[Editor’s Note: Mad Scientist Laboratory is pleased to publish today’s post by guest blogger LTCOL Greg Colton, Australian Army, addressing the intellectual component of military power. In our current drive to modernize the U.S. Army into a Multi-Domain Operations (MDO)-Capable Force by 2028 and set the conditions for fielding an MDO-Ready Force in 2035, we must not forget the lessons learned from our last major transformation in the 1980s. The tactical and operational excellence that enabled us to completely rout Iraqi ground forces in 100 hours was not only the result of effective doctrine and the acquisition of the “Big 5” weapon systems, but also due to the development of our Combat Training Centers (CTCs) and Leader Development platforms like the Non-Commissioned Officer Education System and the School of Advanced Military Studies. Read on to learn how one of our key allies is approaching their Army’s Professional Military Education.]
“We must push ourselves to think in creative and unconstrained ways to ensure our warfighting philosophy is appropriate and informs our future capabilities” — LTGEN Rick Burr, Australian Chief of Army, in Accelerated Warfare
In an increasingly volatile world, militaries need to be prepared to conduct a broad range of contemporary operations while also continuously anticipating the requirements of future conflicts. As the Australian Chief of Army so succinctly puts it, “Preparedness is dynamic. It requires us to be ready now, while concurrently becoming future ready.” Key to this is the development of the intellectual component of fighting power, both of individuals and of the Army as an organisation, so that the Army is able to adapt to changes in circumstances quickly enough to win future conflicts.
Yet, as the Institute for Defense Analyses points out, “military institutions recognize the need for leaders who can adapt, but struggle with exactly how to teach or train them to do so.” Within the Australian Army, Professional Military Education (PME) is an important component of a wider approach that blends training, education, and experience to develop a workforce able to cope with the demands of war in an ever-changing environment.
The Army’s approach to PME
The Australian Army’s approach to PME is laid out in its PME Strategy, executed on behalf of the Chief of Army by the Directorate of Professional Military Education, which itself falls under command of the Director-General Training and Doctrine (DG TRADOC). The Directorate uses two broad approaches to enhance the intellectual component of fighting power. First, using the principle of connectivism it seeks to connect those who can impart specialist knowledge to the workforce. Secondly, it seeks to develop organisational adaptability through promoting a contest of ideas. It delivers these approaches through a number of different mechanisms which allows content to be tailored to the target audience. These mechanisms include its online portal, The Cove, unit PME packages, webinars, and conferences.
Connectivism
The Australian Army’s approach to connectivism is based on connecting our soldiers with acknowledged subject matter experts or those who have specific expertise in their field. A good example of the former is TX Hammes who gave a CoveTalk on the development of artificial intelligence in unmanned platforms, while an example of the latter is this article by a military workshop manager on improving the efficiency of his workshop’s layout and processes. Regardless of the source, connectivism enables the Army to link both experts and expertise with the wider workforce to develop the intellectual component of fighting power within our individual soldiers and officers. In doing so, it promotes the dissemination of best practice across the force.
However, this approach only provides half of the solution. For argument’s sake, let’s take as a given that warfare is an ever-evolving phenomenon. As such, best practice in and of itself cannot be enough, as the very term indicates the pre-determination of an optimal solution derived within a static set of variables. The uniqueness of each theatre, campaign, battlefield, or individual soldier’s field of fire will mean that the variables on which best practice has been developed will never exactly replicate. Consequently, tactical solutions to complex problems will rarely (if ever) be found using a cookie cutter template. Instead, we need an Army that is institutionally flexible enough to recognise and incorporate emerging practice to solve unique problem sets. In other words, if best practice provides the theoretical foundations required to understand the tactical problem, emerging practice provides the intellectual adaptability to actually solve it.
A contest of ideas
This leads us to the second approach we use to enhance the intellectual component of fighting power: promoting a contest of ideas. Fostering a culture of contesting ideas has two benefits. Firstly, it gives our people the confidence to analyse the unique problem set they are faced with and recommend bespoke solutions to a hierarchy that is often one or two steps removed from the ground truth. Secondly, and just as importantly, it inculcates an organisational culture within the Army that is willing to recognise, and accept, emerging practice (i.e., the recommendations from those trying to solve the current problem) rather than always insisting on best practice (i.e., what we have always done in similar circumstances). This is essential if we are to win future wars.
A good example of how the Australian Army promotes a contest of ideas is The Cove’s recent Army 2030 Competition, in which readers were invited to submit a ‘script’ of no more than 100 words on what they thought the Army of 2030 should look like. Run over the period of a calendar month, it generated 48 entries from a broad range of authors, from front-line practitioners to life-long academics. Collectively, these scripts were viewed over 93,000 times in 31 days and were the genesis for numerous comments on our website, within units and messes across the country, and on social media. At the end of the competition, the entries and online discussion were captured and passed on to the Australian Army’s Directorate of Future Land Warfare to inform its work.
This ‘crowd sourcing’ of ideas doesn’t just support the work of those tasked with thinking about the future structures and capabilities of the Army. It also encourages the Army’s people to think about the future of warfare, encourages debate on how the organisation can best meet the challenges of the future, and gives our people the confidence to contribute to that debate.
A complementary approach
Most readers will already have realised that when these two aspects are combined, they form a complementary approach to PME: collectivism harnesses the experience of experts for the development of the workforce, while a contest of ideas harnesses the experience of the workforce for the development of the organisation. If the Army is to be truly adaptive, one cannot exist without the other. An organisation which always insists on best practice, rather than emerging practice, is risking ruin through imposing dogmatic solutions to complex problems, while an army that automatically reacts to instantaneous suggestions from the workforce, ungrounded in theoretical understanding, risks repeating the mistakes of the past.
Thus, contributions need to be sought from a broad range of viewpoints if the Army is to be ready for future conflict. As Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank is at pains to point out: “Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas.” This is particularly important to remember within hierarchical organisations such as the military. It can be all too easy for generals, staff officers, or senior public servants to fall into the trap of believing that experience alone is the foundation of hard-earned knowledge, and that new ideas from juniors that challenge doctrine, the status quo, or the strategic narrative are unnecessarily subversive.
Yet, when the next war comes it will not be the desk officers or policy experts that do the fighting, or the dying, in foreign fields. It is the young military practitioner who, regardless of rank, will find themselves trying to solve a unique problem set in the most testing of circumstances. In the words of Nassim Taleb, it is they who have ‘skin in the game.’ As such, we owe that young soldier or officer not only the very best foundational professional military education we can give them, but also an organisation willing and able to adapt to bespoke solutions based on ground truth. As an Army, we must set the conditions such that our people challenging the status quo and contesting ideas is our organisation’s comfort zone.
This requires a complementary approach to PME, developed and delivered now, so that we may enhance the intellectual component of fighting power in time for the Army to fight, and win, the next war. It is an approach that the team at The Cove is dedicated to delivering for the Australian Army.
If you enjoyed this post, please read:
– Setting the Army for the Future (Parts I, II, and III)
Mad Scientist also invites you to mark your calendars and plan on joining the TRADOC G-2’s Distinguished Speaker Series on-line next Tuesday, 23 July 2019, from 1430-1600 EDT, to participate virtually in Dr. Tuomas Sandholm‘s presentation on Superhuman AI for Strategic (=Game – Theoretic) Reasoning for the DoD – Beyond Machine Learning. To whet your appetite, please see Army game-theory research better allocates military resources, fight cancer; It’s Hard To Win At Poker Against An Opponent With No Tell; and A Poker-Playing Robot Goes to Work for the Pentagon.
LTCOL Greg Colton is an infantry officer with 18 years’ experience in both the British and Australian armies, including operational service in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Pacific. Greg has had a range of regimental, instructional, and staff postings and recently took a years’ sabbatical to accept a Research Fellowship at the Lowy Institute, Australia’s leading international policy think-tank. While at the Lowy Institute, he ran a Defence funded project examining drivers of instability in the Pacific. On his return to the Army, Greg assumed his current position as SO1 Professional Military Education at Forces Command. He is also Director of The Cove.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This piece is meant to be thought-provoking and does not reflect the current position of the U.S. Army. Readers should also note that this article does not necessarily reflect the position of the Australian Army, the Australian Department of Defence, or the Australian Government.
As the resident red teamer for a large military organization, I have long advocated for military planners and those involved in modernization to examine their assumptions and to identify the potential second/third order and “evil” effects in their plans, programs, and efforts. While the common use of the word “evil” means “profoundly immoral and wicked,” I use the term more broadly. “Evil,” in my usage for this essay, implies the unexpected and profound implications of a policy or adaptation of a technology – often with negative (but not necessarily always immoral) significant consequences.
While many professionals in and out of the military would agree that we should examine our assumptions and potentially harmful implications – specifically in developing or adopting technologies or capabilities – I am frequently disappointed in how often we actually do it and the extent to which we drill down and examine the details associated with technology implications. Like doctors, staffs have a responsibility to do no harm; they should identify assumptions and the 2nd/3rd/evil order effects, inform decision-makers, and incorporate these considerations into their estimates of the costs/benefits and risk estimates.
– “If you want credit for the good, take responsibility for the bad” – highlighting the fact that Silicon Valley’s revolutionary inventions connecting people around the world have also enabled data breaches, privacy violations, hate speech, and fake news.
While I am sure that Mr. Cook wouldn’t have us throw out our iPhones and Macs, neither am I recommending disregarding the advantages of modernity by returning to manual typewriters in lieu of laptops or returning to less sophisticated medical procedures (e.g., refuting the benefits of applying machine learning to CT scans, X-rays, and other procedures).
Many of us remember the first fielding of GPS devices in the 1990s, which enabled leaders to accurately and instantly determine their location. The advantages of this capability are many, but some of the costs included a dependency on technology to navigate from point to point; reduction in Soldiers’ proficiency in map reading; and perhaps the loss of an appreciation and understanding of terrain. Now expand this increased dependency on technology and the network across the Army and Joint force – have we truly fully identified their implications and do we have workarounds in place?
In one formal study of the use of technology in the classroom and its effects on learning, researchers examined a sophomore introductory economics class at the United States Military Academy. The researchers divided the course sections into three random groups: in some sections, electronics were banned; in others, the use of laptops and other devices were allowed; while the remaining sections were only allowed to use tablets, provided that they were laid flat so professors could observe their use. All sections underwent the same instruction and testing; however, the students in those sections where electronics were allowed scored significantly lower on tests.
order effects. As I’ve highlighted before in this blog – “every new capability begets a new vulnerability.” As a caveat to this rule and as noted historian Murray Williamson observed, “capabilities create dependencies, and dependencies create vulnerabilities.”
Outside that building, on an asphalt parking lot, employees played roller hockey. The games were full contact. Employees wore pads and would come back inside drenched in sweat and sometimes bloodied and bruised.
A few years after the idea of ranking web pages by their inbound links came to Larry Page in a dream, the founder of Google wrote down his five rules for management. He was in his twenties at the time. The list of rules included:
1910: Natural resources were a company’s most valuable assets. America’s leading companies grew large by spending increasing amounts of capital to acquire and exploit oil, mineral deposits, forests, water, and land.
1955: An insatiable appetite for American-made cars spurred the manufacturing industry. Companies needed labor, but mainly for routine-intensive jobs. When turnover occurred, those jobs were easy to fill, and individual workers had little bargaining power.
1965: Business growth dominated the economy and more jobs began to require creativity, as well as independent judgment and decision-making skills. The concept of talent (utilizing skills, knowledge, and ideas) began to emerge.
2016: Topping the largest companies list were Apple, Microsoft, and Google, all talent-dependent companies. People under the age of 35 were starting more companies, managing bigger staffs, and realizing higher profits than any of their predecessors.
Now we’ve moved into the 21st century—the Talent Economy—and the generations born into this era have little to no memory of the last century’s methodologies. They struggle to comprehend why decisions can’t be made on the fly, why they can’t have a seat at the decision-making table, and why it’s always been done ‘that way.’ They’ve been raised in an era fueled by collaboration, globalization, mobility, flexibility, transparency, and creativity. Anything else seems foreign and irrelevant to them.
Turnover, decline, and uncertainty about the future doesn’t have to be the reality for any organization. I’ve spent several years researching generational behaviors and the employee engagement practices common among the most successful organizations in existence today. In brief, here are six of my key findings, which I also outline in my latest book, 
In the 20th century, leadership was often the equivalent of power, fueled by a top down, ‘do-it-because-I-said-so’ approach to management. Today, the organizations boasting the highest employee engagement are led by leaders who exhibit a strong sense of passion, humility, and urgency. They are willing to learn from others and take risks. Unlike their 20th-century predecessors, these leaders are visionary, collaborative, and swift, never losing sight of their organization’s core purpose or wavering in their desire for change.
The organizations boasting high employee engagement are those that spend a considerable amount of time thinking about change and preparing for it. They also spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how to hire the best and build the best teams. The fact is, employee engagement is an impossible feat in the midst of distrust, stereotypes, and hierarchies. Today’s most successful organizations are accepting of new ideas and new people and intentional about building relationships.
Being truly talent-focused means prioritizing your people above all else. In a talent-focused organization, the entire team is empowered and encouraged, always part of the discussion, and there’s an effort to incorporate young talent into everything.
It’s imperative that all organizations ask: How do we rebuild around what we need to be next, rather than what we used to be? Organizations boasting high employee engagement are focused on creating the future, not responding to it. They pay attention to trends, set aside time to contemplate their futures, and dialogue often with younger generations.
Innovation naturally happens through and exists within collaboration. And the best organizations harness innovation from their employees and outsiders—especially those from younger generations. True collaboration isn’t limited to doing one project every once in a while; it’s a sustained strategy which maximizes individual contribution while leveraging the collective intelligence of everyone involved.
We have moved rapidly into a global, technologically advanced, knowledge-based economy. Presently, our schools are preparing students for a world we can’t even imagine, and they’re struggling to adapt and make the school-to-work connection. Many of today’s leading organizations have aligned with student-focused initiatives, and it’s critical that representatives of military, business, and industry find a way to get involved in school programming, outreach, partnering, and education. New research indicates that students hone in on a career path as early as sixth grade, so the connection must start before a student’s junior or senior year in high school.
Climate change is most often discussed in terms of its ecological and environmental impacts; rarely is it touched upon as a direct national security threat. The DoD has formally recognized the severity of climate change with references to it as a “threat multiplier.”
The 2019 DoD Arctic Strategy explicitly expresses our desire to maintain supremacy in the region and counter Russian and Chinese incursions.
2. The health of our troops is far from guaranteed. A number of infectious diseases, such as malaria, West Nile virus, cholera, and Lyme disease, are expected to worsen as climate change continues to raise global temperatures and cause more extreme weather.
In 2016, thawing permafrost in northern Siberia melted to reveal a reindeer carcass that had been infected with anthrax, leading to dozens of hospitalizations and the death of a 12-year-old boy, as well as over 2,300 reindeer.
Naval Air Station Key West, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Dam Neck Annex, and Parris Island – are at risk of losing between 75 and 95 percent of their land.”
for those special operations, and long-range bomber flights into Afghanistan.”
4. Climate change impacts will lead to mass migration. A report by the World Bank found that climate change increases migration through various existing drivers, such as “depressing rural wages, raising agricultural prices, shaping exposure to hazards, and stressing ecosystems.”
Most importantly, rural to urban migration will only continue to increase as population growth and resource scarcity compel more and more people to seek a better life in cities.
a. The Arab Spring. With an event as complex as the Arab Spring, drawing precise causal arrows is virtually impossible. However, vulnerability of the Middle East and North Africa region to various climate-impacted phenomena show that security is directly linked to stability. The failure of governments to meet the basic needs of citizens by responding to climatic issues such as drought, desertification, and food shortages is what drove many to take part in the series of political uprisings.
b. The Syrian civil war. Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the brutal civil war raging in Syria is a prime example of the kind of climate change-induced conflicts that the U.S. may have to respond to militarily. A ten-year drought in the region led Syrians to flock to cities unable to adequately meet the demand for resources, leading the Syrians to revolt due to the government’s inability to support them.
c. Boko Haram. Climate change has been found to be linked to political violence in Nigeria. Poor responses to climate change have increased risks of conflict, such as low economic opportunity and negative relations between the government and its citizens.
narrative contest among the population. In the process, traditional concepts within the art and science of violent political conflict associated with boundaries, thresholds, levels, and phases are all deeply disrupted.
While many in the NSID community are willing to accept we are fighting a cognitive war, few are willing to recognize the extent to which it is being lost. Losing the cognitive war raises another fashionable topic emerging lately – strategic surprise. This is not the
Cognitive warfare is not only an attack on
The target of this type of warfare is obvious enough. It is the
When Occidentalism and Positivism combine in the race for the next false dawn in technological supremacy, blind spots are produced. Believers in an ‘AI race’ should be wary. We in the West see this as an S&T contest, while largely ignoring its socio-political implications. For the Chinese, AI is politics, politics, politics. Is there something about non-Occidental cultural orientations that makes AI applicable to human affairs in ways not amenable to us? It’s an important strategic question. Positivism, by masking the salience of cultural orientation, is an exploitable weakness of our epistemic communities in need of addressing.
When ‘behavioural scientists’ get excited about manipulating people, either for benign or malign ends, what is the effect on the fabric of trust open society depends on? Military organizations now scrambling to incorporate ‘the cognitive’ into their operational concepts face a steep curve and many roadblocks. Friction is not always a bad thing. Hubristic behavioural interventions into complex anthropological systems involving AI should be approached with great caution. Hidden assumptions are cognitive vulnerabilities, and what appears to be a branch of S&T competition could turn out to be a strategic cul de sac we might want to back out of later.