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In 2016, I was asked to write a chapter for a new British book titled Conduct Risk: A Practitioner’s Guide, on the root causes of conduct risk and how it manifests itself.  I was writing primarily about financial institutions from an operational risk perspective, but my conclusions about those questions apply equally to governance issues in both the public and private sectors.  Here, I want to identify what I saw as the root causes in 2015-2016 and provide several current examples that are destabilizing our country.

Hegseth’s first words to the over 700 generals and admirals, sitting quietly before him at last month’s emergency gathering, were “Welcome to the War Department because the era of the Department of Defense is over. Your only mission is ‘warfighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising.” Hegseth cast a glowing view of the past to the generals, most of whom had more military experience than he did. He claimed our period of peace, ignoring the Vietnam and Iraq wars, was brought about by the warrior ethos that has been lost.