Views Expressed Podcast

My wife and I pulled our eleven-year-old out of school and brought him to the hearing. It seemed a like a good opportunity for him to see just a sliver of how our government works. The room was small; smaller than I expected. We arrived early and I took my seat at the witness table behind a folded piece of paper that bore my name.

The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission was established in the US House of Representatives in 2008. It’s a bipartisan commission, not a committee. So, instead of a chair from the majority party and a ranking member from the minority party, the Commission has two co-chairs, one from each of the two major parties.

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NOTE: I encourage you to listen to the audio version of this post via the Substack app or website where you can hear the actual audio recording of my retirement remarks.

On the 24th of July, I retired from the US Air Force. In the intervening weeks, I’ve grown a beard, traveled the UK and Iceland with my family, and worked through the first several stages of the identity crisis the retirement has imposed.

As the dust settles, I want to share with you my remarks from that ceremony. The ballroom at the Army and Navy Club was full of extended family, old friends, colleagues, and mentors. It did not go as planned, but it did go perfectly.

My presiding official wasn’t able to make it to the ceremony. We were already about ten minutes past the planned start time. My little team (me, my emcee, and the two Airmen who volunteered to help with thankless tasks like ushering and proffering) huddled in the hallway. What were we going to do?

We needed someone who knows me well enough, who is comfortable enough in front of a microphone and a crowd, and who understand the Air Force well enough to handle the gravity of the event, to make it special for the friends and family involved, and, somehow, to rescue it from its current condition.

Within a matter of seconds, we all agreed that the only person capable of performing such a feat was Hammer. Our little team asked him to join us in the hallway. Without missing a beat, he said, “I’m officiating this thing, aren’t I?”

Hammer’s last minute substitution took all the pressure off the event and brought a sense of levity it would have lacked otherwise. In Hammer’s own words, he may not have been my first choice, but he was my best choice.

The event was personal and I’ll not share the whole thing, but I do want to share with you my own remarks which were, among other things, reflections on what it means to be shaped by an institution but also to try to shape it. Without further delay, here are my reflections on 20 years of service in the United States Air Force.

Remarks:

As you can tell, I’m rushing a little bit. I’m a little worried about the time. We’ve gone long. We started late. And so, 20 years is a lot to recap and I’m a little reluctant to go back to the beginning; but I feel like there are some things you need to know.

When I was six years old, I was in a Sunday school class in Southern California at church. And whoever was teaching that class asked us to raise our hand and say what we want to be when we grow up. And I raised my hand and said, I want to be an artist. And after church, Debbie Tucker teased me about that, and I did not like that.

So at some point shortly thereafter, I decided I don’t want to be an artist. I want to be an Air Force pilot. And nobody ever teased me about that.

And at about that same time, we have earthquakes in Southern California. There was an earthquake. My dad and I used to make those model airplanes that you glue together, except instead of putting them on a shelf, we’d hang them from the ceiling so it looked like a P-51 and an A-10 in a dogfight or whatever.

And I was asleep on the top bunk. There was an earthquake. And my dad woke me up standing in the door frame. It was the safest part of the house during an earthquake. And he said, Joey, Joey, wake up. There’s an earthquake.And I looked at my dad and said, how do you know there’s an earthquake?And he said, look at the models. And sure enough, the models were swinging from the ceiling. And I thought, that is sufficient evidence.

And so at that moment, I just assumed that my dad knew that I was destined for a life in philosophy. From the moment I asked him, how do you know there’s an earthquake?

And so there, at six or seven years old, I wanted to be an Air Force officer, pilot, philosopher.

And we did it!

And, you know, bureaucracies don’t do that on their own. That was only through the influence of good leaders who were willing to take a risk on me, and certainly Flare is one of them. General Hinote was one of them. There are others in the room, and I’m very grateful.

So I want to kind of tell you how we got there. How did I come to the Interforce Pilot Philosopher? And I want to do it through the lens of a few bits of wisdom that I’ve picked up over the years.

So the first one’s from my dad. When I was in high school, I was getting ready to go to ROTC at Boston University. And because we were living in Bedford, Mass., so I knew people from my high school who had already matriculated to that detachment. I started to hear about some things that were going on that didn’t sound right. And I’m not going to tell that story here. You can ask me over dreams if you want to. But I was faced with this question, what is my role here? What am I supposed to do given that I can see that something is happening and it’s not right?

And I asked the Airman that I trusted, Master Sergeant Pete Roland, a retired first sergeant who ran the junior ROTC detachment at my high school. I asked my Aunt Gail, late Aunt Gail, who was a JAG officer in the Air Force, turned Article II judge. And then I asked my dad. And they all gave me versions of the same answer.

I’ll give you the wording my dad gave me. He said, whose Air Force is it? And it was rhetorical, but I knew the answer.

The answer is it’s my Air Force.

If I’m going to sit back and watch this thing happen, then I might as well be accepting it. I might as well be applauding it because I’m allowing that to happen in my Air Force.

One way you can tell the story of these last 20 years is over and over and over again being faced with that question. What is my role here given that this is my Air Force?

The second bit of wisdom came indirectly through my dad. When I was in high school, again, he gave me the Robert Coram book on John Boyd. It’s a biography on John Boyd.

If you don’t know John Boyd, he was an Air Force officer who had a fundamental impact on not just fighter tactics, but then how he designed fighter airplanes to perform those tactics. And then later in life, he had an influence on the operational strategic level of war, and the United States Marine Corps adopted that more enthusiastically even than the Air Force did. So he’s more of a hero in the Marine Corps than he is in the Air Force.

And in that book, Boyd, he gives this speech. John Boyd gives a speech to people that work for him, and it’s called the To Be or To Do Speech. And he’s a pretty extreme guy. I don’t buy the full extreme version of it. I think it’s possible to be successful in the Air Force without selling your soul.

But here’s how He says, at some point you’re going to face a fork in the road and you’re going to have to decide, do you want to be somebody or do you want to do something? And if you decide to be somebody, you’re going to have to sacrifice your integrity and you’re going to have to step on your friends, but you’ll get promoted. But if you want to do something, you may not get promoted, you may not get recognition, but you’ll be able to do something great for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself.

And I remember many times in that weird career of sitting back and having to ask myself, do I want Do I want to put myself on a path to beat somebody, or do I want to put myself on a path to be able to do something?

And the story that comes most immediately to mind is when I tried to do this Air Force Academy thing, go study philosophy and teach youth ethics at the Air Force Academy, Flair said, Flair Bernard-Webett said, I’m willing to push you for this Academy thing, but only if you look me in the eye first and tell me you never want to be a squadron commuter. Because if you go do this, it’s going to be very hard for you to come back and be successful as a squadron commuter.

And to this day, I’m grateful that he put me through that, right? Because he forced me to ask the question, Is there a milestone that I want to meet? If there is, I probably ne…

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This post is a little different. First, this week marks my one-year anniversary on Substack. This is, in fact, weekly post number 52! Second, my book came out this week! Humanity by Proxy: Essays at The Intersection of Philosophy and AI is a collection of essays drawn from this very Substack newsletter. The paperback, hard cover, and eBook are all available now. The audiobook should be out in a couple of weeks.

This week, I thought I would tell you about the how the book came to be and then make an announcement about the future of Views Expressed...

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At a budget hotel in Lexington, Massachusetts, my team of Air Force reserve officers and government civilians working on AI policy gathered around the bar. We had just finished our annual Department of the Air Force Data and AI Conference and everyone wanted to blow off a little steam. I had prearranged dinner plans with some good friends in Newton and told the team I’d catch up with them later. By the time I got back, they were quite a few drinks ahead of me.

Then two things happened. ...

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Network Rail chose to delay several freight and passenger trains in Lancashire, England recently because of damage to a rail bridge. Following minor tremors, someone posted a photo showing severe damage to the bridge. Based on that photo, rail authorities acted from caution and halted the trains—as any reasonable person might do.

Here’s the thing, though: There was no damage to the bridge. The image that circulated was AI-generated.

Kant had a pretty bold claim about the universe we call home. Kant argued that there are real things—things as they are. These, he called “noumena.” Then there are our perceptions of things. These aren’t things as they really are, but only as we perceive them. These, he called “phenomena.” ...

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A brief note before I begin: as you may have noticed, I took two weeks off from publishing here. I appreciate your patience. When I decided last January to publish these newsletters every Thursday, I didn’t anticipate that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years would all fall on Thursdays. My two weeks off were enjoyable, but, like Frank Costanza, “I’m back, baby!”

There’s a story—probably an apocryphal one—about how Walt Disney decided where to put trash cans at Disney World. He bought a hot dog and then walked while he ate. He counted his steps and stopped when he had finished his hot dog. That’s how far apart the garbage cans should be. The moment you find you have trash in your hand—through the magic of Disney—a trash bin should appear before you.

The story probably isn’t true, but it does point to Walt’s obsession with cleanliness. Rubbish, Walt believed, should never be visible to the park’s visitors. But placing a bin here or there isn’t enough to drive cleanliness amidst a culture of litter. Even when it comes to refuse, I suppose, culture eats strategy for breakfast...

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Many years ago, we stood up a new M-1B Predator squadron—the 20th Reconnaissance Squadron. The last time the squadron had been activated was during the Vietnam War, when US Air Force pilots flew O-1s, O-2s, and the mighty OV-10 Bronco in the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron. For the squadron stand-up event, we tracked down as many veterans of the original Vietnam-era squadron as we could. Thirteen such members descended upon Whiteman Air Force Base to celebrate with us. For us, it was the re-activation of an old squadron. For them, it was a reunion. We affectionately called that baker’s dozen “the old guys.” My commander told us in no uncertain terms that part of our job that weekend was to listen to the old guys’ stories; and so, we did.

On Saturday, late into the night at a visiting officers’ quarters room our guests called “the old guy hooch,” we listened to their war stories. Most our guests—and indeed most members of our squadron—had long since gone home. Five of them and two of us remained. Long after the sun had set, as the solo cups were emptied and refilled, and as voices lowered, the tenor of the conversation changed. No doubt, the day’s talk of throttle settings and aerial tactics drew the old guys into a headspace they hadn’t often occupied. Memories turned to their aircraft and their war.

As forward air controllers - airborne, they didn’t carry heavy bombs or missiles. Instead, they carried white smoke rockets. Flying aircraft with longer loiter times at slower speeds, the pilots of the 20th identified targets and marked them with smoke and then directed the heavier aircraft—often F-105 Thunderchiefs (or “Thuds”)—onto those targets.

To a person, each one of those five who remained that night had a story about a target mark and a weapons employment that still raises questions deep in their memories and in their consciences. One veteran in particular, John, told the story of a man in local attire riding his bicycle toward the friendly forward operating base (FOB). He said he didn’t have any reason to suspect the bicyclist of being a member of the Viet Cong, but the rules of engagement were clear: if a person got within a certain range of the FOB and continued toward the FOB, he was to be identified as hostile. John marked the target and the Thuds did the rest.

Moral injury, as a field of study, is relatively young. But as a phenomenon, it is as old as war. ...

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You probably don’t remember 110 film. It doesn’t come in a cylindrical can like 35mm film. It comes preloaded on a roll that looks a little like an old phone receiver—two small, black cylinders connected by a long piece of hollow plastic.

Back in the era of film cameras—110 or otherwise—every shot had to count. I had, I think, 24 photos on my roll of 110 film, a long, skinny container of film placed into the back of a long, skinny camera. Our family took a trip to Washington, DC. It’s the first time I can remember thinking, “I want to capture this moment on film.” We saw the sights. I’m sure I took pictures of my brother and sisters, the Washington Monument, and statues of dead presidents. But on the long road trip home, I had only one picture left. I needed to use it up so I could get the roll developed, but I also needed to make it count...

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I got bit by the publishing bug in 2013. I was applying to graduate schools and I didn’t have a writing sample from my undergraduate days that I was happy with. So, I decided to write a new paper. With the help of a philosopher from the US Air Force Academy (Dr. Leonard Kahan, in whose debt I remain), I wrote an academic paper on the ethics of remotely piloted aircraft. As a matter of procedure, I had to share the paper with my commander before sharing it more widely. Not only did he like the paper, but he also thought I should try to publish it. He happened to know the editor of the Spanish language edition of our professional journal, The Air and Space Power Journal, so, that’s where I sent it. It was published in 2013.

That was a profound moment for me. I realized for the first time that I, a fairly junior officer (a young captain at that time) might be able to shape the way people—maybe even senior people in my own organization—think about the world. I was hooked.

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That article-as-writing-sample (among other things) was enough to earn my matriculation into Boston College’s MA program in philosophy. There, my interests ranged widely. But one point of consistency was that every time a class required me to write a long (6-10k word) final paper, I decided I’d try to get that paper published. I was successful only a few times; but those few successes resulted in a published paper on Soren Kierkegaard, one on C. S. Lewis, and one on virtue ethics called, “The Martial Virtues: A Role Morality for Soldiers?”

I published the Martial Virtues paper in a journal called Social Theory and Practice. At that time, it was the most competitive outlet in which I had published and I was, frankly, very proud to have written something worthy of that journal. As a philosophical writer, I’ve come a long way since then and that 2018 article leaves me a little embarrassed now. At the time, though, it was easily the best thing I had ever written and I remain convinced that that publication had an impact my admission to Oxford’s PhD program.

I don’t expect you to care about any of these details except for this one: Social Theory and Practice, for better or worse, keeps a running tally of how many times each article has been downloaded. Today, in 2025, seven years since publication, my article, “The Martial Virtues: A Role Morality for Soldiers,” has been downloaded (wait for it)

Eighteen times.

Think about that for a moment. The best thing I had ever written, published in a high-end philosophy journal, has been enough to motivate 18 people to download and (maye even to) read it.

Earlier this year, I created Views Expressed. It’s reach is limited and its growth glacial. But every week, 100-150 people open up an email from me to read what I have to say about philosophy and AI. As a friend put it to me recently, 120 people is just about Dunbar’s number. That’s a person’s entire social circle. Each week I reach nearly ten times the number of people who have downloaded that scholarly paper. I might even get to impact the way some of those people think about philosophy and AI; and what a great privilege that is.

In addition to the weekly reports of people reading my work, there are, of course, also the “in real life” conversations in which many of you have reach out to tell me that something that I said informed you of something, or resonated with you, or meant something to you. For those interactions, I am especially grateful.

This Thanksgiving, my family will gather around a turkey (cooked on the grill as is the Chapa way) and share what we’re thankful for. I hope you’ll have a similar opportunity. In the meantime, I mean this will all sincerity: I am thankful that you’re a Views Expressed reader.

From my family to yours: Happy Thanksgiving.

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Glen Powell hosted SNL last weekend. It was one of the best episodes I’ve seen in awhile. (Beware, spoilers).

In Powell’s opening monologue, he tells the story of the first time he was supposed to host the venerated sketch comedy show. When he received the phone call inviting him to host back then, there happened to be a UPS delivery guy named mitch delivering a package just as the family was on the porch receiving the call. Mitch got wrapped up in the celebration and, no doubt, told his friends and family members that he met Glen Powell and that Powell would be hosting on such-and-such a date.

Well, that wasn’t to be. COVID delayed the opening of Top Gun: Maverick and SNL gave Powell’s slot to someone else.

When Powell got the word that he would finally be hosting the show for real, the Powell family did what any normal people would have done: They tracked down Mitch the UPS driver and invited him to be in the studio audience.

It was a very well done bit.

The quality of SNL waxes and wanes with time and I’m sure each fan has his or her favorite cast or favorite era of the show’s fifty year history. But we can probably all agree that SNL can act as a kind of barometer of cultural import. A pop culture reference has to rise above a certain threshold of common knowledge before we can expect to see it on SNL. Why does SNL prioritize impressions of Presidents, Vice Presidents, Presidential Candidates, and Speakers of the House? It’s because so many Americans know who those people are and know the circumstances under which those people appeared in the news that week.

So, here’s my thesis: If SNL highlights a topic, that topic is probably already pretty pervasive in our society.

In the very first sketch after Powell’s monologue, several cast members create a scene in which four young people introduce their aging grandmother to AI-enabled technology that brings old photos to life. ...

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