The Death of Expertise and America's Strategy Deficit

In August 2023, I wrote about the alarming erosion of expertise in American society. Drawing on insights from bestselling author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short) and his deep exploration of expertise in his "Against the Rules" project, I traced how social media had created a world where your high school classmate's Facebook post carried as much weight as a medical doctor's diagnosis.

Today, that erosion has reached an unprecedented and dangerous new level – and revealed its connection to what I call America's "strategy deficit."

Senior Trump administration officials, including the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor, conducted detailed discussions about classified military strikes against Yemen's Houthi militants not in the Situation Room, not over secure government networks designed for top-secret information, but on Signal – a commercial messaging app. And they accidentally included a journalist in the conversation.

This isn't just a security breach. It's the culmination of two dangerous trends: the systematic devaluation of expertise and the replacement of strategic thinking with tactical reactions. When you dismiss the expertise embedded in established security protocols, you inevitably create strategic incoherence – making decisions without proper consideration of their second-order effects or how they fit into broader objectives.

The Signal scandal perfectly exemplifies what I've previously described as "all tactics, no strategy" – national security decisions made without the benefit of institutional guardrails designed specifically to ensure strategic coherence and protect sensitive information.

Let that sink in. The most sensitive military plans – "weapons packages, targets, and timing" – shared on the same platform where you might coordinate happy hour plans with friends.

When confronted, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed the Atlantic's editor Jeffrey Goldberg (the journalist inadvertently included) as "discredited" and insisted that "nobody was texting war plans." This, despite the White House confirming the authenticity of the chat and the fact that, as Goldberg noted, "Two hours before the strikes began, Hegseth sent the group sensitive information about the strike plan, including weapons packages, targets, and timing."

This dangerous dismissal of expertise goes beyond individual decisions to the very systems designed to ensure strategic coherence in governance. The Signal scandal reveals four disturbing patterns that perfectly mirror the broader erosion of expertise I described last year:

1. Dismissal of established protocols
Just as COVID patients rejected medical expertise during the pandemic, these officials dismissed decades of national security protocols established precisely to protect sensitive military information. The Situation Room and secure classified networks exist for a reason - they embody the collective wisdom of generations of national security professionals. Using Signal instead isn't just a technical breach; it's a rejection of the very idea that specialized systems matter.

2. Casual approach to specialized knowledge
The cavalier attitude toward classified information mirrors how social media has normalized treating all knowledge as equally accessible and valid. The officials discussed military strikes with the same casual informality you might use to plan dinner. This "democratization" of specialized knowledge ignores that some information requires rigorous training and institutional safeguards to handle properly.

3. Institutional erosion
Both the Signal scandal and the broader rejection of expertise reflect the weakening of institutional norms that previously ensured expert knowledge was respected and protected. When Hegseth vowed to use polygraphs to track down "unauthorized disclosures" of sensitive information - while himself disclosing classified strike plans on a commercial app - we see how institutional guardrails have been replaced by personal judgment calls.

4. Defensive deflection
When confronted with evidence, Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as "discredited" rather than addressing the security breach itself. This mirrors how expertise is commonly rejected today - not by engaging with the substance of expert claims, but by attacking the credibility of the messenger. It's the same pattern we see when scientific expertise is rejected by claiming scientists are "corrupt" or have ulterior motives.

When I last wrote about expertise, I recalled a heartbreaking story from Michael Lewis's podcast about a nurse in Aurora, Illinois, who watched as an unvaccinated police officer refused potentially life-saving medical intervention because he believed conspiracy theories about hospitals trying to kill COVID patients. The officer died a week later, leaving behind a wife and two young children.

What we're witnessing now is that same deadly dismissal of expertise, but at the highest levels of government, with stakes that extend far beyond individual tragedies to national security itself.

Most striking is how this parallels the exact mechanisms I described in 2023. Just as social media users dismiss medical experts in favor of their own research, these officials dismissed decades of established security protocols. Just as COVID conspiracy theorists rejected evidence that challenged their worldview, Hegseth rejected the reality of what happened even after it was confirmed by the White House.

When I examined the January 6th indictment in my original article, I noted how alarming it was that millions of Americans rejected the testimony of experts who were "actually there" – from the Vice President to the Attorney General to state election officials. Now, we have national security officials who were "actually there" in classified briefings acting as if those briefings held no special status requiring protection.

The Signal scandal represents the full circle of expertise's decline: from the public rejecting experts to the experts themselves rejecting expertise. And in that rejection, we see not just individual recklessness, but the breakdown of strategic thinking that has long distinguished effective governance from mere reactive management.

In my 2023 piece, I asked what could be done to rebuild trust in expertise. Michael Lewis suggested national service programs, better education in statistics, and elevating stories about what experts do to make our world safer. His words carry a painful irony now, as those specifically charged with making our world safer have themselves abandoned the protocols designed by experts to protect sensitive information.

The consequences extend beyond this specific incident. Without strategic frameworks guided by expertise, we can't effectively address the complex, interconnected challenges of our time: national security threats, technological disruption, changing global power dynamics, and maintaining America's position in a competitive world.

As I tell my students at USC Annenberg, effective communication isn't just about crafting compelling messages—it's about ensuring those messages serve coherent strategic objectives. The same principle applies to national security. Without expertise informing strategy, even the most forcefully implemented policies become merely sound and fury, signifying nothing except a failure to plan beyond the next news cycle or military operation.

If there's any silver lining to this dark cloud, it's that the dangers of expertise's erosion are now so obvious that perhaps they cannot be ignored. When the systems designed to protect our most sensitive military information are bypassed so casually – and when those responsible respond with dismissals rather than accountability – perhaps we can finally see clearly where this path leads.

As John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, put it: "This is appalling." Indeed it is. And it's exactly where the death of expertise and the strategy deficit were always heading.