Last Friday the Secretary of Defense abruptly fired half of the Defense Business Board.
For some reason, he forgot me.

He appointed former Trump campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie as chair and vice chair and nine other new members. (Update: the new chair is Chris Burnham and the new vice chair is Kiron Skinner. Both are current board members.)

The Defense Business Board is one of several advisory boards that serve as the pleasure of the Secretary of Defense. The business board is just what it sounds like – leaders from business who could offer best business practices to the department and nation.

Other defense advisory committees include Policy, Innovation, Science, Military Personnel Testing, Women in the Services, and on Sexual Assault. Each of these boards/committees is supposed to provide the Defense Department with the best nonpartisan information and advice available.

The reason I joined was to offer the Secretary of Defense insights that could transform and leapfrog the status quo, not just make us incrementally better. Not just 10% better advice but 10x advice.

After multiple board meetings I still couldn’t tell you what political party any of the board members were in, nor did any of them let their party affiliations color any of their advice. We were all volunteering our time to serving our county.

Over the last year the administration began replacing members of every defense advisory board with party loyalists.

Below is my resignation letter to the Secretary of Defense.

K&S Ranch
Pescadero, California
December 7, 2020

Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller

I volunteered to serve on the Defense Business Board because our nation faces an unprecedented set of challenges. For the first time in a century, the United States is no longer guaranteed to win the next war. We face authoritarian governments in China, in Russia, in Iran and North Korea, governments that not only oppress their own people, Tibetans, Uighurs, those in Hong Kong, but that offer the world a dystopian vision of control.

The national power of a country – its influence and footprint on the world stage – is more than just its military strength. It’s the combination of a country’s diplomacy (soft power and alliances,) information/intelligence and its military and economic strength.

Nations decline when they lose allies, decline in economic power, they lose interest in global affairs, have internal/civil conflicts, or a nation’s military misses disruptive technology transitions and new operational concepts.

For the last century the U.S. was a global power that represented much more than just a strong nation. It stood for a set of values that set us apart. Freedom of speech and worship. Freedom from fear and the collective belief that we are one people with a continual aspiration to a more perfect union. To the rest of the world, we were the shining city on the hill, a beacon of justice and opportunity to emulate and aspire to.

When other nations required loyalty pledges to a party and launched ideological purges of their best and brightest, we recognized that they did so because they were weak. Their ideas and values could not withstand dissent or discussion. We celebrated what made the United States strong was that we embraced diversity of thought and acted collectively in the nation’s interest.

In exchange for ideological purity, the abrupt termination of more than half of the Defense Business Board and their replacement with political partisans has now put the nation’s safety and security at risk.

My service to the Department of Defense was a service to the country not to a party.

I hereby tender my resignation.

Steve Blank