I met my first civilian bully in the small Iowa town where I grew up. A group of us who lived within blocks of one another were outside most of the year, doing everything from playing school in an old coal shed at our house, to afternoons spent at the swimming pool or at our small public library. We also played softball and tag football regularly, and traded comic books. Several of us also tracked Hit Parade sheet music and learned it, pretending to offer concerts in the park. Pretty innocuous, except for the neighborhood bully who lurked on the sidelines or interrupted our activities or our walks by threatening us and impeding our activities. For about a year, I recall that my reaction after trying to ignore him was to run inside my house and cower until he picked on someone else. At that point, I decided to look up all the words he called me and let him know he needed to stop or I would report him to both of our parents. Because he had no real power over me, I was able to back him off. I learned my first lesson about standing up to bullies.

No surprises in that headline because we’ve had trouble leap out at us at the federal level for nearly a year. There are so many examples to choose from, not only in the executive branch, but in Congress and the Supreme Court as well. Following along in the 2025 Project playbook shows us that, no matter how chaotic and illegal things might look, there are a few players -- Steven Miller, Scott Bessett, and Russell Vought come to mind—whose ideological discipline makes sure that the administration is sticking to the script. Ironically, of late that discipline has been fractured by two cabinet members—Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth—and we are starting to see cracks in the previously loyal group who follow Trump and the administration wherever they are led.

In 2016, I was asked to write a chapter for a new British book titled Conduct Risk: A Practitioner’s Guide, on the root causes of conduct risk and how it manifests itself. I was writing primarily about financial institutions from an operational risk perspective, but my conclusions about those questions apply equally to governance issues in both the public and private sectors. Here, I want to identify the root causes I saw in 2015-2016 and provide several current examples that are destabilizing our country.

This past week saw the first stage of a Gaza Agreement agreed to by both Israel and Hamas (cease fire, hostage release, and prisoner exchange, as well as Israel moving back a border it occupies), and action should be realized this next week. Coincidentally, it was also the beginning of announcements of the 2025 Nobel prizes, perhaps the most highly prized global awards bestowed annually.