Bill Thompson

I was part of an accepted career program that they were starting to call like the old white boys network because most of the people, so the requirements for this network were you had to speak a couple languages.

You needed an engineering degree or some kind of demonstrated engineering background.

You had to have deployed.

They wanted you to speak the language very well.

They wanted you to be able to go through these engineering courses, these other things.

And what happens naturally is you now need people who are interested in engineering, all right?

So you've got somebody who's maybe more constrained in their thinking.

You need somebody who speaks languages.

Well, now they also need to be kind of – speak French, speak Russian, whatever it was.

So they had to have studied or lived in an area and done this.

And they need to be able to go through these crazy tactical and strategic types of courses.

By virtue of those things, you're going to get men.

And there were lots of women, but then there'll be more white men.

And it's not because the pool presented itself that way.

Now you have to extract from that pool.

And so in this briefing, when they were talking about like the old white boys network or how we need to change things, I said, you know, do you realize that most men have more in common?

Um, than most women or like if there's a, if, if, if I, if I say I need more diversity in a particular room, if you said diversity of thought, I'd be fine with that.

But, but Joe and, you know, random black guy in the, in the same program, in the same office have far more in common than the white woman.

But what you're saying is these people need to have all separate different colors and different, like all of this needs to be this way.

It's going to naturally present itself that way because men in the military generally are disagreeable.