An Open Letter To The Serving And
THE STEADY STATE
An Open Letter to the Serving and Former Flag Officers of the U.S. Military
We are The Steady State — a network of more than 350 former senior officials from the U.S. national security community, including veterans of intelligence, defense, diplomacy, law enforcement, and congressional oversight. Many of us spent our careers planning, collecting, processing, analyzing, or evaluating the intelligence that informed the decisions of America’s military leadership. We write with the utmost respect for your service, and with deep concern for those currently in uniform as they are called to defend their oath to the Constitution under this Administration — at a moment when military leadership may stand as the final institutional safeguard against the collapse of constitutional democracy.
Recently, Bill Piekney, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer who held numerous senior positions at the Central Intelligence Agency and across the national security community — and who is himself a member of The Steady State — published an essay titled Well, General, What Are You Thinking?. In it, he poses a question of profound gravity: At what point must a senior officer refuse to obey an order that, while issued by the command, is in fact illegal — or that would serve the interests of an aspiring autocrat rather than the Constitution and the Republic it protects — a moment when the armed forces may be our last line of defense?
Piekney’s warning is not speculative. Around the world, democracies have faltered when military leaders have failed — or hesitated — to recognize the moment when loyalty to command must yield to allegiance to the law and to the democratic order itself. The United States, despite its traditions and institutions, is not immune to that danger — and if that moment arrives here, senior military leadership will be uniquely positioned to prevent democratic failure.
You were (and for those still serving, still are) among the primary consumers of intelligence community analysis: objective, tradecraft-based assessments designed to inform decisions of the highest consequence. Today, as Piekney notes, that same kind of disciplined, fact-based assessment is needed again — only this time, the threat to be evaluated is not about foreign adversaries, but about the condition of our own democracy and the possibility that military judgment may again be decisive in its defense.
To that end, we share with you Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, a recent analytic product of The Steady State. Prepared by former professionals trained in intelligence and national-security analysis, the authors apply the same standards of rigor (ICD-203) used within the U.S. Intelligence Community to evaluate warning indicators of democratic backsliding and authoritarian consolidation abroad — but this time to assess our own democracy. The findings are sobering: those same indicators are now evident within the United States — and they are accelerating.
We offer this assessment not as advocacy, but as analysis: a resource to help inform the professional and moral judgment of those who may once again face decisions about where lawful command ends and unlawful coercion begins. The survival of our constitutional democracy has always relied on leaders who can discern that distinction — and who have the courage to uphold it if other institutions falter.
We invite you to read the assessment, reflect upon it, and share it with your peers. The decisions that may soon rest upon your shoulders will determine whether the nation you have long defended continues as the constitutional republic we have all sworn to serve — or whether history will look to the military and ask whether its leaders stood firm when democracy most needed them.
Very Respectfully,
The Steady State