Veterans, Trust, and AI: Rebuilding National Cohesion

In 2023, Pew Research reported that the share of Americans who are veterans has been shrinking for decades—meaning fewer households have direct, lived contact with military service. That’s not just a cultural footnote. It’s a national security issue hiding in plain sight.

When fewer civilians personally know people in uniform, it gets easier for myths to harden into “common sense,” for partisan narratives to attach themselves to the military, and for public debates about defense to become more emotional than informed. Add the reality that active-duty and reserve forces have recently been pulled into domestic law-enforcement support in multiple cities, and you get a combustible mix: high respect, low understanding, and rising distrust.

Here’s my view: veterans are one of the few groups positioned to reduce that friction—because they can translate between cultures. And in the AI in Defense & National Security era, that bridge-building has a new counterpart: AI systems that can either deepen mistrust through opacity and misuse, or reinforce trust through transparency, accountability, and better coordination.

The real civilian–military gap isn’t respect—it’s contact

Most Americans “support the troops,” but many don’t know what military service actually looks like day-to-day. That gap shows up in awkward rituals (“thank you for your service”), shallow conversations, and a tendency to treat veterans as symbols instead of neighbors.

Rick Landgraf’s Veterans Day reflection lands on something many veterans recognize: gratitude often comes out as a script because people don’t know what else to say. The problem isn’t bad intent. It’s distance.

Distance has consequences:

• Policy debates get distorted. When the military becomes an abstraction, it’s easier to simplify complex questions (force posture, readiness, rules of engagement, budget tradeoffs) into slogans.
• Trust becomes fragile. People can admire an institution while still distrusting how it’s used—or fearing it’s being politicized.
• Service members can feel isolated. A closed professional culture is necessary for mission readiness, but social isolation makes reintegration harder and misunderstanding more likely.

A better norm than “thanks”: curiosity with guardrails

The fastest way to turn a ritual into a relationship is to ask an open-ended question that doesn’t put the veteran on the spot. Landgraf suggests simple prompts like why someone chose their branch, or what they miss about serving.

Here are a few more that work well in professional settings (workplaces, community events, board meetings):

• “What’s a leadership habit you learned that you still use?”
• “What did your team do that civilians might not realize is hard?”
• “What do you wish people understood about the military as an institution?”

These questions do something subtle: they invite meaning, not spectacle. And that matters because social trust grows through repeated, normal interactions—not ceremonial moments.

Veterans as trust infrastructure: what “service after service” looks like

Veterans rebuild national cohesion by showing up locally and consistently. Not as moral authorities, not as mascots, but as citizens with uncommon experience in teamwork, consequences, and institutional discipline.

Landgraf’s argument is straightforward: don’t wait for civilians to magically “get it.” Veterans can lower the barrier to understanding by telling small, concrete stories—what the unit actually did, what “mission” meant in practice, what accountability felt like.

I’d extend that: veterans are uniquely credible in three civic roles that directly affect national security.

1) The translator: helping civilians interpret military reality

The public doesn’t need classified details; it needs context. Veterans can explain concepts civilians routinely misread:

• “Readiness” isn’t chest-thumping; it’s maintenance, training time, personnel stability, and logistics.
• “Chain of command” isn’t blind obedience; it’s controlled authority with legal constraints.
• “Civilian control” isn’t a slogan; it’s the foundation that keeps military power legitimate.

When veterans calmly explain these ideas in everyday spaces—schools, local councils, nonprofits—they reduce the odds that defense conversations become purely partisan identity fights.

2) The stabilizer: modeling restraint when politics heats up

When institutions are pulled into political narratives, veterans can de-escalate without being naïve. The profession of arms has durable principles: lawful authority, constitutional loyalty, disciplined conduct, and a bias toward order under stress.

That doesn’t mean veterans should be apolitical or silent. It means their public posture can be different:

• Speak precisely.
• Avoid rumor and “buddy said” sourcing.
• Separate criticism of policy from contempt for institutions.
• Refuse calls to treat the military as a partisan prop.

A veteran who models restraint in public life is doing something strategic: they’re protecting the legitimacy of the force.

3) The builder: strengthening local institutions that feed national resilience

National security isn’t only missiles, ships, and cyber teams. It’s also schools, public health capacity, emergency management, and critical infrastructure protection.

Veterans can improve those systems by doing unglamorous work:

• Serving on school boards and budgeting committees
• Mentoring young professionals (especially in STEM and public service)
• Coaching youth teams (seriously—leadership and trust start early)
• Helping local agencies run realistic crisis exercises

Every time a veteran applies “mission clarity” and “after-action review” habits to local problems, that’s readiness—just not the kind that shows up on a parade route.

Where AI fits: trust is a shared problem in defense and in civic life

The same trust dynamics that strain civilian–military relations also show up in AI adoption across defense and national security. If people don’t understand how decisions are made, they assume the worst. If systems feel unaccountable, legitimacy erodes.

In other words: AI doesn’t just need to work. It needs to be governable.

Here are three practical ways AI can support the “veterans as bridge-builders” mission without turning into another source of suspicion.

AI can reduce friction in veteran-to-civilian transitions (and keep talent in the fight)

One under-discussed readiness problem: we train people at great cost, then lose their expertise because transitions are messy.

Used responsibly, AI can help:

• Translate military experience into civilian competencies (e.g., mapping roles to skills frameworks for public sector, defense industry, and critical infrastructure employers)
• Support personalized education pathways for ROTC cadets, junior officers, and separating service members (course planning, credential alignment, tutoring)
• Improve access to benefits navigation with secure, auditable assistants that reduce paperwork errors and missed deadlines

This isn’t about “automating care.” It’s about removing administrative drag so veterans can serve their communities sooner—and with less burnout.

AI can strengthen civil-military dialogue with better information hygiene

Domestic information environments are noisy. That noise hits defense issues hard—because secrecy, complexity, and emotion make them easy targets.

AI can help communities and institutions build information hygiene:

• Summarizing public defense documents in plain language for town halls or classrooms
• Flagging likely mis/disinformation patterns for communicators and educators
• Supporting scenario-based civic education (what actually happens during a domestic deployment, what legal authorities apply, who approves what)

Done well, AI becomes a translator—the same role veterans often play.

Done poorly—opaque models, untraceable outputs, uncorrectable errors—it becomes gasoline on the distrust fire.

AI governance is the trust test (and veterans should have a voice)

Here’s a stance I’m comfortable defending: defense AI programs that can’t explain accountability shouldn’t be fielded at scale. Not because AI is uniquely scary, but because defense systems operate under democratic legitimacy.

Veterans—especially those with operational, intelligence, cyber, logistics, or acquisition experience—can contribute to AI governance in concrete ways:

• Serving on ethics and oversight boards in government, academia, and industry
• Stress-testing “human-in-the-loop” claims with real operational examples
• Demanding audit trails, escalation paths, and clear authority boundaries

If you’ve ever watched a small ambiguity become a big operational problem, you’re exactly who should be in these rooms.

A practical playbook: what to do next (veterans and civilians)

Trust-building works when it’s specific, repeatable, and local. Here’s a playbook that doesn’t require a podium or a viral post.

For veterans: 30 days of civic bridge-building

1. Tell one “small story” per week. Not a highlight reel—one lesson about teamwork, accountability, or failure recovery.
2. Join one local institution. A board, a PTA committee, a volunteer fire auxiliary, a disaster-response org, a library program—anything that forces collaboration.
3. Mentor one future-servant. ROTC cadets, JROTC, a community college student, a new hire in a critical infrastructure job.
4. Practice “calm correction.” When someone says something wrong about the military, correct it without humiliation. If you win the point but lose the relationship, you didn’t build trust.

For civilians and employers: turn appreciation into support

• Replace “thanks” with one real question and listen without trying to perform empathy.
• If you manage people, create clear on-ramps for veterans: transparent leveling, mentorship, predictable feedback cycles.
• Support veterans as citizens, not just as hires—encourage civic leave, board service, and community volunteering.

For defense and national security leaders: treat trust as a program requirement

If your organization is deploying AI for mission planning, intelligence analysis, cybersecurity, or decision support, bake in:

• Explainability appropriate to the decision (not every model needs the same transparency, but every decision needs accountability)
• Auditability and logging as default
• Red-team testing that includes social and institutional failure modes—not just technical ones

Trust is a system property. You don’t bolt it on later.

The Veterans Day idea that should last past November

Veterans Day creates a moment of attention, but national cohesion is built in ordinary weeks: school meetings, workplace conflicts, neighborhood emergencies, and public debates that could go sideways fast. Veterans can help keep those moments from breaking into something worse.

And as AI becomes more embedded in defense and national security—mission planning tools, ISR analysis workflows, cyber defense platforms—the same principle applies: capability without trust creates instability.

If you’re leading an AI program in the national security ecosystem, or you’re a veteran looking for meaningful “service after service,” the opportunity is the same: build systems (and relationships) that hold up under stress. Where are you currently relying on ritual—when what you really need is a durable bridge?