And so competing for volunteer army has been a challenge since 72.

And in today's world, young adults don't spend a life with a company.

You know, the company man, company woman is kind of gone, and it went away really about 20 years ago. And so the Army can keep up with that or, you know,

be bypassed. And many of these skills really lend themselves much better to the reserve and

guard than they do the active component, right? I mean, I could have a fellow who's a young lady working over at IBM, who is working cyber issues at IBM and

support of some bank somewhere. And when they're not doing that, they're working for us.

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Modern War Institute podcast. I'm John Amble, editorial director

at MWI. and for this episode,

I got to sit down and have a conversation with Dr. Casey Wardinsky, the Assistant Secretary of the

Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. His office has a pretty remarkably wide portfolio, and the work

they do touches the careers and lives of soldiers, army civilian employees, families, and more.

It's really, really important stuff that they work on.

And this was a fantastic opportunity to hear directly from the source about some pretty

major things the army is doing to contribute to building a force that is optimized to both

compete on the modern battlefield and accept and embrace some of

the changes that have been affecting workforces in the private sector for years and even decades.

Before we get to that conversation, a couple quick notes. First, if you aren't yet following

MWI and social media, find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It is a great way to stay up to

date on the new articles, podcast episodes,

and research we're releasing every day. And second, as always, what you hear in this episode

are the views of the participants and don't represent those of West Point, the Army, or any other

agency of the U.S. government. All right, here's my conversation with Dr. Casey Wardinsky. Sir, thank you very much for sitting down and having a conversation with us for the Modern

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