The Convergence - An Army Mad Scientist Podcast (The Army Mad Scientist Initiative)

Inderpal Bhandari rejoined IBM as Global Chief Data Officer in December 2015. In this newly created role, he has leveraged his extensive experience to lead the development of IBM’s data strategy and drive IBM’s internal cognitive enterprise transformation. The work has culminated in the AI Enterprise Blueprint; a roadmap for IBM’s clients on their own journeys to AI.  Inderpal is an expert in transforming data into business value and improved customer experiences by delivering strategic, innovative capabilities that use analytic insights to enable growth and productivity.  In 2017, he was named U.S. Chief Data Officer of the Year by the CDO Club, and has been featured as an industry expert by Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, US News & World Report, CNN, and FOX.  Inderpal earned his Master of Science Degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and holds a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.  Learn more about Inderpal’s insights on harnessing the power of data and accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) implementation at IBM’s Journey to AI and Think blogs.

In today’s podcast, we talk with Inderpal about data as a strategic asset, the challenge in ensuring new technologies are intuitive to engender user trust, and how Soldiers can be empowered to transform the Army into a data-centric culture.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Describing “data” as a field of study is like the “blind men describing an elephant,” each one will have a different, limited aspect of it, and thus, a different description. Data is now being recognized as more than just a record, as it can illuminate patterns and insights that can re-shape or invent new businesses and products. It is a strategic asset that is being referred to as the new oil, because it is “the fuel that drives the engine.” 

• Scaling is the goal of any chief data officer of a large company with a global footprint. The first key step is to understand what the company is trying to do, or for a commercial company, how they are trying to make money, and using the data strategy to enable that goal. For a large enterprise like the Army,the question will be how data can enable the Army to accomplish its various mission sets of deploying, fighting, and winning our Nation’s wars. 

• Culture change can occur in three ways:  Top-down as a strategy, laterally, and bottom-up/ grassroots. Bottom-up makes up the most significant portion of successful culture change in a system. Organizations need to make sure the users are prepared, and the technology interfaces are adapted to the change being sought. 

• You can’t make every employee or Soldier into a data scientist. It’s crucial to design systems or technology in a way that brings people along in a way that allows them to intuitively use them. Trust is a significant portion of...

The Army Mad Scientist Initiative is hosting our Back to the Future: Using History to Forecast conference, November 8th and 9th, at the National Museum of the United States Army.  It is our first in-person conference since 2019!

• The conference will feature world renowned historians, thinkers, innovators, futurists, and industry leaders. We’ll use history to set the foundation for our look into the future to determine what the Operational Environment might look like, what new and unique conditions a Soldier might encounter, and what capabilities they might need — Check out our exciting conference agenda hereand presenter and panelist biographies here !

• You can still attend the event in-person by registering here through Eventbrite — Hurry, space is limited! You must be registered with Eventbrite in order to gain access to the conference.  Museum security will have a list of all individuals registered and will check your name upon entry.

• You can also attend the conference virtually! Everything will be live-streamed through Zoom— you can connect and engage in real time remotely here, beginning at 7:45 am Eastern, Tuesday, 08 November 2022! 

Whether in person or virtually, please plan on joining Army Mad Scientist at our Back to the Future:  Using History to Forecast conference — you’ll be glad you did!

Check out content from previous Army Mad Scientist events on our All Partners Access Network (APAN) Conference page (just click on an event to drill down to explore event agendas, presenter bio’s, presentations, and notes) and YouTube Channel Video Playlists — content from next week’s conference will be similarly archived for future reference!

Back to the Future Writing Contest:  Crowdsourcing is an effective tool for harvesting ideas, thoughts, and concepts from a wide variety of interested individuals, helping to diversify thought and challenge conventional assumptions.  Army Mad Scientist seeks to crowdsource the intellect of the Nation (i.e., you — our community of action!) with our Back to the Future Writing Contest.  Entries should address one of the topics’ writing prompts listed here.  Entries will be accepted in two formats:

• 
  A written essay(no more than 1500 words, please!)

• A tweet @ArmyMadSci using #MadSciBacktotheFuture

We will pick a winner from each of these two formats! Contest Winners will be proclaimed official Mad...

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist is pleased to present our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, featuring our interview with proclaimed Mad Scientist Jason Sherwin, CEO and Co-Founder of deCervo, discussing the science of quick decision making, how deCervo blends gaming with science to help individuals make the best decisions in high stakes and complex environments, how these technologies have enhanced professional athletes’ performance, and these technologies’ potential for enhancing Soldiers’ performance — Enjoy!]

Jason Sherwin, Ph.D., is a founder and currently serves as CEO of deCervo, a neuroscience tech company he founded with his research partner, Jordan Muraskin, Ph.D.  Since starting in 2014,  deCervo has provided cognitive training programs using neuroimaging and customized phone apps to over 15 Major League Baseball organizations, over 60,000 baseball and softball players worldwide, the umpires of the Major Leagues, and the officials of the National Hockey League.  deCervo has been an Army research grant recipient since 2017 and Sherwin himself has done contract research for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory going back to 2011.  Continuing to apply its novel approach to decision training, deCervo is currently launching apps in law enforcement and tennis training to complement its suite of five other apps for decision training.

• Analyzing quick decision-making is done by providing simple stimuli to people, imaging their response and its speed, and identifying how their brain reacts to different inputs. This can be accomplished by having a subject listen to a song with an unexpected, abrupt key change; not only do brains show a reaction to that unexpected change, but trained musicians’ brains produce a stronger response, as captured via electro-encephalogram (EEG), than a non-musician’s brain.

• deCervo’s apps for baseball players use accuracy measurements to estimate how well the user discriminates between different kinds of pitches.  This approach is an evolution from using EEGs, and shows that non-invasive methods can be just as effective in measuring responses.  Improving athletic prowess on the playing field has direct implications for improving warfighting prowesson the modern battlefield.

• Emotion impacts all decision making, but deliberate decisions are more susceptible to influence from emotionand often require simulations generated by video or AI to produce environments that are closer to real life.  For Soldiers, decisions often need to be deliberate while dealing with fear and strong emotion in dynamic, austere, and potentially lethal environments; training for this kind of decision making requires teaching people how to respond quickly and correctly, despite emotional impacts or inhibition.

• Military decision making can involve simple decisions like target detection, but more often requires the ability to make complex, deliberate decisions.  Using effective human teaming and social sensing can help train for visual search type decisions where Soldiers analyze their own placement and their teammates’ placements and ...

[Editor’s Note:  Army Mad Scientist is pleased to present our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, recorded on location at I/ITSEC 2022, the world’s largest modeling and simulation conference in Orlando, Florida.  Co-hosts  Luke Shabro and Matt Santaspirt spoke with proclaimed Mad Scientist Jenny McArdle from the Center for a New American Security, Cmdr. Paul Grøstad from NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), and Whitney McNamara from Beacon Global Strategies, about emerging technologies and how they can better prepare us for both competition and conflict — Enjoy!]

Jennifer McArdle serves as an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Center for a New American Security’s defense program and wargaming lab and as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University.  A former professor, Ms. McArdle has served on Congressman Langevin’s cyber advisory committee and as an expert member of a NATO technical group that developed cyber effects for the military alliance’s mission and campaign simulations. Ms. McArdle is a PhD candidate at King’s College London in War Studies, is the recipient of the RADM Fred Lewis (I/ITSEC) doctoral scholarship in modeling and simulation, and is a Certified Modeling and Simulation Professional (CMSP). She is a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations.  Ms. McArdle is also a proclaimed Mad Scientist, having frequently contributed to the Mad Scientist Laboratory blog site and The Convergence podcast.

Cmdr. Paul Grøstad  is Deputy Branch Head for Concept Development at NATO ACT.  A Royal Norwegian Navy officer with 29 years experience in Signals, C4ISR, and Cyber Operations, Cmdr. Grøstad is currently researching Cognitive Warfare, Malign Influence, the Information Environment, and Cognitive Effects. He has extensive international experience from serving in multiple positions at different levels of the NATO command structure.  A Norwegian Naval Academy and Joint Command and Staff College graduate, he holds a Master’s degree in military studies from the Norwegian Defence University College and a Bachelor’s degree in Information Science from the University of Bergen.  Cmdr. Grøstad is a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner.

Whitney McNamara is an Associate Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.  She is also currently supporting the Atlantic Council’s Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption, where she is the lead author on assessing critical technologies and their barriers to innovation in the Department.  She previously served on the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Board (DIB), whose mission is to provide the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and other senior leaders across the DoD with independent advice and recommendations on emerging technologies and innovative approaches that the Department should adopt to ensure U.S. technological and military dominance.  Ms. McNamara is a former National Security Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and worked in t...

[Editor’s Note:  Army Mad Scientist is pleased to present our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, recorded on location at I/ITSEC 2022, the world’s largest modeling and simulation conference in Orlando, Florida.  Co-hosts Luke Shabro and Matt Santaspirt spoke with Dr. Maria Kozhevnikov about non-relaxing meditative states, enhanced cognition, the relationship between video games and reaching that enhanced cognitive state, and the associated ramifications for Army training — Enjoy!]

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Maria Kozhevnikov, Associate Professor of Psychology at the National University of Singapore and Visiting Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, is a cognitive neuroscientist with an interest in enhancing human cognition and understanding the potential of the human mind.  Her research uses modern technology, such as augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR), as well as ancient meditative techniques.  The following bullet points highlight key insights gleaned from our interview with Dr. Kozhevnikov: 

• Meditation is a great technique to induce relaxation and reduce stress, but there are many different kinds of meditation. To enhance cognitive capacity, a type of meditation can be used to induce stress to an individual in order for them to learn from it and combat it in a controlled environment.

• Meditation which is arousal-based or “good stress”-based will deliver stress that the individual can handle while still focusing on and completing the task at hand.This type of meditation is more suited to Soldiers on the battlefield who will be operating in austere environments with external factors competing for their focus.

• Arousal-based meditation releases adrenaline into the blood stream(as opposed to cortisol being released from “bad stress”).  Adrenaline triggers the body’s “fight or flight” response, which in turn amplifies cognitive and mental resources to meet the demand of the task at hand.

• People process information about the space around them in two ways: allocentric and egocentric. Allocentric processing involves an individual interpreting objects in space as they relate to other objects in space, while egocentric processing involves an individual interpreting objects in space as they relate to their own body. This distinction is important because it identifies two different ways in which learning and training occurs. It’s very important for a pilot to be egocentric while it’s important for an air traffic controller to be allocentric. Different job types require different learning methods.

• Game-based training does not necessarily have to be immersive or high fidelity to effectively train the mind.Two-dimensional video games have been shown to be just as effective as high fidelity, completely immersive, 3D first-person games, as long as the user feels there is a real threat to them or their avatar. Th...

John Bicknell founded More Cowbell Unlimited to help America remain a beacon of hope and strength on the world stage. America must adopt Process Dominance as a core capability in order to innovate and survive in the Information Age.  His vision is for process technologies to be as ubiquitous as processes are.  John is a national security thought leader and passionate analytics visionary.  He has written extensively on national security matters related to information warfare, critical infrastructure defense, and space situational awareness.  John leads software and business development efforts for More Cowbell Unlimited. 

Before retiring from the United States Marine Corps in 2010 as a Lieutenant Colonel, John served worldwide, most notably in Afghanistan and at the Pentagon.  He led enterprise-level process intensive human resources supply chain projects designed to discover inefficiencies, architect solutions, and re-purpose manpower savings. In his corporate career, he operationalized an Analytics Center of Excellence for a large EdTech firm, among other accomplishments.

John is a member of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) and InfraGard. He is also Vice President for the Information Professionals Association and host of The Cognitive Crucible podcast. His Master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School emphasizes econometrics and operations research. John lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.

In today’s podcast, we explore complex systems, entropy, how data can be turned into action, and empowering Soldiers to make better and faster battlefield decisions.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• More Cowbell Unlimited is a decision-support firm helping organizations make better, faster, data-driven decisions through process mining — a method that illuminates where there are inefficiencies in a process and turns data into action. It can be used to process complex systems, such as modeling ecosystems of satellites in the geostationary orbital regime for the U.S. Space Force.

• Complexity is here to stay. Complex systems have characteristics that are nonlinear and difficult to predict – much like the future battlefield. Bicknell has developed a powerful way of examining complex systems by synthesizing different theories from various prominent thinkers, like measuring the entropy in complex systems using Claude Shannon’s 

Joanna Siekiera is an international lawyer and Doctor of Social Sciences in public policy sciences. She studied under a New Zealand Government scholarship at the Victoria University in Wellington. Her specialization is legal and political relations in the South Pacific, and the law of armed conflict. She is prodigious author, having written a book, co-authored three monographs, over 90 scientific publications in several languages, and over 40 legal analyses.

In today’s podcast, we explore the legal aspects of Multi-Domain Operations and the protection of civilians, what we can learn from the on-going war in Ukraine as it pertains to U.S. policy and legal implications, and her concerns about security and policy in the Indo-Pacific.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview: 

• Dr. Siekiera’s goal is to advise commanders on how to lawfully accomplish their military aims by understanding legal possibilities.

• Law is important, both as a discipline and within the context of society.  Societal and cultural context help us to accurately analyze a conflict and understand the initial ideas and values that send countries to war, in order to respond appropriately and proportionally.

• There are no ethics in international law – one country’s system of values may not translate to another, creating differences in approaches to the law of armed conflict.  Context and history can teach us why countries may see things differently and help to predict further actions.

• Dr. Siekiera uses the terms “East” and “West” not to divide but to make people aware that the two are not the same.  Assuming that an adversary shares your cultural values is a dangerous and misleading bias —  mirror-imaging — that threatens security.  Alliances between nations are maintained when a shared identity is fostered.

• The legal aspects of Multi-Domain Operations and the protection of civilians are not being treated with the requisite importance.  Although international laws exist to protect civilians in armed conflicts, a nation that does not hold the same values cannot be relied upon to comply with these otherwise widely accepted humanitarian laws.  This must be recognized when planning all aspects  of military operations.

• China – the biggest threat not only to western civilization but to NATO – slowly influences economic and societal changes in surrounding nations, quietly creating a military threat decades before it is recognized.  Although NATO falls outside the Indo-Pacific region, China is still a threat through its influence in nearby nations.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Labor...

General Gary M. Brito assumed duties as the 18th Commanding General, United States Army TRADOC, on September 8, 2022.  He is responsible for building and sustaining a highly trained, disciplined, and fit Army by acquiring the best people, training the most lethal Soldiers, developing the most professional leaders, guiding the Army’s culture, and shaping the future force. 

In today’s podcast, General Brito discusses synchronizing modernization across the Army, critical aspects of modernization that are crucial to shaping the fighting force , and how changes in the Operational Environment affect this process.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion with General Brito: 

• TRADOCis “that first layer of bricks” in building readiness for the Army.  In building this foundation, TRADOC acquires the very best people, trains the most lethal Soldiers, and develops the most professional Leaders. TRADOC also provides that connective tissue that guides Army culture and shapes the future force.

• Modernization ismore than materiel and the Soldier is the centerpiece. Technology does not replace them, but rather is enabled by them. This scales to the squad, platoon, company, battalion, and beyond, to give the Army the overmatch needed to contest our adversaries.

• Integration and synchronization across the entireDOTMLPF-P (Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and education, Personnel, Facilities, and Policy) spectrum of capabilities is one of TRADOC’s major responsibilities.  Identifying the doctrine associated with a future tank or next generation aircraft has to occur at the earliest stages of acquisition, in coordination with other organizations like the Army Staff, Army Futures Command, FORSCOM, the Joint Force, and others.

• It’s vital that TRADOC takes the lessons learnedfrom current conflicts in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and feed them into how we train our Soldiers.  It is also important to measure the impacts of new technology and materiel in a multi-domain operation. All of this new knowledge needs to be infused into the accessions process and Professional Military Education.

• Balancing training, readiness, personnel, and modernization is a delicate and difficult balance in which all components need to be synchronized. It’s important to weave Soldier touchpoints into the acquisition process at specific milestones for user feedback. With a good plan and coordination, the Army can modernize and test e...

General Robert Brown (USA-Ret.) is an experienced commander who has led at every level, from platoon through Army Service Component Command. Serving as Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific, General Brown led the Army’s largest service component command responsible for 106,000 Soldiers across the Indo-Pacific Region before his September 2019 retirement.

General Brown is a 1981 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he was commissioned as an Infantry Second Lieutenant. His assignments took him across the globe including deployments in support of Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and two combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Before U.S. Army Pacific, he commanded the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; I Corps and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; and the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning, Georgia.

He also served as Chief of Staff for U.S. Army Europe; Deputy Commanding General for the 25th Infantry Division; Commander, 1st Brigade (Stryker) 25th Infantry Division; Commander, 2nd Battalion 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division; the Joint Staff, J-8; Army Staff, Strategy and War Plans Division G3/5/7 in the Pentagon; Aide-de-Camp, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army; Executive Officer to Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; Assistant Professor and Deputy Director, Center for Enhanced Performance, West Point; and Infantry Assignment Officer, Human Resources Command.

General Brown holds a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy, a Master of Education from the University of Virginia, and a Master of Science in National Security and Strategic Studies (Distinguished Graduate) from the National Defense University.

General Brown retired after more than 38 years of service. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) before becoming President and CEO in October 2021.

In today’s podcast, General Brown discusses how the Army can reach the next generation of Americans, the creation of Multi-Domain Task Forces, challenges in the Pacific AOR, and the importance of the Human Dimension. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• AUSA, like many other thought-leading organizations, has found itself needing to adjust to changing demographicsand has focused its outreach on connecting the Army with the community. Army bases have become heavily fortified in the post-9/11 environment, making it more difficult to reach that next generation of potential recruits. With “community connectors” and “community partners,” AUSA has the opportunity to tell the Army story and make those critical links.

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is more aggressive nowthan in the last several decades. Relying on his experience as the Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC), GEN Brown believes the combination of an aggressive and over-confident CCP could be dangerous and potentially lead to accidental conflict.

• In the Indo-Pacific, it will be a Joint fight andevery domain matters. China’s Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) is powerful and can repel U.S. Forces at significant distance. To combat this A2/AD problem, GEN Brown and others created the Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTF)

[Editor’s Note: Large language models like ChatGPT — democratizing the power of artificial intelligence — have rocked industry and academia with their potential to revolutionize how humans process vast quantities of information and generate content. Our Federal Government, including the Department of Defense and its

constituent Services, will similarly be transformed as myriad processes begin to harness this capability to augment traditionally human endeavors. But this sea change will require work force flexibility and a willingness to learn and adapt to new ways of accomplishing mission requirements. Changing culture is hard…

Army Mad Scientist is pleased to present our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, featuring LTC Robert Solano, Commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) at Boeing in Mesa, Arizona, discussing what DCMA does, how language models like ChatGPT can help the Army and the Nation’s industrial base work together, and some of the challenges and barriers these language models may face when it comes to wide-spread adoption in the Department of Defense (DoD) — Enjoy!]

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LTC Robert Solano is an accomplished Army officer and the Commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) at Boeing in Mesa, Arizona. With 19 years of experience under his belt, LTC Solano has a passion for delivering quality aircraft and parts to support Warfighters while making a difference in the acquisition community. As a senior Army Aviator and Acquisition Corps officer with multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, LTC Solano has honed his skills in organizational leadership, program management, and government contracting. As an engineer, he is skilled in artificial intelligence, augmented reality, aviation systems, and advanced weapons systems development. His impressive career has taken him to work at the Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, Palantir

Technologies, U.S. Special Operations Command, and other procurement and aviation units. LTC Solano holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Master’s Certificate in Aviation Doctoral Studies (ABD) from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

In today’s podcast, LTC Solano discusses what DCMA does, how language models like ChatGPT can help the Army and the Nation’s industrial base work together, and some of the challenges and barriers these language models may face when it comes to wide- spread adoption in the DoD. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) has over 11,000 personnel throughout the

world. These personnel are on the factory floors, looking over the shoulders of the contractors who are designing and manufacturing materiel for the warfighter. They ensure end items are built to standard, at cost, and delivered on time.

ChatGPT, and other large language models, are artificial intelligence (AI) programs that are fed a large body of data (books, Tweets, articles, etc.) from which they can derive meaning and draw conclusions.

For example, you can ask ChatGPT, “Why is the sky blue?” and it will respond

with the science behind light refracting through the atmosphere. These programs are so adv...

“The Convergence of AI, robotics, and cyber-warfare could create new and highly complex military capabilities such as autonomous weapons systems that can make decisions in real time” — ChatGPT

[Editor’s Note:  As described in the previous episode of The Convergence podcast, large language models like ChatGPT — democratizing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) — will potentially revolutionize (and disrupt!) how people around the globe access, process, and generate information from the wealth of online data — per TechCrunch, “estimated at 97 zettabytes (10²¹ bytes) created or replicated in 2022 alone!  To put that number into perspective, to store 97 zettabytes on 1 terabyte hard disks, you’d have to stack the disks 27 million times—equal to roughly 15 round trips between the Earth and the Moon.”  Big Data indeed!  As the Internet transformed our lives some three decades ago, allowing us to harness and access this mass of online information, so too will democratized AI transform and augment how we learn, work, create, and — most importantly to the U.S. Army — compete and fight… and not just in the Cyber Domain!

Our adversaries understand the game-changing power of AI.  President Vladimir Putin virtually addressed over one million Russian school children and teachers at 16,000 schools on September 1, 2017, stating,  “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind.  It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict.  Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”  Just as ominously, in addressing the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on October 16, 2022, China’s President Xi Jinping stated that quickly elevating the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to a world-class army is a strategic requirement, and that China would adhere to the integrated development of the PLA through the concept of “three-izations” (三化) — mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization — the latter being China’s concept for integrating AI’s machine speed and processing power to military planning, operational command, and decision support.  Xi further stated that these three-izations are not to be achieved in stages but are to be pursued simultaneously and in parallel.  

Recognizing that the AI Age is now upon us, the latest episode of The Convergence podcast features our interview with Chatty Cathy, an instance of ChatGPT by OpenAI, discussing the future of warfare, “her” thoughts on technology trends, and her responses to several questions from our Mad Scientist Community of Action — Read on!]

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In today’s post and podcast, we feature the winning submission from our Back to the Future Writing Contest — Task Force Wolf — as a short audiobook and then interview its author — proclaimed Mad Scientist LTC Daniel Gomez — about his inspiration for the story, the impact of democratized technology and ubiquitous connectivity on the future of warfare, and why we should be experimenting with these commercially-available capabilities — Enjoy!]

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LTC Daniel Gomez currently serves in the U.S. Army Reserve as an Instructor of Innovation and Creativity at Joint Special Operations University, United States Special Operations Command. During his twenty years in service, LTC Gomez served two combat tours in Iraq, two Special Operations deployments to the Pacific Theater, and five years as an instructor, scenario designer, and course manager at the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. LTC Gomez is the CEO of First Person Xperience LLC, an education and training company focused on teaching Creativity, Adaptability, and Human Dynamics to National Defense Professionals.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist asks proclaimed Mad Scientist LTC Daniel Gomez about his inspiration for his winning submission Task Force Wolf, the impact of democratized technology and ubiquitous connectivity on the future of warfare, and why we should be experimenting with these commercially-available capabilities.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• In LTC Gomez’s story, JTF Wolf is designed to track and interrupt illicit operations in Eurasia, specifically Turkey and its northern neighbors. His re-imagined geo-political structure describes the New Soviet Union and T’China(Taiwan re-joined with mainland China) as global powers using irregular and liminal warfare, regionally and internationally.

• Non-state actorshave employed mobile video games, ubiquitous connectivity, and cryptocurrency to conduct multi-domain, synchronized operations across multiple geospatial regions while operating as independent and self-sustained, but distributed, joint teams. Built-in communications software was leveraged for real-time translation of over 100 different languages.
  
  
• These teams were able to access home camera video feeds and manipulate them with deepfakes(Deep-Snapping) and access car toll passes to search for less than reputable locations for blackmail (Spot-Blowing) to charge victims monthly fees to support their illicit business. They identified and exploited...

[Editor’s Note:  Mad Scientist is an Army initiative and Community of Action that continually explores the Operational Environment and the changing character of warfare. We connect the intellect of the Nation to the Army and serve as an on-ramp for academia, industry, and other parts of the Government to share their ideas and innovations. Our latest episode of The Convergence podcast features "rock star" proclaimed Mad Scientists — Dr. James Giordano and Dr. James Canton — discussing the convergence of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, its impact on future warfare, and where the U.S. falls short in technology development, relative to our competitors and adversaries — Enjoy!] 

Proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Giordano is Pellegrino Center Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biochemistry; Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program; and Chair of the Subprogram in Military Medical Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC.  Dr. Giordano is a Bioethicist of the Defense Medical Ethics Center at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences; Distinguished Stockdale Fellow in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the United States Naval Academy; Senior Fellow in Biosecurity, Technology, and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI; Senior Science Advisory Fellow of the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA), Joint Staff / J-39, The Pentagon; Chair Emeritus of the Neuroethics Project of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Brain Initiative; and serves as Director of the Institute for Biodefense Research, a federally funded Washington, DC think tank dedicated to addressing emerging issues at the intersection of science, technology and national defense. He previously served as Donovan Group Senior Fellow, U.S. Special Operations Command; member of the Neuroethics, Legal, and Social Issues Advisory Panel of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and Task Leader of the Working Group on Dual-Use of the EU-Human Brain Project.

Dr. Giordano is the author of 340 peer-reviewed publications, 7 books and 45 governmental reports on science, technology, and biosecurity, and is an elected member of the European Academy of Science and Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK), and a Fulbright Professorial Fellow. A former U.S. Naval officer, he held designations as an aerospace physiologist and research psychologist, and served with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. 

Proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Canton is a global futurist, social scientist, author, and strategic advisor. As a former Apple Computer executive and high tech entrepreneur, he has been insightfully forecasting the key trends and technologies that have shaped our world, including AI-nano-bio-IT-neuroquantum-cloud. The Economist recognizes him as one of the leading global futurists. He has advised three White House Administrations, the DoD, Intelligence Community,  and over 100 companies over 30 years. Dr. Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government. 

Dr. Canton is the author of Future Smart,  The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next Twenty Years, and Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century. Dr. Canton has been a lecturer at Stanford University...

[Editor's Note:  Crowdsourcing and Storytelling are two of Army Mad Scientist's most effective tools in exploring future possibilities regarding the Operational Environment. Crowdsourcing helps us harvest ideas, thoughts, and concepts from a wide variety of interested individuals, helping us to diversify thought and challenge conventional assumptions.  Storytelling — creative fictional writing and narrative building — helps us to explore how concepts, technologies, and other capabilities could be employed and operationalized. Together, they help us to effectively source, then impart knowledge about future possibilities — creating a network of people with a shared understanding of potential futures.
In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, we sit down with John "Grant" Rafter to discuss the Air Force Futures’ mission, the recently published Air Force Global Futures Report: Joint Functions in 2040, and the associated AFGFR Vignette Writing Contest (see more about this in the Announcement at the bottom of today’s post) — Read on!]


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John "Grant" Rafter is the Branch Chief for Futures and Foresight in Air Force Futures. He also has experience with the U.S. Secret Service, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy as the Regional Director for Maghreb, and with the UN Development Programme in Myanmar.  Mr. Rafter has a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College, a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law, and an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School focusing on Management, Leadership, and Decision-Making in International Organizations.  He is finalizing an additional master’s degree with a focus on China.
In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sits down with John "Grant" Rafter to discuss the Air Force Futures‘ mission, the recently published Air Force Global Futures Report: Joint Functions in 2040 (aka AFGFR), and the associated AFGFR Vignette Writing Contest — seeking to crowdsource engaging, plot-driven stories that illustrate a scenario from one of the many futures described in the AFGFR.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

As the world becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) – especially post-COVID – the demand for foresight increases. Foresight excels in a VUCA environment as linear projections become less certain and timelines increase. Foresight helps organizations like the Joint Force obviate and avoid strategic surprise.
  
The AFGFR explores the seven Joint Functions for warfighting — command and control, information, intelligence, fires, movement and maneuver, protection, and sustainment — through four alternative futures:  Growth, Transformational, Constrained, and Collapsed. The AFGFR examined these competing Operational Environments and how the trends and forces within each impacted mission sets for the Air Force, as well as the DoD at large.

The Joint Functions for warfighting are cross cutting (across not only specific military branches, but the entire Joint Force), proving to be the best lens for utility and relevance. Using modified foresight methodologies, AF Futures was able to crowdsource and condense the expertise from hundreds of foresight practitioners – a diverse group from across Government agencies, academia, and Allied and Partner nations – into 32 pages of analysis. 

The AFGFR and associated four worlds help planners to assess how well their plan, team, or organization functions (or not) in any of the proposed futures. They can then identify weaknesses or opportunities in their concepts and refine as they go. 

The report identified six key trends overall, with the scope, scale, and speed of...

"We found that people systematically were more willing to reveal confidential or sensitive information to a virtual human than to a real person"

[Editor’s Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging game-changer technology for our Warfighters — as Dr. James Mancillas espoused in a previous post, “AI systems offer the potential to continue maximizing the advantages of information superiority, while overcoming limits in human cognitive abilities.” Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work stated at the Mad Scientist Disruption and the Operational Environment Conference, co-sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin in 2019, that this is an “Own the Night Moment for the United States Army” — the Army (and TRADOC) must embrace and rapidly incorporate AI across the force.

One such AI application is enhancing Army learning and training. The Army will not only have to incorporate AI as a subject in its Professional Military Education (PME) — ensuring our Soldiers and Leaders have the requisite AI literacy — it has the opportunity to utilize AI in augmenting Field Training Exercises, Home Station Training, and Combat Training Center rotations to expose and prepare our Warfighters for the second and third order effects resulting from the compressed battle rhythms wrought by AI.

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, we interview Drs. Keith Brawner and Bill Swartout from the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT) — a DoD-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) focused on immersive technology, simulation, human performance, computer graphics, AI, and narrative — about the Center for Generative AI and Society within ICT, their research into large language models, and their vision of the future of training through emerging technologies. Enjoy!]

Dr. Keith Brawner is the Program Manager of the Institute for Creative Technologies University Affiliated Research Center (ICT UARC) for the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, as managed by the U.S. Army DEVCOM Soldier Center, where he is also the lead for AI initiatives. He is a research leader in intelligent tutoring systems with over 100 publications in research/ application of simulation and training technologies.

While he manages the ICT at the University of Southern California, he works at the SFC Paul Ray Smith Simulation and Training Technology facility in Orlando, Florida. He has worked on, or contributed to, systems which train land navigation, marksmanship, hovercraft operation, destroyer decision making, physics, UAV route planning, calling for indirect fires, submarine harbor navigation, sonar system operation, helicopter flight, counterinsurgency, and many others. His current research focus is on enhancing simulations, the realism within simulations, the behaviors of simulated characters, and the creation of human behavior change. He earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Central Florida. He earned an MS and Ph.D in Computer Engineering while working full-time for the Navy (Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division) and Army (Army Research Laboratory), respectively. He is the recipient of the National Training and Simulation Association Governors award (2nd highest honor) and the UCF Alumni 30 under 30 award.

Dr. William Swartout is a research professor in the Computer Science Department at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, providing overall direction to the institute’s research. Dr. Swartout was also recently named Co-Director of USC’s Center for Generative AI and Society. In 2009, he received the Robert Engelmore Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) for seminal contributions t...

[Editor’s Note: In recent weeks, Mad Scientist Laboratory has featured a number of podcasts and associated blog posts exploring the democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential ramifications for Warfighters and the Operational Environment (OE). From generating better proposals from a broader array of defense contractors, exploring the future of warfare and OE trends, the convergence of neuroscience and AI, and the future of learning through emerging technologies — large language models (e.g., Open AI‘s ChatGPT) can augment how we learn, work, create, and — most importantly to the U.S. Army — compete and fight.
Imagine a not-too-distant future when all of our Military Leaders (from platoon to echelons above corps) are able to harness the comprehensive thoughts and insights of the world’s military theorists and tacticians, from antiquity to the present, via a personal AI digital assistant — or as proclaimed Mad Scientist Juliane Gallina so eloquently stated — a “Patton in the Pocket.” Human-machine teaming has the potential to enable future Commanders to focus on the battle at hand with coup d’œil, or the “stroke of an eye,” maintaining situational awareness and processing inputs, generating potential courses of action, and down selecting the best way ahead — tailored to specific mission objectives and conditions at the bleeding edge of the fight — all at machine speed. Sustained Soldier overmatch indeed!

The application of Soldier-enhancing human-machine teaming isn’t limited to tactical applications, however. In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, we interview LtCol Joe Buffamante, USMC, about his experience in applying human-machine teaming to support Professional Military Education (PME), leveraging large language models as effective learning support tools, and establishing and maintaining trust in AI applications — Enjoy!]

LtCol Joe Buffamante is a native of Great Valley, New York, and graduated from Miami (Ohio) University, receiving his commission in the United States Marine Corps in May 2003. Upon completion of The Basic School, he was designated an Armor Officer and graduated from the Armor Officer Basic Course in May 2004. He has commanded USMC units in combat tours to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and has served as a maneuver and fire support team instructor at 29 Palms, California. LtCol Buffamante assumed the duties as Chief of Readiness for Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS), Ft. Eustis, Virginia, in 2014, ultimately serving as the training chief for current operations where he was responsible for training all Joint Operations Center personnel. Following completion of this Joint assignment, LtCol Buffamante attended the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, earning a Master’s Degree in Defense and Strategic Studies. He also attended the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School (MAWS) and received the additional MOS of 0505 (MAGTF Planner). LtCol Buffamante is currently a student at the United States Army War College (AWC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with LtCol Buffamante to discuss his experience in applying human-machine teaming to support PME, leveraging large language models as effective learning support tools, and establishing and maintaining trust in AI applications. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• As a student at the AWC, LtCol Buffamante, along with Dr. Billy Barry, used a large language model as a learning support tool to explore the effectiveness of human-machine teaming research, specifically the effectiveness of the system itself and in collaboration with a human vice a human alone.

• LtCol Buffamante employed the system to assist in answering research questions related to his coursework. He coordinated with his professors to hand in three products for each assignment – AI produced, AI and human produced, and human produced –...

[Editor’s Note:  Sunday morning’s tropical idyll was shattered as the adversary’s surprise attack caught our naval, ground, and air forces completely unprepared. An hour and a half later, more than 2,400 U.S. Service members and civilians had been killed, with almost another 1,200 wounded. Despite three missed tactical warnings that could have alerted our local defenses of the impending attack (perhaps reducing its effectiveness), senior Army and Navy leaders on-site remained blithely unaware until the first wave of attackers struck their primary targets — as were the Nation’s political and military leadership in Washington, DC, when they received news of the catastrophic attack. Collectively, we had been lulled by perhaps the most insidious of cognitive biases — mirror imaging — believing that the Japanese Empire wanted to avoid war with the U.S. at all costs because of our perceived military superiority.

“Mirror imaging occurs when we subscribe our beliefs or ideas to other competitors. A corollary to this mirror imaging idea is the concept of railroading where we assume that other competitors, for example, are developing technology at similar pace and along the same track that we are. Mirror imaging places a premium on the notion that our way is the only way – discounting history and organizational, strategic, geographic, and cultural differences – as well as dismissing ideas that others might have.” As Dr. Nick Marsella stated so eloquently, “Thinking about the future is hard work, requiring us to continually examine the rigor associated with these efforts and avoiding the cognitive biases inherent in our future’s work. ”

Gaming is an invaluable tool for adding rigor to our exploration of Operational Environment possibilities – it also helps us to identify and avoid our cognitive biases. Frequent contributor LTC Nathan Colvin recently used game theory to explore the dynamics affecting three principal “actors” – the transnational “liberal order” (i.e., the West), the diffuse aggregate needs of the Russian people (a society of individuals), and the individual needs of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin himself (as an autocratic leader) — to clinically explain the rationale underlying the superficially irrational invasion of Ukraine. Today’s post features highlights from our latest episode of The Convergence podcast with LTC Nathan  Colvin discussing game theory and how it can provide insights into the pitfalls of mirror imaging our rationality and morality onto foreign leaders’ decision-making processes — Read on!]

LTC Nathan Colvin is currently an Army War College Fellow at the College of William and Mary. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Modeling and Simulations from Old Dominion University, where he is also completing his Ph.D. in International Studies as an I/ITSEC Leonard P. Gollobin Scholar. He earned masters’ degrees in Aeronautics and Space Studies (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), Administration (Central Michigan University), and Military Theater Operations (School of Advanced Military Studies). He is an Army Strategist and former Aviator with deployments to Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with LTC Nathan Colvin to discuss game theory and how it can provide insights into the pitfalls of mirr...

[Editor’s Note:  Regular readers of the Mad Scientist Laboratory and listeners to The Convergence podcast know that our Pacing Threat — China — is feverishly modernizing its People’s Liberation Army (PLA).  In addressing the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on October 16, 2022, China’s President Xi Jinping stated that quickly elevating the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to a world-class army is a strategic requirement, and that China would adhere to the integrated development of the PLA through the concept of “three-izations” (三化) — mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization — the latter being China’s concept for integrating Artificial Intelligence’s (AI’s) machine speed and processing power to military planning, operational command, and decision support.  Xi further stated that these three-izations were to be pursued simultaneously and in parallel.

Consequently, it behooves us to better understand how, in the words of Dr. James Mancillas, “AI will disrupt our current military decision cycles… [and] shape the future of AI enabled military operations.”  That said, understanding the limits imposed by our adversaries’ embrace of AI is just as important as appreciating how AI can help sustain and enhance our Warfighters’ overmatch — possibly allowing us to exploit the constraints wrought by an adversary’s overreliance on AI to our advantage.

Today’s episode of The Convergence podcast is the second in our The AI Study Buddy at the Army War College series, featuring Dr. Billy Barry discussing AI study technology, its impact within the Army War College, and how he sees it evolving in the future — Read on!]

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Dr. Billy Barry is a Professor of Emerging Technology and Principal Strategist of the Artificial Intelligence/Intelligence Augmentation (AI/IA) Program (GovCon) for the Center for Strategic Leadership at the United States Army War College. Before working at the Army War College, Dr. Barry was a visiting professor of Philosophy and Just War Theory at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  A pioneer in Human-AI/IA teams, he is the first to introduce AI-powered intelligent augmentation androids, robots, digital virtual beings, and strategic advisors as teaching and learning partners in civilian university and Professional Military Education classrooms. A sought-after TEDx and international keynote speaker, Dr. Barry’s influence extends to Fortune 500 companies and global leadership symposiums and conferences. His current research interest centers on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, driving the conversation on ethical technology interactions. His contributions to academia and industry establish him as a leading authorit...

[Editor’s Note:  Army Mad Scientist has extensively explored how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) can be harnessed to enhance our Warfighters’ ability to fight at machine speed and sustain our decisive Soldier overmatch. But as frequent contributor COL Stefan J. Banach (USA-Ret.) has noted, the evolution and convergence of technologies has added a new non-kinetic battle space to conventional warfare, which in turn requires the recruiting and retention of adaptive Warfighters, with highly-tuned aptitudes for tactical innovation and rapid, decisive decision-making. The challenge facing the Army is how to effectively identify and then screen for these and other requisite talents.

Today’s episode of The Convergence podcast features our interview with Mr. Loran Ambs, Chief Technology Officer, Ideal Innovations, Inc., regarding his company’s research into measuring the distinctive characteristics of innate talent, identifying potential high performers, and how the Army can harness AI/ML to screen and match these high performers with specialty vocations — Read on!]

Mr. Loran Ambs serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Ideal Innovations, Inc.  He supports the development and implementation of innovation processes at I-3 and DoD customer sites.  Mr. Ambs participates in the conception, development, and transition of technical solutions for problems affecting operations of the DoD and intelligence communities.  He conducts basic and applied research into techniques using measures of brain activation for the discovery of traits, aptitude, knowledge, interest, familiarity, group association and compatibility applied to selection and assessment of individuals for in military, government, academic and commercial environments. Mr. Ambs is inventor or co-inventor of more than 30 issued U.S. patents including several related to brain activation matching, brain matched compatibility, and knowledge discovery.   

Mr. Ambs previously served as the on-site PM in Afghanistan for the installation and operation of stand-off biometric data collection, remotely operated ISR systems, wireless data communication, data fusion, aggregation and presentation capabilities leading to increased safety and effectiveness of our soldiers and coalition partners.  He served as the Chief Scientist for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) in which he participated in the identification, acquisition, development, test, and transition of solutions for the detection, neutralization, and mitigation of IEDs.  He collaborated with the DoD Service branches, DoD labs, National Labs, operational units, Congressional staffers, Defense Science Board, Army Science Board, National Academies, JASONS, industry, and academic institutions to focus the Nation’s resources on defeating IEDs.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Mr. Ambs to discuss his company’s research into measuring the distinctive characteristics of innate talent, identifying potential high performers, and how the Army can harness AI/ML to screen and match these high performers with specialty vocations (e.g., pilots, special operators, and other select duty positions).  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• Training is expensive – it costs $13 million to train one F-35 pilot – so devoting resources to personnel who are not suited to a specific competency or MOS is wasteful. Looking at a prospective trainee’s brain activation response, and comparing the re...

[Editor’s Note:  Army Mad Scientist continues to explore issues impacting the Operational Environment, especially those directly affecting U.S. Army operations in the contemporary battlespace. Over the past decade-plus, dual use automation technologies have increasingly been weaponized by state and non-state actors alike, democratizing warfighting capabilities in the air, land, and sea domains.  In the air domain, Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) initially provided Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities without the associated costs and infrastructure required to operate manned platforms.  More recently, we’ve witnessed ISR and strike capabilities converge in small UAS (sUAS), granting lesser powers the ability to identify, reach, and strike targets — “lower[ing] the ‘entry fee’ into combined arms operations.”

With this democratization of the air domain, we’re also witnessing the resurgence of Mass.  Virtually anyone will “be able to use these small, cheap, and individually expendable platforms to almost continuously gather real-time intelligence and choose the time and place to overwhelm an adversary’s defenses through sheer volume” — creating, in the eloquent words of proclaimed Mad Scientist Zachery Tyson Brown, Jomini’s Revenge: Mass Strikes Back!

Today’s episode of The Convergence podcast features our interview with COL Bill Edwards (USA-Ret.) exploring the very real, contemporary threat presented by sUAS, what trends he’s seeing emerge from current and recent conflicts, and how the U.S. Army, the Joint Force, and the Nation as a whole should respond.   Read the highlights from our interview below, then listen to this important podcast — it’s not too late, but the time to act is now!]

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 COL Bill Edwards (USA-Ret.) currently serves as President of Federal and Public Safety at Building Intelligence, Inc.  Before this role, COL Edwards was a Principal in Protective Design and Security for Thornton Tomasetti, a globally recognized structural engineering firm. As an organizational leader, he has been instrumental in expanding the organization’s global footprint by providing strategic direction in the startup of a new security consultancy division focused on providing comprehensive security-driven risk mitigation approaches and business continuity solutions.  

Before this, COL Edwards served as the Director of Intelligence, Special Operations Command North, where he oversaw the successful unification of interagency communications in support of Homeland Defense. He additionally earned recognition for transforming a struggling $400M DoD technical intelligence program as the Capability Director for the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Center, and served as a Commander in the U.S. Army, overseeing strategic military and intelligence operations in theatres across the globe.

From 2009 to 2011, COL Edwards served as a Commander and Director of Operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. In this highly complex leadership role, he led a U.S. Army Battalion of 800 personnel, a $50M operating and contract budget, and numerous governances, economic development, and security readiness programs. He additionally managed two major U.S. Base facilities, as well as numerous outposts, located througho...

[Editor’s Note:  Regular consumers of Army Mad Scientist content — via this blog site and The Convergence podcast — will understand how wargaming can enhance Professional Military Education (PME), hone cognitive warfighting skills, and broaden our understanding of the Operational Environment.  Wargaming removes hierarchies and encourages players to attempt innovative solutions, while also creating a safe environment in which to fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes.  Wargaming can also help us assess concepts and capabilities with a reasonable degree of verisimilitude — before committing the Nation to costly, and in some instances, irrevocable courses of action.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we report back from “Fight Night” in Washington, D.C. , where we sat down with the Hon. William M. (“Mac”) Thornberry, former U.S. Representative for Texas’ 13th Congressional District and former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to discuss the importance of wargaming to public policy, his experiences with it on Capitol Hill, and what we can do to better emphasize it with our lawmakers — Enjoy!]

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The Almanac of American Politics 2020 called William M. (“Mac”) Thornberry “one of Congress’ brainiest and most thoughtful members on national and domestic security issues,” and said that he “has long been at the forefront of national security issues.”  USA Today said Mac has “experience in Washington, a rare long view and a reputation for serious, thoughtful problem-solving.”​ Since leaving Congress after 26 years, which included service as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mac continues to work at the intersection of technology and national security.  He serves various companies and non-profit organizations as a board member and advisor.

Consistently on the leading edge of critical national security issues during his time in Congress, Mac led in creating the National Nuclear Security Administration to improve management of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex; establishing the Department of Homeland Security (introducing a bill to do so six months before the attacks of 9/11); preparing the military to defend the nation in new domains of warfare such as space and cyber; and improving DOD’s innovation and acquisition efforts.

In addition to serving on the House Armed Services Committee throughout his time in Congress, Mac also served on the House Intelligence Committee for 14 years. He has written widely on defense matters and appeared on all major television channels providing insight on national security-related issues.

In December 2021, Mac received the Peace Through Strength Award from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.  He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Service Medals from the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, as well as the Marine Corps Foundation’s Semper Fidelis Award, the American Legion’s Distinguished Public Service Award, the Sam Nunn National Security Leadership Award from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and awards from the Aerospace Industries Association, Military Officers Association, National Defense Industrial Association, Non Commissioned Officer Association, Computing Technology Industry Association, USO-Metro among others. During the fall 2021 semester, he was a Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics in Harvard’s Kennedy School and has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of Texas Tech University.

Born in Clarendon, Texas and raised on the family ranch in Donley County,...

[Editor’s Note:  As we reported earlier this month, “The Operational Environment is increasingly lethal with the ubiquity of sensors and proliferation of battlefield automation facilitating effective precision and massed strike capabilities.  Forces that can be sensed are targeted, and if targeted, are destroyed or rendered inoperable. ” This increasingly transparent battlespace has been wrought by the democratization and convergence of commercial satellite imagery, inexpensive Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)-borne sensing platforms, and the Internet of Everything and Everyone. The resulting web of networked sensors could usher in the end of covert movement for combat units and their associated command and control and logistical support nodes, and with that spell the demise of strategic and operational deception and surprise.

This battlespace transparency is driving a renewed quest for concealment.  In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, we sit down with Dr. Andrea Alù to discuss the reality of invisibility, the science behind metamaterials, and the associated possibilities for the U.S. Army.

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Andrea Alù is a Distinguished Professor, founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Professor of Electrical Engineering at The City College of New York. He is affiliated with the Wireless Networking and Communications Group and the Applied Research Laboratories, both based at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Professor. His research interests span a broad range of technical areas, including applied electromagnetics, nano-optics and nanophotonics, microwave, THz, infrared, optical and acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces, plasmonics, nonlinearities and nonreciprocity, cloaking and scattering, acoustics, optical nanocircuits and nanoantennas.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Dr. Alù to discuss the reality of invisibility, the science behind metamaterials, and the associated possibilities for the U.S. Army.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• Alù’s work focuses on wave physics, specifically looking at how to structure materials at the nanoscale to change their interactions with waves – light, sound, and radio – and demonstrate phenomena that would not be possible otherwise, for example invisibility.These new structured materials are called metamaterials because their properties go beyond those of natural materials. 

• By structuring materials in specific ways, a “cloak” can be created and, when wrapped around an object, can suppress the scattering of light or waves which is what allows the object to be visible. This process causes a transparency effect on the object, effectively causing it to disappear.  

• There is a limit, however, to making an object fully transparentwhen using passive materials which require no energy. There is a tradeoff between the size of the object and the amount of suppression of scattering waves from the object –- the larger the object, the harder it is to achieve full suppression of the scattering waves. 

[Editor’s Note:  Regular consumers of Army Mad Scientist content — via this blog site and The Convergence podcast — understand how wargaming can enhance Professional Military Education (PME), hone cognitive warfighting skills, and broaden our understanding of the Operational Environment. Wargaming removes hierarchies and encourages players to attempt innovative solutions, while also creating a safe environment in which to fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes.  Wargaming can also help us assess concepts and capabilities with a reasonable degree of verisimilitude — before committing the Nation to costly, and in some instances, irrevocable courses of action.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we return to last fall’s “Fight Night,” hosted by USA Fight Club, CAE, Inc., and Army Mad Scientist in Washington, D.C., for Part Two of our discussion with wargame designers and players, exploring what makes a great wargame and why they are important to the U.S. Army — Enjoy!]

Army Mad Scientist sat down with five wargame designers and players at “Fight Night” in Washington, D.C., on 23 September 2023, to discuss what makes a great wargame and why they are important to the U.S. Army.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• Wargames act as an effective tool to systematically explore potential futures and test different hypotheses. They provide a confined, contextualized space to practice strategic decision making while in a safe-to-fail environment. As a teaching tool, players can make decisions and explore the consequences of their actions.
• Wargames offer an effective way to work through the challenge of ambiguity.As certain tools may not be sufficient for some ambiguous problems – modeling and simulations or pure analysis – wargames help to fill the methodology gap. For example, they allow players to explore the human dimension of a problem – how people perceive and understand the world around them, and how that influences their ability to accomplish the objective. 
  
  
• Game designers must create wargames with the end-goal or objective in mind at the beginning of the design process.Throughout this process, designers are constantly trying to ensure the game developed meets the objective, while also maintaining internal and external validity needed for a scientific approach.
  
  
• Technologyhas drastically changed wargaming in recent years. Wargames can be conducted more rapidly and with a significantly larger scope of information enabling the gameplay – including real-time data and AI-enabled activity. Newer wargames also facilitate linking all five domains (land, air, sea, space, and cyber) together for optimum results. 
  
  
• Wargames help the Army better understand the evolution of the Operational Environmentwhich underpins all Army training and Leader development.

[Editor’s Note:  Regular readers of the Mad Scientist Laboratory are familiar with the potentially disruptive effects of cognitive and neurowarfare. As guest blogger Robert McCreight observed, “Most non-kinetic threats — or the NKT spectrum — consist of silent, largely undetectable technologies capable of inflicting damaging, debilitating, and degrading physical and neural effects on its unwitting targets…  A determined and patient covert enemy can inflict strategic damage non-kinetically before we can recognize the attack, resist it, or recover from it.” Overmatch in the Land, Air, Sea, Space, and Cyber Domains is irrelevant if our adversaries can harness and unleash capabilities that manipulate the brains of our Leaders.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we sit down with Dr. Guosong Hong, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, to explore emergent research behind one such NKT — brain manipulation. Dr. Hong discusses neuro-engineering tools, controlling brains from a distance, and how the Army might one day need to protect our Soldiers and Leaders against mind control — Read on!]

Dr. Guosong Hong is Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.  His research aims to bridge materials science and neuroscience, and blur the distinction between the living and non-living worlds by developing novel neuro-engineering tools to interrogate and manipulate the brain. Specifically, the Hong lab is currently developing ultrasound, infrared, and radiofrequency-based in-vivo neural interfaces with minimal invasiveness, high spatiotemporal resolution, and cell-type specificity.

Dr. Guosong Hong received his PhD in chemistry from Stanford University in 2014, and then carried out postdoctoral studies at Harvard University. Dr. Hong joined Stanford Materials Science and Engineering and Neurosciences Institute as an assistant professor in 2018. He is a recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award, the MIT Technology Review ‘35 Innovators Under 35’ Award, the Science PINS Prize for Neuromodulation, the NSF CAREER Award, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Dr. Hong to discuss neuro-engineering tools, controlling brains from a distance, and how the Army might one day need to protect Soldiers against mind control. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• During Dr. Hong’s pursuit of his PhD at Stanford University, he createda method using short wave infrared light to non-invasively observe rodent brains without removing the scalp and skull, which was traditionally necessary. During his post-doctoral studies, he created ultra-small devices that can be loaded into a syringe and injected directly into the subject’s brain to stimulate and observe neural activity.
• As a faculty member at Stanford, Dr. Hong developed nano particles to inject into the bloodstream which convert ultrasound into local light emission. This allows for optogenetic stimulation based on ultrasound alone.
• Rattlesnakes have the unique natural ability to sense infrared radiation. This assists them when hunting for prey – like mice. Dr. Hong was able t...

[Editor’s Note:  As longtime readers of the Army’s Mad Scientist Laboratory know, our adversaries are deploying capabilities to fight the U.S. Joint Force through multiple layers of stand-off in all domains – space, cyber, air, sea, and land. Per the Defense Intelligence Agency‘s Challenges to Security in Space 2022: Space Reliance in an Era of Competition and Expansion:

“Between 2019 and 2021 the combined operational space fleets of China and Russia have grown by approximately 70 percent. This recent and continuing expansion follows a period of growth (2015–2018) where China and Russia had increased their combined satellite fleets by more than 200 percent. The drive to modernize and increase capabilities for both countries is reflected in nearly all major space categories—satellite communications (SATCOM), remote sensing, navigation-related, and science and technology demonstration. Since early 2019, competitor space operations have also increased in pace and scope worldwide, China’s and Russia’s counterspace developments continue to mature, global space services proliferate, and orbital congestion has increased.”

Preserving our advantage in the space domain is critical — a contemporary U.S. Army maneuver Brigade Combat Team (BCT) has over 2,500 pieces of equipment dependent on space-based assets for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). This number of dependent systems will only increase as emerging technology on Earth demands increased bandwidth, new orbital infrastructure, niche satellite capabilities, and advanced robotics. Dominance in the space domain is vital to Joint Force and U.S. Army operations.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we sit down with Dr. Olga Bannova, Director of the Space Architecture Graduate Program, University of Houston, to discuss designing vehicles and habitats for space, how we can use austere environments here on Earth as proving grounds, and what these environments can teach the U.S. Army. — Enjoy!]

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Dr. Olga Bannova, conducts research and design studies that address a variety of topics, including: planning analyses for a broad range of space vehicles, habitats, and systems; inflatable hydroponics laboratory and logistic modules; special design influences and requirements for different gravity conditions in space; and habitat concepts for extreme environments on Earth. She is a corresponding member of International Academy of Astronautics, IAC Space and Society Symposiums coordinator, senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a Chair of the AIAA Space Architecture Technical Committee, and an elected member of the ASCE’s Executive Committee on Space Engineering and Construction. She recently received 2019 Outstanding Technical Contribution Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Aerospace Division. Dr. Bannova earned her PhD from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, in 2016, and Master in Architecture and M.S. in Space Architecture from the University of Houston in 2001 and 2005. She authored Space Architecture Education for Engineers and Architects (Springer, 2016) and Space Architecture: Human Habitats Beyond Planet Earth (DOM Publ...

[Editor’s Note:  Grizzled readers of the Mad Scientist Laboratory will recall their well-thumbed copies of the forty-year-old FM 100-2 series, The Soviet Army.  U.S. Army Soldiers and Leaders from the Cold War-era were expected to know their Soviet adversaries’ Operations and Tactics; Troops, Organization, and Equipment; and Specialized Warfare and Rear Area Support cold — as international tensions and crises could (and frequently did!) escalate to trigger alerts at a moment’s notice, sending units racing forward from their garrisons to occupy their GDP positions… ready and prepared to counter Soviet and their Warsaw Pact allies’ forces advancing across the Inner German Border (IGB)!

Flash forward to today’s Army, where knowledge of the Operational Environment (OE) and the five National Defense Strategy Threats — China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) — remain critical competencies within the Profession of Arms.

In this episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist partnered with the Breaking Doctrine podcast from the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC), to co-host a fascinating discussion with General Gary M. Brito, Commanding General,  U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Colonel Rich Creed (USA-Ret.), Director, Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, U.S. Army CAC, and Mr. Ian Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff Intelligence, TRADOC G-2, exploring how understanding the OE and knowing Threat Doctrine remain core Soldier and Leader competencies, underpinning how the Army will fight and win decisively in the 21st century battlespace — Read on!]

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General Gary M. Brito assumed duties as the 18th Commanding General, United States Army TRADOC, on September 8, 2022.  He is responsible for building and sustaining a highly trained, disciplined, and fit Army by acquiring the best people, training the most lethal Soldiers, developing the most professional leaders, guiding the Army’s culture, and shaping the future force.

 COL Rich Creed was commissioned an Armor officer in 1989 from the U.S. Military Academy and retired from active duty in 2021 after a variety of command and staff assignments from platoon to four-star level. Mr. Creed has been the Director of the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate at Fort Leavenworth since December 2016, where he helped write and edit the last two versions of the Army’s capstone operations publication, FM 3-0. He was one of the authors and editors of ADP 6-22 (Mission Command: C2 of Army Forces) and ADP 3-13 (Information).

Mr. Ian Sullivan is the Deputy Chief of Staff Intelligence, TRADOC G-2. He holds a BA from Canisius University in Buffalo, New York, an MA from Georgetown University’s BMW Center for German and European Studies in Washington, D.C., and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Universität Potsdam in Potsdam, Germany. A career civilian intelligence officer, Mr...

[Editor’s Note:  It has almost been a decade since U.S. forces and coalition partners assisted Iraqi government forces in dislodging ISIS fighters from Mosul in what some observers described as the toughest urban battle since World War II.  With the Islamic Resistance Movement’s (aka Hamas) October 7, 2023 cross-border terror attacks on Israel and subsequent Israel Defense Forces’ combat operations in Gaza, new lessons are emerging about engaging an entrenched adversary across 360 square kilometers of densely populated (over 2 million Palestinian civilians) and highly urbanized terrain.

As Dr. Brent Sterling reminded our readers and listeners, other observers are also watching and learning — especially our pacing challenge China with regard to potential operations in dense urban centers on Taiwan, North Korea with its subterranean operations beneath the Demilitarized Zone, and Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” in continuing to target U.S. and Israeli interests.

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sits down with LTC Kenneth Hardy, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) liaison officer to the Israel Defense Forces, and discusses the on-going Israel/Hamas Conflict and key lessons the U.S. Army is learning about contemporary asymmetric warfare in dense urban terrain — Read on!]

LTC Kenneth Hardy currently serves as the U.S. Army TRADOC Liaison Officer to the Israel Defense Forces.  A Middle East Foreign Area Officer, LTC Hardy’s previous assignments have included In-Region Training (IRT) as a U.S. Security Cooperation Officer to the Moroccan Military in Rabat, Morocco; Political/ Military advisor to the Commander, USARCENT, and Security Cooperation/Liaison Officer to Kuwait and Qatar Armed Forces; Security Assistance Officer to the Egyptian Land Forces and Border Guard in Cairo, Egypt; and Middle East Analyst and CENTCOM J2 International Engagements, Tampa, Florida.  LTC Hardy has a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry from the University of Central Oklahoma, an Associate’s Degree in Arabic from the Defense Language Institute, and a Master’s Degree in International Relations and Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with LTC Hardy to discuss his observations regarding the October 7^th Hamas attacks on Israel and insights into how this larger conflict is informing the U.S. Army about the Operational Environment.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas showcases the battle between low-tech and high-tech — for example Hamas employed massed salvoes of inexpensive, home-made Q...

This is a special off-schedule episode of The Convergence where we talk with a mystery guest, possibly for the last time!

“China sits in INDOPACOM, but the playground is Africa.”

[Editor’s Note:  Regular readers of the Mad Scientist Laboratory will recall that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported, “Relatively poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will account for almost all global population growth during the next two decades…” The World Economic Forum supported this assessment, projecting that Africa’s population is likely to triple by 2100. Specifically, Nigeria is set to become the second most populous country in the world by 2100, trailing only India.

The significance of this growth is not lost on China — our pacing challenge has already established a permanent military presence in Djibouti and it is seeking to establish another military base at Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.  China is investing strategically throughout sub-Saharan Africa — it is now Africa’s biggest trading partner, with Sino-African trade exceeding $200 billion per year, and Africa has surpassed Asia as the largest market for China’s international construction projects. China continues to exert its influence across the continent via its Belt and Road Initiative.

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sits down with Selina Hayes, Founder and CEO of The Hayes Group International, to discuss the nexus of space investment and operations in Africa — a critical region of focus for our adversaries — and the potential implications for the U.S. Army — Enjoy!]

Selina Hayes founded Hayes Group International (HGI) to provide unique access to people, places, and data.  Designed to disrupt, Ms. Hayes has access to strategic partners and networks across Africa and the Pacific.  With her intelligence background and unique on-the-ground experience, HGI has developed and delivered solutions involving multiple intelligence sensors, information gateways, information operations, cultural intelligence, data collection, geospatial, ISR, and Space-as-a-Service.  Ms. Hayes has extensive experience leading defense and international business development strategies for emerging and disruptive ISR, PED, and geospatial technologies. She successfully combined the innovation of Silicon Valley with Washington, having successfully launched three new technologies in the DoD ecosystem to expand the capabilities of our country. As HGI’s CEO, Ms. Hayes has introduced her connections in Africa and the Pacific with this unique access to exquisite data sources and nonconventional methodologies.

Army Ma...

[Editor’s Note: Crowdsourcing remains an effective tool for harvesting ideas and concepts from a wide array of individuals, helping us to diversify thought and challenge conventional assumptions. Army Mad Scientist seeks to crowdsource the intellect of the Nation (i.e., you — our community of action!) with two concurrent opportunities this Spring. In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we explore these crowdsourcing opportunities — Read the highlights here, listen to the podcast, then get busy crafting your inputs to both!]

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientists Matthew Santaspirt and Raechel Melling discuss our two concurrent crowdsourcing opportunities:  Calling All Wargamers and Wicked Problems Writing Contest  — check out the highlights from this conversation below.

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1. Calling All Wargamers!

Regular consumers of Army Mad Scientist content — via this blog site and The Convergence podcast — understand how wargaming can enhance Professional Military Education (PME), hone cognitive warfighting skills, and broaden our understanding of the Operational Environment. Wargaming removes hierarchies and encourages players to attempt innovative solutions, while also creating a safe environment in which to fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes. Wargaming can also help us assess concepts and capabilities with a reasonable degree of verisimilitude — before committing the Nation to costly, and in some instances, irrevocable courses of action.  In challenging our assumptions and reinvigorating our thoughts about Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO), wargaming can be a useful tool in facilitating life-long learning and guarding against that most fatal of flaws in assessing the Operational Environment — the failure of imagination!

Army Mad Scientist wants to hear from you about your wargaming experiences:

• What are you learning about LSCO? 

• What wargames do you find useful for learning about military operations? 

• If you could imagine the perfect wargame, what would it look like? 

• What Great Power peripheral flashpoints are you gaming? 

• What emergent technologies (or convergences) are you integrating into your wargaming? 

• What compelling insights from gaming would you most like to share with the U.S. Army? 

Submit your responses to these questions and more at: madscitradoc@gmail.com NLT 11:59 pm Eastern on May 1, 2024.

Check out the following Mad Scientist Laboratory blog posts on wargaming:

Live from D.C., it’s Fight Night (Parts One and Two) and associated podcasts (Parts One and Two)

[Editor’s Note:  Humanity is entering an era of hyper-innovation as the potential of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Neurocognitive Sciences are harnessed to revolutionize human endeavors. As these exponential convergences of technologies spin ever faster cycles of adaptation and innovation, the quest for dominance and advantage will favor those who jettison outdated industrial age processes and implement (and resource!) whole-of-nation strategies integrating private and public sector science and technology enterprises.

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, our “rock star” proclaimed Mad Scientists — Dr. James Giordano and Dr. James Canton — return to discuss the transformative convergence of neuroscience and artificial intelligence and its implications for the Operational Environment — Read on!]

Proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Giordano is Pellegrino Center Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biochemistry; Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program; and Chair of the Subprogram in Military Medical Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC.  Dr. Giordano is a Bioethicist of the Defense Medical Ethics Center at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences; Distinguished Stockdale Fellow in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the United States Naval Academy; Senior Fellow in Biosecurity, Technology, and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI; Senior Science Advisory Fellow of the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA), Joint Staff / J-39, The Pentagon; Chair Emeritus of the Neuroethics Project of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Brain Initiative; and serves as Director of the Institute for Biodefense Research, a federally funded Washington, DC, think tank dedicated to addressing emerging issues at the intersection of science, technology and national defense. He previously served as Donovan Group Senior Fellow, U.S. Special Operations Command; member of the Neuroethics, Legal, and Social Issues Advisory Panel of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and Task Leader of the Working Group on Dual-Use of the EU-Human Brain Project.

Dr. Giordano is the author of 340 peer-reviewed publications, 7 books, and 45 governmental reports on science, technology, and biosecurity, and is an elected member of the European Academy of Science and Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK), and a Fulbright Professorial Fellow. A former U.S. Naval officer, he held designations as an aerospace physiologist and research psychologist, and served with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

Proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Canton is a global futurist, social scientist, author, and strategic advisor. As a former Apple Computer executive and high-tech entrepreneur, he has been insightfully forecasting the key trends and technologies that have shaped our world, including AI-nano-bio-IT-neuroquantum-cloud. The Economist recognizes him as one of the leading global futurists. He has advised three White House Administrations, the DoD, Intelligence Community, and over 100 companies over 30 years. Dr. Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government.

Dr. Canton is the author of Future Smart, The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next Twenty Years, and <...

[Editor’s Note:  The TRADOC G-2 appreciates the value of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) in informing us about emergent trends across the Operational Environment (OE). For almost two years, analysts within the G-2 ACE collated insights on Russia’s on-going “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine to learn about the contemporary Russian way of war, understand how they were adapting and innovating across enduring Large Scale Combat Operations, and identify potential ramifications for U.S. Army modernization across DOTMLPF-P. The associated weekly “scrum” methodology generating weekly TRADOC Running Estimates and associated Narratives is described in greater detail in this Red Diamond article.

Beginning in January 2024, the G-2 ACE adapted this methodology to address its FY24 Program of Analysis key intelligence questions spanning the OE and conducted bi-weekly “scrums” to generate monthly OE Running Estimates and associated Narratives, and quarterly OE Assessments.

Each of these weekly TRADOC Running Estimates and monthly OE Running Estimates were “synchronized” with corresponding classified products prior to their publication to ensure the highest fidelity and accuracy in OE reporting. Capturing these insights has proven invaluable in the G-2 describing the evolving OE — foundational to TRADOC’s mission of training Soldiers and supporting unit training; developing adaptive Leaders; guiding the Army through doctrine; and shaping the Army by building and integrating formations, capabilities, and materiel. Links to our archives of these TRADOC and OE Running Estimates may be found at the end of this blog post.

In today’s episode of The Convergence Podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with Shawn Nilius, Director, Army OSINT Office, to discuss why OSINT is important to the Army, how it is being used in contemporary operations, and how he sees it evolving over the next 10 years — Enjoy!]

Mr. Shawn M. Nilius was appointed Director, Army Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Office in March 2022. The Army OSINT Office (AOO) serves as the OSINT operational support lead for Army OSINT and provides technical oversight, compliance, management, and governance of open-source activities while synchronizing resourcing and requirements across the Army Intelligence and Security Enterprise (AISE). Prior to becoming a Department of the Army civilian, Mr. Nilius served as a career Army Military Intelligence Officer, whose previous assignments included Director of Intelligence (G-2), U.S. Army Africa; Director, Combined Joint Intelligence Operations Center, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, Kabul, Afghanistan; Director, Joint Intelligence Center Special Operations Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Tampa, Florida; and Director of Intelligence (J-2), U.S. Forces – Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq. Mr. Nilius has a Masters of Science, Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; a Masters of Science, Strategic Intelligence-Middle Eastern Studies, National Intelligence University, Washington, DC; and a Bachelors of Arts, Political Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with Shawn Nilius, Director, Army OSINT Office, to le...

[Editor’s Note:  Last week’s Mad Scientist Laboratory post featured an assessment by U.S. Army War College student LtCol Erik Keim (USMC) that “militaries will blend with civilian transmissions instead of relying solely on the specific military electromagnetic spectrum by 2030 due to the availability of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) and the proven success of digital camouflage.”

In today’s episode of The Convergence Podcast, Army Mad Scientist sits down with LtCol Keim to discuss the Future Dynamics of Warfare project he and his U.S. Army War College classmates collaborated on, his research on blending in the electromagnetic spectrum, and how the Army can adapt to the modern battlefield — Enjoy!]

LtCol Erik Keim is currently a resident student at the U.S. Army War College. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Wyoming and a Master’s Degree in Information Technology Management from the Naval Postgraduate School. He is the recipient of the 2015 Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Naval Postgraduate School. LtCol Keim is a Marine Corps Communications Officer with over 20 years of service and deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the Western Pacific.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with LtCol Keim to talk about his work on the Team Sullivan’s Travels project at the U.S. Army War College, what his research showed for the U.S. Army, and how blending might be a viable course of action on a cluttered battlefield. The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• Current military tactics use reserved frequencies and high-powered transmitters for communications. These actions stand out in the electromagnetic spectrum and make it easy for the enemy to triangulate and pinpoint the origin of the emissions for targeting and destruction.  

• The on-going war in Ukrainehas shown that both sides are able to very quickly and easily identify and locate the source of communications transmissions and use a variety of kinetic attacks on those locations. Blending would be a viable alternative to using traditional military frequencies, with military communications “hiding within the noise” of commercial and civilian transmissions – e.g., WiFi, 4G and 5G, and Bluetooth. 

• Blending in with the background electromagnetic spectrum “noise” makes it much harder for an adversary to detect and discern specific military communications from normal environmental transmissions.  This may come with added risk — Russia, for instance, transitioned to using cell phone communications but used unencrypted signals that Ukraine was able to intercept and act on. 

• The contemporary battlefield shows that if you are operating anywhere in the world, you can be seen, and if you can be seen you can be hit.Military operations require diligence when emitting and transmitting. Following the principles of shoot, move, communicate, and move again will help ensure survivability, but a mix of old and new techniques might be needed. Military...

[Editor’s Note:  Last week’s Mad Scientist Laboratory blog post featured a timely “what if?” nightmare scenario by COL John Antal (USA-Ret.), set in a not-too-distant-future — imagining an Operational Environment where today’s National Defense Strategy threat members, colluding as a coalition of autocracies, launched simultaneous surprise strikes against United States’ Joint forces around the globe.

In today’s 100th episode of The Convergence Podcast, Army Mad Scientist welcomes back COL Antal to read his scenario for our listeners and discuss its associated implications for the U.S. Army — Enjoy!]

COL John Antal (USA-Ret.) is a Soldier, military historian, and leadership expert. He served 30 years in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer, senior staff officer, and commander. He is the author of two recent books on modern warfare: Next War: Reimagining How We Fight (September 2023) and 7 Seconds to Die: A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting (February 2022).

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with COL Antal to review and discuss his troubling scenario and the associated implications for the U.S. Army. The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• The Dictator’s Dreamis a fictional story written as a wakeup call for Army Leaders to focus on a worst-case scenario. “Useful fiction” presents possible scenarios intended to develop creativity and strengthen foresight — solving problems in the short term and creating solutions for the long-run. The U.S. could end up in a war for national survival — something most people cannot imagine.  This scenario helps our Leaders to imagine and think about how to respond to such an existential threat.
• The increasing speed of battlefield adaptation requires the U.S. Army to innovate and develop courses of action very rapidly. We can use lessons from history, specifically recent history, to help inform our decisions on how to adapt our forces. Wargames and thought experiments are also essential, enabling our Leaders to engage in productive dialogues on creative, timely solutions. 
• We are living in a precarious time – possibly more dangerous than at any other time in the 21st century. American deterrence has been dramatically affected by events in the past several years, providing our adversaries with opportunities to exploit. These threats are now colluding in ways we have not previously seen – becoming allies.
• Training rotations at our Combat Training Centers are capstone training events for our maneuver brigade combat teams. They must accurately depict the Operational Environment(OE), specifically regarding the 

[Editor’s Note:  Army Mad Scientist is pleased to publish its 500^th post!  Since its inception on 09 November 2017, the Mad Scientist Laboratory has continuously sought to explore the Operational Environment (OE) and the changing character of warfare on behalf of the U.S. Army.  Given this enduring mission, it’s fitting that this milestone post features the highlights from our latest episode of The Convergence podcast.  Army Mad Scientist sat down with Mr. Ian Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff Intelligence (DCSINT) G-2, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), to discuss the TRADOC G-2’s newly published The Operational Environment 2024-2034:  Large-Scale Combat Operations.  

The OE underpins how the U.S. Army is organized, trained, equipped, and operates — it is foundational in ensuring the Army’s mission success — fighting and winning our Nation’s wars.  This latest OE assessment focuses on how our adversaries are learning and adapting how they fight from recent and on-going conflicts around the globe (e.g., Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Gaza, and the Gulf of Aden).  It describes the twelve conditions that contribute to Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) and five resulting implications for the U.S. Army. 

This new OE assessment is central to how the U.S. Army integrates the threat within our Leadership Development Training and Education system, our doctrine, and our modernization efforts across the DOTMLPF-P spectrum of capabilities.  In preparing for LSCO against our pacing and acute threats (China and Russia, respectively), it represents the “gold standard” for which the Army must ready itself as a “precursor to victory.”  Any and everyone associated with defending this great Nation should familiarize themselves with its contents — Read on!]

Mr. Ian Sullivan is the Deputy Chief of Staff Intelligence, G-2, TRADOC.  He holds a BA from Canisius University in Buffalo, New York, an MA from Georgetown University’s BMW Center for German and European Studies in Washington, D.C., and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Universität Potsdam in Potsdam, Germany.  A career civilian intelligence officer, Mr. Sullivan has served with the Office of Naval Intelligence; Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) at the National Counterterrorism Center; the Central Intelligence Agency; and TRADOC. He is a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service and was first promoted to the senior civilian ranks in 2013 as a member of the ODNI’s Senior National Intelligence Service.  Mr. Sullivan is a frequent and valued contributor to both the Mad Scientist Laboratory and The Convergence podcast.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with Mr. Sullivan to discuss the newly released The Operational Environment 2024-2034:  Large-Scale Combat Operations...

[Editor’s Note: The Mad Scientist Laboratory featured LTC Kristine M. Hinds‘ assessment of private sector involvement in future conflicts in “Sixth Domain” – Private Sector Involvement in Future Conflicts last June. While some Army purists have taken exception to the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security‘s use of the term “Sixth Domain” to describe the private sector’s sphere of activities supporting warfighting, no one disputes the vital role that the private sector has played in providing corroborative intelligence via space imagery, effective cyber security, and resilient Command and Control networks — heretofore the domain of public sector defense services and intelligence communities — in Ukraine’s on-going fight against Russian imperialism.

In today’s episode of The Convergence Podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with LTC Hinds to address Fifth Generation Warfare, the Sixth Domain, and how we may need to adapt to defend ourselves and the Nation in the evolving Operational Environment.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with LTC Kristine Hinds — a 90A Logistics Corps officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and Future Seminar student at the Army War College — to discuss her work on Team Sullivan’s Travels, what her research revealed, and the implications of a Sixth Domain and Fifth Generation Warfare. The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• In focusing on the central theme of “how innovations from contemporary conflicts impact the future dynamics of warfare,” LTC Hinds explored the impacts of non-military or non-federally governed entities in crisis and conflict, specifically those of the private sector.

• Per The Atlantic Council, the sixth domain refers to the private sector’s role in warfare. In its on-going fight with Russia, Ukraine continues to receive private sector support in cyber, communications, and data migration services. The “sixth domain” has emerged as a critical consideration for operational planning and warfighting, not only for the assets and capabilities it can deliver, but also for its associated risk in blurring the distinction between noncombatants and combatants.

• Private sector support is not guaranteed – it can be pulled or even turned into a threat.There is risk in relying too heavily on support that can be easily turned off. The private sector’s ability to deny services or withhold information creates the possibility of them adversely impacting strategic, operational, and tactical operations, such as targeting.

• Fifth generation warfare loosely describes contemporary conflicts in which tactics like social media influence operations and cyberattacks play a more...

“I don’t think America, or the West in general, is prepared in any sort of way to fight a static war like we’re seeing over there in Ukraine.”

[Editor’s Note:  One of the twelve key conditions driving the Operational Environment (OE) in the next ten years is its increased lethality.  According to the TRADOC G-2‘s recently published The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations:

“LSCO will be increasingly lethal due to the intersection of sensor ubiquity, battlefield automation, precision strike, and massed fires.”

We’ve seen an increase in the production, employment, and success of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) on the battlefield in recent years. These systems were integral components of the Azeri victory in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War – specifically the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 and Israeli Harop – and are proving vital in the on-going Russo-Ukrainian war.  Indeed, during this latter conflict, the ever evolving Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)/Counter-UAS (C-UAS) fight has led to rapid adaptations on both sides as they seek to achieve battlefield advantage.  Yet any advantage achieved is fleeting — as observed by Daniel Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, “The peak efficiency of a new weapon system is only about two weeks before countermeasures emerge.”

In our latest episode of Army Mad Scientist’s The Convergence podcast, we sat down with Wolfgang Hagarty to learn first-hand about the on-going war in Ukraine, its rapidly evolving UAS/C-UAS fight, and the overarching impacts of technological innovation on the changing character of warfare — Enjoy!]

Wolfgang Hagarty — a United States Marine Corps veteran — joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) in 2022 as an intelligence officer.  He took part in the UAF’s Kharkiv offensive as well as the Kherson offensive.  He became a team leader and focused primarily on the UAS/C-UAS fight as well as Electronic Warfare (EW) and counter-EW.  

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Mr. Hagarty to talk about his experiences fighting in Ukraine,  his opinions on the rise of UAS, and his thoughts on the evolution of Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO).  The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• First-Person View (FPV) drones have become a very cost-effective way for Ukraine to achieve precision strikes. Their ubiquity on the battlefield initially arose from Ukraine’s shortage of artillery shells.  The UAF soon realized dismounted infantry teams could find and finish Russian targets with precision strikes using fewer drones than conventional artillery firing masses of ordnance.   

• To counter Russian reconnaissance UAS, like the larger Orlan-10and -30, the...

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist first introduced Andrew Olson to our community of action with his insightful submission to our Calling All Wargamers crowdsourcing effort entitled Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) Considerations in Wargaming LSCO.  In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, we sit down with Mr. Olson to learn more about CHMR — now a DoD priority with the implementation of DoDI 3000.17 on 21 December 2023 — and how incorporating it into the Army’s wargaming activities can help our Leaders understand how it “supports U.S. national security interests… furthering strategic objectives to achieve long-term strategic success, enhancing the effectiveness and legitimacy of military operations, and demonstrating moral leadership.”  CHMR helps ensure we retain the moral high ground when executing military operations, are more precise with our application of lethal force, and are more effective at the operational level — all essential components of achieving victory — Enjoy!]

Andrew Olson is an Associate Research Analyst at CNA, specializing in wargaming. He has experience with a variety of educational and analytical approaches, with a particular interest in wargaming policy challenges, climate change wargames, and emerging technologies wargames. He has facilitated wargames for the National Academies, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, Pew Charitable Trusts, U.S. State Department, and the Joint Staff, among others. Prior to joining CNA, Mr. Olson worked for the Department of State examining technology cooperation challenges. He has managed several print publications, including the Science and Technology section of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and served as lead researcher and lab manager for a biological research lab examining the genetic foundations of empathy. Mr. Olson holds a Master of Science in foreign service from Georgetown University and Bachelor of Arts degrees in biology and political science from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Andrew Olson to discuss CHMR, its evolution within wargames, and its impact on Army planning. The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) is not a constraint – it is how we win. Effective CHMR is a part of how the U.S. can achieve its strategic and operational outcomes. Wargaming provides Leaders with the opportunity of exploring unfamiliar scenarios in a fail-safe environment. Future conflicts are likely to include the possibility of civilian harm – integrating CHMR into wargaming is essential in allowing our decision-makers the space to understand the full consequences of their decisions and actions. 

• CHMR is not a single inject to tack on at the end of a wargame – it must be a consistent approach that is incorporated into the development of commanders’ guidance, mission planning, courses of action, and targeting plans. Diffusing CHMR throughout every step of a wargame forces every player to account for civilian harm in decision-making at all levels and steps of mission planning and execution. The importance does not fall on CHMR simply being injected into every step of a wargame, but in making informed decisions towards a strategic outcome, of which C...

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist continues our series of blog posts and podcasts in the run up to our Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference, co-hosted with the Georgetown University Wargaming Society, on 6-7 November 2024 — additional information on this event and the link to our registration site may be found at the end of this post (below).

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist interviewed Sebastian Bae, Senior Wargame Designer at CNA, adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University teaching graduate wargame design, and designer of the phenomenally popular Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific — the single most cited game in the host of responses we received from our Calling All Wargamers crowdsourcing exercise last spring.  In this fascinating conversation, Mr. Bae explores how wargaming can help better prepare our Soldiers and Leaders for a complex Operational Environment — Read on!]

Sebastian Bae is a Research Scientist and Senior Game Designer at CNA’s Gaming & Integration program — working in wargaming, emerging technologies, the future of warfare, and strategy and doctrine for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. He is the game designer for Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific, a commercially available, professional military educational wargame exploring peer conflict and future technologies. Sebastian also serves as an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, where he teaches a graduate course on designing educational wargames. He has taught similar courses at the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Marine Corps Command & Staff College. He is also the faculty advisor to the Georgetown University Wargaming Society, the Co-Chair of the Military Operations Research Society Wargaming Community of Practice, and a former Non-Resident Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity. Previously, he served six years in the Marine Corps infantry, leaving as a Sergeant. He deployed to Iraq in 2009.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Sebastian Bae to discuss his views on wargaming in the military, his thoughts on the various technology evolutions, and  how the Department of Defense can better harness this unique tool. The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• “Wargaming is sort of like golf –it is often the refuge of the “wealthy” — the senior leaders — and it does not get lots of play at different echelons typically.” Wargaming capabilities are rarely pushed down to the lowest echelons and tactical level. They tend to be concentrated at the Combatant Command-level, creating a unique challenge as the games often only serve a specific viewpoint on any given problem.

• Integrating different types of wargames throughout different echelons allows Soldiers to practice decision making at all levels of their careers.This is critical because a Soldier’s decision space and perspective changes as they move from echelon to echelon. Ideally, the games should evolve as the Soldier moves up through their career path to represent the changes in their decision-making requirements. 

• Establishing a wargaming ecosystem consisting of both microgames and larger wargames creates an opportunity to explore topics outside of the typical kinetic, combat-centric wargames, such as Medical Services and CASEVAC, water distribution, and maintenance, that may be better suited for smaller games that can be played in 20-minutes. Additionally, a war...

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist continues our series of blog posts and podcasts in the run up to our Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference, co-hosted with the Georgetown University Wargaming Society, on 6-7 November 2024 — additional information on this event and the link to our registration site may be found at the end of this post (below).

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist welcomes back COL Arnel P. David, a frequent contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory and returning podcast guest, to learn how NATO is injecting new technologies into wargaming to integrate and build staff proficiency across the Alliance’s 32 member nations’ militaries — Enjoy!]

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COL Arnel P. David is the Director of the Strategic Initiatives Group at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). He is a distinguished military graduate from Valley Forge Military College, completed a Master of Arts from the University of Oklahoma, a Master of Military Art and Science in the Local Dynamics of War Scholars Program at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and is a distinguished graduate of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) where he was a National Defense University Scholar and completed a Master of Science in Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy. COL David is a PhD candidate with King’s College London.  He is the cofounder of Fight Club International, a global gaming network seeking to improve the efficacy of warfighting across the spectrum of conflict and competition — find information on Fight Club‘s current online Tactical Decision Game at the end of this post.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with COL David to discuss his views on wargaming in the U.S. Army and NATO, how technology is shaping its evolution, and how to push it to the forefront of Professional Military Education (PME). The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• NATO SHAPE recently stood up a wargaming department. They are creating and prototyping games at the strategic level that can incorporate many of the 32 member countries as well as counter-terrorism games.This nascent team is just beginning to build out its wargaming capability and is looking for experts to contribute to its mission. 

• The aforementioned wargaming department is crowdsourcing input to help better understand “what Multi-Domain Operations(MDO) looks like.” They plan to take the information they collect and use it to construct games that will help explore the crowdsourcing prompt. Additionally, the best ideas will be evaluated and briefed out to Senior U.S. Army and NATO leaders. 

• A mixed-method approach to wargaming is best. The wargame itself is not the end state; rather, the post-game analysis and the lessons learned from multiple iterations is what is important. For wargames that focus on the Balkans, NATO incorporated large-language models (LLMs) to create psychometric profiles on different ethnic groups in the region to help better unde...

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist continues our series of blog posts and podcasts in the run up to our Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference, co-hosted with the Georgetown University Wargaming Society, on 6-7 November 2024 — additional information on this event and the links to the conference agenda and registration site may be found at the end of this post (below).

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist welcomes back Dr. Billy Barry, who is joined by LTC Blair Wilcox from the Army War College (AWC) to discuss their recent case study using their “AI Study Buddy” — TIM — to pass an AWC class, explore how hybrid intelligence can augment human cognition, and address how AI could be used to amplify learning during Army wargames — Enjoy!]

Dr. Billy Barry is a Professor of Emerging Technology and Principal Strategist of the Artificial Intelligence/Intelligence Augmentation (AI/IA) Program for the Center for Strategic Leadership at the United States Army War College. Before working at the Army War College, Dr. Barry was a visiting professor of Philosophy and Just War Theory at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  A pioneer in Human-AI/IA teams, he is the first to introduce AI-powered intelligent augmentation androids, robots, digital virtual beings, and strategic advisors as teaching and learning partners in civilian university and Professional Military Education classrooms. A sought-after TEDx and international keynote speaker, Dr. Barry’s influence extends to Fortune 500 companies and global leadership symposiums and conferences. His current research interest centers on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, driving the conversation on ethical technology interactions. His contributions to academia and industry establish him as a leading authority on the future of human relationships with emerging technology.   

Blair Wilcox is a lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army Strategist (FA59), and Assistant Professor currently assigned as the Deputy Director in the Strategic Landpower and Futures Group in the Center for Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College. Before his current assignment, he taught in the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy from 2016-2020. His first functional assignment as a Strategist was at V Corps where he was the lead author for the Corps Subordinate Campaign Plan and Operational Approach. LTC Wilcox helped stand up the Corps, deployed with the Corps during crisis, and served as the Chief of Plans during his final year in the G5.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Dr. Barry and LTC Wilcox to discuss their fascinating use case of pairing with an artificial intelligence (AI) to pass an AWC course, how hybrid intelligence can amplify a Soldier’s cognitive abilities, and how AI is a wargaming game changer. The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• Hybrid intelligence takes the concept of human/AI teaming to a whole new level, requiring both sides of the partnership to accomplish a task.One major benefit of hybrid intelligence is the ability for the machine to continuously learn through its interactions with humans, as opposed to static AI which has a pre-determined and finite base of knowledge. 

• The application of hybrid intelligence will be extremely useful to the Army and Joint Force at the strategic level – corps through theater. <...

Soldier Dominance and Battlefield Primacy

“What we’ve got to think about is, how do we make our Soldiers more effective, how do we maintain that battlefield primacy for our commanders, for our Soldiers, and for our units.”

[Editor’s Note:  At the conclusion of Ian Sullivan‘s insightful blog post from almost four years ago, we were provided with a sage and cautionary admonition:

“… I think it is important to ask ourselves which approach are we [the U.S. Army] following on our path to modernization?  Are we are trying to revolutionize our approach to warfare, or are we simply trying to modernize a force based on yesterday’s ideas?  Is our preferred way of war capable of standing up to our pacing threats’ transformations, or do we need to refine it? ... We must answer the question “Are we doing enough fast enough?” — but we also must inexorably link that answer to an even more fundamental question:  “Are we building the right force, with the right people to prevail over adversaries who have thought long and hard about how to defeat us?”

In our latest episode of the Army Mad Scientist’s The Convergence podcast, we sat down with proclaimed Mad Scientist COL Scott Shaw, Director, Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate (MCDID), to learn how the Army Futures Command’s presence at the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE), Fort Moore, Georgia, is accomplishing this challenge — helping transform the Army’s maneuver capabilities to ensure our war-winning future readiness — Read on!]

[If the podcast dashboard above is not rendering correctly for you, please click here to listen to the podcast.]

COL Scott Shaw, U.S. Army, is a graduate from the University of Arkansas in August 1996 and was commissioned as an Infantry officer.   Prior to his current assignment as the Director, MCDID, COL Shaw was Assistant Chief of Staff, G3, I Corps and Joint Base Lewis McChord.  COL Shaw also commanded the U.S. Army Asymmetric Warfare Group, Ft Meade, Maryland, from July 2019 to the unit’s deactivation in May 2021.

COL Shaw has held two combat commands — as the Commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division deploying to Kabul, Afghanistan, and as Commander, Company A, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment deploying to Baghdad, Iraq.  He has had three additional combat tours in Iraq, plus another in Afghanistan, and has served abroad in the Sinai in Egypt, in Kuwait, and in Korea.  COL Shaw holds three Master’s degrees – Military History (With Honors) from Norwich University, Military Art and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and Strategic Studies (Distinguished Graduate) from the Marine Corps War College.

COL Shaw has also been a frequent guest of The Convergence podcast and is a proclaimed Mad Scientist.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with COL Shaw to talk about the Maneuver CDID, how it supports Army innovation, and how you can contribute to its mission.  The following bullet points highlight the key takeaways from our conversation:

• A capabilities development and integration directorate (CDID) is the Army Futures Command’s lead for an Army force modernization proponent.  The Maneuver CDID (MCDID), specifically, determines and develops future force capabilities and future infant...

“We have craft that defy physics as we know it and are moving at speeds that are at least a hundred times faster than anything a human or robot… can produce on the planet.”

[Editor’s Note:  Today’s The Convergence podcast welcomes back our very own James Gang — proclaimed Mad Scientists Dr. James Giordano and Dr. James Canton — discussing a topic featured prominently in recent news stories and Congressional testimony:  Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, now referred to by Drs. Giordano and Canton as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.  

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a preliminary assessment to Congress several years ago.  This assessment documented the findings of the Department of Defense’s UAP Task Force (UAPTF) and the ODNI National Intelligence Manager for Aviation — focusing on reports that involved UAP largely witnessed firsthand by military aviators and collected from systems considered to be reliable.  These reports described incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2021 —  144 reports originated from U.S. Government sources.  Of these, 80 reports involved observation with multiple sensors.  This preliminary assessment states:

“Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.”

UAPs represent a currently unknown aspect of the Operational Environment  — all the more troubling, given the possibility that they could be foreign adversarial systems, operating freely within U.S. territorial spaces.  Drs. Giordano and Canton dismiss the “woo” factor often associated with this topic, describe what we do know about UAPs, and lay out three recommendations to better understand these phenomena — Enjoy!]

Proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Giordano is Pellegrino Center Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biochemistry; Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program; and Chair of the Subprogram in Military Medical Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC.  Dr. Giordano is a Bioethicist of the Defense Medical Ethics Center at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences; Distinguished Stockdale Fellow in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the United States Naval Academy; Senior Fellow in Biosecurity, Technology, and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI; Senior Science Advisory Fellow of the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA), Joint Staff / J-39, The Pentagon; Chair Emeritus of the Neuroethics Project of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Brain Initiative; and serves as Director of the Institute for Biodefense Research, a federally funded Washington, DC, think tank dedicated to addressing emerging issues at the intersection of science, technology and national defense. He previously served as Donovan Group Senior Fellow, U.S. Special Operations Command; member of the Neuroethics, Legal, and Social Issues Advisory Panel of the Defens...

[Editor’s Note:  Today’s The Convergence podcast welcomes back Ben Van Roo, recent author of our Unlocking TRADOC’s Potential with GenAI: Opportunities and Challenges blog post, to continue our exploration of the transformative potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) — specifically its ability to democratize access across the U.S. Army to the vast reservoirs of Operational Environment information.  In ingesting all of the OE Data Integration Network’s (ODIN) content — including the Worldwide Equipment Guide (WEG), Decisive Action Training Environment (DATE) and accompanying Force Structures, the Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 7-100 series, and the Training Circular (TC) 7-100 series — Gen AI offers the potential to respond to conversational queries from individual Soldiers with the TRADOC G-2’s aggregated and authoritative OE knowledge.  Operationally, Gen AI could also help accelerate the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) loop, the intelligence cycle, and even kill chains — powerful stuff, indeed…. Read on!]

Ben Van Roo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Yurts, a generative AI company partnering with the U.S. Department of Defense to advance mission-critical systems.  He holds a PhD in Operations Research and has significant experience developing AI solutions for defense and national security applications.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist sits down with Ben Van Roo to discuss Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) models, how they can be  integrated into secure networks, and how TRADOC can use them to enhance Army training.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation.

• Classic AI models could provide rudimentary identification abilities, whereas Gen AI is a newer class of modelswith the capability to produce long form documents, generate and critique ideas, and create new images, video, and music.

• The technology enabling Gen AI is moving at a rapid pace.  As soon as a new model is available, competitors and adversaries will use that newer model to upgrade their own, fostering a rapid learning and adaptation cycle.  When thinking about the geopolitical implications and competition, there is a very tight timeline of advantagebetween open-source communities, proprietary model vendors, and the U.S. and other countries. 

• Where Gen AI is useful today is plugging into pre-existing systems andaugmenting the processes that already exist.  TRADOC’s mission of preparing the Warfighter in basic aspects of readiness, for different environments (e.g., Decisive Action Training Environment [DATE]), understanding our adversaries’ materiel capabilities in the Worldwide Equipment Guide, and much more is a perfect use case for employing the current state of Gen AI technology. 

• While DoD is experimenting with Gen AI in aspects such as computer vision or Course of Action development, it is more suited to bridge the gap between the technology vendors and the Warfighters. The Government lacks what a large venture-backed company with a sole focus on writing Gen AI software can provide. 

• For large organizations like the DoD, within the next 2 to 3 years, the fundamental focus will be on how to bring Gen AI into production— how it’s integrated, where it shouldn’t be, and how management, costs, and analytics will be conducted.  

“The hope is that we can begin to profile what the capabilities of the jammer are that we’re seeing out in the field with enough measurements from enough devices”

[Editor’s Note:  In last week’s post, Sherman L. Barto posited a fictional intelligence (FICINT) scenario detailing China’s swift victory over Taiwan and the United States — achieved in part by the People’s Liberation Army’s use of

“… jam-resistant swarms utiliz[ing] permissioned blockchain encryption and … onboard AI adjust[ing] Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers in real time to ignore interference that does not transmit with proper encryption and authentication.  The loss of GNSS satellite navigation was assumed by PLA military planners and is replaced with a ship-based Long Range Navigation (LORAN) system providing the location of the three PLAN aircraft carriers to UAVs which is then paired with UAV computer vision trained on detailed maps of Taiwan to recognize where they are.  Each UAV transmits a location tag every second to each adjacent node in the swarm, enabling precision location within 20 meters.  The one pulse per second geolocation tags perform double duty as a network timing protocol, ensuring all PLA networks remain in synch despite the loss of GNSS timing.”

A U.S. Army maneuver Brigade Combat Team (BCT) has over 2,500 pieces of equipment dependent on space-based assets for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) — precision strikes and the convergence of massed fires depend on accurate and resilient PNT data.  However, as we’ve seen in Russia’s on-going war in Ukraine, access to this PNT data is increasingly being disrupted or spoofed by Electronic Warfare (EW) jammers.

Today’s The Convergence podcast welcomes Dr. Sean Gorman, CEO and co-founder of Zephr.xyz, to discuss how his company is “crowdsourcing [GPS] measurements across a bunch of phones to get a better version of reality by looking at more satellites and getting more measurements.”  Zephr is also harnessing this capability as a counter-EW jamming capability, turning everyone with a cellphone into a sensor to detect, identify, catalog, and locate these emitters.  These capabilities, conceptually proven in Ukraine, may soon be tested in Taiwan against our most capable adversary — the People’s Liberation Army — Enjoy!]

Sean Gorman is the CEO and co-founder of Zephr.xyz, a developer of next-gen networked positioning technologies.  Gorman has a more than 20-year background as a researcher, entrepreneur, academic, and subject matter expert in the field of geospatial data science and its national security implications.  He is the former engineering manager for Snap’s Map team, former Chief Strategist for ESRI’s DC Development Center, founder of Pixel8earth, GeoIQ, and Timbr.io, and held other senior positions at Maxar and iXOL.  Gorman served as a subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security’s Critical Infrastructure Task Force and Homeland Security Advisory Council, and he’s be...

Today’s The Convergence podcast welcomes back proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. Billy Barry, Professor of Emerging Technology at the U.S. Army War College, to discuss his latest innovation — an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled digital war game.  We tested this capability with two of the TRADOC G-2’s most experienced wargamers to get their thoughts on how it performed and its potential to democratize access to wargaming and potentially revolutionize Army training and strategic planning — Read on!]

Dr. Billy Barry is a Professor of Emerging Technology and Principal Strategist of the Artificial Intelligence/Intelligence Augmentation (AI/IA) Program for the Center for Strategic Leadership at the United States Army War College.  Before working at the Army War College, Dr. Barry was a visiting professor of Philosophy and Just War Theory at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  A pioneer in Human-AI/Intelligent Augmentation (IA) teams, he is the first to introduce AI-powered IA androids, robots, digital virtual beings, and strategic advisors as teaching and learning partners in civilian university and Professional Military Education classrooms.  A sought-after TEDx and international keynote speaker, Dr. Barry’s influence extends to Fortune 500 companies and global leadership symposiums and conferences.  His current research interest centers on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, driving the conversation on ethical technology interactions.  His contributions to academia and industry establish him as a leading authority on the future of human relationships with emerging technology.   

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Dr. Billy Barry visited TRADOC to demonstrate his custom-made digital war game using his new Deterministic Constraint Processing (DCP) idea.  Seasoned TRADOC G-2 wargamers Kate Kilgore and Dorsel “Flip” Boyer II tested several scenarios of Dr. Barry’s wargame and provide their insightful feedback regarding how this tool could be used by the Army.  The following bullet points highlight the key insights from this conversation.

• Barry created a custom-made digital war game using DCP on top of the ChatGPT framework.  Using DCP as a methodological framework to transform probabilistic Generative AI(Gen AI) systems into deterministic, rule-bound models, Dr. Barry’s Hybrid Deterministic Generative AI (HDGAI) system rigorously enforces semantic validity, epistemic integrity, and ethical logic through structured token selection processes, preventing semantic drift and computational inaccuracies typical in traditional Gen AI.  HDGAI is designed to be auditable, transparent, and free from “hallucinations” or unpredictable outputs, making it a more reliable tool for exploring the viability of courses of action and strategic decision-making. 

• Digital wargame scenarios using the HDGAI system — e.g., FLASHPOINT 2042: Taiwan Strait and ASCENDANCY 2050: The AI Uprising— significantly reduce the cost and logistical barriers associated with traditional war gaming — anyone with a computer or mobile device can access and play through these games.  This accessibility democratizes wargaming and allows for wider participation, including the tool’s potential use in education and training. 

• When tested by experienced wargamers, the HDGAI system’s intuitive design fostered a faster learning curve and enhanced player The ability to directly ask the system a clarifying question during gameplay – or modif...

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Kara Cunzeman, Lead Futurist for Strategic Foresight, with the Center for Space Policy and Strategy, at The Aerospace Corporation. In this role, Ms. Cunzeman is focused on cultivating a formalized approach to futures thinking through the strategic foresight Corporate Strategic Initiative (CSI), helping the enterprise adequately prepare its organizations and capabilities to proactively shape the future through innovative approaches across strategy, acquisition, science and technology portfolio management, policy, and operations.

In this episode, we discuss strategic foresight, the future of space research, public-private partnerships, and advice for the next generation of engineers. Some of the highlights include:

• How we must conceptualize the use of space is rapidly evolving and it requires dynamic and innovative thinking to keep up with an expanding range of possibilities and competition in space.
• Strategic foresight practitioners aren’t usually valued until something unusual happens that mainstream thinking hadn’t considered. We can’t predict, but we can prepare, and having foresight helps us alleviate pains and tensions in society when something unexpected happens.
• We try to keep pace with strategic competitors in space, which is hard to do in the gray zone of modern warfare. Speed will be our security, requiring us to modularize technical efforts and eliminate bureaucracy and red tape.
• The phrase “keeping at pace” sounds reactionary. The real question is how do we develop and execute our own vision while precluding our competitors from dictating our agenda?
• While it may seem counter-intuitive, the Government can actually take risks where private industry cannot. Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the National Security community need to engage with each other more. This collaboration will yield the greatest possible outcome.

If you enjoyed this post and podcast, check out:

• Space 2035: A Surplus of Uncertainty and a Deficit of Trust, by Maj Rachel Reynolds
• Space: Challenges and Opportunities
• Ethics, Morals, and Legal Implications
• Star Wars 2050 and The Final Frontier: Directed Energy Applications in Outer Space, by Marie Murphy

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Rob Albritton, Senior Director and AI Practice Lead at Octo Consulting Group. A former U.S. Army Geospatial Research Lab Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer at MITRE, Rob spent several years growing NVIDIA’s public sector team alongside the world’s foremost thought leaders on high-performance computing, AI, and deep learning. Rob now leads Octo’s oLabs AI Center of Excellence, where he guides and shapes Octo’s AI capability, strategy, and vision.

In this episode, we discuss a realistic vision of the future of AI, its integration into the DoD, and what the Government can learn from the private sector. Some of the highlights include the following:

• Academics and industry tend to overestimate the readiness of effective AI, although real progress may occur at a rate faster than we expect.
• DoD can learn data best practices from industry and apply it to unique DoD practices. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, but each AI challenge should still be tackled in a unique way.
• AI publications have slowed, although we are not necessarily nearing an “AI winter.” Innovative applications for deep learning are still being discovered, and there is still significant academic interest in AI and profit to be made in the field.
• DoD focuses on the tech industry as a hub for AI talent, but this rhetoric may actually deter talent from working with the DoD. The military should consider a “greening” process to encourage young talent to connect with the military on AI applications.
• The DoD should promote its relationship with the AI industry by emphasizing transparency in its AI development and its use of “AI for good.”
• S. Soldiers are likely to encounter fully autonomous weapons systems on the battlefield. DoD should research ways to jam or deceive these systems, rather than compete in autonomous weapons, since U.S. ethical regulations are likely to continue to limit the development and use of fully autonomous lethal systems.
• Current rhetoric emphasizes AI competition with adversaries, particularly in relation to competition with China. While the United States’ adversaries are developing AI, the United States maintains the most creative and innovative culture with regard to AI development.

 Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory, as our next podcast with Cindy Otis, former CIA officer, national security commentator, disinformation and cybersecurity expert, and author of TRUE OR FALSE: A CIA ANALYST’S GUIDE TO SPOTTING FAKE NEWS, will be posted on 11 June 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Cindy Otis, a disinformation expert specializing in election security, digital investigations, and messaging. She is a non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Prior to joining the private sector, she spent a decade as a CIA officer, serving as an intelligence analyst, briefer, and manager. Her regional expertise includes Europe and the Middle East. Ms. Otis is the author of the forthcoming book True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News, to be published on July 28, 2020 by Macmillan Publishers.

In this episode, we discuss the role of technology in accelerating the spread of disinformation; its increasing use by state, non-state, and commercial actors; and the vital role an educated population has in implementing effective intervention tactics and counter-measures. Some of the highlights from our interview include the following:

• Disinformation and propaganda have been a part of the information landscape for a long time, but the current news focus sometimes creates a misconception that it is a new phenomenon. The tools and tactics that organizations use might change with the creation of new media, but the patterns and messages are the same throughout the historical context.

• Because fake news and disinformation are not new phenomena, there are actions that can be taken to defend against it and people can be armed against it. People should feel hopeful that there are actions they themselves can take to become a first line of defense against fake news.

• People should also have a feeling of responsibility that they are part of the solution in being more conscientious about what information they consume and what they share.

• The number of players involved in creating, disseminating, and amplifying disinformation will keep increasing as countries and groups see how effective and successful others currently are at using disinformation as a tool or weapon.

• More foreign governments will be getting involved, but commercial entities will also move into the space as “disinformation-for-hire” with troll farms and black PR firms.

• Most organizations, from DoD to non-profits, are similar in that they do not have a deep enough capability to look at the issue of disinformation. There need to be far more people trained in disinformation investigation and analysis.

• Disinformation investigation often looks for the same trends and patterns from previous years, while disinformation actors have learned from those trends and become ever more sophisticated.

• We need to pay more attention to the actual solutions of how we minimize the risk of disinformation with different intervention tactics, instead of only looking for current threat actors and trends.

• Education plays a huge role in defending against disinformation, especially with organizations providing training to both consumers and journalists to consider information and use OSINT tools.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with Molly Cain (founder of GovCity, former DHS Director of Venture, and entrepreneurship expert) addressing talent management, leadership, and innovation on 25 June 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Molly Cain, founder of GovCity, the Nation’s first disruption and culture accelerator focused on government, civic, and culture change. Molly works at the intersection of technology and cultural disruption with broad ranging expertise in industry, startups, and helping the Federal Government tap into innovation with greater ambition and more visibility.

In this episode, we talk with Ms. Cain about leadership, barriers to youth in government service, and rewarding disruption. Some of the highlights from our interview include the following:

• GovCity is a hackathon-style think tank that promotes collaboration, innovation, and disruptive thinking through 48-hour events. These events give people a safe space to share innovative ideas and have disruptive conversations.
• Government leaders should trust themselves in uncomfortable situations, and allow their teammates to make mistakes as they strive for innovation.
• There are lots of similarities between the government and private sectors. DoD can better harness this relationship by focusing more on learning about the local business ecosystem and collaboration with their partners. Private companies hoping to work with DoD should use sources like LinkedIn and Twitter to start conversations on departmental innovation.
• People who communicate and cross-index well are valuable in every workspace.
• Government employees should constantly send internship and job opportunities to young applicants, and eschew government jargon to make jobs more appealing to the next generation of innovators. Young people should seek to find the right boss, as well as the right job, so they can fully participate in their work.
• The government should innovate their promotion process by promoting more leaders who have made difficult or disruptive decisions rather than those who have “toed the line.”

 Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with Lisa Kaplan, founder of the Alethea Group, addressing weaponized information as a national security problem, algorithmic silos created by social media, and disinformation as the next iteration of warfare on 9 July 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Lisa Kaplan, who founded Alethea Group to help organizations navigate the new digital reality and protect themselves against disinformation. Ms. Kaplan served as digital director for Senator Angus King’s 2018 campaign, where she designed and executed a strategy to identify, understand, and respond to disinformation. She is one of the few people who has firsthand experience combating disinformation on the campaign trail. Ms. Kaplan has also briefed US, NATO, EU, and G-7 policy makers and officials on disinformation. Previously, she consulted with PwC for the U.S. State Department, and served as a U.S. Senate aide.

In this episode, we talk with Ms. Kaplan about weaponized information as a national security problem, algorithmic silos created by social media, and disinformation as the next iteration of warfare. Some of the highlights from our interview include the following:

• Disinformation is a national security problem manifesting itself in politics. Open source information can be leveraged to create effective digital strategies to counter this rapidly-proliferating threat.
• Social media algorithms create algorithmic silos: personal echo chambers that create individual realities for users. This method of platform retention is creating more polarized information spaces. Algorithms will continue to get stronger over time, increasing the impact of this problem.
• Disinformation will become the next iteration of warfare, as it is comparatively inexpensive and easy to use. Bad actors can leverage algorithmic silos to target their disinformation to vulnerable populations. As a result, the government should identify vulnerable populations and develop support plans.
• The proliferation of fringe and conspiracy media outlets will make it difficult to know which information to trust. We should begin examining the long term impacts for children growing up in this environment, particularly in relation to their feelings towards U.S. competitors.
• We are all targets of disinformation, so we can all combat it. Thinking before you share, reading critically, searching for the right sources/authors, and avoiding sensationalized media can reduce the impact of disinformation. Remember, you are likely a trusted source to those around you.
• Conversations about disinformation trends are an important part of combating this threat. The U.S. Government has unmatched capacity to address disinformation, but needs to work towards legislation that will allow it to act in this space.

 Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with LTC Arnel David, U.S. Army, and Maj Aaron Moore, British Army, as they discuss Fight Club, the current revolution in Professional Military Education, and the role of Artificial Intelligence in future military operations on 23 July 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with guest bloggers LTC Arnel David, U.S. Army, and Major Aaron Moore, British Army, who recently penned Fight Club Prepares Lt Col Maddie Novák for Cross-Dimension Manoeuvre — describing the nascent revolution in Professional Military Education (PME) wrought by the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital assistants, gaming, and Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Using storytelling and backcasting, LTC David and Maj Moore vividly described how Leaders will seek out and leverage these technologies to hone their warfighting skills across all dimensions, enabling them to “think, fight, learn, repeat” and enhance their versatility as innovators on the battlefield.

In today’s podcast, LTC David and Major Moore further discuss the convergence of technology and wargaming that resulted in Fight Club and how it is transforming Leader development: 

• Fight Club designs realistic wargames to remove hierarchies and encourage players to attempt innovative solutions, while also creating a safe environment to fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes.

• These games replicate expensive training through a virtual setting, and harness younger generations’ aptitude for technology and virtual networking. The virtual setting also allows Fight Club to better connect players of different backgrounds, making the gaming more available and accessible.

• The DoD should implement more gaming in training. Wargaming can be effective in more frequent, smaller-scale games to increase Service members’ exposure to these types of decision making.

• Wargaming helps the Army and its international partners increase interoperability without having to run large-scale, time-compressed exercises.

• Gaming will allow the military to push innovation and will continue to attract younger generations who thrive in interactive environments. The competitive nature of gaming can inspire action and push people to develop more creative and effective solutions.

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Samantha North, cyber investigator and consultant, who is completing her final year of a PhD in computational social science at the University of Bath. Ms. North’s research focuses on understanding the drivers of tribalism in online political behavior, using data science methods to analyze large data sets and behavioral psychology theory to guide the interpretation. She also explores the factors that make social media users more susceptible to disinformation. Her objective is to understand what drives tribalism in online political behavior, using a mix of data science and behavioral psychology.

In today’s podcast, Samantha North discusses political tribalism online and our susceptibility to disinformation:

• People divide themselves into groups based on their similarities. Loyalties to these tribes increases self-esteem, and requires the designation and mistreatment of an outgroup. Disinformation targets these tribal divisions and attempts to amplify them. 

• Despite the rise of fact-checking and counter-disinformation efforts, disinformation is still extremely effective, exposing the ease with which adversaries can exploit human cognitive biases. 

• Disinformation tactics mirror digital marketing strategies. Thus, marketers and psychologists will be essential to understanding and combatting disinformation. 

• Conspiracy theories, like those created in local, private Facebook groups, pose a bigger dangerthan individual fake news stories, as they create real-world grassroots action. 

• Incentives for social media platforms to regulate disinformation based on tribalism are growing, especially as these trends are contributing to real-world actions. 

• The future of disinformationwill probably include rises in “disinformation for money,” deepfakes, and malinformation (true information manipulated for nefarious or misdirecting purposes). 

• The DoD and campaigns to counter political tribalism cannot only fixate on foreign actors because there are homegrown groups also looking to inflame divisions. There must also be more of a focus on how conspiracy theories form over time, especially in small regional groups which have large grassroots impacts.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with proclaimed Mad Scientist Keith Law, author and Senior Baseball Writer with The Athletic, discussing the parallels between baseball and the Information Environment, how stats skew our thinking, and the implications of anchoring bias on 20 Aug 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Keith Law, Senior Baseball Writer at The Athletic, which he joined in January 2020 after spending thirteen and a half years at ESPN. Before joining ESPN.com in June 2006, Keith spent just over four years as the Special Assistant to the GM of the Toronto Blue Jays, and prior to that had written for Baseball Prospectus. Keith Law is the author of Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball, published in April 2017; and The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, published in April of this year.

In today’s podcast, Keith Law discusses the parallels between baseball and the Information Environment, how stats skew our thinking, and the implications of anchoring bias:

• The brain develops cognitive biases to manage extensive information. These biases lead information consumers to draw false conclusions and ignore conflicting data.
• Anchoring bias occurs when the brain latches onto the first piece of information, even if it is irrelevant to what you are working on.
• Creating radical change in a large, traditional organization, like the Army or a sports team, is best done through an individualized grassroots effort. Radical change, especially from people new to the organization, does not usually “win hearts and minds.”
• Information environments are full of persistent yet harmful beliefs. These need to be addressed, as those with these beliefs are often more aggressive about promoting their viewpoints.
• “Credibly foolish beliefs” benefit from a "first mover" advantage. These irrational narratives are rarely challenged by peers. Once these fallacies are adopted, they are difficult to let go.
• Data collection tools are becoming democratized, leading to individuals having more agency over information.
• To become a better writer, future analysts should work to become better readers, especially when it comes to reading books and articles outside the genre they write in. For people with a STEM background, being able to write well provides a personal competitive advantage for future employment.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. Claire Nelson, futurist, engineer, and activist, discussing a smart futures approach to forecasting, technologies and science in small island nations, and positive impacts on the future on 3 Sep 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Dr. Claire Nelson, the Founder and President of the Institute of Caribbean Studies (ICS). Per Forbes, Dr. Nelson “is a strategic thinker, change agent, keynote speaker and innovator,” and is listed among that publication’s 50 Leading Female Futurists. Dr. Nelson is also Ideation Leader of The Futures Forum and Sagient Futures LLC, which provides strategic foresight and development futures consulting. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the World Futures Review and The Journal of Futures Studies, and is an emerging voice as a Black Futurist.

In today’s podcast, Dr. Nelson discusses a smart futures approach to forecasting, technologies and science in small island nations, and positive impacts on the future:

• Everything is a system. National challenges can be viewed from a systems approach by breaking them down to the sum of the parts and then adding them back up. You have to pick the right tool for the problem you are trying to solve.
• Future technology is often presented as utopian. But we need to filter that idea through the smart futures lens. What happens when the technology fails, is compromised, or hacked? There must be forethought about the legal and ethical systems and processes. All of these aspects must be part of the framework.
• Our brains oftentimes can’t negotiate many and varying opposing forces as mathematical equations. But if we translate engineering and mathematical concepts into a story, our minds can more readily assimilate, accept, and understand these complex concepts. Similarly, if we break complex and interconnected systems of systems down into characters in a story, we’re better able to connect with them and solve their related and intricate problems.
• We shouldn’t blindly gather metrics for metrics’ sake. Metrics should specifically address the nature of the problems we’re trying to solve and should be tailored to the specific system that they’re measuring. The language of the transportation system will be different from the language of the military system, and they don’t necessarily cross over or translate proportionally.
• Space is humanity’s common heritage, but there are very few concrete laws and policies in place. Access and awareness will be paramount to the future of sustainable development. Smaller and island nations will need to access this domain to monitor climate change, forecast weather, manage disasters, and ensure food and water security.
• Small island nations can serve as a laboratory or testbed for pilot projects to showcase efficient resource and infrastructure management. With indigenous populations and significant bio-diversity, small island nations offer considerable untapped knowledge, such as thousands of years of seafaring experience from Pacific island nations or access to unique flora and fauna for pharmaceutical research.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with Dr. Aleksandra Nesic, co-founder of Valka-Mir...

In today’s podcast, Dr. Nesic discusses how humans remain at the center of great power competition — “everything else are simply mechanisms being used to influence the human element” — and how we must understand the human domain and synchronize social science in the non-kinetic, non-lethal space if we are to successfully out-compete our adversaries:

• The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is far from over.  In the hybrid / asymmetric space, anything can be an instrument of war. We have to be realistic and understand the human element, which we do not yet fully grasp or comprehend.
• We tend to look at technology as a problem, not at the people using the technology [with evil intent] as the problem. Advances in technology have allowed our adversaries to become disruptive anytime, anywhere. The so-called ‘technological disruption’ should be accepted as the new status quo, as a modus operandi, and no longer be viewed as something extraordinary.
• Anthropology describes, but does not explain, the cultural lenses in the way that psychology does. Understanding the “why” of how people and groups act is important for operationalizing influence.
• How do populations change over time? Look at the brain, the most complex organ that is still not fully understood. The brain is wired for resilience and trained for adaptation. We need to invest in the brains of our target audiences and use knowledge to build resilience against our adversaries’ bad influences.

Dr. Zalman is a global futurist who helps leaders and organizations explore the implications of critical global trends and prepare their organizations for transformative change. She is a part-time professor of Strategic Foresight at Georgetown University and the CEO of the foresight consultancy Prescient, LLC, which she founded in 2017 after over a decade of hands-on experience accelerating change in public, private, and non-profit organizations.  In today’s podcast, Dr. Zalman discusses forecasting and strategic foresight, paradigm shifts in thinking, and the nature versus the character of warfare:

• Strategic foresight is a way of thinking to develop an effective strategy that is appropriate for the moment.
• How to think like a futurist — If you can tell a compelling story that engages someone else in a shared aspiration (e.g., the American Dream), then you have a higher probability of realizing that vision.
• The point of foresight is to avoid being surprised.  The key to marrying foresight and strategy is maintaining global situational awareness – remaining constantly vigilant and attuned to trends and events occurring around the world – and then using this knowledge to shape and affect strategically advantageous decisions.
• Avoiding surprise is a central tenet in the Army — so why do we feel surprised after an event like COVID? Because unpredictable events with major effects are either not taken seriously or are willfully ignored; consequently, they are not factored into institutional planning.
• Organizational culture must be receptive to discussing strategic foresight ideas that run counter to mainstream thought.
• What are the Army and DoD missing regarding the future?  The power of the individual.  Even in Great Power Conflict, individuals are able to wield inordinate influence and shape events via their phones, cameras, drones, and global social media platforms.
• All institutions are involved in national security, including the relationships between companies and their people.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast addressing The Future of Talent and Soldiers with CPT Jay Long, Richard Kuzma, and MAJ Delaney Brown, on 15 October 2020!

In today’s podcast, the following Army officers discuss Soldiering and talent management in the future force:

MAJ Delaney Brown is a strategist with the Army Talent Management Task Force. She has deployed in a variety of roles ranging from intelligence platoon leader to regional foreign aid coordinator and served as an Assistant Professor of American Politics in West Point’s Department of Social Sciences. MAJ Delaney holds a Bachelor of Science in Comparative Politics and Systems Engineering from the United States Military Academy and a Master of International Development Policy from Georgetown University where she used quantitative methods to evaluate the efficacy of government policies. She is currently a term member at the Council of Foreign Relations and active with the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Program.

CPT James “Jay” Long is an Army Reservist serving as an innovation officer at Joint Special Operations Command. Previously, he served in various infantry assignments on active duty and was a National Security Innovation Network Startup Innovation Fellow. He is based in Washington, DC.

1LT Richard Kuzma is a data scientist and technical program manager at the Army Artificial Intelligence Task Force, where he applies machine learning to Army problems and helps the Army build its digital workforce. Richard is an alum of the Defense Innovation Unit and the Harvard Kennedy School, where he wrote his thesis on structural changes needed to facilitate AI adoption within the Department of Defense. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild and writes about the DoD’s machine learning transformation in War on the Rocks, The U.S. Naval Institute, and The Strategy Bridge.

The following are highlights from the Podcast’s panel discussion:

• At a fundamental level, the Army is still looking for the same future leaders:  People who find fulfillment in service, enjoy working on hard problems, learn fast, and like to work hard.
• Future Soldiers need to be capable of learning fast; possess the emotional intelligence to rapidly build, lead, and be assimilated into effective mission-oriented teams; and have the curiosity to continually learn.
• The Army cannot focus on specific technical knowledge. We cannot predict the tech in five years, but we know which tech competencies will be important.
• We need to re-weight the importance of physical and intellectual skills. Culturally accepting that technical fluency might outweigh the importance of a Ranger tab is difficult.
• Before the Army can realize the benefits of Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T), we will need Commanders that understand networks, data, and workflows.
• To paraphrase Napoleon Bonaparte — Amateurs talk tactics, masters talk logistics, and the leaders of the future will need to talk ecosystems.
• We are facing a war for talent as the Army seeks similar technical skills as the civilian sector.
• The Army is not effectively communicating the value proposition of serving in uniform versus working in Silicon Valley. We are not communicating what our hard problems are and allowing the talent to serve at a level where they can solve them.
• Elite talent will leave the force if they cannot work on these hard problems and are not provided the tools (e.g., AI, big data, networks) available to them in the civilian sector.
• The Army’s force structure management and human resources policies should allow technical and cultural experts direct entry to Army service at middle management and senior leader levels. Why shouldn’t an Amazon warehouse manager be able enter the Army as a logistics Major?

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podca...

In today’s podcast, Major Rob Slaughter discusses Platform One (P1), an official DoD DevSecOps Enterprise Services team.  P1’s vision is to create an innovative, collaborative, and unified Defense Department that delivers freedom through continuous software integration and deployments.  Its mission is to guide, empower, equip, and accelerate DoD program offices and weapon systems through their DevSecOps journeys by:

• Helping to deploy mission code to the Warfighter quickly and securely.
• Accelerating deployment capabilities by providing an 85% solution to jump start coding.
• Providing a common code base for reusability.
• Creating a collaborative environment to break down silos and enable government-wide cross-functionality.

The following are highlights from our interview with Major Slaughter:

• Platform One solves two simultaneous DoD problems, usually seen as polar opposites:

– DoD systems are not secure enough.

– DoD struggles to quickly deliver software capabilities.

• The current limitation on software is the age of our systems. The average USAF aircraft is older than our airmen.
• The future is “everything software,” but to realize this future, we will need new hardware. An AI beat an F-16 pilot in air-to-air combat, but that same F-16 could not incorporate that AI onboard without major hardware upgrades.
• The “everything software” future means every Soldier and Civilian should be able to write software wherever they are. The greatest immediate potential is with the new Space Force, as 100% of their fight will be through a console.
• Mobility is an enabling trend — being able to access the necessary software tools and work with agility in any environment.
• In this future, the #1 risk to combat systems is software.  Rapid software development and accreditation, and sharing what works across the force is critical to mission success. Platform One can be the “Easy button”– using a trusted process to mitigate risk.
• DoD has over 100,000 software developers, which makes it one of the largest “software companies” in the world.  With all of this capability, we still have the reputation of not being able to produce fast and secure products.
• Use of open source produced software offers a way to bring the most secure solutions to DoD.  Thousands of contributors on a software solution will always beat 50 contributors on a black box project.
• Not all open source code is created equal.  A tipping point occurs when an open source product is not well supported or is primarily supported by known adversaries.
• The software advantage is a future competition which will equate to battlefield advantage. We are missing a key trend — a dearth of Mandarin language proficiency could lead to an AI disadvantage for Western AI scientists who cannot keep abreast of Chinese scientific progress and breakthroughs.

                                                                                                                        Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with Doowan Lee of Zignal Labs, discussing disinformation, changes over time in approaches to information warfare, and revisionism and the Chinese Communist Party on 12 November 2020!

Today’s episode of “The Convergence” podcast features a conversation with Mr. Doowan Lee, Senior Director from Zignal Labs.  Mr. Lee is a National Security expert in influence intelligence, disinformation analysis, data analytics, network visualization, and great power competition. Before joining Zignal Labs, Mr. Lee served as a professor and principal investigator at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he executed federally funded projects on collaborative information systems, network analysis, and disinformation analysis. His article, entitled The United States Isn’t Doomed to Lose the Information Wars, explores Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns and was featured in Foreign Policy last month.

The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with Mr. Lee:

• Our adversaries see disinformation as just an effective tool that provides strategic and global reach. We see it as irregular warfare when it is anything but irregular.
• Disinformation, or the historical term propaganda, has been around forever.  COVID-19 has accentuated this threat vector or surface.
• The Chinese government outlined their national information operations policy in “The Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” (also known as Document #9):

–    Nations talking about the spread of open societies are attempting to undermine the CCP.

-     The CCP will maintain positive control of all media.

-    The CCP will professionalize information operations.

This policy resulted in the development of the “Great Firewall,” the “Golden Shield“ project, and the PLA’s Strategic Support Forces.

• The CCP and the Kremlin are increasing their coordination on national security activities and, in some cases, are increasing their collaboration. This resulted in a recent joint statement that stated the two governments would work together to undermine disinformation that seeks to destabilize the Russian and Chinese governments.
• How is our Great Competition strategy working to prevent Chinese and Russian collaboration?
• Slaughtering the “Golden Calf”
• Information Operations are not irregular DROP THE ADJECTIVE! There is nothing irregular about these operations and they are probably the most regular or everyday form of competition we face.

• Embrace our doctrine. We are not using our tools such as international or bilateral exercises for advantage, while our adversaries are using these exercises, oftentimes in the same contested space, to their information advantage.
• Stop trying to make perfect decisions. Instead, work to perfect decision making using rapid experimentation, learning, and implementation.
• When engaging the younger generations, we need to discu...

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) is the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center of Excellence that provides a critical mass of expertise to help the Department harness the game-changing power of AI. To help operationally prepare the Department for AI, the JAIC integrates technology development with the requisite policies, knowledge, processes, and relationships to ensure long term success and scalability.

The mission of the JAIC is to transform the DoD by accelerating the delivery and adoption of AI to achieve mission impact at scale. The goal is to use AI to solve large and complex problem sets that span multiple services, then ensure the Services and Components have real-time access to ever-improving libraries of data sets and tools.

In this episode of “The Convergence” we discuss how the JAIC is bringing AI to the Joint Force (and the associated challenges!) with the following panel members:

• Jacqueline Tame, Acting Deputy Director, Chief Performance Officer
• Alka Patel, Head of AI Ethics Policy
• Jane Pinelis, Chief, Testing and Evaluation, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML).

The following bullet points highlight the key insights from our interview:

• We have not seen a reorganization of the DoD since the Goldwater–Nichols Act in 1986. AI offers a catalyst for what is next.
• The DoD has a temporal split in how to integrate AI. AI is now ready to start tackling Phase I objectives to alleviate redundant and repetitive work, but legacy processes and cultural barriers remain as obstacles in starting this work.
• Phase II objectives of integrating AI on the battlefield present additional obstacles that are measurable. Getting AI ready requires improved open mindedness at the individual level on what is possible and a willingness to accept risks, improve data readiness, modernize information technology, recruit the requisite talent, and implement the necessary policies.
• Phase II represents AI integration at a level that could redefine what it means to be Joint. Moving from doctrinal definitions and incredible effort to operate join...

In this episode of “The Convergence,” we discuss reading and its implications on leadership and forecasting, the future of command selection, and cultivating effective communicators and thinkers in the future force with LTC Joe Byerly, an active duty armor officer in the U.S. Army who has served in both conventional military and Joint assignments. In 2013, LTC Byerly started From the Green Notebook to share this thoughts on self-development — “I’m passionate about leader development and want to help others to lead with the best version of themselves. I created this site to provide a platform for leaders to help each other by sharing lessons learned. Lessons that come from our own green notebooks.”

The following bullet points highlight key insights on leadership and reading from our interview with LTC Byerly:

• Leaders can learn and prepare for the future by reading and understanding how we got to where we are, studying economics and the social sciences, and focusing on what the classics tell us about human behavior.
• Reading science fiction as part of our personal study program serves as a mental laboratory to push our thought and help us break from linear projection (now) into the future.
• To understand the possibilities of the future, you have to connect disparate things and bring them together. Reading broadly and connecting these dots improves strategic thinking.
• Ideal Soldiers in the future will love to learn, demonstrate empathy, and have the ability to fight and win.
• Communication is a key skill for the future to describe vision and intent. A favorite quote – “If the people can’t see your vision, then it is a hallucination.”
• Talking to future Soldiers, we must convince them to own their personal development.
• The tech that scares me the most in the future? “Altering bio and genetic engineering – really, anything that makes me wear a mask for seven hours at Disney World.” [Editor’s Note: this response is similar from those of Soldiers from the 1980s when confronted with the daunting prospect of having to fight buttoned up in MOPP IV for prolonged periods of time!]

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next episode of “The Convergence,” featuring Dr. Lydia Kostopoulos, Science and Technology (Emergent Tech) subject matter expert at the Joint Special Operations University, U.S. Special Operations Command, on 7 January 2021!

If you enjoyed this post, check out:

The Convergence: The Future of Talent and Soldiers with MAJ Delaney Brown, CPT Jay Long, and 1LT Richard Kuzma and the associated podcast

Fight Club Prepares Lt Col Maddie Novák for Cross-Dimension Manoeuvre, by proclaimed Mad Scientists LTC Arnel David, U.S. Army, and Major Aaron Moore, British Army; The Convergence: UK Fight Club –...

Dr. Lydia Kostopoulos is the Science and Technology subject matter expert at the U.S. Special Operations Command’s (USSOCOM’s) Joint Special Operations University where she is working on developing technology related education for the Special Operations Force Professional.  Previously, she was a Strategy and Innovation Advisor conducting forecasting work on technology and the future operating environment for the J5 at USSOCOM. She has addressed the United Nations member states at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Group of Governmental Experts (CCW GGE) meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) and participates in NATO Science for Peace projects. Check out her website at www.lkcyber.com and follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lkcyber.

In today’s podcast, Dr. Kostopoulos discusses the future of competition and conflict and steps the Army can take in preparing for it.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with her:

• I think about the future from a point of tech abundancy.  If you think about the availability, accessibility, and benefits of emerging technologies, you can study the flip side of this to identify the associated threats. Examples include the use of technologies by protestors or the use of drones and loitering munitions in small conflicts like Nagorno-Karabakh.
• There is no shared reality of what competition and conflict is or will look like. In a recent speech, LTG (R) McMaster said that we needed “more strategic empathy” and “less strategic narcissism.” This isn’t about preparing for the war we want to fight because our adversaries will probably not provide us that opportunity.
• You see this difference in the view of future warfare by studying the growing role of the cyber threat space.  Our adversaries seek to influence and attain their objectives in the competition and crisis phases via Information Operations. They are more focused on limiting our C4ISR and less on big platform conflict.
• This threat to our C4ISR capabilities and the speed of the future battlefield means we will have to find ways to preserve decision space for our political and military leaders.
• We need to focus on gaining a competitive advantage in situational understanding and rapidly conveying this information to our leaders.
• Emerging technologies like

David Kilcullen is Professor of Practice at the Center on the Future of War and the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University, a Senior Fellow at New America, and an author, strategist, and counterinsurgency expert. He served 25 years as an officer in the Australian Army, diplomat and policy advisor for the Australian and United States Governments, in command and operational missions (including peacekeeping, counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense) across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe.  In the United States, he was Chief Strategist in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, and served in Iraq as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus, before becoming Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He is the author of a number of influential books including The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Counterinsurgency, Out of the Mountains, and Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism — based on an essay that received the Walkley Award, the Australian version of the Pulitzer Prize.  His newest book is The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West.

In today’s podcast, Dr. Kilcullen discusses the future of conflict, changing concepts of victory, and achieving decisive advantages. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with him:

• Different actors (state and non-state) are converging on a set of tactics:  small teams, modular, urban, use of cyber kinetics.
• This convergence is an adaptation to US and Western dominance in a small sub-set of warfare characterized by high tech, connected, exquisite systems of systems. We describe this as conventional or regular warfare because we are the best in the world at this type of conflict.
• These different actors are the Dragons (states) and Snakes (non-state actors). Dragons are back, but acting more like Snakes. Snakes are more capable due to the democratization of technology which makes them more lethal and capable of operating regionally and globally.
• The War on Terror is not over, but the period of large occupations has ended. Simultaneously, the possible resurgence of Great Power Conflict means the US must be capable of fighting both near peer competitors and capable non-state actors.
• The defining characteristics of future warfare include:
• Liminal Warfare – Our adversaries will seek to operate below the West’s response threshold, executing covert operations that may be detected, but whose sponsorship remains cloaked and unattributed; and ambiguous actions, where both the operation and sponsor may be suspected, but remains unproven.
• Tactical Concepts employing small teams, modular, swarming, empowered by advanced communications and (in the future) artificial intelligence.
• Blending cyber-k...

Eli Dourado is a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity (CGO) at Utah State University. He focuses on the hard technology and innovation needed to drive large increases in economic growth — speeding up infrastructure deployment, eliminating barriers to entrepreneurs operating in the physical world, and getting the most out of federal technology research programs. He has worked on a wide range of technology policy issues, including aviation, Internet governance, and cryptocurrency. His popular writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, among other outlets.

In today’s podcast, Mr. Dourado discusses technology opportunities in the next decade, the economic impact of shifting technology trends, and their impact on global security.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with him:

• According to economic statistics, technological growth has stagnated since 2005. While some claim that the economy has fully matured and further growth will be limited, others argue that there is still room for growth, but U.S. culture and complacency has prevented further growth.
• In the next two decades, geothermal energy will have the biggest impact on economic development. Cheap, unlimited geothermal energy will enable the use of more expensive materials like silicon carbide by significantly reducing the cost to create them, produce energy without carbon emissions thus mitigating the effects of climate change, and reduce food security concerns via indoor growing models.
• The United States is now energy independent, which could incentivize a shift away from intervention in the Middle East. Conflict in the region could still significantly impact U.S. supply chains, given Asian reliance on Middle Eastern energy flows.
• While genetic enhancements are still decades away, brain computer interfaces (BCI) could allow soldiers to command technology at the speed of thought in the next ten years. Related bioethical concerns, while important, may also be limiting the growth of beneficial technologies.
• Decreasing launch costs are facilitating both commercial and governmental expansion in space. High resolution earth sensing technology could soon enable a “live Google Earth,” in which viewers could watch scenarios unfold in real time (e.g., Uyghur camps), impacting social movements.
• Augmented reality will be widely adopted by the middle of the decade. However, systems will still require the development of ‘contextual awareness’ to prevent overloading users w...

Michael Meier is the Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General (JAG) for Law of War Matters at Headquarters, Department of the Army.  As such, Mr. Meier serves as the law of war subject matter expert for the U.S. Army JAG Corps, advising on policy issues involving the law of war.  Mr. Meier also reviews all proposed new U.S. Army weapons and weapons systems to ensure they are consistent with U.S. international law obligations.  Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, instructing courses on the Law of Armed Conflict.  Mr. Meier is a retired JAG officer, having served in the U.S. Army for 23 years.

Shawn Steene is the Senior Force Developer for Emerging Technologies, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where his portfolio includes Emerging Technologies and S&T, including Autonomous Weapon Systems policy and Directed Energy Weapons policy.  Prior to joining OSD Strategy & Force Development, Mr. Steene worked in OSD Space Policy, where his portfolio included Space Support (launch, satellite control, orbital debris mitigation, and rendezvous and proximity operations), as well as strategic stability and all space-related issuances (Directives, Instructions, DTMs, etc.).   He is a proclaimed Mad Scientist, having presented and served as a discussion panelist in our Frameworks (Ethics & Policy) for Autonomy on the Future Battlefield, the final webinar in our Mad Scientist Robotics and Autonomy series of virtual events.

In today’s podcast, Messrs. Meier and Steene discuss the ground truth on regulations and directives regarding lethal autonomy and what the future of autonomy might mean in a complex threat environment.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with them:

• Current law and policy do not specifically prohibit or restrict the use of autonomous weapons. However, these systems will need to operate within the law of armed conflict and Department of Defense (DoD) directives. These restrictions entail that autonomous systems will need to be capable of distinguishing between appropriate targets and non-combatants, maintain proportionality in attacks, and undertake feasible precautions to reduce risk to civilians and protected objects. 

• Ultimately, operators and human supervisors will be held responsible under laws of conflict and U.S. policy. Thus, appropriate safeguards will need to be adopted to ensure appropriate human oversight of autonomous systems. DoD directives establish guidelines for this supervision and facilitate case by case reviews of systems with autonomous capabilities. 

• Artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy are not interchangeable. While some autonomous systems use AI, this is not always the case. 

• The United States is concerned with and making efforts to address the ethical components of autonomous systems. DoD directives...

In this latest episode, we talk to LTG Eric Wesley, who is currently serving as the Director of the Futures and Concepts Center in Army Futures Command at Fort Eustis, VA. General Wesley has served in numerous operational units throughout his 34 year career and served as a staff officer and director at the Pentagon and White House. Prior to taking over the Futures and Concepts Center, General Wesley was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia. We talked to General Wesley in this episode about multi-domain operations, modernization, and the future Army.

COL Scott Shaw commands the Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG), whose mission is to provide global operational advisory support to U.S. Army forces to rapidly transfer current threat based observations and solutions to tactical and operational commanders in order to defeat emerging asymmetric threats and enhance multi-domain effectiveness.

In today’s podcast, COL Shaw discusses the future of ground warfare and the realities of combat for tomorrow’s Soldiers. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with him:

• AWG was developed to promote U.S. Army understanding of asymmetric threats. Today, this effort is focused in three research areas: the operations and information environment, electronic warfare, and countering unmanned systems.
• The United States needs to balance focus, spending, and training among threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and violent extremist organizations (VEOs). Strategists need to remember that “the enemy gets a vote,” and thus efforts will need to remain adaptable.
  
  
• While the United States excels at fighting at a Brigade Combat Team-level, future success will stem from excellence in space and cyber operations, electronic warfare, air defense, information operations, and lean logistical planning. These areas are challenging and will require extensive organization and advanced exercise design.
  
  
• The use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for reconnaissance and targeting will increase. As these systems proliferate, they will lower the ‘entry fee’ into combined arms operations, granting even

Cathy Hackl is a leading tech futurist and globally recognized business leader specializing in AR, VR, and spatial computing. Ms. Hackl hosts the Future Insiders podcast and has been designated as one of LinkedIn’s Top Tech Voices.  She founded and leads the Futures Intelligence Group, a futures research and consulting firm that works with clients in tech, fashion, media, government, and defense implementing innovation strategies, strategic foresight, and emerging technologies. BigThink named Cathy “one of the top 10 most influential women in tech in 2020” and she has been called the CEO’s business guide to the metaverse.  She was included in the 2021 prestigious Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.

In today’s podcast, Ms. Hackl discusses forecasting, the metaverse, and women in tech. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with her:

• The world is approaching a pivotal moment for VR/AR/MR. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated adoption of these technologies, as they allow for an elevated sense of presence in a distanced physical world.
  
  
• AR/VR technologies have extremely diverse applications, from filters on social media to the treatment of PTSD and Alzheimer’s disease. Novel applications for these technologies are in constant development, particularly as wearables like “smart glasses” proliferate in the commercial sphere.
  
  
• Although AR/VR are frequently associated with altered visuals, other senses are increasingly incorporated into these platforms. Currently in development is AR that would allow users to focus on a single conversation amidst significant background noise.
  
  
• As the metaverse, a digital copy of the world available in real time, is developed, the way we engage with the physical world will change. Information available to VR/AR users in various “layers” could be manipulated or controlled by actors capable of altering the available data.
  
  
• In order to recruit future generations to technology development, it will be essential to “meet them where they are.” By identifying online platforms, interests, and values of youth, recruiters will be able to present opportunities to create meaningful change in an attractive manner.
  
  
• The federal government’s focus on artificial intelligence has de-prioritized AR/VR. However, AR/VR are innately American technologies, and increased focus on their development could allow the United States to maintain its current advantage in the field.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next episode of “The Convergence,” featuring an interview with COL John Antal (USA-Ret.) discussing the implications for future conflict from the Second Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, the psychological effects of drone warfare, and the future of maneuver, on 1 April 2021.

COL John Antal served 30 years in the Army and has commanded combat units from platoon through regiment and served on division, corps, and multinational staffs. He also served at the National Training Center and has extensive ex­perience in Korea, serving multiple tours on the DMZ.  After retiring from the Army, COL Antal was selected by Mi­crosoft Games Studio to help develop an interactive enter­tainment company in Texas. He then became the Executive Director for Gearbox Software with studios in Texas and Can­ada. He led teams to develop multiple AAA+ video games and is an innovator in the interactive gaming and learning industry.  As an author, COL Antal has published 16 books and hundreds of magazine articles. He has served as Editor of the Armchair General magazine, and appeared on TV and the radio to discuss leadership, historical, and national security issues. He is a freelance correspondent for Euro-based Military Tech­nology (Mönch Publishing Group) and Mittler Report Verlag.

In today’s podcast, COL Antal discusses the implications of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, the psychological effects of drone warfare, and the future of maneuver. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview with him:

• U.S. success in future conflicts depends on our ability to analyze the trends found in conflicts today. By examining the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war, the United States can gain valuable insights on the future of warfare, and better respond to threats in future conflicts.
  
  

Ten lessons learned from the Second Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are:

1. Know Yourself, Know your Enemies.  The Azeris had reviewed the underlying causes of their previous defeat at hands of the Armenian armed forces, meticulously studied their current capabilities, and adapted/incorporated new ways of warfare, enabling them to decisively win this conflict in 44 days.  Better equipment, organization, training, preparation, and leadership are key.
   
2. Set the Conditions for Success before you Fight.  The Azeris had cultivated strategic relationships with both Turkey and Israel — providing them with access to sophisticated ISR and strike UAS and loitering munitions.  They also induced hesitation with Armenia’s sponsor, Russia, causing them to equivocate whether the defense of the Nagorno-Karabakh region fell within the scope of the Armenian-Russian mutual defense agreement.
   
   
3. Strike First. The innovative use of obsolete, remotely piloted air assets to probe and force Armenian air defense radars to “light up” enabled the Azeris to then fix, target, and destroy the Armenian layered air defenses using precision weapons, granting them first mover advantage.
   
   
4. Dominate across all Domains. While the Mar...

Mr. Richard G. Kidd IV, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Environment & Energy Resilience, provides policy and governance for programs and activities that enable resilience and cyber-secure energy for weapon systems and installations. This includes budgetary, policy, and management oversight of programs related to climate change, compliance with environmental laws, prevention of pollution, management of natural and cultural resources, and cleanup of contaminated sites, as well as energy resilience, risk, and performance. Prior to his current position, Mr. Kidd served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Strategic Integration where he led the strategy development, resource requirements, and overall business transformation processes for the Office within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. He was responsible for developing and monitoring performance metrics for the Army’s installation management community as well as leading a strategic effort to examine options for future Army installations.

In today’s podcast, Mr. Kidd addresses threats to the force from climate change, operating conditions in a worsening climate, and how the DoD can be proactive in this existential fight.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• Climate change presents an inevitable threat to world peace, economic prosperity, and capital investment. It is likely to impact the U.S. military in three major ways:
  
  
  • Increased Operational Requirements: Climate change will overwhelm the governing capacity of weak states, increasing conflict and extremism abroad and subsequently increasing foreign threats. Domestically, demand for the Army National Guard, the Corps of Engineers, and civil authorities will increase in responding to and preventing damage from severe weather.
    
    
  • Increased Vulnerability of Installations: Prevalence and intensity of floods, erosion, drought, fires, wind shear, and sea level rise will grow as a result of climate change, threatening military installations.
    
    
  • Degradation of Performance: Performance parameters of both people and equipment will be challenged as they are forced to operate in extreme temperatures. Keeping Soldiers alive in an increasingly hostile climate will challenge the U.S. Army.
    
    
• U.S. adversaries will craft strategic narratives to criticize U.S. action, or inaction, on climate change. China has heralded, and indeed, ‘weaponized’ its own prioritization of climate change policy and technology development, highlighting its actions in contrast to previous U.S. failures to engage in the Paris Accords. Despite this element of competition, the United States should cooperate with China on climate change policy, given the two nations’ significant impact on the environment.
  
  
• Through a series of executive orders, and specifically via EO14008, the Biden administration has established

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (2015), and The Daughters of Kobani (2021). Additionally, Ms. Lemmon is the Chief Marketing Officer at Rebellion Defense, and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, serving as an expert on their Women and Foreign Policy Program,  She also serves in private sector leadership roles in emerging technology and national security firms,  Ms. Lemmon is a frequent speaker on national security topics, including at the Aspen Security Forum and TED forums, and has given talks at the U.S. Military Academy, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the National Infantry Museum.

In today’s podcast, Ms. Lemmon discusses writing about disruptors, the emergence of female fighters and military leaders, and the future of women on the battlefield.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• In The Daughters of Kobani, Lemmon details the story of an all-female Kurdish Militia that partnered with the United States to fight ISIS in Syria. Their story demonstrates the evolving nature of women in combat, as role-breakers step forward to lead both women and men in conflict.
  
  
• The successful collaboration between this militia and the U.S. military provides strong justification for the formation of future counterterrorism partnerships. These efforts could include a ground partner force, a light U.S. special operations presence, and U.S. air support. While partnerships with local groups can be challenging, success in Kobani shows significant advantages to such endeavors.
  
  
• As the United States forms these partnerships, it will be critical for the U.S. military to consider and define U.S. responsibilities post-conflict. Partner allegiance to the United States involves significant risk, and thus the United States should be certain to support partner efforts before, during, and after conflicts.
  
  
• The Daughters of Kobani demonstrates the advantages for the inclusion and advancement of women in conflict operations. By harnessing all available talent and integrating women across all levels of the military, the United States can significantly advance U.S. national security interests. Importantly, this effort may involve the dismantling of structures that no longer serve U.S. interests and a reshaping of the conceptualization of power.
  
  
• The establishment and preservation of U.S. values will be essential in order to maintain U.S. leadership internationally. The United States is not competing against other democracies for global influence, and thus will have its policies and behavior criticized on the international stage. Commitment to high democratic standards will be critical in maintaining U.S. soft pow...

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them, into the impossible.” — Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 20th Century British science fiction writer, futurist, and inventor

Mad Scientist is pleased to introduce a new series of The Convergence podcast interviews with writers, creators, and producers who have a wealth of knowledge and experience in envisioning the future in diverse and unique ways!  Creative writing and narrative building helps us to explore how emergent technologies and other capabilities could be employed and operationalized.  Today’s post highlights key points from our interview with Ronald D. Moore — award winning screenwriter and producer of the several science fiction, fantasy, and alternative history television shows — in the first of our special series of podcasts exploring the power of science fiction, the importance of storytelling, and the significance of imagination

Ronald D. Moore is a multiple Emmy and Hugo award-winning screenwriter and producer for Star Trek: The Next Generation; Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica (for which he also won a Peabody award), the Outlander historical fantasy series, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, and the For All Mankind streaming series portraying an alternative history featuring an enduring American/Soviet Space Race after the Russians beat us to the Moon.

In today’s podcast, Mr. Moore discusses creativity, the power of science fiction in exploring future technologies, the importance of storytelling and narrative, and the significance of imagination in formulating fresh perspectives about future possibilities.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• Thinking about the future involves both world-building and storytelling. To do this process successfully, futurists must first identify constants and relevant social elements (e.g., religion, government structure, culture) for the desired time period. Then, one can consider key changes in the time period, and think through their second and third order impacts on the society being discussed.
• By harnessing the powerful process of developing science fiction narratives, the U.S. military can develop and prepare for alternate futures in the operational environment. These narratives can help communicate complex and abstract ideas in concrete ways and provide Army leaders with explicit examples of problems they may encounter in the future.
• Sharing st...

Peter Warren Singer is Strategist and Senior Fellow at New America. He has been named by the Smithsonian as one of the nation’s 100 leading innovators, by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues, and by Foreign Policy to their Top 100 Global Thinkers List.  Mr. Singer is the author of multiple best-selling, award winning books in both fiction and nonfiction.  Described in the Wall Street Journal as “the premier futurist in the national-security environment,” Mr. Singer is considered one of the world’s leading experts on changes in 21st century warfare, with more books on the military professional reading lists than any other author, living or dead. He has consulted for the U.S. Military, Defense Intelligence Agency, and FBI, as well as advised a range of entertainment programs, including for Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Universal, HBO, Discovery, History Channel, and the video game series Call of Duty.

August Cole is an author and futurist exploring the future of conflict through fiction and other forms of storytelling.  He is a non-resident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity at Marine Corps University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council; he directed the Council’s Art of the Future Project, which explores creative and narrative works for insight into the future of conflict, from its inception in 2014 through 2017.  Mr. Cole is a regular speaker to private sector, academic, and U.S. and allied government audiences.  He also leads the Strategy team for the Warring with Machines AI ethics project at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Messrs. Singer and Cole co-authored the best selling Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, a near-future thriller about the next world war.  Foreign Policy states “Every Army officer should read it…. we need to imagine what war will look like in the future so that we are prepared to win.”  Last year, Messrs. Singer and Cole co-authored Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution — our colleagues at War on the Rocks stated that this novel “will do more for defense experts’ understanding of this brave new world with literature than a thousand non-fiction assessments would have.”

In today’s podcast, Messrs. Singer and Cole discuss the power of fictional intelligence; the importance of storytelling, narrative, and verisimilitude in crafting tales of future possibilities that resonate and inform; and the significance of imagination.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• FicInt, also known as fictional intelligence or ‘useful fiction,’ combines extensive research and futures forecasting with worldbuilding and narrative,...

Dr. Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. This is the first novel of the Centenal Cycle trilogy, which also includes Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018).  The trilogy was a finalist for the Hugo Best Series Award of 2018.  She is also the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station and the author of the short story collection …and Other Disasters.  Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, Dr. Older has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at The Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of post-disaster improvisation in governments.  Dr. Older is a part-time Faculty Associate at Arizona State University‘s School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS)

In today’s podcast, Dr. Older discusses worldbuilding and inspirations drawn from her humanitarian work.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• In Infomocracy, Dr. Older explores an alternative to our current media environment. Instead of fragmented media environments and the concept of media neutrality, she presents an idealized information management officer – a well-intentioned single source for information. With this comes the realization that even a single actor with good intentions could hold massive influence in society.
  
  
• The inspiration for Infomocracy came from Dr. Older’s disaster relief work while responding to an earthquake for which the United Nations brought in a dedicated information management officer to collate all information and ensure the response team had what was fundamental to completing their work. This curated the idea of centralizing information that was then widely dispersed. Dr. Older began thinking about the role of information in our society and how it is portrayed through media.
  
  
• When thinking about content for science fiction writing, it is important to experience things outside your comfort zone in order to give yourself an idea of the possible, while also taking an introspective look at yourself.
  
  
• Experiencing diverse communities allows you to truly get a different perspective on future possibilities. Some places may vary so much from your “normal” world that they could resemble t...

CAPT George Galdorisi (USN-Ret.) is a career naval aviator whose thirty years of active duty service included four command tours and five years as a carrier strike group chief of staff. He is currently the Director of Strategic Assessments and Technical Futures at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific in San Diego, California. He is also a contributing blogger for the Mad Scientist Laboratory, having written Creating a Convergence of Technologies to Defeat the Deadly Fast Inshore Attack Craft Threat Before 2050 and Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Meet Warfighter Needs. CAPT Galdorisi also presented Designing Unmanned Systems For the Multi-Domain Battle (please access this video via a non-DoD network) as a Mad Scientist Speaker Series presentation on 10 January 2018.

CAPT Galdorisi began his writing career in 1978 with an article in the U.S. Navy’s professional magazine, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. Since then, he has written fifteen books published by mainstream publishers, including the New York Times bestseller, Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor, the novelization of the Bandito Brothers/Relativity Media film, and The Kissing Sailor, which proved the identity of the two principals in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic V-J Day in Times Square photograph. His latest projects include a new series of thrillers published by Braveship books, as well as a recent collaboration with St. Martin’s Press rebooting the Tom Clancy Op-Center series. His three Braveship thrillers are: The Coronado Conspiracy, For Duty and Honor, and Fire and Ice, just released in 2021. The first three books of the rebooted Tom Clancy Op-Center series, Out of the Ashes, Into the Fire, and Scorched Earth are New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly best-sellers.

In today’s podcast, CAPT Galdorisi discusses leading edge technologies, man-machine teaming, and algorithms of armageddon. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• All military services must identify the “low hanging fruit” where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be injected quickly and easily into the operational force. For example, the U.S. Army lost Soldiers on fuel and water resupply convoys during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. AI can be incorporated into logistics platforms, replacing vulnerable human drivers in order to save lives.
• We are still assessing who — human or machine — h...

In this episode, we talk with Michael Kanaan, Director of Operations for U.S. Air Force and MIT Artificial Intelligence. Following his graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy he was the Officer in Charge of a $75 million hyperspectral mission at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, and then the Assistant Director of Operations for the 417-member Geospatial Intelligence Squadron. Prior to his current role, Michael was the National Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise Lead for an 1,800-member enterprise responsible for data discovery, intelligence analysis, and targeting development against ISIS, and most recently the Co-Chair of Artificial Intelligence for the U.S. Air Force.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the impact of AI on the armed forces, how we identify and cultivate talent, and the challenges that arise.

Highlights from the conversation:

AI is multidisciplinary. I’m not a computer scientist. The barriers to education have never been lower. You can teach yourself these kinds of things. And it’s what you do with AI that’s the real question. But make no mistake, I think the future rock stars in the AI sphere are most certainly sociologists and psychologists.

Why don’t we treat programming languages as the equivalence to as the equivalent to foreign language aptitude and proficiency? We have a long history of doing this in the DoD. In fact if you bring that skillset into the DoD, we cherish it, we try to cultivate it the best we can. Well, why aren’t we doing that with computer languages?

We need to team the techniques of the old with the ideas of the new. Experience is not dictated by age any longer. You can’t fall back and say, ‘well because I’ve done this for so long, I know about AI.’

It’s not supervising. We want to do this all transparently, very openly. So we published the Air Force AI strategy unclassified. So why we did it in principles was it’s not supervision. It’s not telling you how to get there, it’s providing and environment to get there. That’s the kind of flip in the digital age.

Air Force Gaming (AFG) is the official gaming program and competition hub for the United States Air Force and Space Force.  Over 86% of Airmen and Guardians between the ages of 18-34 identify as gamers.  AFG was started to help Airmen of all ages, ranks, and backgrounds find common ground through video games, while also promoting mental acuity, fine motor coordination, and competitive excellence.  Its mission is to create an inclusive gaming community for Airmen of all ages, ranks, and backgrounds.  

Capt Zach “ZB” Baumann co-founded AFG, and for the better part of 2020, led the explosion of AFG's digital reach to 575K impressions and 40K profile visits (doubling its digital footprint of followers on social media and verified members on its Discord server) across five platforms, and tirelessly built the connective tissue between the Department of the Air Force, DoD at large, and the gaming industry — ultimately leading to AFG’s “acquisition” by the USAF in November of 2020.  AFG is helping to bridge the gap between the DoD’s digital natives (tomorrow’s leaders) and digital immigrants (today’s leaders).

Capt Oliver “OliPoppinIt” Parsons founded AFG and leads a diverse group of Airmen and Guardians all across the world. AFG strives to be the leading DoD eSports/gaming organization. In 2020, he led the AFG Space Force Call of Duty team to victory in the first ever transatlantic Armed Forces eSports bowl (CODE Bowl).

MSgt Michael Sullivan co-founded AFG, launching the Department of the Air Force’s first gaming and eSports organization, with a primary focus in mental health and resiliency for service members.  MSgt Sullivan led day to day operations; advised on the organization’s direction, event planning, and brand implementation; developed its “Ambassador” volunteer program, on-boarded, and trained 50+ personnel; and established the first ever USAF/USSF official eSports teams, achieving the Championship title in an international tournament.

In today’s podcast, Capt Baumann, Capt Parsons, and MSgt Sullivan discuss how gaming breaks down barriers in rank, generation, and geography; identities the digital talent residing in the gaming community; and how video games can cultivate the future Senior Leaders in the military.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• AFG seeks to identify and engage gamers already ‘within the gate’ of the Air and Space Forces, providing an online platform where Airmen and Guardians can network and develop skills in teaming, organization, and strategy. AFG hopes to expose the benefits of gaming to the DoD, counteracting the outdated stereotype that gaming is a waste of resources.
  
  
• AFG engages service members on a massive array of games, ranging from

COL Stefan Banach (USA-Ret.) is a Distinguished Member of the 75th Ranger Regiment and served in that organization for nine years, culminating with command of the 3rd Ranger Battalion from 2001-2003. He led U.S. Army Rangers during a historic night combat parachute assault into Afghanistan on October 19, 2001, as the “spearhead” for the Global War on Terror. Steve subsequently led U.S. Army Rangers in a second combat parachute assault into Al Anbar Province in western Iraq in 2003.  He served with distinction in the United States Army from 1983 to 2010. Since then, he has provided executive consulting services to a diverse range of clients at a number of prestigious institutions.  Steve Banach also serves as the Director, Army Management Staff College, an element of Army University responsible for “igniting the leadership potential for every Army civilian.”

In our interview with Steve Banach, we discussed global entanglement, multi-reality warfare, and the urgent need for a new paradigm and cognitive approach to warfare for the U.S. Army and larger Joint Force.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• The U.S. military needs to develop a ‘fourth Army,’ whose form and function are capable of gaining logic from disorder. This Army will be better prepared to operate in the multi-reality, technologically integrated battlespace that is already upon us.
  
  
• The next war will be characterized by operations within the virtual battlespace. To prepare for this phase of warfare, the U.S. Army needs to develop new mental models to understand the vulnerabilities that arise from an increasingly interconnected world.  Such an effort should feature the development of a ‘virtual battlespace maneuver’
  
  
• Our adversaries are working to integrate technologies from autonomous weapons systems to social media to dominate this new battlespace. Future adversaries will not always be on a physical battleground, but the impacts of their operations will be felt both by the U.S. military and civilian population as they seek to create systemic shock and paralysis. The Army should redevelop its total force design and increase its operational arc to prepare the United States for this new form of conflict.
  
  
• Weapons of ‘mass deception’ will be increasingly prevalent in conflict, as social media is manipulated to prevent population education and engagement with critical issues. The United States should increase awareness of this threat via programs in both civilian and military education.
  
  
• Asymmetric ethics in the virtual battlespace will necessitate the development and communication of

Jennifer McArdle is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and a Product Strategist at Improbable LLC, an emerging global leader in distributed simulation technology for military planning, training, and decision support. Her research focuses on military innovation, readiness, and synthetic training. She currently serves as an expert member of a NATO technical working group that is developing cyber effects for the military alliance’s mission and campaign simulations. Her work has been featured in Real Clear World, The Cyber Defense Review, National Defense Magazine, and War on the Rocks, among others. Ms. McArdle previously served as an Assistant Professor of Cyber Defense at Salve Regina University, where she lectured on the relationship between national security and disruptive technologies.

In our interview with Ms. McArdle, we discuss the future of the Synthetic Training Environment, flexibility and scalability in training systems, and the critical need for a new agile approach to training that can keep pace with the dynamic character of warfare.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Synthetic training will be instrumental in providing the next generation of Soldiers with the tools they need to succeed in a new era of warfare. The adoption of synthetic training and simulation will empower realistic individual and collective multi-echelon and multi-domain training and mission rehearsal, advanced wargaming, and enhanced decision-making.
  
  
• The New American Way of Training Initiative at CNAS examines how the military will be required to train and fight in the future, using the Cold War as a model. During the Cold War, intense tension and sporadic ‘hot’ proxy conflicts spurred a series of innovations that required radical changes to military training and organization. This new CNAS initiative will help ensure that our future individual and collective training programs meet the needs of our warfighters, today and in the future.
  
  
• The DoD should focus on developing modular synthetic training architectures, enabling it to adapt training and simulations more readily as warfare evolves. This method differs from current synthetic simulators, which are monolithic in nature (i.e., large, complicated, and un-editable platforms). Modular training simulations will give future Soldiers ‘degradation dominance,’ or the ability to maintain high levels of performance under duress.
  
  
• The DoD should require modular components of training platforms in future acquisition contracts. Such contracts will also reduce cost for the DoD, as updating platforms will require less overhaul than monolithic platforms.
  
  
• Synthetic training is particularly important for success in multi-domai...

Brent L. Sterling has been an adjunct lecturer at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for the past twenty years, teaching courses on security studies, military strategy, and operations. He is the author of Other People’s Wars: The US Military and the Challenge of Learning for Foreign Conflicts and Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? What History Teaches Us about Strategic Barriers and International Security. Dr. Sterling has spent the past thirty years as a defense analyst, including positions at the Central Intelligence Agency and consulting firms working for the U.S. Department of Defense.

In our interview with Dr. Sterling, we discuss how militaries learn (or don’t!) from foreign conflicts, what pitfalls await those trying to learn from historical conflicts, how focusing only on “relevant” observations hampers our creativity in analyzing warfare, and what strategists can do to avoid past mistakes. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• In Other People’s Wars, Dr. Sterling provides a longitudinal evaluation spanning the 19th and 20th centuries on what the U.S. military learned from foreign conflicts.  Exploring the Crimean, Russo-Japanese, Spanish Civil, and Yom Kippur Wars as use cases, Dr. Sterlingidentifies how effectively the U.S. assimilated key lessons from each of these conflicts and developed responsive capabilities across doctrine, organization, training and education, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and policy (DOTMLPF-P); drew erroneous conclusions; or failed to act altogether. Importantly, Dr. Sterling compares the success of learning from these wars across the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.
  
  
• Studying foreign conflicts allows the U.S. military to learn about new technologies, their applications, and novel problem sets, facilitating proactive responsesto problems before they are encountered in the field.   For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. Army was reconsidering the future of the bayonet. Observations from the Russo-Japanese War, where knife fighting was prevalent — especially in night assaults, given the heightened risk of friendly fire — led Army Leaders to determine that the weapon was still relevant, and should be maintained.
  
  
• Learning from foreign wars can be a challenging endeavor, as it frequently runs counter to deeply-rooted institutional biases.Services’ culture and bureaucratic politics can limit the implementation of lessons learned from other nations’ conflicts. Insufficient access to information can also prevent the Services from fully appreciating the important implications of remote conflicts involving less than peer adversaries.
  
  
• The U.S. military also needs to be mindful that other observers learn from foreign conflicts, too. For example, while the U.S. Army learned of the importance and adopted Anti-Tank (AT) g...

Russia is a formidable adversary that is currently undergoing transformative modernization.  Its combat proficient force has inculcated lessons learned from recent combat operations in Syria, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine; selectively invested in niche capabilities (e.g., autonomy, robotics, and artificial intelligence) to add precision strike to its already formidable fires, enhance decision making, augment combined arms formations and logistics support, and safeguard its Soldiers; and professionalized to a more balanced ratio of contract to conscript Soldiers.  A master of information confrontation, Russia employs cyber, information operations, and disinformation to offset any conventional force asymmetries.  Above all, Russia remains a persistent, vice a declining power!

Army Mad Scientist interviewed the following four world-class SMEs about our near peer threat to learn How Russia Fights:

Ian Sullivan serves as the Senior Advisor for Analysis and ISR to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC G2). This is a Tier One Defense Intelligence Senior Level (DISL) position. He is responsible for the analysis that defines and the narrative that explains the Army’s Operational Environment, which supports integration across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. Mr. Sullivan is a career civilian intelligence officer, who has served with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI); Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2 (USAREUR G2); and as an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) cadre member at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Prior to assuming his position at the TRADOC G2, Mr. Sullivan led a joint NCTC Directorate of Intelligence (DI)/Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC) unit responsible for WMD terrorism issues, where he provided direct intelligence support to the White House, senior policymakers, Congress, and other senior customers throughout the Government. He was promoted into the Senior Executive ranks in June 2013 as a member of the ODNI’s Senior National Intelligence Service, and transferred to the Army as a DISL in January, 2017. Mr. Sullivan is also a frequent and valued contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory.

Katerina Sedova is a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where she works on the CyberAI Project. Most recently, she advised SEN Maggie Hassan on cybersecurity and technology policy issues and drafted key legislation as a TechCongress fellow with the Senate Ho...

Over the past two decades, China has transformed its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) through a holistic approach — modernizing its weaponry, force structure, and approaches to warfare, to include operations in the cyber and space domains, while improving its professional military education. Although Russia remains a near-peer threat, China has ascended to become the United States’ lone pacing threat. The PLA’s momentous progress in warfighting capabilities and concepts, coupled with its whole-of-nation approach to competition, crisis, and conflict, enables it to challenge the United States across all domains and the Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic spheres.

Army Mad Scientist interviewed the seven world-class SMEs regarding our near peer threat to learn How China Fights:

Ian Sullivan serves as the Senior Advisor for Analysis and ISR to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC G2). He is responsible for the analysis that defines and the narrative that explains the Army’s Operational Environment, which supports integration across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy.  Mr. Sullivan is a frequent and valued contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory, including the previous episode in this series, How Russia Fights.

Peter Wood is a program manager and defense analyst at Blue Path Labs, a strategic advisory firm. He previously edited China Brief, a publication of the Jamestown Foundation. He has an M.A. from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies (HNC) and a B.A. in Political Science from Texas Tech University. He is proficient in Chinese.

Elsa B. Kania  is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at CNAS. Her research focuses on Chinese military strategy, military innovation, and emerging technologies. Her book, Fighting to Innovate, should be forthcoming with the Naval Institute Press in 2022.  At CNAS, Ms. Kania has contributed to the Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative and the “Securing Our 5G Future” program, while acting as a member of the Digital Freedom Forum and the research team for the Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and National Security.  Ms. Kania is a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard University’s Department of Government. She is also a graduate of Harvard College and has received a Master of Arts in Government from Harvard University. Ms. Kania was a Boren Scholar in Beijing, China, and she maintains professional proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. She i...

The character of warfare has consistently changed over time, with technology evolving from edged weapons, bows and arrows, gunpowder, and battlefield mechanization, to more advanced technologies today, including long-range precision weapons, robotics, and autonomy.  However, warfare remains an intrinsic human endeavor, with varied and profound effects felt by Soldiers on the ground.  To explore this experience with those engaged in the tactical fight, we spoke with the following combat veterans, frontline reporters, and military training experts for this episode of The Convergence:

Denys Antipov is a Ukrainian war veteran who served as a platoon leader and reconnaissance drone operator with the 81st Airborne Brigade in the Ukrainian Army, defending his homeland and fighting Russian paramilitary groups and anti-government separatists in the Donbas in 2015-2016.

Heydar Mirza spent 36 days on the frontline as a war reporter in Terter and Agdere during the 44-day Second Nagorno-Karabakh war during the Fall of 2020.  He is currently the program author and host of the weekly RADIUS military analysis program on Azerbaijan Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company – ICTIMAI TV and Caliber.az YouTube channel. 

Nolan Peterson is Senior Editor at Coffee or Die Magazine and The Daily Signal‘s Ukraine-based foreign correspondent. A former U.S. Air Force special operations pilot and veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he was among the first journalists to embed with Ukrainian forces in combat in eastern Ukraine. In Iraq, he embedded with Kurdish peshmerga forces in operations around Mosul and Sinjar. He has reported from throughout Eastern Europe, France, the U.K., and was onboard the USS George H.W. Bush off the Syrian coast to cover the air war against ISIS.

John Spencer is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute, Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast.  He served over twenty-five years in the U.S. Army as an infantry Soldier, with two combat tours in Iraq as both an Infantry Platoon Leader and Company Commander.  He has also served as a Ranger Instructor with the Army’s Ranger School, a Joint Chief of Staff and Army Staff intern, fellow with the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, Strategic Planner and then Deputy Director of the Modern War Institute where he was instrumental in the design and formation of the institute. He has just returned from walking the battlefields of Nagorno-Karabakh, gleaning lessons learned about modern combat on complex terrain.

Jim Greer  (Colonel, USA-Ret.) gradua...

Elizabeth L. Chalecki is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Nebraska Omaha, a Research Fellow in the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and a Research Chair with Fulbright Canada. Her expertise lies in the areas of climate change and security, international environmental policy, and the intersection of science/technology and International Relations.  Dr. Chalecki has authored groundbreaking research on geoengineering and just war, and has published over 25 books, articles, and chapters on diverse topics such as climate change and Arctic security, environmental terrorism, climate change and international law, public perceptions of environmental issues, and water in outer space. She also serves as an environmental security subject matter expert for NATO.  Dr. Chalecki holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, a M.Sc. in Environmental Geography from the University of Toronto, and an M.A. from Boston University.

In our interview with Dr. Chalecki, we explore the broad global security implications of climate change and manipulation; their effects on Army and DoD readiness, operations, and mission requirements; and potential approaches for mitigating and regulating these threats.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion:

• The consequences of climate change will force countries to reconsider their definitions of security. Instead of traditional military force size and strength, the stability of the environment will reflect the security of nations. Importantly, climate change is a security threat interconnected with the actions of other countries. 

• Temperature increases and precipitation changes caused by climate change will have incalculable second order effects. Food security, civil unrest, migration, border insecurity, and disease patterns will all be shaped by the changing environment. 

• Climate change will alter Army operations. The Army’s focus may shift to humanitarian support and peacekeeping missions in regions destabilized by climate change.  Additionally, the emergence of novel diseases in deployment regions could reduce the size of the Army’s recruitment pool due to increased social resistance to vaccinations.

• Humans are looking at geoengineering– specifically solar radiation management (i.e., shielding the Earth from the Sun’s rays) and carbon dioxide sequestration – to fight climate change. However, these solutions are impossible to test without consequence, necessitating their careful development and regulation via international law. Currently, there is no national policy nor international law in place regulating geoengineering. Failed attempts at geoengineering could harm the global ecosystem worse than the climate change it seeks to mitigate, with potentially destabilizing effects.

• As governments fail to address climate change, individuals and subnational groups may be motivated to act in 

In the fifth episode of “The Convergence” we talk to Zachery Tyson Brown, who is an Army veteran, analyst, consultant for the DoD, and Security fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Zach is a career intelligence officer now working at the intersection of emerging technologies, organizational structures, and strategic competition. Zach is most recently a graduate of the National Intelligence University, where his thesis, Adaptive Intelligence for an Age of Uncertainty, was awarded the LTC Michael D. Kuszewski Award for Outstanding Thesis on Operations-Intelligence Partnership.

In this episode, we discuss conflict and competition, how to create intelligence from the onslaught of data, and structural and process changes to the Intelligence Community (IC).

Highlights from the conversation:

We have all this data that the IC collects. We spend billions of dollars on it every year, and a lot of it is left on the cutting room floor.

We have a clog in the system that gets worse as the amount of information out there keeps increasing and we still have this outdated mechanism of delivery…we can’t keep pace with the volume of information that’s growing out there every day.

The amount of data out there is going to very rapidly, probably already has, eclipse the ability of un-augmented humans to keep up with it.

I really think we have to disaggregate that whole system. Move about to a federated sort of network architecture. Push autonomy down to the units at the forward edge of the battle area.

We’re not focusing on that competition aspect involving the whole of government to use another buzzword. The commerce, treasury, state department. Because that information space is where the competition is happening today and it’s not just information it’s manipulation of public awareness and psychology.

Now we have ISIS propagandists, the guys on Twitter that are like recruiting or spreading messages, and those guys are targets of kinetic strikes now because they’re considered to be combatants in that information space.

One of the reasons, again, where I think we have to rethink this whole structure of the way we do interagency coordination, decision making at the national level, [is] because it’s too slow to keep up with the pace of emergent threats today.

I really believe we are living through a revolutionary era and we have to question all the assumptions we’ve kind of inherited from the past couple hundred years.

MAJ Joe Littell is a U.S. Army officer and researcher assigned to the Army Cyber Institute at the United States Military Academy. He has been an instructor in the Math and History departments, teaching statistics and intelligence history. His research includes computational propaganda, open source intelligence, narrative warfare, de-platforming, and generative media (such as deepfakes). 

CPT Maggie Smith, PhD, is a U.S. Army cyber officer also assigned to the Army Cyber Institute, where she is a scientific researcher, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences, and an affiliated faculty of the Modern War Institute. She is also the director of the Competition in Cyberspace Project. 

In our interview with MAJ Littell and CPT Smith, we discussed the impact of information operations on recruitment, retention, and overall force readiness, and how we can gain information advantage over our adversaries.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Western liberal democracies’ concept of the internet as a platform for the free exchange of ideas is not shared by Russia and China, who regularly manage the information available to their populations via their concept of “cyber sovereignty.” As a result, Russia and China have extensive experience in manipulating online information to influence both domestic and foreign populations via propaganda. The United States has not developed this skillset. 

• While Russia and China see information operations as a critical component of every operation, the United States has yet to adopt this strategy. Consequently, the U.S. is lagging behind its peer competitors in information warfare, oftentimes considering the narrative-building component of its actions only as an afterthought. 

• The technologies facilitating today’s social media age are not the first to impact information operations — the printing press and radio were two revolutionary technologies that have been weaponized to control public opinion. Today’s digital technologies, however, are unique in that actors can now buy data to determine what messaging will be most impactful, enabling them to precisely target groups of individuals.For example, in the run up to the 2016 Presidential election, Russia created “Blacktivist” and “Back the Badge” social media accounts to exploit and push a divisive agenda, manipulating and polarizing American citizens.
  • Russia and China are leveraging information operation...

Paul Barnes is a serving Warrant Officer in the British Army, employed as a Doctrine Writer at the Land Warfare Centre. He is uniquely a Chief of the Air Staff’s Fellow, a Chief of the General Staff’s Fellow, and a former MWI fellow at West Point in 2021.

In today’s interview, Warrant Officer Class 2 Paul Barnes, British Army, discusses his article Learning the Wrong Lessons:  Biases, the Rejection of History, and Single-Issue Zealotry in Modern Military Thought, featured by our colleagues at Modern War Institute; learning from historical conflicts; and fighting against “neophilia” and “presentism”.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• In the aforementioned article, Paul Barnes discusses the dangers of “presentism,” in which current events are catastrophized and used to inform the future without adequate acknowledgement of historical context. This mindset creates two dangerous fallacies:  1) that the world is more dangerous than it has been before; and 2) that technology is developing more rapidly than ever before.These statements are both false and promote the idea that history cannot help us understand our operational environment. 

• The misconceptions promoted by presentism are generally accepted due to a lack of contextual historical understanding.However, militaries also promote the ideas of presentism to secure greater budget allocations. Analysts, too, use presentism to promote the legitimacy of their ideas and engagement with their work. 

• Leveraging historical context to avoid the bias of presentism can be challenging. Even information from on-the-ground analysts throughout history will include bias. Multiple perspectives from history should be recognized, thus creating the opportunity to ‘learn from committee’ and avoid the pitfalls of biased reporting. 

• The age of the tank is not over, as seen in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Modern and future warfare will continue to leverage a combination ofinformation operations and heavy combined arms maneuver. 

• To avoid presentism, enhanced education on critical thinking,bias recognition, and military history should be incorporated in professional military education for both Soldiers and Leaders.The latter is especially important, as an understanding of the past helps provide context for comprehending the present.  While we can “train for the known,” education will help the Army be better prepared for the unknown.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory 

MAJ John Spencer (USA-Ret.) is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies with the Madison Policy Forum.  He served over twenty-five years in the U.S. Army as an infantry Soldier, with two combat tours in Iraq as both an Infantry Platoon Leader and Company Commander.  He has also served as a Ranger Instructor with the Army’s Ranger School, a Joint Chief of Staff and Army Staff intern, fellow with the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, and Strategic Planner and Deputy Director of the Modern War Institute where he was instrumental in the design and formation of the institute.

 In today’s interview, MAJ John Spencer (USA-ret.) discusses the on-going war in Ukraine, urban warfare strategies employed by both Russian and Ukrainian military forces, the changing character of warfare, and what this portends for the future of conflict. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Both with respect to the current Russia/Ukraine conflict and with modern conflict in general, urban warfare strategies are critical.This is true whether the objective requires getting past urban terrain or involves an objective that is urban in nature. 

• Despite Russia’s initial plans falling in line with traditional invasions, characterized by a large mass of forces that are then rapidly deployed in a “shock and awe” campaign, Ukraine’s combined arms approach to defense has prevented Russia from quickly gaining control of critical areas.
• Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) and Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) have been very effective in this conflict due to Russia trading combined arms operations for speed. Russia’s rush to seize ground objectives in convoy without effectively utilizing their air superiority has led to many of their ground assets being destroyed. 

• It is tough to find a recent battle where an urban area was not the strategic or decisive objective.As Antony Beevor once stated, “The age of combined arms maneuver on the open plain is over.” The conflict in Ukraine is challenging the idea that urban fighting can be bypassed.
  
• The Russia/Ukraine conflict is sending a clear reminder to the U.S. and allied forces that many of the lessons we’ve learned in the past— using combined arms in urban warfare, the dangers of emitting large Electronic Warfare (EW) signatures, and the importance of Command and Control — are all still relevant on the battlefield today. 

• Information from around the world can be received in the combat zone and directly influence on-going kinetic operations.When Mr. Spencer observed the call for Ukrainian civilians to be added to the military force structure, he wrote a series of tweets on the most basic things civilian auxiliary forces could do to help in defending their nation (i.e., installing barricades at choke points along probable axes of advance to deter/halt Russian forces). He received videos proving that Ukrainian civilians had put his advice to good use, demonstrating that the information age is changing the character of war. 

• Ukraine is capable of winning in urban warfare, because they do not have to actually defeat the enemy’s military power. In this situation, not losing is winning.Every day the Ukrainians maintain control of key urban areas, Russia cannot achieve its strategic objectives. Every day that passes, Russia’s political will continues to be sapped. All war...

In today’s interview, Senior Leaders and Soldiers discuss how the Army is successfully harnessing its disruptive thinkers to cultivate innovation at the tactical level. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• The 3rd Infantry Division’s The Marne Think Tank, the 101st Airborne Division’s EAGLEWERX, and the 18^th Airborne Corps’ Dragon’s Lair are leading the U.S. Army’s efforts to crowd-source innovative ideas from every echelon of the force. While innovation tends to focus on technology, these organizations also invite creative ideas on policy, process, and quality of life. 

• These organizations provide opportunities for Soldiers to pitch their ideas to senior leaders, then collaborate with their peers to refine their ideas and create actionable solutions. Soldiers themselves lead their projects, developing leadership, creativity, and problem-solving skills. 

• Innovation requires both time and resources — the Army must dedicate specific time to innovation, particularly outside of focused technology development efforts.  This tactical-level innovation, harnessing insights from Soldiers on better ways to perform missions and duties, is often overlooked. Ideas can range from the adoption of preparedness measures for assault survivors to new methods of range scheduling, team cohesion building, and rucksack transportation. 

• Prerequisites for innovation include a welcoming environment and platform rather than extensive incentive structure. Soldiers already want to improve the Army – providing a positive space for them to proactively engage and collaborate on problems allows disruptive seekers to find each other and excel at innovation.

• The Army can cultivate its tactical innovators by fostering partnerships with academia and industry. By building a network ecosystem of interested parties, Soldiers are empowered to leverage existing technologies and processes in new ways to help solve Army problems now.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next episode of The Convergence podcast — Crossing the Valley of Death for Innovation — featuring Trish Martinelli and David Schiff, both At-Large Regional Directors with the National Security Innovation Network, discussing innovation, the value of hackathons and crowd-sourcing in harnessing the Nation’s intellect to benefit National Security, and integrating their programs in support of U.S. Army innovation.

If you enjoyed this post and podcast, check out the following related content addressing Innovation:

Keeping the Razor’s Edge: 4th PSYOP Group’s Innovation and Evolution Council, by the 4th Psychological Operations Group (4th POG) Innovation and Evolution Council

Strategic Latency Unleashed!, 

To Boldy Go, edited by COL Jonathan Klug and Steven Leonard, and published by Casemate Publishers in 2021, is subtitled “Leadership, Strategy, and Conflict in the 21st Century and Beyond.” Army Mad Scientist’s The Convergence podcasters Luke Shabro and Matthew Santaspirt explore how science fiction can inform the Army about the Operational Environment and the changing character of warfare with the books co-editors and contributors:

COL Jonathan Klug is a U.S. Army Strategist serving as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the U.S. Army War College. Commissioned as an Armor officer, he served in Haiti, Bosnia, South Korea, Egypt, and Iraq.  His strategy assignments included writing U.S. Army, U.S. Joint, and NATO Joint counter-insurgency doctrine; teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy; serving as V Corps Deputy Plans and Strategy Officer; and strategic planning in the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, International Security Assistance Force Joint Command, and Operation Resolute Support Headquarters. He holds degrees from the U.S. Military Academy, Louisiana State University, and the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies.  He is a PhD candidate in Military and Naval History at the University of New Brunswick.  COL Klug co-edited To Boldly Go and co-authored “Yours is the Superior” with Steven Leonard (below), and contributed “You Rebel Scum!” and “To Live and Die at My Command.” 

Steven Leonard is an award-winning faculty member at the University of Kansas, where he chairs graduate programs in Organizational Leadership and Supply Chain Management. As a former military strategist and the creative force behind the defense microblog Doctrine Man, he is a career writer and speaker with a passion for developing and mentoring the next generation of thought leaders.  He is a senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point; the co-founder of the national security blog Divergent Options; co-founder and board member of the Military Writers Guild; and a member of the editorial review board of the Arthur D. Simons Center‘s Interagency Journal.  He is the author, co-author, or editor of five books, numerous professional articles, countless blog posts, and is a prolific military cartoonist.  Mr. Leonard co-edited To Boldly Go and co-authored “Yours is the Superior” with COL Klug (above), and contributed “Beware the Beast Man” and “The Mirror Crack’d.”

Dr. Kathleen McInnis has worked in the Pentagon, the UK Parliament, and in think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic.  Having earned her PhD in War Studies at K...

General Paul E. Funk II assumed duties as the 17th Commanding General, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), on June 21, 2019. As TRADOC commander, Gen. Funk is responsible for 32 Army schools organized under 10 Centers of Excellence that recruit, train, and educate more than 750,000 Soldiers and service members annually.  Gen. Funk was born at Fort Hood and graduated from Fort Knox High School. He was commissioned an Armor Officer through ROTC upon graduation from Montana State University.  Gen. Funk has commanded at every level, Company through Corps; his combat and operational experience includes six deployments in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Inherent Resolve. Gen. Funk holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech communications, from Montana State University, and a Master of Science degree in administration, from Central Michigan University. He is a graduate of the Armor Basic Officer Leaders and Advanced Courses, the Command and General Staff College, and completed his Senior Service College as a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Technology, University of Texas at Austin.

 In today’s interview,  Gen. Funk addresses how the Army is modernizing doctrine given the Operational Environment, what are the challenges facing our all-volunteer force, what the Army can observe and learn from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and how it is adapting to the changing character of warfare.  The following bullet points highlight some of the key insights from our interview:

• The all-volunteer force is at risk.Demographic trends show that the population of individuals qualified for recruitment is diminishing. Finding the “Secret Sauce” that motivates people to serve and stay in the Army will be vital to ensuring the Nation’s Senior Service remains an effective and capable force.
• Professionalizing the U.S. military gave the United States a quarter century of global dominance. At its core, it prioritized the Soldier – a mission that should still be emphasized today. Though the character of war is changing, it remains, in essence, a human endeavor. Today, prioritizing the Soldier must be done holistically – nutrition, sleep, and education will all contribute to mission success.
  
  
• Education is the best tool to prepare our Soldiers, and should be prioritized at every echelon.Strong doctrine can help form successful training programs and modernize the Soldier to out-think our adversary. Such education should also teach ‘disciplined disobedience,’ enabling Soldier-Innovators to adapt creatively to ensure mission success.
  
  
• Soldiers and their families will continue to be targets of disinformation.As a result, it is essential to promote trust in the chain of command, and to ensure military families have a safe, secur...

Gen. Flynn is a native of Middletown, Rhode Island and Distinguished Military Graduate from the University of Rhode Island with a BS in Business Management. General Flynn is a graduate of the Infantry Officer Basic and Advanced Courses at Fort Benning, GA. He holds two master’s degrees, one in National Security and Strategic Studies from the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI, and one in Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy from the National Defense University.

In today’s interview, Gen. Flynn discusses the unique pacing threat posed by China, building interoperability with partner nations, and the future of multi-domain operations in INDOPACOM.  The following bullet points highlight some of the key insights from our interview:

• 
  - While it is often argued that future conflicts in the Pacific will be fought in the air and at sea, the U.S. Army remains critical in securing our regional interests. The Army continues to build relationships with partners on land, and will likely be the only Service not hindered by China’s Anti-Access /Area Denial (A2/AD) system, which is not designed to find, fix, and destroy land forces. As a result, land power will serve as a counterweight to Chinese aspirations both regionally and globally.

- The Army’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) integrates live, virtual, and constructive environments, enabling our forces and partners to conduct training via a mobile, regional training center in the Pacific’s Arctic, Jungle, and Archipelago conditions and environments. JPMRC enables the Army to maintain a constant presence in the region, train, and build readiness with our allies and partners.

 - While training with technology in the region of operation is important, relationships matter.  Building strong relationships between individuals, organizations, and countries is vital for deterrence by denial. We rely on our allies and partners for their understanding of the geography and the human terrain — the cultures, the societies, and the peoples of the region. 

• - There are three types of interoperability:  human, technical, and procedural. There are also three dimensions:  human, physical, and information. The crossover or intersection between interoperability and dimensions is the human.  By focusing on the human dimension and investing in and building human interoperability with our allies and partners, other vital components of interoperability will follow. 

• - There are four principles for successful network integration. First, it will require an open architecture so Joint forces and mission partners may easily plug into it. Second, there must be a better way to both grant and evaluate the risk of granting authority to operate within these frameworks. Next, the Army needs to be more data-centric. Finally, our forces need to become transport agnostic for our data.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next episode of The Convergence podcast featuring COL Stefan Banach (USA-Ret.), Director, Army Management Staff College, returning to discuss non-terrestrial warfare, weapons of mass deception, and the future information environment.

If you enjoyed this post, learn more about China as our Pacing Threat at the

COL Stefan Banach (USA-Ret.) is a Distinguished Member of the 75th Ranger Regiment and served in that organization for nine years, culminating with command of the 3rd Ranger Battalion from 2001-2003. He led U.S. Army Rangers during a historic night combat parachute assault into Afghanistan on October 19, 2001, as the “spearhead” for the Global War on Terror. Steve subsequently led U.S. Army Rangers in a second combat parachute assault into Al Anbar Province in western Iraq in 2003.  He served with distinction in the U.S. Army from 1983 to 2010. Since then, he has provided executive consulting services to a diverse range of clients at a number of prestigious institutions.  Steve Banach also serves as the Director, Army Management Staff College, an element of Army University responsible for “igniting the leadership potential for every Army civilian.”

In today’s interview with COL Banach, we explore non-terrestrial war, weapons of mass deception, and why we are at a pivotal point in the defense of our country.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• The United States is experiencing a new form of conflict known as “non-terrestrial warfare.” Our adversaries no longer seek to confront us on the traditional battlefield. Instead, they will use non-tangible capabilities in cyber, big data, space, and the information space to influence entire societies and create tangible results, the effects of which may remain invisible for weeks, months, or even years. It is an unbounded, global, strategic form of maneuver, performed by nation and non- state actors that is an enduring, new approach to warfare. 

• Non-terrestrial warfare encompasses strategies like mis-and disinformation — weapons of mass deception — where social media has emerged as a tool that can influence the behavior of entire populations.  Data collected on human behavior while operating in this space creates new opportunities for actors to understand, exploit, and manipulate collective behaviors. This is a pre-meditated and well-orchestrated campaign that we are seeing implemented in algorithmic warfare today, dividing populations and creating dis-equilibrium and systemic shock in our society — it is a brilliant, elegant, strategic form of maneuver that is being levied against us.  It is not by accident, and it is pervasive and growing!
• As witnessed in the on-going conflict in Ukraine, the role of non-state actors is increasingly important.Elon Musk maneuvered Spacex satellites and provided Starlink ground stations to the Ukrainian government to ensure continued satellite internet communications in the face of Russian cyberattacks.  Hackers targeted Russian communications infrastructure, while Ukrainian citizens engaged in hybrid warfare in the defense of their homeland.  In non-terrestrial war, the lines between civilians and combatants will conti...

While Shubhi Mishra, founder and CEO of Raft, is a lawyer and data scientist by training, she’s better known as an intentional government technology (GovTech) disruptor at heart.  She loves solving complex problems, even the kind that give you a headache while you’re working through them. But that process of discovery, of realization, and coming to a solution makes it all worthwhile.  Her passion is working with bleeding-edge technology focused on the defense sector.  Raft provides an innovation space for people who are similarly mission-focused, tackling vexing challenges with passion and enthusiasm.  Ms. Mishra seeks to inspire other women in and out of the GovTech space and excite them enough to join the movement of providing better solutions and services to the defense industry through sustainable, emerging technology.

In today’s interview, Ms. Mishra discusses wicked problems in national security; finding creative, mission-focused solutions; and equipping the DoD with sustainable, emerging technology.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

 
Raft’s strategy seeks to build a data fabric, or mesh, on top of data lakes, to reduce silos and increase communication among data resources. This enables faster decision making, which ultimately benefits our warfighters.

When delivering a data product, it is important to maintain a human-centered design which considers for whom you are building the product. It is critical to experiment with the project and obtain user feedback.

When working with historical datasets, one must consider: [1] If the full data is present. Can other datasets be integrated to get a better picture?[2] How will we measure the success of the algorithm we are using the data to build? Will we obtain a new result, or are we simply pattern matching? [3] Who can we get comments from to ensure we have a beneficial feedback loop?

Warfare data presents unique challenges, as [thankfully] there is not high repetition. However, you do not necessarily need high volumes of data to get useful information. Being cautious about what outcome is being measured, using algorithms to pattern match, and enabling different values to be introduced for fair and non-biasedoutcomes can produce beneficial and informative results.

The Department of Defense (DoD), working with external partners, helps illuminate fresh perspectives and challenge assumptions, as well as pullnew talent. There is an appetite among private sector companies to work with the DoD, but many times companies are not aware of such opportunities.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next episode of The Convergence, to be published in a fortnight on 7 July 2022.

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Algorithms of Armageddon and associated 

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk to Dr. Alexander Kott, Chief Scientist for the Army Research Lab (ARL). In this role, he provides leadership in development of ARL’s technical strategy, maintaining the technical quality of ARL research, and representing ARL to the external technical community.

In this episode, we discuss the Internet of Battlefield Things and modernizing the Army.

Highlights from the conversation include:

• The battlefield is becoming saturated with devices that can do computation, some kind of thinking, and can communicate. These are not just things the Army owns.
• Complexity can actually be a good thing. Being able to “hide” on the battlefield is a good thing and we can hide in the complexity of the Internet of Battlefield Things.
• The battlefield of the future will be populated by multiple intelligent species. Humans will be very important but just one among them. How do humans co-exist with those intelligent species? We humans are not known for working and living well with other species, not even ourselves.
• The Army (and larger Department of Defense) has a collaborative relationship with industry that is actually beneficial. It is not just a competition for talent but rather a relationship that is a strength. A rising tide lifts all our boats.
• Every war has seen greater and greater ranges in magnitudes from the Civil War up to the Global War on Terrorism. In the future we may see an Army missile that could be intercontinental. We could see artillery “spanning a fraction of the globe.” This leads to global ground warfare and changes the battlefield calculus. Such a shift in warfare could change the Army’s relationship with other services and actualize the reality of multi-domain operations even more.
• Regimes that are unethical, immoral, and authoritarian lose the technological edge in the long run because as they run out of ways to use technologies they have developed for unethical and immoral purposes, they do not have thorough investment in other technology areas where the United States is excelling.
• Long-range, intelligent, precision fires may be a major threat to our Homeland in the future. The Homeland may not be as defensible as it has been for centuries.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory as we will be releasing a new podcast every other week with exciting and impactful guests — next up:  The College of William and Mary’s Project for International Peace and Security Fellows!

MAJ John Spencer (USA-Ret.) is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies with the Madison Policy Forum. He served over twenty-five years in the U.S. Army as an infantry Soldier, with two combat tours in Iraq as both an Infantry Platoon Leader and Company Commander. He has also served as a Ranger Instructor with the Army’s Ranger School, a Joint Chief of Staff and Army Staff intern, fellow with the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, and Strategic Planner and Deputy Director of the Modern War Institute, where he was instrumental in the design and formation of the institute.

In today’s interview, MAJ Spencer returns to discuss what we’ve learned about LSCO, urban conflict, and the changing character of warfare from the last four plus months of Russia’s “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Modern technology forces our societies, and those of our adversaries, to be more connected to the battlefield. As the Ukrainian “Tik-Tok” war demonstrates, such connectedness can allow actors outside of the war to leverage open-source intelligence to influence the conflict by providing either side with logistical support and operational advice. 

• It is important to study wars firsthand to understand how they are evolving to the modern context; the U.S. military used to employ appointed observers for this mission. Given that the battle for Kyiv is a truly urban fight, there is much the Army can learn from the conflict.

• The battle for Kyiv demonstrates that, especially in an urban environment, terrain still matters. Ukrainians flooded rivers and destroyed bridges to canalize Russian invaders into chokepoints and kill zones, demonstrating an understanding of their environment unthinkable to non-natives. 

• The Russian invasion also demonstrates the importance of civilian involvement in urban conflict, as volunteers collaborated to establish defenses in depth, targeting and ambushing their attackers. Here, too, technology played an important role. Images and messages from the Ukrainian government and their fellow citizens helped strengthen citizens’ resolve to defend their country.

• Today, Soldiers and their families are more connected by technology than ever, allowing them to live with a foot in each world. This feature of modern warfare is important as it prevents Soldiers from feeling isolated, but also gives civilian families a clearer understanding of the realities of warfare.

• What are we missing?  The Army is not learning the lessons of modern war.  Future conflict will happen in urban areas. ...

Army Mad Scientist interviewed the following world-class SMEs to address what we’ve learned about How Russia Fights 2.0:

Ian Sullivan serves as the Senior Advisor for Analysis and ISR to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC G-2). This is a Tier One Defense Intelligence Senior Level (DISL) position. He is responsible for the analysis that defines and the narrative that explains the Army’s Operational Environment, which supports integration across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. Mr. Sullivan is a career civilian intelligence officer who has served with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI); Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2 (USAREUR G-2); and as an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) cadre member at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Prior to assuming his position at the TRADOC G-2, Mr. Sullivan led a joint NCTC Directorate of Intelligence /Central Intelligence Agency Counterterrorism Mission Center unit responsible for Weapons of Mass Destruction terrorism issues, where he provided direct intelligence support to the White House, senior policymakers, Congress, and other senior customers throughout the Government. He was promoted into the Senior Executive ranks in June 2013 as a member of the ODNI’s Senior National Intelligence Service, and transferred to the Army as a Defense Intelligence Senior Level employee in January 2017. Mr. Sullivan is also a frequent and valued contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory.

Sam Bendett is an Adviser with CNA‘s Strategy, Policy, Plans and Programs Center (SP3), where he is a member of the Russia Studies Program. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. His work involves research on Russian defense and technology developments, unmanned and autonomous military systems and artificial intelligence, as well as Russian military capabilities and decision-making during crises. He is a Member of CNA’s Center for Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence, and a proclaimed Mad Scientist, having contributed multiple insightful blog posts to the Mad Scientist Laboratory addressing Russian autonomous weapons and presented informative topics during a number of Army Mad Scientist webinars and conferences. He is also a Russian military autonomy and AI SME for the DoD’s Defense Systems Information Analysis Center.

Katerina Sedova  currently serves at the Global Engagement Center in the U.S. Department of State. Formerly a Research Fellow at the Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Ms. Sedova helps coordinate efforts at the GEC’s Russia Division to analyze, expose, and counter Russia’s disinformation, including about its war in Ukraine. Following the 2016 election, the U.S. Government greatly increased its efforts to protect future ele...

COL John Antal (USA, Ret.) is a lifelong student of leadership and the art of war. His purpose in life is “to develop leaders and inspire service.” Today, he is an Amazon best-selling author, a defense analyst, a military correspondent, and a galvanic speaker. John has appeared on radio, podcast, and television shows and is the author of 16 books and hundreds of magazine articles on military and leadership subjects. His latest books are Leadership Rising (July 2021); and 7 Seconds to Die, A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting (February 2022). In the past year, based on his in-depth study of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, COL Antal has made over 108 presentations on the “changing methods of warfare” to U.S. military and national security leaders. He offers these presentations to the U.S. military at no charge and as a “Soldier for Life.” His previous The Convergence podcast — Top Attack: Lessons Learned from the 2nd Nagorno-Karabakh War — and its associated blog post remain Army Mad Scientist’s “best-selling” listens and reads to date!

In today’s podcast, COL Antal returns to discuss the challenges facing our Army in executing continuous and uninterrupted mission command in the contemporary battlespace, ensuring command post survivability, and achieving the Joint Force’s requirement for an All Domain Common Operational Picture.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Modern conflict is increasingly transparent; it is impossible to hide on the battlefield.  Consequently, it is imperative that the Army adopt and practice “masking” — a full spectrum, multi-domain effort to deceive enemy sensors and disrupt targeting.  Our Joint Force must obscure its optical, thermal, electronic, acoustic, and quantum signatures — or die! 

• Today’s centralized command posts are incredibly vulnerable to enemy fire, while “Command Posts-in-Sanctuary” — those out of reach of adversary strikes — are limited by communications capabilities. To find an appropriate middle ground, we should adopt decentralized, mobile command posts that can support command and control and mask their locations and communications. 

• It is unlikely that the United States will initiate the first strike in a conflict. Therefore, the U.S. military must consider how it will respond to a first strike by our adversaries. We should ask what we could do to prepare for a 

Army Mad Scientist interviewed the following world-class SMEs to explore how wargaming can enhance traditional training and education methods to help build better Leaders:

Ian Sullivan serves as the Senior Advisor for Analysis and ISR to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC G-2). This is a Tier One Defense Intelligence Senior Level (DISL) position. He is responsible for the analysis that defines and the narrative that explains the Army’s Operational Environment, which supports integration across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. Mr. Sullivan is a career civilian intelligence officer who has served with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI); Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2 (USAREUR G-2); and as an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) cadre member at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Prior to assuming his position at the TRADOC G-2, Mr. Sullivan led a joint NCTC Directorate of Intelligence/Central Intelligence Agency Counterterrorism Mission Center unit responsible for Weapons of Mass Destruction terrorism issues, where he provided direct intelligence support to the White House, senior policymakers, Congress, and other senior customers throughout the Government. He was promoted into the Senior Executive ranks in June 2013 as a member of the ODNI’s Senior National Intelligence Service, and transferred to the Army as a DISL employee in January 2017. Mr. Sullivan is also a frequent and valued contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory.

Mitchell Land has spent time in both the Navy and the Army National Guard, and has a life-long love affair with gaming war.  He is the designer of GMT’s Next War games. The series currently consists of five games (two of which are 2^nd Editions) and three supplements, with more on the way.  In addition, Mr. Land was the developer for GMT’s Silver Bayonet: The First Team in Vietnam (25^th Anniversary Edition) and Caesar:  Rome vs Gaul. When not playing or working on games, you can find him cycling — most often on the Katy Trail.

LTC Peter Soendergaard is an Infantry officer in the Royal Danish Army. He has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. For the last ten years, he has worked in various force development positions, from the Danish Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence to the Army Staff.  For the past four years, LTC Soendergaard has served as the Danish Army’s liaison officer to U.S. Army TRADOC.  He is currently serving in the strategic development section of the Danish Defense Command.

Jennifer McArdle is the Head of Research at Improbable U.S. Defense & National Security, a commercial start-up that is bringing innovative distributed simulation technology to defense. She also serves as an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Center for a New American Security’s defense program and wargaming lab and as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University. A former professor, Ms. McArdle has served on Congressman Langevin’s cyber advisory committee and as an expert member of a NATO technical group that developed cyber effects for the military alliance’s mission and campaign simula...