Terry Vance

What led you to your career, or what inspired you to build a career in national security?

I was initially inspired to join the military by the “sound of freedom” at an airshow during college. Shortly after the Gulf War I was attending architecture school at the University of Oregon and already had a strong sense of adventure and patriotism. The F-16 fly-by to start the airshow sealed the deal for me and I charted a path for Air Force ROTC the next year while the nation was “at peace”. My sense of serving began to change quickly once I was commissioned since my first assignment was at Misawa Air Base in Japan working closely with our allies to defend against North Korean missile attacks. The USS Cole was attacked in October 2000, followed by the EP-3 incident in April 2001. The globe didn’t feel very peaceful. Then on my first deployment, I flew from Japan to support SOUTHERN WATCH at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, landing on September 10^th, 2001.  A lot of careers in national security changed the next day. After the deployment I changed stations again to Osan Air Base, South Korea and began working closely with our ROK allies to “fight tonight” on the peninsula and to ensure we had the capabilities to absorb follow-on forces and move north. So, within my first four years in the Air Force, I had worked in multiple combined and joint environments, at several austere locations, and had been immersed in numerous languages and cultures. It was an incredible time of life and sequence of experiences. I added in a short vacation to China for sightseeing and that catalyzed my career focus to become a China Foreign Area Officer. After three years in Korea I went off to the Naval Postgraduate School and to study Mandarin at DLI. I spent much of the rest of my career focused on China and the PLA as these issues grew in importance.  

What is the most rewarding aspect of your job?

Prior to retiring from the Air Force, there were a couple aspects of life as an FAO that were pretty incredible. After many years of training and education, we were accepted into the Defense Attaché Service and assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The opportunity to represent the Air Force, the DoD, and the United States in a major diplomatic hub was one of the most rewarding experiences for our family. The Country Team we had was amazing and really dedicated to driving change in the bilateral relationship with China, which had been poorly managed for far too long. Not just at the government to government level, but across industry and academia as well. We had the opportunity to dig deep into the economic, social, political, and security changes occurring across China and educate key policymakers at every level, across both the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch. After returning to Washington, I was then extremely fortunate to serve on the National Security Council at a time when we were just getting many of the competitive wheels turning across the country. Collaborating across the interagency and moving policy into action was extremely rewarding, but it wouldn’t work without the amazing support of the Intelligence Community. Seeing our teams work day after day and providing their critical analysis of global challenges was tremendous. Often times there are policy desires but there are limited means to achieve them. Robust, multi-domain intelligence is a must today as much as it ever has been.

What is the best/worst career advice you have received? or what’s one piece of advice you would offer somebody new to the field?

The worst piece of advice I ever received was during a 2012 deployment amidst the withdrawal from Iraq. I was a squadron commander based in Kuwait with people scattered across the region and I ran into a senior officer in my engineering career field from an earlier part of my career. He asked what I was doing for the deployment and eventually proceeded to tell me to give up on the “foreign affairs” business since the career field needed me to be a leader. After years of Mandarin studies and working on China-Taiwan issues, I’m glad I didn’t follow his advice and kept my goals in front of me. Over time I learned that it can be hard to distinguish mentors and guidance from agency. When you’re junior and motivated you want to believe that everyone has good advice, but over time you’ve got to continue to check your bearing and own your development. For people new to the field, it may be more complicated now than in the past. Years ago, just being good in a foreign language or at economics might have been a competitive advantage. Now we need analysts and collectors with so many different hybrid skillsets. This creates more pathways to build a successful career across the IC, but it doesn’t make it easier.

What is your favorite movie, book, TV Show, or podcast? Why?

After 40 years, I would say my favorite movie is still The Right Stuff. Of course, it has a great cast and countless, incredible one-liners. But that story from Tom Wolfe chronicles such an incredible time in our history as a nation. It was a period when we were facing a major geopolitical competition and needed the very best of industry and academia to cooperate with the government to do things that were unthinkable. We had to kick-start new industries and integrate numerous emerging technologies. And we did it.  Certainly the geopolitical situation we face now bears some resemblance to those times. I’ve been to Long March build-up sites and have seen some of the infrastructure the PRC has put in place to enable their space program. I’ve also seen several of their education and exchange programs where they’re growing their capacity and partner networks. The results on their end have been pretty impressive, and this is just one of many critical industries they’re driving forward on like this.  These future state industries have significant consequences for the US and our allies. Going back to The Right Stuff, I actually met both Chuck Yeager (in Kuwait) and Buzz Aldrin (in China).  Amazing. That also wouldn’t have happened if I had given up on the “foreign affairs” business.

What’s one thing you want to change within the Intelligence Community?

I’m expecting some applause with this answer, but I’d like to see better incentives and more opportunities for our IC members and their families. They’re so critical to what we do and what we’ll need to do in the future.  It’s a tough job and working conditions are just different than most organizations have to deal with. We have to incentivize them to develop their skills over longer periods of time and to make sure they are well-compensated and retained. We have to give them more targeted opportunities for development and industry exposure so they can bring it back to the mission. We also have to find ways to manage hybrid working conditions and remote jobs for them and their spouses through better technology investments. I’m hopeful we can do all of these things for the IC and look forward to INSA’s support throughout this long transformation journey.