Paper # 56. Hierarchy of Effort: Reforming Tactics, Operations, and Strategy for Advantage

  • ICSL admin
  • Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

A hierarchy of effort is essential to achieving meaningful advantage in the information environment (IE). The IE’s diverse contexts are multi-domain and all-effects. Three reforms can improve tactics, operations, and strategy against human and AI competitors: Align the ends of desired cause-and-effect relationships Note: the basic strategy process consists of interactive ends (the why—goals), ways…

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

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Cyber, Eurasia, Strategy
  • No Comments

Net Assessment The purpose of net assessment is to gain an asymmetric advantage over competitors. US goals generally seek technological superiority. The US Office of Net Assessment, in a rare run of leadership continuity (Andy Marshall, 1973-2015), analyzed strategic competitions and recommended offsets against adversary strengths. Some offsets threatened the mutual vulnerability of Mutual Assured…

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

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Leadership, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Prevailing in an operational environment does not matter if one loses in the information environment. Vietnam Workers Party nationalists understood this. Taliban religious fundamentalists understand this. Why do we not, and what to do about it?

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

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Cyber, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

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

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Cyber, Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

This paper applies a narrative weaponization model to decision making (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act), using Iranian disinformation. Papers 23 and 24 did the same with disinformation from China and Russia. Understanding how narrative strategy works in the information environment is key to detecting and countering disinformation.

Paper #34. Cyber Security-Resilience: Compliance & Competitiveness in the Information Environment

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Commercial, Cyber, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Manipulating information over cyber networks has become a societal weapon of choice. Compared to traditional military, diplomatic and economic instruments of state power, cyber information power has competitive advantages. 

Note #18. a Veterans Day Sequel to “Planning-to-Win”

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Plan with a winning strategy. Follow through with activities to bring about superior effects. Anticipate what competitors will do. Reimagine and repeat.

Paper #33. Special Ops Command-Africa Strategy: Analysis & Recommendations (Part II)

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Security, Strategy, Sub-Saharan Africa
  • No Comments

Following our historical context review of ten African states in Part I (Paper #31), this section begins Part II with linkage analysis, focusing on strategy in Somalia.

Paper #29. Disinformation Trackers & Destroyers

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Commercial, Cyber, Eurasia, Strategy
  • No Comments

This sortie is a follow-on to ICSL Paper #28 which showed how critical thinking errors lead to exploitation. Our focus here is on freely available platforms and programs that can track and destroy disinformation.

Paper #28. To Defeat Disinformation, First Arm the Mind

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Cyber, Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

Disinformation is a global threat. Pervasive digitized technology and social media provide rich opportunities to distort public perceptions at scale. Authoritarians assail democracies incessantly. Comparitech recently discovered a Facebook bot farm that controls nearly 14,000 fake accounts and produces 200,000 posts per month.

Paper #26. Supply Chain Competition & Warfare II: Strategic Decisions and Integrative Options

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Commercial, Cyber, Eurasia, Strategy
  • No Comments

Authoritarian states are weaponizing supply chains into all-effects warfare while democratic states compete with inferior strategies. We can be more competitive and wage superior complex warfare in kind.

Stick & Rudder #5. A Basic Strategy Toward China: Rules-based Competition that Cooperates & Confronts

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Commercial, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Competing effectively with the authoritarian regime in Beijing requires a superior blend of cooperation and confrontation.

Paper #23. Collapsing the Loop: How China’s Narrative Subverts OODA Decision-making & What to Do About It

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Cyber, Strategy
  • No Comments

Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act— is a powerful model for making decisions in contested environments. Strategic use of information can defeat it. Understanding narrative strategies can protect it.

Note #15. Tracking Chinese and Russian DisInformation: Hamilton 2.0 Reloaded

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Commercial, Cyber, Eurasia
  • No Comments

This Note paraphrases today’s webinar from the Alliance for Security Democracy on Hamilton 2.0, a dashboard on Russian, and now Chinese, disinformation.

Teaching & Learning #3. Visual Analytics & Case Method Applied to COVID-19

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Teaching & Learning, With Blackboard & Map
  • No Comments

In an age of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, governments and businesses become more dependent on machine learning. Human learning is a continual requirement.

Stick & Rudder #2. A Basic US Strategy Toward the Koreas: Deterrence, Defense, Compellence & Inducement

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Strategy
  • No Comments

Both North Korea and South Korea seek self-reliance and alignments with main powers. From that take-off point, I recommend this basic US strategy toward the Koreas:

Paper #16. Comparative Threats and Integrated Effects: Japan

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Using complex warfare concepts from Papers #13 (East Asia) and #14 (China), we apply that approach to Japanese security strategy, with comparisons to China and Russia.

Paper #14. Comparative Threats and Integrated Effects: China

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

This paper uses concepts of complex warfare established in ICSL Paper #13 to analyze the world view, threat assessment, and combined effects strategy of China.

Paper #11. China’s All-Effects All-Domain Strategy in an All-Encompassing Information Environment

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Strategy
  • No Comments

The essence of Chinese strategy consists of waging complex wars that exploit opponents’ expectations of warfare. The operational design creates preventative and causative effects that blend confrontation with cooperation, imposing dilemmas on opponents. Such asymmetric effects win wars via information that changes opponents’ behavior.

Paper #8. How to Integrate National Defense & Security Strategies: A Detailed Analysis

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Americas, Commercial, Leadership, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

As a detailed follow-on to The US National Security Strategy Needs Combined Effects, this paper integrates combined effects with the US National Defense Strategy (NDS), too.