of the Women, Peace and Security Initiative and adjunct political scientist at RAND. Thank you so very much for joining us, Major Hunter. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is On Point.