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Hey, what's going on? It is rad and welcome to this episode of software, radio. As always, I have to mention I have a merch store, we have a software merch store.

Go check it out on the website at software.com and just maybe pick up something for you or for loved ones and a gift.

Hey, thanks for keeping our lights on. The other thing is we have a book club and I really want to push that out there because reading is a really good thing to do.

So it's software.com forward slash book hyphen club. So rewind what I just said and listen to software.com forward slash book hyphen club.

Now today I have someone who has written a book and author. He's also served our country. His name is Peter Fever and he is the former national security council member on public confidence in the military.

Am I saying that correctly? Well, I've written a book on public confidence in the military, but my job at the White House was for strategic planning and institutional reform.

So I was headed the strategic planning cell in the Bush White House and before that I was worked in the Clinton administration in the Defense Policy and Arms Control Directorate.

Right, and here it also says, let me just drop this in that there is a brewing crisis within the United States military recruitment and enlistments are down across multiple branches.

Countless veterans no longer want to see their family members following in their footsteps and join to serve as the nation's labor market remains.

Hoitley contested becoming a new service member isn't the same appealing option for long term financial stability that once was right joining up having these up front bonuses and all this opportunity.

Talk to me a little bit about what I just read to you.

Well, this is actually the 50th anniversary of the all volunteer force. So 50 years ago this summer the nation chose to transition from a draft based form of military service to one where they just had volunteers.

Of course, they're not true volunteers. They're recruited encouraged to join and that all volunteer force has lasted longer and worked better than anyone thought.

But we're seeing some of the strains and you identified some of them in what you just said that there is it's getting harder and harder to recruit folks.

They're still meeting their targets on retention so people who are in are tending to stay but we're not we're struggling to bring in new people and so that's a challenge for for the US military as they shift from the war on terror to meeting high intensity peer threats.

But all of this is happening against a backdrop of changing public attitudes towards the military and then that's really what my book is about.

Yeah, and the book is thanks for finishing for me.

Thanks for your service exactly causes and consequences of public confidence in the US military that title thanks for your services that phrase that many of us have used you know you go into the airport you see somebody.

Or you learn that they're in the service or veterans and you might reflexively say thanks for your service and often the recipient of that may feel awkward by that they may may or may not want to be thanked or feel you know put on a pedestal in some way.

The book looks really closely at public attitudes towards the US military and the premise or the basis of it is the striking fact as Americans most of us don't know much about the US military at all most of us don't have personal connections to the military we haven't served ourselves and increasingly we don't have family members who served.

But we all know one thing about the military and that is that the public seems to hold the military and high regard that's what political scientists call a social fact something that everybody seems to know they don't know why but they kind of know that other people.

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