“The military’s very strongly put into effect, from leadership down, to only trust the words of your high command and not your fellow soldiers on the line.”

Among the institutions that face the greatest threat from misinformation, the United States military may be the most significant. While misinformation in national politics may lead to polarization and awkward Thanksgiving conversations, when it comes to national security, having the right information is often a matter of life or death. To better understand how the military handles misinformation, I spoke with Gavin Curtin. Gavin is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who funded his education through enlistment in the United States National Guard. The purpose of my interview with Gavin was to understand an insider’s view into the reality of being in the military in 2022, how being in the military shapes one’s views when it comes to politics and information, and how the military handles the issue.

Gavin is a senior at UWM graduating in May with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing. Gavin funded his education by joining the United States National Guard as a Specialist in the 13 Bravo Cannon Crew. Over the past four years, Gavin has been deployed nationally for a variety of operations ranging from testing and vaccination operations during Covid-19 to riot control during the Summer 2020 riots.

A: My name is Gavin Michael Curtin. I am a specialist in the United States National Guard with the Army. I’m 22 now, senior at UWM in the marketing department. I am a Thirteen Bravo Cannon Crew member, so for long-barreled Howitzers I pretty much towed artillery and shell components.  I’ve been on a few deployments, mostly national, I haven’t been sent overseas. I’ve been in the guard for coming on three years now, well no, past three years.

Q: I want you to explain a little about why you joined the military in the first place, what inspired you to do that, and how did you find yourself ending up where you are now.

A: So, like most kids, I think we all kind of envision the bad ass, we want to be action heroes and we all wanted to be soldiers. But it never really hit me as a career option through all of school until I tore my ACL. I was working for a sports scholarship at UWM to go for soccer. That flew out the window the year prior due to the ACL tear, so it took me out of my prime spot to even have a chance. So then I had to figure out how I was going to pay for college. I heard a fellow student talking about national guard benefits, how they pay you monthly, you get normal pay, they’ll help pay for tuition, and so on. I was like, alright, I need those kind of benefits. I’ll call up the recruiters office and see what’s what. From that point on, and a whole bunch of trying to figure things out along the way, I ended up here.

Q: What about the general perception about being in the military is wrong?

A: Having family or someone you know in the military a better grasp than, obviously, someone who has nothing to do with military or no family, no connections, no friends in there.

Not everyone in the military is your hardcore, action-star, right-wing Texas Joe Schmo. I think that’s one of the biggest things. They think everyone is a hardcore gun-advocate, everyone is a straight White American for the most part. Typically, you have pretty much one of the most diverse groups of people I’ve ever met, from politics to beliefs to backgrounds. Not everyone in the military is your hardcore, bread-and-butter, working for the American ideal of freedom. Some of them are in for college benefits just trying to pay off those loans because it’s a frankly scary thing to try to conquer. Some people are in for the health insurance, by the way, which is fantastic. Some people go in so they can advance their status on becoming an American citizen, working for that American dream we’ve all been promised.

Q: Since you’ve joined the military, what changes have occurred in the way that you view politics, the way that you consume news and information, and just your life in general? How has being in the military affected your outlook?

A: I think it’s opened my eyes to a whole different side of the world. It gives you more of a global view on things. Especially with current events over the past few years, you kind of have to consider it’s not just about America anymore. Especially in this period of going from a high school student into college and starting the process of actually being an adult, you start to become more worldly.

I think it gives me a different perspective because when people intake news, especially on world conflict, normally you’d go with your day. I was like, oh, that might be interesting, hope that passes by. But for the military its like, will I see one of my friends get deployed for that, or myself? Something more obvious to the general public like when during the Trump administration, it was the Iran strike on that one general who was on our most wanted list but was very popular over there and it was like this huge conflict for a little bit. I got hit up by twenty different people after taking a nap saying, ‘are you going over?’, ‘are you going over?’ But really, I went in the next day and it was the big topic for the week, everyone thought that we were going over to Iran. But when you get into the unit, we had our briefing and the big thing that our leaders basically brought down to us of: “Yep, so I assume you’ve all heard the news about the Iran strike. It is a possibility, we can’t rule it out. But obviously I can’t tell you if we’re going or not because that’s obviously not in place. We’re waiting on next steps from higher ups”. So what news actually gets down to us is very limited and would kind of surprise the public that they think if you’re involved with the military, you know the whole operation. Which for security reasons, we can’t know the whole operation and we can’t know the whole step.

Q: So that kind of already is answering my next question, which is, how is information dispersed in the military, especially when it comes to rumors and events that are unfolding in front of our eyes

A: I think, for me anyway, it could be different for any other military personnel, but there’s one thing we all agree on, and it’s a thing called PNN. It’s called the Private’s News Network. So it’s the young buck, doesn’t know much, and spreads information as soon as they hear it. It’s funny what you hear and it can be really misconstrued or really wild but this has been a phenomenon since basic and it goes all the way to your main unit. You’ll get misinformation and basically take it with a grain of salt until a higher person of rank brings it down to you. So typically someone of officer level or NCO level, which would be your Sergeants or Platoon Sergeants, they’ll let you know what’s going on.

Q: We as an American society have a certain collective understanding of events as well as a media narrative that has very much informed that collective understanding. The actual experience as well as the military understanding and narrative I think is different than the general population’s understanding. Can you think of any good examples of where the media or general public narrative differs from the military narrative?

A: For instance, I would say, I was called to duty by the governor at the time for when the Milwaukee riots and protests were happening during the significant events of Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, that whole spiel of protests and then riots and then just the whole mixture of everyone on one side. It was kind of freaky, on one side, because the misinformation that got in was that we were going down to shoot. We were given loaded weapons, but we were put in a position where they literally handed us legal documents. They make sure that everyone is on the same page, for the most part, in the military and they crack down on anyone that is not with the line that the military wants to draw. So typically, a professional standard is one of limited action and violence if at all can be opposed. Typically any violence initiated is to be a deterrent or to save life, and that is what we were told.

Especially for the protests, riots, whatever your personal belief is on it, the military was there to be a neutral and deterring party from violent acts. It can be well agreed upon that the military was not there to stop anyone from speaking their mind, or stopping them from voicing their opinions, or how they felt, or what they feel should be changed. The main reason we were there is because when high concentrations of people get together, there are individuals who will take advantage of certain situations like that and could either use them as high population attacks or raiding of people’s business, or things that don’t seem to align with what the majority want to say. When we were there, we were constantly followed. It was reality TV, we were constantly on camera. They transported us on buses throughout the city and we had Humvee convoys to guard and protect us. There were multiple situations where people with their own agenda cut off the convoys and it became a security measure. So it was a very big thing that we all grouped up and we had to say, “What level of risk are we willing to take to possibly end up in a situation where, if you have a firearm and you end up defending yourself in any kind of way with a firearm against another person, how will that be construed against you?” I heard people say, even Sergeants say, “Hey, I got plate armor, unless they’re pointing at my head I’m willing to take a shot before I fire back.”

Q: When they hear rumors and see kind of questionable things floating around in the narrative, do they go out of their way to address it to you and say, “this is what we know about it,” or do they try to ignore it if they don’t believe it’s substantiated.

A: I think it depends how substantial the rumor is to the public because it would be impossible to catch every rumor that goes through. They’ll do a good job of If it becomes pertinent, typically it’s we talk to our leaders, our leaders talk to their leaders, and it kind of goes up the chain of command what’s kind of pertinent. Some things slip through, some things don’t but they typically try to squash it. In terms of rumors overseas, it literally is a grain of salt. We don’t know what’s going on, information gets passed to us as is. One thing I’d like to refer to is whenever we’re interviewed, we have a department that is solely for media purposes and to help avoid rumors because they’re in direct contact with command, command tells them what they want the public to know and what they want to make a promise as this is what we’re here for, this is what we do, this is what the mission is, so on.

Once you’re in the military, you’re not allowed to have a political standpoint as a military member. On the civilian side, you can, you can talk shop. But you can’t go professionally speaking your own mind because you are the government, you are influential in certain ways and that can be misconstrued, your personal politics to what the military is, and it doesn’t want to mix those up. Because in the military you are not an individual, you are a group.

Q: What do you think the military should do about misinformation?

A: I’m certain this is a just a constant phenomenon now, and especially throughout history it’s gotten a lot stronger, the ability of misinformation with technology. Deep fakes, photos, videos, and then how you cut a video or photo, how you cut the sides, how you place it, how you take a shot. It misconstrues the whole idea and it makes it harder to take action in certain situations because you don’t know whether you’re right or wrong in the decision. And it could absolutely blow up in your face if you choose the wrong answer, especially today when you need to rely on the possible aspects, especially in a military consideration.

I think it’s handled it a lot better as we come to these decades of more and more modern technology. Just even the recent events of the Iraq and the Afghanistan War really put a boot in the military high command’s ass to squash rumors, misinformation, and make them more responsible for their members and their actions. Especially when everyone’s on camera and no one wants a public scandal. And not just for the public scandal’s look, but it’s really hard to redeem trust when it’s lost. So the military’s very strongly put into effect, from leadership down, to only trust the words of your high command and not your fellow soldiers on the line. Take everything with a grain of salt. That’s really the key thing there. And that’s what I think they’ll continue to do.

Q: I know you’ve done work with veterans, and I have veterans in my family, what misinformation do you see about veterans?

A: It’s not like you can group them all up, everyone is a little different. A lot of them are very misunderstood. It’s comforting to veterans when I speak to them that they’re speaking to someone who went through the experience or is going through it. I think something that isn’t said enough for Vietnam veterans, they went through the hardest history of “babykiller” slander, straight slander to them. For the most part a lot of them went through just doing what they were told to do. A lot of them were drafted, didn’t really have a choice and some of them just tried doing the good fight. It wasn’t really their choice to be there for the most part. I think, if you know a veteran or someone who served in the military, even if they didn’t commit a combat role, they still took a portion of their lives to commit to something bigger than themselves. We appreciate nothing more than knowing someone thinks about them for a second. Especially veterans who their whole life was the military and for some reason they went out of it, they can be really kind of isolated, some of them anyway. It’s good just to remind them that they’re still people and that you as a collective group can care and do think about them. And that’s good enough.