The first episode of The Convergence features Dr. Sean McFate, foreign policy expert, author, and novelist. Dr. McFate is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington DC think tank, and a professor of strategy at the National Defense University and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Additionally, he serves as an Advisor to Oxford University's Centre for Technology and Global Affairs. Dr. McFate's newest book is The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder, which was picked by The Economist as one of their best books of 2019. On the episode, Dr. McFate provides his opinions on the changing character of warfare, the rise of private military contractors, information warfare, and the effects these trends will have on the operational environment.
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 ...
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 ...
Robin Champ is the Chief of the Enterprise Strategy Division at the United States Secret Service (USSS), where she leads both foresight and strategic planning for the organization. Prior to joining USSS, Ms. Champ was the Chief of the Global Futures Office at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Prior to joining DTRA, Ms. Champ worked at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), Office of Strategic Planning and Enterprise Transformation (J-5), where she was the DLA Lead for the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. In addition to her official positions, Ms. Champ Co-Leads the Federal Foresight Community of Interest (see links below). She also is a guest lecturer on foresight at George Washington University’s “Mastering Strategy for the Public Sector” course. In today’s podcast, Ms. Champ discusses women leading in national security, empowering diversity to think about the future, and how emerging technologies and trends will affect Secret Service missions. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview: Planning for the future involves analyzing trends and considering multiple alternate trajectories. Clearly communicating findings to leaders is essential to create actionable change, and particularly important when government agencies are tasked with ‘no fail missions.’ Generating foresight and creating strategy plans require the Government to fully leverage the nation’s diversity and talent. Recruiting and maintaining this workforce should be a priority for government agencies. The Secret Service has a robust foresight program, providing newsletters, speaker series, and strategic plans to its members. This program enables the Secret Service to identify and mitigate its weaknesses that could be taken advantage of during critical decisive moments. Readers and listeners can connect with the Federal Foresight Community of Interest at org ...
