Note #27. Avoiding Data-Driven Disasters: Tonkin 1964 and Taiwan 2022—
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November 12, 2022
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ICSL admin
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Security, Strategy
Gulf of Tonkin, 1964 On 4 August 1964, data-driven decisions in an uncertain operational environment falsely assumed a North Vietnamese patrol boat attack on American destroyers in Gulf of Tonkin international waters. See Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s “The Fog of War” video account here, which mentions uncertainties such as weather, equipment limitations, and operator…
Paper #51. We Need to Expand Our Strategy Language to Compete and Wage Warfare in the Age of AI
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June 30, 2022
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ICSL admin
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Asia-Pacific, Leadership, Strategy
We need to rearrange our legacy language of coercion theory to compete in the contemporary information environment.
Paper #48. Supply Chain Networks in the Age of AI, Part I: Fixing Joint Doctrine
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February 14, 2022
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Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
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Cyber, Leadership, Strategy
This paper is Part I of II that defines and applies information environment concepts to supply chain networks for an age of artificial intelligence (AI). To avoid overtrained learning, I draw from supply chain examples and beyond.[i] Part I fixes two fundamental flaws in joint military doctrine: (1) the failure to define the information environment…
Paper #41. Concepts of Influence: Critical to Strategy and Human Control of Artificial Intelligence
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May 31, 2021
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Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
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Cyber, Leadership, Strategy
Strategy for dynamic end-states must be multi-dimensional to be competitive in the information environment (ICSL Note #22). If operations are not informing and influencing, they become existential rather than instrumental. They justify themselves, which makes for poor strategy. Yet strategy is the competition that matters most for relevant operations. As we consider the three basic…
Paper #38. What “Talk-Fight” Ideologues Understand About Warfare: All-Domain, All-Effects in the Information Environment.
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April 19, 2021
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Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
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Leadership, Security, Strategy
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?
Paper #21. Informatizing Operations: The Other Half of All-Domain Warfare
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March 23, 2020
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Michael D. Phillips, Col USAF ret. & Thomas A. Drohan, Brig Gen USAF ret.
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Cyber, Leadership, Strategy
Warfare has become all-domain, all-effects, and all-information. This reality is thriving in a comfort zone outside our entrenched concept of a “threshold of armed conflict.”