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GovDiscovery AI Podcast with Mike Shanley
Ep. 61 Brig. General Christopher S. Walker (Ret)
00:46:13
Retired Brigadier General Christopher S. “Mookie” Walker joins Mike Shanley to discuss U.S. and allied readiness in the Arctic and Antarctic, the evolving role of the National Guard, and the future of America’s service academies. The...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the govdiscovery AI Podcast with Mike Shanley, your source for actionable insight into government markets and foreign policy. Gov Discovery AI leverages a decade of experience winning federal funding to deliver intel to sales proposal and capture teams working in defense and civilian markets. Now here's your host, Mike Shanley.
- [00:21]
B
Hello and welcome to the govdiscovery AI Podcast. Our guest today is retired Brigadier General Christopher S. Walker. General Walker was the Assistant Adjunct General and Commander of the West Virginia National Guard. Air National Guard, excuse me, General. And also General Walker was the Special Assistant to the Director at the Air National Guard for United States Air Force. So, General Walker, very happy to have you here. Thank you for taking some time to share your expertise on the show.
- [00:53]
C
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [00:55]
B
Let's get started with the conversation that I was very intrigued by in our prep about the Arctic and Antarctic strategic engagement. Could you give us some high level overview of where things are at? I feel like the conversation today really focuses more on the Arctic engagement. So I was interested to hear you talking about the South Pole as well.
- [01:15]
C
All right, so let's talk about both polls. But back in the end of April, I was asked to host Summit in NATO for Arctic Security where we had Vice Admiral Didier Mallett, who's a Deputy Commander of the NATO Marine Forces. We had Rear Admiral Jens Nykvist, who's a Deputy Chief of Defense Staff for the Swedish Armed forces. We had Major General Robert Softges, who's the commander of U.S. marine Corps Forces Europe and and Africa at Major General Oyvind Kovalvik. And I, I had to ask him several times, how do I pronounce this? Because I don't want to mess it up and I hope I'm not messing it up.
- [02:07]
B
It sounds like you got it down.
- [02:08]
C
Yes, but he's the Deputy Director General of the Norwegian Defense Materiel Agency. We had Major General Soren Anderson, the commander of Joint Arctic Command. We had Brigadier Jamie Norman, the commander of the UK Commando Force, which is the Marine Commandos of the uk. We had General Per Nilsen, who's the Deputy Army Commander for the Swedish Army. But we had speakers like that talking about what we really, really need if we're going to be serious about the Arctic. Because right now, I'll say this. The main theme that came through a lot of our NATO partners was climate change. But, but, but in a, not in a way that says, oh, all is doom. It just says it's changing things so that we're going to start having more commerce going through The North Pole, in order to shorten the, the, the, the trip. So bring in goods from, from continent to continent. But Russia and China are serious about trying to control that. And if we, God forbid, get into a tussle up there, and that's a mild way of saying some kinetics, we really need to know how to fight up there. And only recently has the United States been taking it seriously and doing joint exercises with Sweden, Norway and finding out that it's not what they thought it would be. It's kind of like the first time you get punched in the nose. Because a lot of folks here in the United States, even people who live up in Montana, North Dakota, they say, oh, I'm used to the cold. But the cold that they're used to is not the real cold that's up there. And you find that not only are the human aspect of it is a whole nother thing. But all of our equipment, let's start at the lowest equipment, just the rifles. The typical oils that you use to lubricate your rifles here in the United States will gel up and jam your equipment up in those temperatures. If you take off your mittens or gloves for even a few seconds, it can be debilitating. It will cause injury. It's that cold, the winds and everything. Let's talk about logistics. You start getting far north, there's no railroads, there are no roads. Let's talk about artillery. Let's move up to artillery. Same thing with artillery shells. The cold will actually affect the accuracy because the shells will shrink the barrels. The lubrication, you have to use special kinds of lubrication. You have to take care of the equipment. You have to be very, very vigilant in taking care of the equipment. And then let's talk about modern day artillery. You have to worry about counter battery fire. Again, it's harder to move that artillery out of the way after you fire up there. And these are things to train with and we don't do that now. Rockets and missiles up there do just fine. Let's talk about C4ISR up there. We have certain companies now are trying to get satellite constellations in low Earth orbit, leo in order to, to be able to have reliable communications up in the Arctic or. And we haven't really started that down in the Antarctic, but hopefully we're not thinking about war down there yet. But, but again for the Arctic these are challenges because trying to get geosynchronous orbit on the poles is, is not easy. So you have to be innovative and these are things that Some of the companies have to think about then just communications up there using computers or any equipment. The batteries don't last as long at those extreme low temperatures. Okay. And then there's also the magnetic and ionosphere up there that actually naturally jam your communications up there. And so these are, are challenges that a lot of industry, if they are able to solve that, then they will be riding on golden tickets. But these are challenges and these are things that we're going to need because Russia and China are serious about it and we have to be serious about it as well. One more thing, UASS up there, Even our larger UASs MQ9s, again, the comms, in order to control them, that's a challenge. But the smaller UAS is the cold is going to limit their, their range because of the batteries. Secondly, the high winds up there are a challenge for the smaller UASs. And so these are all sorts of things that, that, that these senior leaders talked to us about and said it's not what you think it is. There's no movie that can prepare you for this. This is, this is hard stuff.
- [07:59]
B
Did you, did we find that some of the NATO allies like Norway and Sweden and maybe Finland specifically already realized that did have more experience with that and, or I mean we have Alaska, there's the base in Greenland. Was there lessons learned from that or is the issue here just the scale of this would be so much larger than just having one or two bases around the Arctic Circle.
- [08:25]
C
And it's more than just us having a base in Alaska. We need to have, have, if we were to have a large scale conflict there, we have maybe a few units that even train that way and we need to have at least half of our units training in that sort of environment. And we haven't even started that. Let's start up. I already know I've had exercises up in Alaska, up in Fairbanks during the winter with C130s and there's special procedures we have to use to keep the seals from being destroyed by the cold. But again, all aircraft, anything that we have up there, we have to be used to it. And it has to be muscle memory. It has to be road, otherwise we're going to be sunk. And Russia is already practicing that. But thankfully the Norwegians, the Swedish and the Finns are practicing that too. And Finland takes it absolutely seriously. We tried to get a senior person from Finland to come and speak. We weren't able to. But we did have one participant from there who after, after hours at the bar, a lot of the senior leaders we all got together talking to them how they're preparing for Russia. And since Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland is taking it dead serious and they are not taking any chances.
- [10:05]
B
There was an interesting quote from the president of Finland a few weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, that we don't have the largest Itillary or most well equipped army in Europe because we're scared of Sweden. So I think there's definitely a very clear understanding of the threat there. What about for the industrial base? Do you feel the, the traditional defense industrial base, the American does have that expertise, or is this one of those examples where it would be good to explore the European industrial base, the NATO industrial base, specifically Norway, Sweden's Finland, because they may have more expertise in the operating in these types of climates.
- [10:48]
C
So the exhibitors there, I took a look at their, their equipment and they were mostly made in Sweden and Denmark and Finland. And all of their equipment was specifically made to endure and be reliable in that kind of environment. I don't see that when I go to the exhibitors, when I go to trade shows or AUSA or AFA here in the United States. And so I think our industrial base needs to start taking that seriously because our armed forces are going to have to operate there. And I suggest that they have something ready so that our armed forces aren't buying things from Sweden and Finland and Norway.
- [11:47]
B
Now let's go to Antarctica. As I mentioned, that's not really top of mind, at least in the public news. What's going on in Antarctica?
- [11:58]
C
Okay, so now we have a unit in the National Guard, Air National Guard, the 109th Airlift Wing out of the New York National Guard that flies ski birds down there, C130s. And then during certain times of year the active duty and guard will fly C17s down there, but down to McMurdo and to support that. But we're not the only country there. And lately there's expansion by Russia and China in Antarctica. Russia and China say it's for scientific purposes, but every other country suspects it's for exploiting natural resources, energy and rare earth elements, as well as trying to take control of all of that. And so right now there are certain treaties that prohibit the United States and other countries from having a military presence. But we might have to re examine that because I don't think Russia or China, particularly China, care about that.
- [13:13]
B
That's probably accurate, General. Let's move on now to the National Guard. I want to spend a lot of time talking about this, what's going on, what it means for industry, let's start high level on the National Guard and active duty. Could you talk about the relationship there?
- [13:33]
C
There's always been friction and tug of war. When I was in the active duty, we were indoctrinated that the Guard and the Reserves were second class citizens and they didn't know what they were doing. My first time even encountering the National Guard was when I was deployed to Kenya when we were flying missions into Somalia. And the Maryland Guard, the Baltimore unit, they had the 135th Airlift Group there, C130, folks. And I said, what is this Air National Guard thing? And I saw that, hey, they're operating pretty professionally. When I left active duty after my stint in Japan at Yokota Air Base, I went to the 167th Airlift Wing in Martinsburg, West Virginia. And I went there as an instructor, thinking that I was going to teach them how to operate professionally. And much to my surprise, they were teaching me. And I said, okay. Everything that I was told about the Guard was bunk and these folks know what they're doing. But that being said, that sort of expertise translates into other things for industry. This tug of war that. Let me be fair, after Iraq and Afghanistan, active duty started seeing that. Holy smokes. Yeah. These folks know what they're doing and we cannot and we would not be able to win without them. That being said, though, the tug of war still happens on the appropriations level. And then after the appropriations, what equipment is going to be procured? And sometimes the Guard has some ideas that the active duty does not agree with. Or even more often, the active duty will modernize and then have the garden reserve on the modernization list down here. And we always have to fight for proportional and concurrent modernization. That being said, there is a mechanism called the National Guard Reserves Equipment Appropriations where the Congress gives the reserve component special money so that they can actually modernize in time with the active duty. But sometimes the Guard and Reserve say what active duty is getting is not quite going to work for us. And again, some people will say, you got a lot of nerve to say that. But again, active duty is not always the smartest person in the room. I'm not saying they're dumb. I'm just saying that they're not always the wisest on this. Now, I'll give you an example. Back in the day, there's something called lightning pods. Okay? So lightning is a full color digital video capability that gives the Air Force, that gave the Air Force Reserve and air National Guard F16 pilots a clearer picture in the battle space, making targeting Faster and more accurate. So originally the lightning pod program was only an Air National Guard and Reserve program and Air Combat Command was not a player. But then Air Combat Command ACC saw the capability of the lightning pod and then they bought some lightning pods. And now the sniper and lightning pods program now is an ACC and Air National Guard program. And not only are they on F16s, they're on A10s, B52s, F15 Strike Eagles and every block of the F15s from 25 up to 52 because they saw the light. Okay. And so same thing happened with the SADDLE program. S A D L which stands for Situational Awareness Data Link. It's a secure digital communication system designed to share real time situational awareness between aircraft drones, common ground stations. Again, it's one of the things that the Garden Reserve did and the active duty said. Hey. And so that being said, I highly, highly recommend that industry starts really getting cozy with the reserve component. And the reserves themselves I've never had an experience with. I've only active duty and Guard. With Guard we have the National Guard association of the United States. And within that we call that Naugus. And Naugus has something called the Corporate Advisory Panel, the CAP and their purpose is to foster National Guard association of the United States, Naugus and industry relationships supporting a mutual goal of enhancing and promoting modernization and readiness for the Army Guard and the Air Guard. Okay, so that panel meets at least four times a year. But the times that industry should really concentrate on is usually in December. They have what they call the Naugus Industry Corporate Members Day. And then each summer, the end of August, they have the National Guard association of the US Conference which will be coming up in Indianapolis next year. This year we had it in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And again with that being said, the Guard sometimes is the lead in, in getting the active duty to turn the light bulb off.
- [20:00]
B
And it looks like that will be. I'm just pulling it up here, 28th annual Industry Day, December 8th and 9th, 2025 in Washington D.C. in Washington this year?
- [20:10]
C
Yes. Yep. The other, the other meetings, the, the National Guard Executive Directors association one that'll be January. I wouldn't recommend going to this, that's not going to bring enough people. But the two I mentioned would be very, very beneficial to industry.
- [20:32]
B
So say you're the chief growth officer at a mid sized defense contractor. What would you prioritize? What steps would you take to follow up on that recommendation? Both on how would you allocate your team's time and, and what are External resources or investments that you would make, like attending conferences like this.
- [20:53]
C
Okay, so the first thing to do is get in contact with the leadership of the corporate advisory panel. While the deputy director is a friend of mine, Mike Ford, retired Army helicopter pilot. And what they do is really, really walk industry hand in hand on how the process works. Because with the Guard a lot of things happen when you talk with the units and you talk with the states. We say here's our need. The corporate advisory panel will advise you how to turn that into some sort of resolution that the Guard will vote on during their National Guard association main conference in August to bring to Congress. You see, the thing is, active duty cannot lobby Congress. The Guard can because of Title 32. There's another company called the Patriot Group that was founded by a buddy of mine, Kevin Campbell, retired Colonel, call sign Stubby. And then there are other members of that organization. For instance, Stanley Sid Clark, who was a former director of the Air National Guard, Kirk Tick Pierce, Lieutenant General as well, who was first Air Force Commander, retired Major General April Vogel, who was the National Guard Bureau legislative liaison director. Dave, Dave Brew, Brew Breaker, who was a former director there. National Guard. So they know how to walk industry through and get it turned into a resolution that is presented to Congress and then sometimes many times appropriations come down directly for these particular kinds of things that, and industry can benefit from that. But again, the cap, the corporate advisory panel and companies like Patriot Group that they can actually really walk industry through.
- [23:19]
B
Let's move on now to Department of Defense service member resilience. High level topic. I'd like you to kind of set the stage for us, talk us through what is the current situation there. And then of course let's get into industry. And if you have an example of someone in industry you think is doing this, well, I think that would be a great, great story to hear. But could you start us high level maybe for those in the industrial base who are not supporting this, this need within DOD kind of set the stage.
- [23:50]
C
For them for years and years. So while I was the Assistant Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard and Commander of the West Virginia Air National Guard, I was also dual headed as the Air National Guard Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, SAF. Mr. Which is the Air Force equivalent to ASA MNRA. So that being said, across the DoD to this day, a big problem is we dub it resilience, but it's really a euphemism because what we're really talking about is self harm and Suicide. But a lot of people don't like to say that. But let's be real, that's what's going on. And when you have high stress, Moss and AFSCs, and when some of these service members have seen horrible things or think that they have done horrible things while deployed, while at war, it's hard to come home and get back into a mode where you're just taking the kids to school, going to Walmart and buying a bottle of milk. Okay. And typically the DoD has been really throwing Hail Marys, bringing in programs that, that try to help things right of boom. After something terrible happens or after the people have an episode. But for 20 years, there's been over 20 years, quite honestly, there's been a training solution that's been quietly working under the radar, mainly with special operations, but they've also done it with, with CIA and with SWAT teams and such. And this small business, the organization EvenPulse has been working and since that time They've trained about 65,000 troops, including veterans and their families, with impressive results that include a three year research study that showed very positive benefit to troops. And so I, I've been trying to push this for a while. Why aren't we doing that? Why are we trying all of these different things that I've gone through certain resilience training where my eyes are rolling back in my head and I'm looking at my watch, when is this thing going to be over? Whereas even Pulse, they've been getting rave reviews and matter of fact, I, I brought, I, I, I brought one of the reviews that they did training at Kirtland Air Force Base, which is the home of the 58th Special Operations Wing and the 150th Special Operations Wing, which is Guard. And so it says those who felt increased resilience, it said 96%. I'll show you some of this here. 96% overall rating 95% I'm going to read some of the, some of the comments of these people saying this was far better than I have had many times over the years. Learned a lot and plan to use what was taught. Thank you. Great training and geared towards a wide variety of participants. I plan on going over some of the techniques I learned today with my family, including four kids 12 and under. Love the breathing training and the PSCOS stretch. Love the training. Much better and more effective than prior resilience training. Awesome. The final exercise was the best. Speakers were very engaging, content is thorough with several actionable skills without being excessive. Awesome training. I learned a lot today, specifically the neurophysiological portion and how the brain and body works together. Finally, the training was very insightful. I believe the skills I learned can be used on a daily basis to improve my life. God is my witness. I've never, ever written anything like that from any other training that I've done in the 40 years I was in uniform. And so when I started reading all of this, I said, then why aren't we doing it? And so it works. And they've been doing it for years with the special operations community. And I think if it works in special operations community, it could work with our fighter community. It could work for our mobility community. It could work for all of army, artillery, infantry, everybody.
- [28:46]
B
So we'll put the EvenPulse website in the show notes. General, what is it? You touched on this already. What is it unique about them? What is it. Is it. You mentioned the breathwork and the physical component of it. It's not just looking at PowerPoint presentations. What's unique about their approach to the DoD trainings?
- [29:05]
C
Their training is preparing the service members left of Boom before the episodes happen. Matter of fact, even before they go into the stressful situations, how to handle those situations, they'll probably be able to actually fight under pressure better. And so that is the magic of this. We're spending too much time trying to repair people, and what we should be doing is building them up and building up their foundations so that we don't have to repair them.
- [29:39]
B
That makes sense. Next thing I'd like to get into is the academies. It's a bit of a thematic jump here now, but the future of the academies. Could you talk a little bit about the work that you're doing with them and what you see is the current state of the, the, the. The Armed Services Academies, specifically the Air Force Academy. Yeah. And talk a bit about, about the work you're doing there and what you would like to see the future of the academies look like.
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C
Okay, so let me start by saying over the last 10 years, I visit the Air Force Academy and the other academies at least once a year, but the Air Force Academy several times a year for football games or just for going out and visiting my mentees. Because I put in several youngsters into the Air Force Academy each year. And then as they go through, when I put in new ones, I have them take care of the younger ones coming through. And I have a cycle of mentees all the time there. I've started noticing some things when I go there, things that would have never happened When I was there, before I retired, I, I remember walking across the Air Force Academy, Toronto in uniform with stars on my shoulders and cadets walking by with their hands in their pockets looking at me and just going, hey, what's up? Wow, what just happened? And I said, okay, this is.
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B
And then I, without asking the obvious, what would have happened?
- [31:27]
C
20 years, I would have been marching tours. I would have probably gotten 20 to 40 tours, which is marching. Each tour is marching for an hour with a rifle for something like that. I, I see cadets downtown with their uniforms, sloppy, the, the shirts hanging out, walking around with their hands in their pockets. Now something very common. I, maybe I'm old school. I have a beard now, but I'm retired. But right now, the, this whole shaving waiver, I think has gone over the top. Not only at all of the service academies, but at bases around the world. Air Force bases, Navy bases, army posts. It looks like everybody is auditioning for the Pirates of Penzance. I go, what's going on here? We have lost our standards. But at the academies, I think that that should be the pinnacle. And what I've seen, this is very controversial now, but we have more and more civilian professors at the academy. When I went through, we didn't have any my senior or first class year. We had one civilian professor of psychology. And so now we have, I think that has, that has changed the tenor, that has changed what's going on at the academies because we've had a lot of indoctrination lately as well. And this new administration, President Trump, Secretary Hegseth have said we're eliminating the whole DEI and CRT thing, but we still have a lot of resistance there with some of these civilian professors. Recently a civilian professor write an op ed saying that the academies are not going to produce as quality a product if we don't have a lot of civilian professors. And I said before we had civilian professors, we, we were producing presidents, senators, congressional members, astronauts and captains of industry. Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. The purpose of the academy is to produce career leaders for our armed forces. More and more of our graduates from all of the academies are doing what they call the five and dive. They do their commitment and leave. If that is going to be the case, it might as well just turn it into a regular college with rotc. That's my opinion. I have other classmates who disagree with that. We can agree to disagree. But if we're going to be paying all of that money for these academies, especially the Air Force Academy, where this is pretty much the only institution in the United States, probably the world, where they also get parachute training, glider training, powered flight training. They don't do that at the other academies. They can't, because we at the Air Force Academy have an airfield right on the academy. And they can do that and then get right back to class. I remember years ago, I was at a football game talking to the retired now, but former superintendent of the Naval Academy, Sean Buck. I said, why don't you have that? And he said, the logistics just don't allow it. We wish we could. And the same thing is true at West Point. But again, if we're paying for all of that, then we expect you to put in a career into this and lead our young men and women when it comes time to win our wars, not just go in for the benefits and get out and go into industry. So, again, this is controversial. And I recently was elected to be in the United States Air Force Academy association of Graduates Board of Directors. I ran along with. There were a total of 16 people running for five slots. And so I got together with four others and we called ourselves the Unity Slate, but with five of us, our platform was to give graduates a say, give them a voice, and also turn the academy military again, and also try to eradicate all the CRT and dei. We won on a landslide. All five of us won those five slots in a landslide. The numbers were incredible. But then in mid March, the board, the outgoing board, held what they call a special meeting, and they appointed two more directors so that they could counter our vote that we were going to have. And so right now we are having. We're having some friction now because the members of the old board don't think like those of us on the UNITY five. And we're working that out. But the graduate community is also raising their voices, and so we'll see how that all works out.
- [37:10]
B
And I was just at the Air Force Academy recently, a couple weeks ago, too, and you can see that activity that you mentioned while you're there, even if you're not on base, just driving past on i25. What would you like to see? The future of the academies? Is it just copy and paste from what it was 10 or 20 years ago, or is there some version of what it was that you'd like to modify and you'd like. What's that vision you have that you would like the academies to be moving towards?
- [37:39]
C
Once upon a time, the senior leadership in all of the services came out of the academies because they are the Ones who set the examples. Okay. I'm not saying that ROTC and OTS don't put out good product, but once upon a time, the top shelf and the premium were the academies. And I'd like to see that those days return. I'd like to see the people think of the service academies as the pinnacle of military development. Okay. And so that's what I'd like to see. We're far from that right now, but. And it's going to take some time. I think the current superintendent of the Air Force Academy has that vision as well, and he's trying. But there again is a lot of resistance along the way with certain faculty. And so it cannot be done in one term. This has to become a new culture. The other thing is West Point and the Naval Academy have traditions that go back hundreds of years. Problem with the Air Force Academy is our traditions change every few years. And that can't be. We have to make it so that we have something that is enduring so that 100 years from now the an academy graduate will know exactly how it was back 100 years before. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any evolution, but we should have some traditions. Okay. There used to be this thing called the form O96 that we filled out every time we had a meal as freshmen, as fourth classmen. And the standard filling out that form was fast, neat, average, friendly, good, good. And it got to a point where during war, Vietnam, or even in Afghanistan or Iraq, if you were being rescued and if someone wanted to verify that you were actually from the Air Force Academy, they can go fast, eat, average, and you go friendly, good, good. And they go, come on, let's pick them up now.
- [40:05]
B
Sure.
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C
Cadets don't know that anymore. I know that West Point has their certain things as well and Navy does as well. But Air Force, we keep losing our heritage and that upsets me greatly.
- [40:20]
B
So let's move high level. A couple more questions. General, you have the time higher level to the Pentagon and the policy level. What are the trends that you are, you have been watching this year and or as we in October 1st start the 2026 fiscal year, what are some of those high level trends that you're watching to see which direction the Department of Defense will be going? I saved the easiest question for last.
- [40:47]
C
So there are a lot of folks, both officers and enlisted who are watching this also. But we hope that a lot of the ancillary training that is just what we call mission creeper go away and we start concentrating on war fighting more because that's the business we're in. And a lot of people forget about that. We have a lot of folks, I think, too many, who come into the military just for the benefits and forget that when you wear the uniform, you're supposed to fight. And so I see that happening now in the Pentagon that they're really, really starting to concentrate on. Hey, by the way, you're a war fighter. I don't really care if your MOS or your AFSC is admin. You're going to get out here and shoot and you're going to learn how to fight because you're not going to rely on somebody else to protect you. If the base is overrun, we expect you to at least pick up a chair and bash someone's head. But they're trying to get the war fighter mentality back into people. And I'm watching that. And it's fil. Filling me with love.
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B
And you believe it is. It's working, that that's more than just rhetoric, that. That actually you're seeing a trickle down to the operational level.
- [42:08]
C
I try to, whenever I'm in town, visit the local wing here on their drill weekends. Cause usually on a Saturday afternoon, many of the people in the wing will meet in what they call the Heritage Room to kind of let off steam and say what's happening and, you know, have a beer or two. And. And I go in there to listen and find out what's going on. And they. The 130th Airlift Wing here in West Virginia. And every once in a while, I'll get into Martinsburg to the 167th and find the same thing. And then every once in a while, I'll go to the armory, the army armory in Glen Jean, and listen to what's going on. And they're saying, all right, all right, we're getting back into the war fighter mode now. A lot of the other training, especially the DEI stuff, has gone away. And now we're concentrating on, all right, how do we survive in wartime situations or how do we make the other guy not survive? It is a beautiful thing to see.
- [43:12]
B
General Walker, as we wrap up, I always like to ask, what's the. So what you want to leave with industry and the defense industrial base. To take away from this conversation, I.
- [43:23]
C
Want you to start getting more in tune with the reserve component because we have smart, smart people there. A lot of those people in the reserve component actually work for your companies, and so they have their air to the ground and they know what you need to be doing. And so if you have people within the Reserve component working for your company, some of you in the C suite need to call them up for an office visit and say, hey, how can we help? And how can you help us?
- [43:55]
B
Great. Well, as we wrap this up, can you share a bit about what you're working on and or how our listeners can connect with you or the companies that you're supporting?
- [44:06]
C
Okay, so right now, something that you didn't mention in my bio, but I did run for Congress before. I may or may not try that again. But right now I am going to be the military outreach person for one of my great friends who is a lieutenant colonel in the army in Green Beret in the Army Guard, Tom Willis. He's going to be running for U.S. senate. And so I'm going to be doing that. I'm also again, trying to help Even Pulse, and I will also try to help any company who wants to talk to me get with the National Guard and get introduced to people within those states that they think that they might want to work with.
- [45:00]
B
And which Senate seat will he be running for?
- [45:03]
C
He'll be running in West Virginia for.
- [45:06]
B
The U.S. senate seat.
- [45:07]
C
A U.S. senate seat. Yes.
- [45:08]
B
All right, well, General Walker, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today on the Gov Discovery AI podcast. I've learned a lot and I truly appreciate you taking some time to share your expertise and your insight and look forward to staying in touch as the as we move into 2026. And I'm sure we'll have plenty to check back in on in the coming months and next year.
- [45:31]
C
I hope so. All right, it's been wonderful.
- [45:34]
B
Thank you very much. Have a great day.
- [45:36]
C
Cheers.
- [45:37]
A
Thank you for tuning in to the GovDiscovery AI podcast with Mike Shanley. Gov Discovery AI leverages our team's decade of experience winning federal funding to deliver federal growth intel to sales proposal and capture teams working in defense and civilian markets. Each market intel report is delivered by federal growth experts leveraging our proprietary deep data discovery process. If you enjoyed today's show, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and connect with Gov Discovery AI and Mike Shanley on LinkedIn or learn more at govdiscoveryai.com.