TE US NAVY IS THE SECURITY O F THE EMPIRE. 4/4: Vectors: Heroes, Villains, and Heartbreak on the Bridge of the U.S. Navy by Thomas B. Modly (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Vectors-Heroes-Villains-Heartbreak-Bridge/dp/1642257036
Thomas Modly had an eclectic career in the military, academia, business, and government when he answered the call to service in 2017 and returned to the Navy where his career began. His experience, as chronicled in these pages, tells the story of Secretary Modly’s quest to advance the Department of the Navy’s preparedness for the challenges of this century. As Acting Secretary of the Navy he held fast to the mantra of “acting, not pretending,” and thus advocated aggressively for the Navy and Marine Corps’ future ― a future he believed would be defined by uncertainty and unpredictability. Every Friday he wrote a personal message to the entire Department regardless of rank. Those messages were called SECNAV Vectors. Each Vector was intended to clearly communicate his priorities and to establish a rapport with all levels of the organization. The subject of each Vector was inspired by real events that occurred in real time. As these events unfolded , the Secretary’s unyielding emphasis on being prepared for unpredictable events are proven to be prescient as the Navy found itself, unintentionally, in the center of COVID-19 crisi.
1912 BATTLESHIP WYOMING.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with Tom Motley. |
| 0:06.4 | His new book is Vector's, Heroes, Villains, and Heartbreak on the Bridge of the U.S. Navy. |
| 0:11.5 | Tom has now flown to Guam to address the crew of the Teddy Roosevelt, whose captain has left the ship. |
| 0:17.8 | There is panic in the nation. |
| 0:20.2 | It is a time when we had very poor information about the ship. There is panic in the nation. It is a time when we had very poor information about the |
| 0:24.4 | pandemic. What we know now is that the young men and women on board TR were very unlikely |
| 0:32.8 | to be damaged severely by the virus. That's reserved for an older age group and people with pre-existing conditions, |
| 0:41.2 | not healthy young sailors. |
| 0:42.4 | But nobody knew that at the time, including Tom, who's taking a great risk to travel to Guam. |
| 0:49.1 | But that was the nature of his job. |
| 0:51.3 | What did you say to the sailors and how did they hear you, Tom? |
| 0:55.0 | Well, I think a couple of missteps on my part. First of all, when we got to Guam, |
| 1:01.7 | I told my team that, and I very much low-keyed the trip, I told people I don't want any public |
| 1:07.5 | affairs. I don't want any press. It's just going to be me and my military aid and my chief of staff and that's pretty much it. We got there and my NCIS protection team told me that they were not going to allow me to go on the ship. And I said, why is that? There's 3,000 Navy sailors on there. I need to go. And they basically said, well, sir, |
| 1:31.1 | you know, we're responsible for your safety and it's a COVID environment and so on and so forth. |
| 1:35.8 | So I said, well, I'm going on the ship. So you guys need to come up with a compromise. So they said, |
| 1:40.3 | well, we'll escort you to a clean room. And remember, these were the days where, you know, you'd bleach down everything to make |
| 1:48.3 | sure it was clean and there was no, you know, virus specs flying around. |
| 1:52.9 | And so they said that they would escort me to a clean room, allow me to speak to them over |
| 1:57.6 | the one MC, which is a shipboard loud speaking system. |
| 2:01.5 | It was not ideal, but it was still something that I wanted to do. |
| 2:06.6 | So I asked for the ship to provide me with some questions in advance so that I could answer them during my remarks to them. |
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