A Conversation with Former Chairman, Gen. CQ Brown, Jr.

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gen. (ret.) CQ Brown, Jr. may have been removed from his post as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he isn't finished serving. He joined Ryan at War on the Rocks HQ to talk about how America can realize the true promise of its faltering defense industrial enterprise (the focus of a recent article he authored). Brown argues the playbook already exists. What is missing is concerted action. He also opens up about his abrupt dismissal and how he sees his duty to the nation in the years ahead.

You can read his article here: https://warontherocks.com/2025/11/racing-against-time-realizing-a-true-defense-industrial-enterprise/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.
0:15.3	My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of Warren the Rocks. In this episode, I was joined by General C.Q.
0:19.7	Brown, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs
0:21.3	of Staff.
0:22.3	We spoke about his argument for how America can realize a true defense industrial enterprise.
0:28.5	We also spoke towards the end of the episode about how his military career prematurely ended,
0:33.4	how he thinks about that, and how he views his role going forward. Enjoy the show.
0:39.2	Thanks so much for joining us, sir.
0:41.9	Ryan's fine. My pleasure. My pleasure.
0:43.8	Always great to see you.
0:45.2	You recently have weighed in on some major defense industrial policy debates in War in the Rocks,
0:51.2	and I know you've been giving a few remarks about this.
0:53.7	What made you
0:54.6	choose to focus on this after your retirement? There's an area that I was focused on over a number of
1:01.9	years. If you go back to when I wrote Accelerary, Change, or Lose, that's where I started the focus.
1:07.3	And as I transitioned to the chairman, I was doing some work particularly in this area.
1:11.3	I would say a bit unfinished, but I thought it was important to at least put some thoughts
1:16.1	together. And I've been talking over the past several months to a number of different people
1:19.2	about some areas that I was thinking through and I wanted to put it along on paper and
1:24.2	contribute to the conversation and add to what's already being done.
1:28.8	What do you view as the sort of risk of not acting? And I guess just to frame what your
1:33.3	argument is, if you think this is fair, as you point out that we have the playbook, that we
	...

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