How A Navy Admiral Turned Hard-Won Lessons Into A Playbook For Ethical Leadership

A two-star admiral sits down with us and lays out a clear, unvarnished blueprint for leadership, mission success, and the China challenge—no buzzwords, no hedging. Mike Studeman hoped to fly after reading Flight of the Intruder, landed in intelligence when the cockpit queue was full, and still found himself launching with A-6 Intruders off a carrier during Desert Storm. That twist shaped a career built on truth-telling, rigorous analysis, and the kind of command presence that earns trust when the pressure spikes.

We trace the moment that set his compass: briefing Tiananmen Square as a young officer and realizing that a richer, stronger, yet illiberal China would test the United States across tech, economics, and security. He explains why Taiwan’s chips, stolen IP, and standards wars matter to every household, and why a divided America risks forfeiting hard-won advantages. Along the way, he digs into the craft of intelligence—confidence levels, gaps, and assessments—and how politicization at the strategic level leads to weaker decisions and real-world costs. Intelligence isn’t “just another opinion,” he argues; it’s the disciplined baseline for action.

We also get practical about command: flatten where possible without inviting chaos, walk the deckplates without an entourage, protect the mavericks who tell you the truth, and build anonymous feedback loops that reveal what polished briefings hide. Studeman shares the habits behind his book, "Might of the Chain: Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity"—four dozen traits condensed into short, memorable stories, endorsed by Henry Kissinger and Bob Gates. The core message is timely and direct: titles don’t make leaders; character does. If we fix leadership, better outcomes follow—from carrier decks to boardrooms to city halls.

If this conversation sparks something, subscribe, share it with a friend who leads a team, and leave a review with the one lesson you’re putting to work this week.

Chapters

• 0:00 Season Four Kickoff & Guest Intro
• 1:33 Why The Navy And The Intelligence Path
• 4:26 Flying With A-6 Squadrons And Desert Storm
• 6:32 Rank Structure And Career Advice
• 8:00 William & Mary, Vision, And Career Tests
• 10:28 Choosing Chinese And The Tiananmen Turning Point
• 14:21 The China Challenge And Technoeconomic Rivalry
• 16:50 Favorite Tours And The Weight Of Command
• 19:46 Writing Might Of The Chain
• 22:15 Evolving Leadership Lessons And Culture
• 25:31 Avoiding Facades And Seeking Ground Truth
• 29:22 Feedback Loops And Trust In Large Commands
• 33:18 Why Intelligence Determines Mission Success
• 36:52 Politicization, Tradecraft, And Decision Quality
• 40:19 Intel Professionals Forward Deployed
• 42:24 Book Formats, Endorsements, And Closing

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:29

Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run. This is our first episode of season four. Okay. And I'm very excited to have with us as a guest today Rear Admiral Michael Studeman, who is a retired Navy Rear Admiral. I'm not going to go through his biography because I'm I'm sure he's tired of sitting and listening to people tick off all the things he did over an extensive career. So if you're interested in that, just do the Google thing and you'll you'll get all that information. So I just want to jump into it and talk to him about a number of issues. Uh he's written a book which I'm very excited about. Admiral, welcome to the podcast.

Admiral Studeman: 1:17

Hey Larry, thanks. Uh and I appreciate being here and thanks for your service uh over the years. I'm really impressed with what you do in terms of uh volunteering your time uh and helping the the warriors who come to this retreat uh reconnect, uh heal, restore their connections uh with their family, uh, and have a chance to you know have new hope uh for their future ahead. And uh so really impressed with you and the others who are part of this organization.

Larry Zilliox: 1:47

Well, thank you for that. And we're so thankful for your support. Uh, you were the our Gala speaker this year at our 2025 uh Gala. It really helps us when we get prior service individuals who are willing to stand up and talk and say, hey, this is an organization that it does good work and uh you should support it. And we really appreciate that. I wanted to dive right in with one of the questions that I ask regularly for most of my guests is why did you join the Navy and not the Air Force?

Admiral Studeman: 2:19

Uh well, I will tell you my father was in the Navy and was a four-star admiral. Uh, so that might have had a small influence, but frankly, you know, he didn't pressure me much. I didn't know what I really wanted to do. I I didn't go to the Naval Academy. I went to William and Mary down in Williamsburg. And uh, you know, to be honest, uh, I read a book, a fictional novel by Stephen Koontz called Flight of the Intruder. I kind of described this in my first chapter of my leadership book. Uh and uh naval aviation uh interested me. I always uh you know wanted to fly, and um they had a backlog of people who joined naval aviation from Top Gun uh in the mid-80s, and so I couldn't go right in as an aviator. They said, you know what? If you go intelligence, which was your number two choice on your list of preferences, that most of the first tours are in squadrons. And if you do well in your Intel school, you might get a choice uh of squadron types, and that's exactly what happened. So I went to Officer Canaan school, you know, I placed uh near the top of my Intel school, and before I knew it, I was qualified uh to fly with my A6 intruder squadron, which is a medium attack bomber flying off aircraft carriers uh that has two seats side by side: the vomiter navigator to the right, the pilot to the left. And within a few months of being part of the squadron as an as an ensign, I was uh able to enjoy flying off aircraft carriers and landing on them and experiencing everything that I had hoped for.

Larry Zilliox: 4:02

As an air intelligence officer, is flying part of the job or were you just itching awry?

Admiral Studeman: 4:09

No, it's uh normally you are there in a support role. You're there to describe uh, you know, current events, uh, to be able to understand adversary capabilities, to understand, you know, threat aircraft and surfed air missile systems, uh anti-aircraft artillery, you know, dangers, opportunities, things like that. So you do strike planning, uh, you're there for debriefs, uh, you're there for a host of other kinds of things that relate to analysis. Uh your squadron has to support you wanting to fly. Yeah, and they wanted to make my call sign with Studman, they wanted to make Stud Man puke, you know, frankly. They want to have some fun with their with their junior Intel officer. And so I was like, okay, try to make me get sick in the cockpit. Uh and uh so it was a great squadron, VA 35, the Black Panthers. Uh, we still get together PD. We were brought together um in uh bonds of combat during uh Desert Storm. I wasn't the one at risk. Uh it was all the rest of the aviators who were going all the way over to the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations uh and also uh into uh Iraq, around Baghdad and Western Iraq. I would do some flights during the war, in addition to my intel responsibilities, to be able to kind of relieve some of the duties for the Bowdur Navigators doing, you know, some tanking in the Red Sea, you know, helping out where I could there. So it was unusual for air intelligence officers to fly with. But if you're really passionate about it and you have a good squadron, uh you can do it.

Larry Zilliox: 5:47

For those of us who weren't in the Navy, a rear admiral has how many stars?

Admiral Studeman: 5:54

Well, there's a rear admiral lower half, and that's the one star. And then uh I was a rear admiral upper half, uh, which was a two-star admiral, you know, before I retired.

Larry Zilliox: 6:04

Is that the only service branch that does that? Uh upper and lower half?

Admiral Studeman: 6:08

I I it does. Uh it's a bit strange. Uh, and uh so we've had different kinds of rank uh structures over time. In fact, my father, when he was going through uh the ranks, went from Captain 06 to Commodore, like today what we call a rear admiral lower half. Uh back in uh the late 70s, early 80s, uh they had it uh listed as a Commodore, which is a throwback uh all the way to sort of the uh 19th century. Yeah. And so we we now have settled on, you know, upper and lower half. But yeah, that's a bit strange. Yeah. I agree.

Larry Zilliox: 6:46

One thing I want our listeners to pay attention to uh is uh if you're thinking about a career field and you can test uh into it and uh you've got the smarts to do it, and not everybody does, but the intelligence career field is really uh something you need to seriously take a look at for a couple of reasons. One is uh you're gonna get a job when you get out, I guarantee you, especially if you're around the the uh Washington, D.C. area, number one. Number two, looking over your uh assignment in history, uh, it seems like the intelligence guys get to go to some really nice places like Hawaii, like Rhoda Spain, which is an awesome assignment. So think about it. So you could have gone to a service academy in a heartbeat with your father's history, but you chose William and Mary, which by the way is an awesome school. It's a beautiful school, has an amazing law school. Um why did you how did why did you end up there?

Admiral Studeman: 7:47

Well, I I will tell you that uh I did apply to the academy. I did have a presidential nomination um and a senatorial nomination. Uh I only applied to a few schools, uh, I think three total. Uh and the Naval Academy did not grant a waiver at the time because my eyes were bad even coming out of high school. And they had the option to choose people that sort of had those kinds of nominations, but didn't have any kind of medical issues. So really my eyes did me in. Um, and I'm happy for it, frankly. I met my wife sophomore year at William and Mary, a love of my life life, and we uh um I can't imagine my existence sort of without her. Some of my best friends uh from there, and the education that you get out of William and Mary is first in class. I mean, best in the nation on so many different levels uh there. And so I'm proud to be a William Mary alumni, and they've got fantastic programs uh uh today that uh continue to serve the nation in in many important ways.

Larry Zilliox: 8:53

So you decide to go into the Navy, finally, and intelligence, I guess, was plan B, but was there any other f career field you were looking at in the Navy, or was it just gonna be either I fly or I I go into intelligence?

Admiral Studeman: 9:07

That was it. If they didn't hook me with the naval aviation part somehow, some way, uh I may uh have gone a different path. You know, they do these tests. You remember these in high school where they say, hey, hear your career field, answer all these questions. You kind of took the test in the library. Yeah. Uh and there were a couple things that popped out. I was either gonna be a military officer, uh, or I was gonna be like a National Geographic photojournalist, you know, something in that field. Because I answered all these questions about well, traveling abroad, like uh new things, like exploring, like taking responsibility, like making a difference in in your world. Uh, and so those are the two top things. So it's funny how that's uh worked out.

Larry Zilliox: 9:52

Yeah, yeah. So another important uh decision point for you comes when you go to uh the DLI, which again, another choice assignment, that's Monterey, California, and uh you're a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker. How did what was did somebody say you needed to do that or did you volunteer to do that?

Admiral Studeman: 10:16

No, let me first fluent is way too uh generous. Uh I was probably you know pretty good for the amount of time that they give you uh at the Defense Language Institute. Uh I was near the top of my class number two. Um, and I think at that point you you know how to talk of government issues with somebody else talking Chinese government issues. So but your your vocabulary is essentially sort of fourth grade, you know, level. And uh if you don't keep it up, it begins to fade. And so my my Chinese is very rusty right now. Um, but I will tell you um that that choice was mine. Uh that uh it actually was rooted in my Intel school in 1989. One of my first briefings as part of like the grading criteria for uh passing was to brief on a developing situation. And I had been tracking the the TNM and Square protests that had been building uh through the spring and into May and then June of 1989. And I'm still an impressionable sort of 21-year-old. And my first briefing uh kind of described the situation, and then in a follow-up briefing there, graded, I had to describe the bloodshed of the massacre that occurred in Tiananmen Square. And if to me, it was a very important lesson here on the nature of power, but also the nature of authoritarianism and where the Chinese Communist Party was going. So back then, this was a seed that was planted, and I didn't know how it would change my life. Uh, but I realized something that I think it's taken almost 20 or 30 years for other people to realize. Um, and that is that a powerful China, one that had been growing stronger and stronger since Deng Xiaoping took power in the late uh 1970s after Mao Zedong. A China that's strong economically, but politically, does not intend to give up any of its power or to liberalize. And that's what was proven in 1989. It was Deng Xiaoping. This guy came over to the United States, you know, Reagan took him around and he was in Texas with a cowboy hat on with this toothy grin, and you're like, okay, you know, China's gonna change. Uh, and in fact, he's the guy that ordered the massacre, right, in Tiananmen Square in the streets leading out of Tiananmen Square. So if a guy like that, right, is going to make a decision there, then I concluded uh back then that you're going to have a powerful adversarial country, which will be just as dictatorial and autocratic as anything that we saw in the Soviet Union. And it would over time become a major challenge to the United States and the rest of the Western world. And uh I did um uh a tour analytically uh in an analytics center in Spain after uh the squadron, and I asked for education, and I uh and they gave it to me. I said, I'd like to go to get postgraduate studies and I'd like to study East Asia with a particular focus on China, and at the time those programs were connected to a language. And uh so I ended up in Chinese as part of my master's degree uh program, and I felt way back then that this was going to be a problem. And frankly, uh, even if I walk around today, I speak a lot on China matters, I still have to convince people that this is a major issue and why. It is so huge. Uh, it is much more dangerous than ever. Yeah. Uh and harder than the Soviet Union problem. And I know this because my father, who was a Cold War warrior, uh, has said that compared to the Soviet Union, the China problem is much more complex. It is much harder, and we have a lot more to lose uh there. And so, anyway, that's the story of how I sort of got into this uh concentration.

Larry Zilliox: 14:15

Yeah. No, I I don't think people realize all the super chips for everything, including their iPhone and everything else, is in Taiwan. And China has their eyes on Taiwan, and the that could break out at any time.

Admiral Studeman: 14:30

Yeah, it's a complex thing. I I talk about this as we'd have to unpack another four podcasts first. That's right. But you're right to be concerned. Uh, but it's it's not just what happens over there. It's about the exploitation that occurs inside, you know, our country and uh how much of our intellectual property and sure secrets are being uh stolen and how much the Chinese intend to supplant us and so many different levels. We're going gangbusters and frankly, you know, fighting each other internally and treating your neighbor as your enemy at a time when you have somebody that's actually on the verge, if not winning, the technoeconomic war, right? Is is a form of insanity to me. Yeah. That you can be so head in the sand domestically that you can't realize that you need to come together and unify for common cause based on an external nation state threat, which is gonna feel itself in every sector, not just militarily, right? Talking economically, which will affect every American. Yeah. Yeah. To me, there's this wake-up call. I do my best to describe this uh challenge, and a lot of people uh just uh want to whistle through the graveyard on this.

Larry Zilliox: 15:43

Well, you're right, that's like a whole bunch of different podcasts. You were on the um uh Saratoga, and you were doing flight operations, and then you had assignments on shore. And thinking back over all your onshore assignments, which was your favorite?

Admiral Studeman: 16:03

Well, I I think everybody would agree that uh no matter where you live, no matter kind of the uh experiences you have in various tours, the the ultimate test of an officer is in command. Uh and in uh command, you are challenged more as a as a human being uh than in other any other place. Uh and you've got to get it right and you've got to rise up and do extraordinary things to uh be worthy of the people in your charge and to advance the mission. And so my favorite tours are the ones where, you know, I had the responsibility of command and we linked arms and we had the esprita core to focus on, you know, those things that were put in front of us. Even when, you know, my first command was the Hopper Global Communications Center. And uh and I will admit to you, I I dislike information technology. And so Navy has a sense of humor. And so my first command was with 900 uh folks that are part of this command to be responsible for essentially classified information technology. Uh, but I chose that command over going to another almost a king maker position as a a numbered fleet, a fifth fleet uh intelligence officer. Uh, I chose command because I believe so strongly that's where an officer needs to really go and to have that experience. I ended up with three different commands over the course of my career. Each one of them were equally rewarding.

Larry Zilliox: 17:38

And you decide to write the book. Now, listeners, the book is called Might of the Chain: Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity. And I want everybody to go get a copy on Amazon. I just got my copy, so I haven't read it, but I'm going to re start reading it tonight. Talk a little bit about the premise of the book. When did you decide I want to write a book? Was it before you got out, or have you been thinking about this and sort of, you know, jotting down ideas for years, or how did this come to you?

Admiral Studeman: 18:09

Um, I uh first started to uh actually pen down my thoughts on leadership when I took command, my first command, and I uh did so through all of my command and senior staff positions. I would every two weeks send out uh a very short what I call leadership minute, which was designed for you to actually be able to read in less than 60 seconds. Uh, and I would spend three or four paragraphs just talking about an aspect of leadership. Uh, and I collected those uh over time. Um, and this book has about four dozen leadership traits with uh stories related to each one to highlight the characteristic and some key takeaways. As I approached retirement after 35 years in the Navy, and I looked around at America, right, and saw all these statistics here about the lack of trust in leaders, right? People don't respect their leaders and they don't want to be like their leaders, et cetera. I mean, these statistics are, you know, part of scientific studies that have been done. And I observed anecdotally my own kind of impressions of people of influence, very powerful people in our country, whether you're talking about in business, whether you talk about them being in academia uh or in the media or in politics. And they're expressing a different kind of leadership. They may have a title, but they're not exercising their responsibilities the right way. And I thought it was time to get back to the basics and to remind people exactly how to lead with honor and principles and ethics and transparency and authenticity and honesty. It's not that hard to be a good leader, but instead we see in our country this tide of people of relatively low character or who are centered on greed, um, self-interest, uh, being the ones that are now controlling the destiny of the nation. And uh, this isn't a comment on republic uh Republican or Democratic, you know, systems. This is a comment about some of the senior people that have taken up these positions or given rights to make big calls about the future of the United States. And I said to myself, look, when I have free time, I'm going to Go ahead and wherever it tells you to rest, right? Hey, take mic, take, you know, three to six months off. You don't know how tired you are. Uh, people like me, who are still, we think, uh, you know, I think, uh, at the peak of your capabilities, right? They're coming off, uh, you know, uh doing things in service. You can't just go down to after 100 miles an hour, go down to zero, right? Uh you become your own self-tasker. And that's what I did. I said, okay, Mike, buckle down. Now you have the free time, do what you know is the right for the country. Uh, and if you can influence just a few people to think about and actualize leadership the proper way, you will help make a difference uh in small circles that hopefully grow into bigger circles. And maybe we can turn the tide here on what I uh sometimes describe as misleadership. Like you may have a title, but you're a misleader if you have low character or you're not guiding your decisions in the right way, taking a look at how you serve others and not yourself. Um, and so anyway, that's the reason why I wrote the book, and I'll continue to try to spread the message. This isn't about revenue. Uh, this is about how to influence people to up their game and to be better people and to figure out how to lead uh honorable.

Larry Zilliox: 21:51

Again, listeners, it's uh Might of the Chain, Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to this on Amazon. Go ahead and click it, uh, do the one-click thing, buy it right away. I guarantee you you won't be disappointed. So you start to write the book, and then you look back over all of your your notes from when you were doing your your 60 second um leadership uh notes. Did you look at any of them and go, well, what was I thinking?

Admiral Studeman: 22:21

It's funny that you should point that out because I do think that you grow and mature and change over time. So the things that I may have written uh when I first uh took command in 2013 were modified over time. Like I'd come back to them and say, you know, there's a little bit more to add on that because I had, you know, deeper, richer, wider experiences, and I thought that I could uh sort of tweak and refine. And so I didn't overhaul those things because they were, you know, mainly right, but I thought there was a way uh to further color these with a little more depth of experience. So yes, they became for me sort of living leadership insights.

Larry Zilliox: 23:03

Most of our listeners are veterans, and uh we do have active duty listeners as well. And at every point in most service members' uh careers, they begin to uh take on leadership roles from whether it's a squad sergeant, whether it's uh a chief petty officer, all the way up to a four-star admiral or general. And uh with that comes the responsibility of overseeing those below you that are assigned to you. And on the enlisted level, you're you're generally while you are in charge, it it's very family oriented. These become you become very close to the people that you're responsible for. Now, as you move up the chain and you get to the command level, you don't know everybody. And I I'm curious as to how you found the weight of command and the responsibilities for the welfare of those below you, how that changed as you went up the chain of command.

Admiral Studeman: 24:12

You know, um, I do think it changes with the the the size of the command and the geographic disposition. If you're spread out all over, it's just harder to get the direct contact and the touch time, you know, that you need. And so uh, and each organization has their own culture. And you may have inherited a thriving culture, which is doing the right things, or you may have had uh, you know, the misfortune of getting a troubled command that has come out of some you know grievous uh situations uh and so you got to know kind of what you're stepping into. Are you more of a steward that continues sort of on this uh noble course uh where things are going right? Or are you going to have to address some correctives uh that need to be in place within your command? Uh are you going to be faced with a restructure? Do you have to restructure it yourself, which I would advise you do sparingly because of the disruption associated with it? Most people change things uh and the the grueling change uh tends not to be worth whatever uh outcomes that you thought uh you would get. Right. So you have to be very conservative and careful about that, in my view. But you may have a restructuring that's foisted on you from above and says, hey, you're gonna come in and do the following. So in each case, you'll encounter a different situation and you need to tailor, you know, how you approach it. And that's what's so dynamic about command, is that you never perfect it. You never perfect being a leader, just in philosophically taking a look at that. No matter what situation you're in, you're not to be in command. Uh, and everyone is a leader and everyone a follower, no matter where you are in the chain of command from day one of you putting on a uniform, you're a leader. And so you have to commit yourself to being better tomorrow than you were yesterday. And that takes sort of an active attentiveness to how you're interacting with others, uh, what effect you're having. Uh, the people that work for you, how well they're performing their respective duties. It's not just sort of the officer corps that may be beneath you, but it's the whole senior enlisted ranks. It's civilians, actually, that are part of many of our organizations. And how you lead civilians is maybe a little bit different than how you might lead a junior enlisted. And so uh this is the challenge and the excitement of it all is that you're presented with these conditions. Here's a snapshot of time, here's the condition of the organization, and then all the people move all the time, right? We're we're um flowing every two or three years. You've got a new crop of folks that kind of come in. And so uh the personalities change around, and so the challenges never stop. So the weight of command is there. Um you never can walk away from your command. You will get those calls on late on a Saturday night about an accident or somebody with a an illness, or if it's not them, but maybe their parents or their kids or something like that. And so, you know, that weight is with you all the time. It is a very high gravity sort of responsibility. And like I said, I I think it it tests every molecule of your of your being. Uh are you are you are you fair-minded? How do you actually distinguish between administering justice and uh delivering sort of mercy there? What's the the challenge between you know short-term decisions versus their long-term effects, uh dealing with individuals versus the organization? Uh most people when they describe ethical situations, they say that's not you know the the hard ones aren't wrong versus right. It's actually right versus right. And so how do you discriminate which is the better right and which is the less uh appropriate right? And uh those require all of your senses, all of your commitment. You have to listen to folks because you're not gonna add the top, particularly when you have a big organization. You can't rely on your direct primary source, you know, material, like your actual relationship with these people or the situations. You're gonna have to trust other people. If you don't, if you haven't created a culture of trust and openness and the willingness to, you know, lean in with others, uh, then you're gonna find yourself in that ivory tower situation where you're gonna make bad calls on all the things I just talked about because you're not, you know, integrated into sort of the heart of that command where you've created a sense that you're all in it together, right? You have to be careful of adding too much verticality in the hierarchy. You need to combine the horizontal connections, right? You need to flatten organizations where you can without flattening to the point where it's sort of just chaos.

Larry Zilliox: 29:09

Do you ever get this sense that people under you were I don't I don't know how to describe this. Let me let me just talk a little bit about my memory of I was on Guam and I remember the order came down that every morning at like six o'clock in the morning we had to send guys out to pick up trash along a certain route. And finally we're like, what's the deal? Well, it's a general's jogging route. And it's like, well, isn't he driving around the rest of the basement seeing trash? What no, it's a general's uh uh jogging route. So and and I and I remember one time there was it was gonna be a big hoop-to-do, uh somebody was coming, and it was all about mapping out the route that they were taking and then painting everything along the route. And and I just I got the sense that when the higher up command showed up, what they were seeing was not what was really going on. And I know you have to be aware that uh people are trying to put their best foot forward and phase forward and everything. And how did you deal with that to make sure that you were getting the best information or the best picture of what was actually happening?

Admiral Studeman: 30:23

Yeah, I think that's uh not an example of how do a right. I mean, I think it's human nature for people to want to show off uh you know sort of the best um you know facade uh of of of a situation or a place or a mission or a command. Uh and unfortunately, when I hear stories like that, a little part of me kind of dies inside. Um I mean, it should be the general that goes and decides to stop on his path with a small garbage bag and pick up the trash yourself. That to me is a real leader, right? And you see real leaders that do that in their organization. There's a small scrap of paper uh that's there in the passageway. Do you walk by it? Or do you, Captain Schmuckatelli, pick it up and put it in your pocket without trying to get any kind of comment reward? And maybe nobody's in the hallway. That to me, doing something the right thing without anybody else looking and not expecting a reward is the right thing to do. So let's just kind of put that where that is. I do think that if you're in command, that the danger exists that you'll have maybe a lot of people telling you what you want to hear, right? And then just trying to please you. And uh the way out of that is to make sure that you pick the right people around you, and people who will tell the truth. And you have to peep sometimes pick some of the mavericks and you need to protect them, the people that are bloody-minded, uh, that may not get along with everybody, but you know that in fact they're gonna call it like it is, and you need somebody in your circle of trust to do that. In fact, more than one. And you also need to manage by walking around. Look, I learned more intel essentially of uh about what was happening in my commands when I uh slipped sort of the AIDS and was able to by myself kind of go around and just uh uh you know go into work centers and talk to folks in their cubicles and and just listen, you know, um not be in transmit mode, but uh be interested and curious. And it's amazing what people tell you. And if you don't do that, if you don't get around, right, uh and if you're not if you have a command that's uh not in one place, that's harder to do, you still need to get your butt out there and you need to circulate, uh, and you need to give opportunities for people to get feedback. I would go ahead and also have an anonymous electronic, you know, feedback box, essentially. We would also have the ones where you can sort of write in there if you want. And when I got anything uh electronically or physically, we would go ahead and say, here's the issue, and here's what we've done about the issue. I would get in my command of the Austin Naval Intelligence, I could do a loudspeaker across this is an organization with, you know, over 2,000 people, 4,000 spread out over the course of reserve risk and all the rest. Uh, I would get on the speaker every week and I would give an update on what's going on, give them a sense of kind of what's happening at the more strategic level, thank people for X, Y, and Z. And if there were issues, right, we would talk about some of those issues, say, hey, we got a you got a question here, which is, you know, the answer is relevant to all of you. Or I would email out, hey, we got this question, and here's what we've done about it. And so everybody could see that we were acting on their concerns. So it was an expression of care, right? Expression that the question mattered no matter how silly it might be. Uh, and we dealt with it uh, you know, that way. So I do think there are lots of ways to be able to create those channels of communication. You have to go at it non-traditionally, but people need to feel like they are trusted and that when they do speak up, that you're gonna address it in some way, shape, or form. We actually started with another little trick for those of you who are kind of in positions of leadership. I asked the IT people every Tuesday morning, you know, when we had to do a reboot of our systems and upgrade and patch, that we would go ahead and uh reboot. And so when people logged on, they would have a question that they would answer and they could just answer it in like five seconds. And so everybody in the in the command would have a question like, has your supervisor praised you recently? Uh and the answers were interesting because if you're the supervisor, it's like, oh, have I been praising my people well enough? And are they gonna find out that you know we don't have a lot of uh yes answers in this particular division? And so uh those prompts like that, right? A sort of a novel way of also soliciting feedback and getting a pulse on your organization, really, really important to make good decisions on behalf of that organization.

Larry Zilliox: 35:06

Mm-hmm. I want to talk a little bit about where before we wrap up, how important intelligence is to mission success. And it is it is I feel it's so important for our war fighters to have a as clear a picture of what a an operational area looks like and what the forces or cartel or whoever they're gonna go up against these days. Um and that all comes by intelligence. Now, whether it's human intelligence or signal intelligence or any number of different ways, but how important is it to the mission that it's collected and it's analyzed properly and then disseminated properly? What what do you feel is the thing that most people don't understand about the intelligence product?

Admiral Studeman: 36:04

Well, uh I thank you for raising this. Uh I do think that we're finding that intelligence uh is unfortunately being subjected to politicization at the strategic level. And it's uh it's really important if we just take a look at America. I mean, you know, this is like a bigger issue than just a single command that's kind of delivering, you know, a mission outcome where intelligence is embedded in all uh stages of the operation. You're there in the beginning, you're there in the middle, helping to make decisions, anticipating what the bad guys are doing, evaluating, you know, some of the campaign effects or the or the mission effects, you know, and moving on. It's a continuous process all the time. Intelligence never stops, just like operations don't stop. At the strategic level, you know, just like at the in a microcosm uh down at the task level, you've got to make sure clean information feeds decision making so you can make the most informed decision. And this is the challenge today when you have so many conspiracy theories or you have so many biases in play that intelligence is seen as just one of many voices, as if it's equal to somebody's opinion or somebody's single experience over here in the business sector. And I'm afraid that we're seeing a dilution and a diminution of the importance of validated information to the extent you can possibly validate, right? And we spend all of our tradecraft and making sure that we have verifiable facts and good information, right? And we will be honest about what we don't know as well as what we do know, and we describe what we think.

Larry Zilliox: 37:48

As well as credibility of the information you're providing.

Admiral Studeman: 37:51

That's right. That's right. And so we'll talk about our sources, we'll talk about our confidence levels, we'll talk about where we have key gaps, we'll talk about likely courses of action uh and so on and so forth. So we're very, very disciplined in the intelligence field, nonpartisan, to try to make sure that a decision maker has the best possible working knowledge to be able to make a decision, even when you face uh ambiguity and where you don't have all the information that you'd like to have, uh, we give the best. And for that to be uh somehow uh sort of challenged in our political environment makes for bad policy. And you're seeing that today, frankly. Some of the choices that we're making are are not actually uh grounded in sufficiently reliable, validated information. And so we we're gonna have a problem, Houston, if we don't get back to the basics and start agreeing on the facts, right? And talking about the pros and cons of different issues so that we can do the right thing for the American people.

Larry Zilliox: 38:56

And uh the people that work in the field, I want our listeners to understand that they're just not crunching numbers, they have a very clear uh understanding of the the gravity of what they do, that if they don't get it right, uh somebody uh might not be going home. And I think sometimes people don't understand that the the analysts and the the people in the career field really do are trying to do the absolute best that they can at their job.

Admiral Studeman: 39:32

Right. When you look at intelligence people, you're not just back in headquarters, back in the continental United States, sort of just writing a report or whatever. We have intelligence people spread all over every unit uh forward. We inhabit the weapon system just like operators inhabit their weapon systems. And we're there with a very keen understanding of the mission at hand. And this is the reason why you know you need all your support staff uh that's there. Everybody plays a key role, whether you're talking about logistics or you're talking about, you know, administrative uh information technology support all the way through to the intelligence folks. And so uh look, we're globally deployed, you know, for a reason. Uh we are there in your time zone, yeah, right next to you, shoulder to shoulder, uh doing the intimate work of planning and executing and evaluating. Um look, we have very many. Many proud intelligence professionals across the entire military and in the intelligence community, many of whom are civilians who are part of big organizations like CIA and DIA and NGA, who are also putting themselves at risk by going to the Middle East or by going into the Western Pacific and other places. And so we may not have the highest level of risk associated with being in the military or in this field, but we're as close as we possibly can to be able to fulfill our functions. I'm proud of what intelligence people do. Uh, they are uh making a difference every single day. And you can't count up how many lives they've saved or, you know, how many good decisions they supported, but I think they've made all the difference in the performance of what we do as a nation.

Larry Zilliox: 41:19

Yeah, absolutely, for sure. Well, listeners, listen, hit that link in the um show notes for Might of the Chain, Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity. The book uh is awesome. It uh it's it's it's gonna take you a little bit to get through it.

Admiral Studeman: 41:38

If I could uh offer, so I I did the audio book myself on this because I thought people needed to hear uh for me. There's an e-book too, if people want to the e-book, not just the paperback. And so I I hope people uh uh read and enjoy this. Uh I also think that if anybody wants their son or daughter, who may be kind of young adult, teenage, or young professionals, so they want to give them you know the best tips for how to you know uh assume more uh leadership responsibility. This is perfect for them. I was very fortunate. Henry Kissinger, actually, I think this was the last book that he read and endorsed before he died. Uh Bob Gates, uh former Secretary of Defense and CIA director, you know, also endorsed it and uh others. And so um I've tried to do my best uh to pour all the insights that uh I was lucky to gain and where I learned from other people and their example, uh tried to package that all up in a way where it was easy to absorb very short stories, uh, and the chapters sort of move on. I believe that fundamentally our nation faces a leadership crisis. Uh we are in a leadership deficit that leadership affects every American. If we can get leadership right, I think everything else flows from that. Yeah. Uh so anyway, I hope you enjoy the book. Thanks for talking about it.

Larry Zilliox: 43:03

Absolutely. Um well, thank you so much for sitting down with us and and uh it was just a fascinating conversation. We really appreciate it.

Admiral Studeman: 43:12

Thanks, Larry. Honored to be here.

Larry Zilliox: 43:13

Uh well, listeners, we'll have another podcast next Monday morning at 0500. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willing warriors.org. You can find us on all the major platforms and we're available on YouTube and Wreaths Across America Radio. So thanks for listening.