S&L Posts - International Center for Security and Leadership

Note #23. Net Assessment and JADC2: A Step Toward All-Effects Warfare?

Net Assessment The purpose of net assessment is to gain an asymmetric advantage over competitors. US goals generally seek technological

Paper #45. AI-assisted Psychological Strategies: Human-directed Critical Thinking to Disarm Theocratic Strategy

This article completes our series on AI-assisted strategy, but with a stronger emphasis on combined effects. I use the language

Paper #44. China’s Belt and Road Initiative as Combined-Effect Strategy: How Democracies Can Compete

ICSL Paper #41 developed “concepts of influence,” a critical component to effective strategy. Concepts of influence are the ways and

Paper #43. AI-assisted Confrontational-Physical Strategies: Human-directed Savant X Seeker

Continuing our march through the eight basic combinations of strategy introduced in Paper #39 (The Strategy Cuboid), we focus on

Paper #42. AI-assisted Cooperative-Physical Strategies: Human-directed Insights from Savant X Seeker

The Strategy Cuboid introduced in Paper #39 offers eight basic combinations of strategy in three dimensions: cooperative-confrontational; psychological-physical; and preventive-causative.

Paper #41. Concepts of Influence: Critical to Strategy and Human Control of Artificial Intelligence

Strategy for dynamic end-states must be multi-dimensional to be competitive in the information environment (ICSL Note #22). If operations are

Note #22. Multi-Dimensional Strategy for Dynamic End-States: A Realistic Framework, An Application from China, and Recommendations for Strategists

There is nothing static about an “end-state“ because it’s defined in terms of conditions, which are always changing. Strategy needs

Paper #40. How to Expand our Truncated “Operational” Approach to Warfare: Integrate Information as Operations

Information is foundational to competitive strategy because it permeates technology and cognition in all dimensions. We need to integrate information

Paper #39. Information Intelligence & Assessment for All-Effects Warfare: A Competition that Subsumes Combined Arms & Deterrence

Our previous paper offered an assessable definition of “information“ to address two persistent problems in US security strategy: (1) the

Paper #38. What “Talk-Fight” Ideologues Understand About Warfare: All-Domain, All-Effects in the Information Environment.

Prevailing in an operational environment does not matter if one loses in the information environment. Vietnam Workers Party nationalists understood

Paper #37. The Strategy Cuboid: Elements, Dimensions, and Targets in the Global Information Environment

The need for a comprehensive approach to strategy that’s relevant to the global information environment is made clear by recent

Note #21. Narratives as Social Strategies in the Information Environment

Narratives present advantages in any conflict because they influence resolve and if ignored, can reverse operational victories. What are they?

Paper #36. Commanding & Controlling the OODA Loop: Iran’s Narrative Strategy

This paper applies a narrative weaponization model to decision making (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act), using Iranian disinformation. Papers 23

Note #20. Iraq & Iran: Agile Strategies or More Missteps?

As in Note #19, this thought-piece refers to agile strategies as those that can adjust ends, ways and means. Missteps

Note #19. Afghanistan: The Need for Strategic Agility, Not Missteps.

Agile strategies are able to change in all three definitional dimensions—ends, ways and means. Missteps are changes without strategic advantage.