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…

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

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

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

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

The need for a comprehensive approach to strategy that’s relevant to the global information environment is made clear by recent cyber and information attacks. The Solar Winds and Hafnium attacks from US data centers occurred in a context of persistent disinformation campaigns (Russia, China). Yet the US cyber, info ops and law enforcement communities have…

Paper #30. Assessment & Combined Effects Strategy: COVID-19 and the Next Bio-Threat

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

As we watch the media count COVID-19 death rates, it reminds me of the ”body count“ metric during the Vietnam War.