Experience at AHI's WAPONS

This summer, I had the pleasure to participate in the Alexander Hamilton Institute’s Washington Program on National Security (WAPONS), led by AHI Senior Fellow Dr. Juliana Pilon. During our week and a half in D.C., the fourteen of us met with experts in various fields. We focused on a wide range of topics at the forefront of national security discussions, including digital infrastructure for the financial sectors and its implications for national security, technology and security in a geopolitical context, the Senate and defense funding, and North Korea’s use of hybrid warfare against the United States, to name a few. Yet despite these practical, comprehensive offerings, what I took away from WAPONS was more profound and personal than our fascinating lessons about national security.

One example came early in the week, during the question-and- answer part of our meeting with Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. During the Q&A, a student asked Mr. Gonzalez what advice he had, given the tumultuous times we live in. He suggested that when you encounter something you feel passionate about, or that is especially compelling to you, think of it as God whispering in your ear that you should do it. Initially I didn’t think much of this advice, but I found it meant a lot more later in the week.

A few days after our session with Mr. Gonzalez, we met with Yang Jianli, a Chinese dissident and human rights activist. Dr. Yang described his participation in the famous protest at Tiananmen Square in 1989, fleeing to the United States immediately afterward, then returning in 2002, when he was arrested and imprisoned until 2007. He also recounted a very recent story. On the Tiananmen anniversary just a few days before we met, a woman in Beijing climbed a skyscraper, waved an American flag, and dropped pamphlets with the Declaration of Independence. The story further captivated us. In every other presentation, students were fidgeting, looking at their hands, or taking notes. When Dr. Yang spoke, all of us were mesmerized for the entire 40-minute talk.

I felt a reawakened passion, last experienced in my childhood enthusiasm for fighter jets after watching the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds fly over my neighborhood. Now, with the Chinese dissident’s emotionally powerful history, I felt a new, passionate draw to serve the country whose values many others can only dream of being able to live under in their homelands. If others without America’s freedoms are (as Yang showed us) prepared to die to obtain them, I feel the least I can do is work to maintain those principles so they remain not just an aspiration for others, but a vibrant reality, as they are or should be for us. After speaking together, a few of my fellow students shared that feeling. One has just become a newly commissioned Army intelligence officer.

After hearing Mike Gonzalez’s advice and Yang Jianli’s moving stories thanks to the unrivaled opportunities to encounter such perspectives that Dr. Robert Paquette’s AHI and Dr. Pilon’s WAPONS offered us, I have come to believe it’s my calling, as cheesy as it may sound, to serve my country and fly for the military. I’ll take that as a whisper.