Veterans in Advanced Energy Profile: Jesse Medlong
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jesse medlong, 2020-2021 Veterans advanced energy fellow. click the button below to learn more about the fellowship.
Jesse Medlong, a 2020-2021 Veterans Advanced Energy Fellow, joined the US Navy for educational and economic opportunities. His decision to pursue a career in international law stemmed from days enforcing UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein. Today, he represents the country of Georgia in multilateral climate change negotiations. To other veterans, he recommends staying in touch with your peers and looking out for one another. As told to Leah Emanuel.
Why did you join the military and what was your role?
I joined for economic opportunities. Like 95% of the enlisted members I’ve talked to, I enlisted because I didn’t have many other opportunities for getting an education or a tradeable skill.
I was enlisted for ten years in the Navy. For about the first half of that, I was mostly stationed aboard the U.S.S. Monterey, a Ticonderoga Class cruiser out of Norfolk, Virginia. I worked on a defensive weapon system called CIWS (for “close-in weapon system”) or Phalanx. I managed a work center of technicians that operated, maintained, and repaired this last-line-of-defense system. It’s an anti-ship-missile defense system, so if someone shoots a missile at the ship, CIWS shoots the missile down. For the second half of my tenure in the military, I worked on biomedical electronics at the Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan.
How did the military influence your career trajectory into energy?
When I was in the military, I got a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. When I got out of the military, I went to law school, which was paid for by the G.I. Bill. The military laid all the groundwork by allowing me to do all that stuff, but it was really through a series of coincidences that I ended up working in sustainability as my main focus. And energy is such a big part of sustainability, it came along naturally.
I can actually trace it back completely to decisions I made in the military. When I think about it, there’s a pretty straight line.
MEDLONG ON HIS First deployment in the Gulf, RETURNING FROM a boarding mission. photo provided by jesse medlong
I was doing boarding operations in the Persian Gulf, where we were stopping every ship that came into and out of Iraq during the UN sanctions regime under Saddam Hussein. Some elements of that work got me thinking about and interested in international relations and international law.
Around the same time, my department head gave me a few volumes of Foreign Affairs. I found it fascinating so I decided to study political science. I went on to get a degree in political science and then a master’s degree in international relations. I continued to be quite interested in international affairs in law school, so I took as many courses as I could on international law. In my last semester of law school, I externed to the U.S. Diplomatic Mission to the U.N. in Geneva. I found that I loved that multilateral work. But I already had a job lined up at a big law firm, so I assumed that was the end of my work in international diplomacy.
When I arrived at the firm, I was one of two Krantz Fellows chosen through a selective application process to work exclusively on pro bono for my first year. Shortly after I arrived, I received a solicitation for work on a multilateral matter representing the country of Georgia in UN climate talks. It sounded amazing. Here was the multilateral work I love, and it was pro bono since Georgia is a developing country. So I volunteered. I supported from the desk at COPs 19 and 20 in Warsaw and Lima. Then in 2015, the two lawyers who had led that project left. One of them asked if I would take his place at the Paris climate summit. Of course I did, and I’ve been a delegate negotiating for Georgia ever since. No other law firm in the world is doing this kind of sovereign representation in climate talks, so it made sense to pivot my practice toward environmental work, which ultimately led to my work in sustainability law. I can actually trace it back completely to decisions I made in the military. When I think about it, there’s a pretty straight line.
What are you most excited about in advanced energy developments, and what are you most concerned about?
I’m most excited by the idea that renewable energy, in particular, could become a cornerstone of a circular economy. A circular economy is an economy based not so much on scarcity but on abundance. If you think about what really underlies value in the economy, it’s energy, and it’s energy in two ways: motive energy, such as electricity, steam, or combustion; and human energy in the form of labor. Once you get into a world where the former kind of energy is truly abundant, it starts to make it seem like an economy that depends on human labor is not essential. All of a sudden, assumptions about our inability to distribute resources in a way that allows everyone to live a safe and fulfilling life need to be reconsidered. I love the idea that if we can beat the clock and develop renewable energy in enough time to save our species on this planet, then maybe we can do so in enough time to liberate people from an economic model that views them as mere commodities.
I have two concerns. One is that we won’t get there. We have largely decided to put all our chips on innovation rather than on more “conservative” approaches like limiting consumption, and this puts us in a race against the clock. We don’t know whether we can innovate enough to save ourselves. But I’m also concerned that in pursuing energy innovation to stave off climate change we might sacrifice other things on the way that are contrary to what I see as the goal of achieving universal human dignity. So when you have solar panels being made by slaves in China, or when you have electronics components relying on cobalt dug out of the ground by children, those kinds of affronts to human dignity look pretty short-sided. I worry that maybe we’ll achieve energy abundance in a way that does not represent what I think should be the real prize here, which is universal recognition of human dignity.
Why is energy important to U.S. national security?
The traditional tools of the security craft require energy. Historically, the most important kind of asset we know of for global influence, for what we sometimes call “prestige” in the international arena, is a navy, and a navy runs on energy. So if we think security is bound up in the projection of power, then I think it goes without saying that we cannot achieve this kind of traditional military security without energy. Energy is also a matter of national security because, through our basic infrastructure, we have built a system of interdependence: our hospitals run on energy; our air traffic controllers need energy; the grid itself needs energy.
So when we think of security just in terms of stability, losing control of your energy sources means ceding control of that kind of security to someone else. That someone else is often an adversary. If your NATO allies are getting their fossil fuels from Russia, an autocratic petrol state, that sounds like a security problem for the Alliance. There’s also the fact (or at least the perception) that securing energy resources often requires the projection of power. For instance, even if you don’t agree that we invaded Iraq primarily to defend our oil, it’s hard to defend against that appearance. So to the extent that’s bound up in our national security because it makes people cynical about how we project power, that affects our global prestige as well.
The way we’ve built it, national security depends on a foundation of energy, we use energy to project global power, and we often source energy from potential adversaries.
Do you have advice you would like to share with other veterans?
Be helpful. One of the few things I look back on with unambiguous fondness from my naval service is the idea that I took from it a model of comrade leadership. You support people to help them get where they want to be. You don’t pull up the ladder after yourself. That kind of service model is really important. When I was a petty officer, I was always talking to junior enlisted members about their options for schooling, what they wanted to do, and if they were taking advantage of everything the Navy was making available to them. I knew from experience, and from common sense, that the Navy would demand plenty from them regardless, and they were entitled to these benefits in return. This forged lasting bonds. I’m still in touch with people that I mentored when I was in the Navy, I still have many many friends from the Navy, and I still try to help them when I can. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s a good strategy for success as well.
You support people to help them get where they want to be. You don’t pull up the ladder after yourself. That kind of service model is really important.
What is your greatest take-away from the Veterans Advanced Energy Fellowship?
Be humble. This is a cohort of high-performing people. It always amazes me to be in a cohort like this, just how extraordinary your peers are. But you have to be realistic. When you see yourself in a group of people who are impressive, you cannot repeatedly find yourself in that group and think it’s by accident. You’re there for a reason. At the same time, these are extraordinary people, so take the chance to see in them greater potential in yourself. Be able to see in them the opportunity to learn, to be sharpened, to be honed. I think that all comes with a sense of humility and openness, a willingness to say, “I may know a little about a lot of things, or a lot about some things, but that’s not all there is to it.” Being able to step back from myself and see the value that others bring to these processes is essential.
