I guess I should start by explaining why I started this blog.

I’ve been in the Marine Cyber OccField since its inception and the Marine Corps longer than that. In my time in MarForCyber, I’ve seen:

• Some top-notch technical folks get drowned out amid a sea of bozos
• Truly unqualified, incompetent people hired or slated into critical roles
• Commanders and staff at the most senior levels that have absolutely no idea what their job is or their people do

Things are, as they say: pretty bad. How did we end up in a place where the premier Marine Cyber organization consists largely of people that don’t understand their core competency? Why are we a command that’s more interested in swim quals, rifle ranges, and training hikes than operating systems, computer networks, or programming? Why does every Lieutenant and Captain secretly start counting down the days until their EAS as soon as they finish their check-in sheet? This command has been around for 12 years, why aren’t we any better?

This blog is my attempt to grapple with how this is all going so wrong. It’s an attempt to answer some of these questions. It’s a reaction to watching all of my friends walk out the door because they’re tired of not being listened to, because they have skills we need but won’t let them apply, and because the Marine Corps doesn’t have a monopoly on service here in the cyber domain. It’s an open letter to every colonel that asks with mouth agape, “why do all these officers keep quitting”?

Here we go.