Special Additions #5: The War For More

Musings from an Accidental Cult Leader calling for war at the NATO Summit. Oops.

Jul 10, 2024

Welcome to Non-State Actress written by me, Maggie Feldman-Piltch . Our last issue, ‘The CCP, Regina George, and The Third Velociraptor from Jurassic Park’ covers how the Chinese Communist Party has learned from the forced sale of Grindr to fight back against the forced sale of TikTok - which is banned in Mainland China. Plus, an episode of the Non-State Actress Podcast ‘Flaming Hot Cheetos and TikTok’ talks about the bigger data privacy issues at stake.

BLUF

On Monday, July 8th I spoke on behalf of #NatSecGirlSquad as the co-host of a kickoff breakfast welcoming the Transatlantic Young Leaders of NATO1 to Washington at Meridian International Center2. It was an honor I know I may never get again, so I tried to make the most of it and thought I’d share a copy of my remarks with all of you.. and then do a video for the ‘gram. You can learn a little more about NATO here and here.

NATO and The Neighborhood Bar Creep

Gimme More

“Thank you Ambassador Holiday for your kind welcome, and to the Meridian team for inviting #NatSecGirlSquad to collaborate on this unofficial Summit Week Kick-off.

It is such a privilege to be joined by members of the NATO Transatlantic Young Leaders effort, the #NatSecGirlSquad community, old friends, and soon to be friends.

I will now briefly pause so Puru can take a semi-candid picture of me in case I am never invited to speak at Meridian again.

——

My name is Maggie Feldman-Piltch and like all of you, I contain multitudes. I am speaking to you this morning as an information and influence mastermind who accidentally built a cult for good in the world- a cult called #NatSecGirlSquad.

I am particularly honored to be joined by Ms. Chris Miner - the State Department’s Managing Director for Professional and Cultural Exchanges. Ms. Miner’s leadership made this morning possible.

I was asked to share a bit about #NatSecGirlSquad and what I see as the value and impact of emerging leaders to and on the future of NATO.

As you can see, I’m more of a butterfly than a caterpillar so I’ll stay away from emerging much further - but I do want to talk about why we invited each one of you, specifically, to this morning’s event and what precisely I expect in return.

What I expect is more.

Not a little more, but a LOT more. Enormous amounts of more.

Unending moreness.

Diplomatic, yes?

This week’s Summit, like some before and many after, is urgent. We know that because we are told that, we tell one another that, and because evolution has made each of us exceptional at sensing danger. We can feel it - and that makes it real.

Take a look around and you wouldn’t be faulted for confusing 2024 with 1924 - or dare I say 1934.

Here in the US The echos of “America First!” have carried across time and space from Charles Lindbergh’s 1941 speech in Madison Square Garden to today in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and right here Washington.

Anger and resentment with the status quo is, in many ways, pushing a return to old scapegoats and answers instead of new horizons.

It can be easy to ask aloud if we are simply failing to learn from the reoccurring horrors of the past and while I don’t disagree with this starting point - I do take issue with where it often ends.

Time and time again, we are told to fight for democracy and freedom. To protect the system we have against degeneration, apathy, corruption, and fascism.

While I would challenge those in this room and elsewhere to find someone more passionate, more devoted, more ready to take each and every hill in that fight than me- I also know the current focus on what is at stake is sadly one battle in a much larger war.

It is not a war to protect what we have now but a fight to build a better, more just, more free, more MORE world.

It is a fight for what will be.

In some ways we are climbing mountains our predecessors summited decades ago - The BBC’s evolution during WW2 as it wrestled with radio and all its effects and capabilities alongside Lord Hawhaw, Tokyo Rose, Joseph Goebbles brought information and psychological warfare into the mid-20th century and raised precisely the same questions as generative AI and algorithm-led content is doing now, 80 years later.

People trust less and hunger for more now than they did 40 years ago - calling into question not merely our institutions and processes but the definitions of success that govern both.

And instead of celebrating the insatiable desire for more-ness, the human compulsion to push past the horizon, the rules-based order went on the defense.

Instead of remembering where the rules came from to begin with and building the bigger, better universe generations always crave - we dried up faster than grass in an extended heat emergency.

Our failure to build a bigger root system gave cult-like leaders (the bad kind), authoritarian regimes, and data sets time to capture the imaginations of people around the world, offering this non-descript moreness which is anything but.

And the branding is good - or at least decent enough to draw people in to bite the apple.

Our current democratic institutions failure to sustain our need for expansion and dreams has led us to meet these modern variations on timeless themes by trying to prove an unending list of negatives.

Instead of saying, “The current situation isn’t working for you? You need more? Let’s make more!” We said “Don’t you know how good you have it?” in the most, carelessly condescending tone we could bother to put together.

To be clear, I am acutely aware of how good I have it. There is no other time and place in the known universe in which my life story so far could exist. It is that deep, inter-generationally rooted knowledge of how good I have it that feeds my hunger for more.

And I think we can all acknowledge - I am obviously a fan of more.

Which brings me to why you are each here.

Each person in this room received an invitation to this breakfast - and not by accident.

And the reasons had nothing to do with gender, age, or even occupation. This morning’s convening is the result of my desire to win the larger war For More and my sense of the role of each of us individually and collectively in that claiming victory.

The people in this room have something for you, and you for them.

Most importantly, we together have more to offer the world than the current reality we live in.

I firmly believe it is our life’s mission to determine how we can best contribute to a living justfulness and to execute on that how to our fullest ability each and every day. My guess is a part of each of us believes that too because it’s 0900, nearly 90 degrees, and none of you are in an ice bath right now.

I know I need to talk about #NatSecGirlSquad and young leaders if I ever want to come back to Meridian. I also know each time I hear the word young or emerging in front of the word leader I want to yeet myself into the sun.

Why?

Because these words are used to caveat the significance of the individual. To separate that person from power, influence, and impact “until later.”

But what happens if later never comes?

I started #NatSecGirlSquad more than 10 years ago out of desperation. I was looking for guidance- an answer on how to make it from high a top the thing. What began as an email became a Google Group listserv, then a training camp before a platform and now a community devoted to building and sustaining competent diversity in national security and defense. Not out of some exclusively altruistic window dressing but because I became and remain utterly convinced any other outcome is insufficient.

To be clear, I never got what I set out looking for. There are still days where I wonder if I am meaningfully closer to my own professional goals. I would say those days are just as common as the ones where I’m absolutely sure I’m nearly there.

Chesty Puller, the human Marine not the dog Marine, is often quoted as saying:

“They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can’t get away now.”

There is work to be done everywhere we look. And how lucky we are to be here in time to do it.

NATO and the world has no need for young leaders - but we absolutely need leaders who are “young”. We do not need women leaders, we need leaders who are women. We don’t have time Hibernating Leaders but we always have time for growth.

We are all exactly the right age.

We are fully emerged, not emerging.

And no that doesn’t mean we’ve peaked.

On our own we offer the potential for more. In collaboration with our colleagues, that forward pull becomes nearly tangible - like the first pings of popcorn in the microwave. And through programs like those run by Chris and her team at the State Department, those sparks become a symphonic crescendo of global sound.

I am looking forward to fighting for and building more with all of you. Thank you again to Meridian for including #NatSecGirlSquad this morning, thank you to all of you for showing up today - let us get to work.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as NATO, is meeting in Washington, D.C this week for the annual NATO Summit. This year’s Summit celebrates the defensive Alliance’s 75th birthday and is the first Summit in the US in over 20 years. I’ve written about NATO before and will again - but this Special Addition isn’t so much about NATO as it is about…everything.

A special thank you to to Puru Trivedi, a dear friend who made this opportunity possible, Cori Fleser for being Exactly the Right Age, Benedikt Franke for showing up, and Sir Chris Harper for thinking Non-State Actress is worth doing.