#E173: The Global SOF Imperative - Global Special Operations Forces Foundation President Stu Bradin (SOF Week 2025)

For over three decades, retired Colonel Stu Bradin served on the front lines of some of America’s most critical Special Operations missions from Central America and the Balkans to Northern Africa and Afghanistan. He led Special Forces teams under fire, built NATO’s Special Operations Headquarters from the ground up, and ran multi-national, interagency fusion cells in the heart of combat zones.

But in 2014, Stu Bradin saw a different kind of threat emerging: disconnected allies, stovepiped intelligence, and fragmented Special Operations communities. He knew the next fight against cyberattacks, transnational crime, and terrorist networks would require something we didn’t yet have: a global SOF network. That’s why he created the Global Special Operations Forces Foundation (GSOF); the first nonprofit dedicated to uniting Special Operations military, government, and commercial partners across the world.

Fran Racioppi sat down with Stu during this year’s SOF Week to talk about why he founded GSOF, what it takes to bring together over 60 nations and 85 industry partners, and how his experiences building NATO SOF HQ and leading interagency teams shaped the Foundation’s mission. They explored what elite leadership really looks like at the global level, the danger of operating in silos, and why SOF must evolve its mindset as rapidly as its technology.

Stu also broke down how GSOF accelerates innovation, helps SOF units and partners connect in real time, and creates space for public-private collaboration that can meet the speed and complexity of modern threats to answer the hardest question of today; what must Special Operations become to win the next fight?

This episode is about global leadership, unity of effort, and how one Green Beret’s post-military mission is helping shape the future of Special Operations across the world.

Highlights

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:02 Welcome to SOF Week
• 3:17 Significance of Global SOF Foundation
• 7:38 Prioritizing Small Businesses
• 11:02 Defining the Next Battlefield
• 19:00 NATO SOF
• 23:05 American’s Propensity to Serve
• 27:33 Winning the Next Fight
• 30:55 Getting Equipment to Warfighters
• 35:35 What it means to be a Green Beret

Quotes

• “What makes us different is we’re international and we’re joint and nobody else is that way.”
• “Part of what you have to do as a SOF commander in the joint environment is unite your tribes.”
• “The innovation comes from small businesses.”
• “Most small businesses fail because of catastrophic success not catastrophic failure.”
• “If you’re wrapped in metal, you have zero probability of survival.”
• “You can’t just assume that your enemy is ignorant because they’re not.”
• “I wouldn’t want to be on the modern battlefield.”
• “Our deterrent is having the best partners we can.”
• “We back into wars, we don’t run to them.”
• “They’re going to be our future whether we like it or not, so we’ve got to make sure that they are armed to do the right thing.”
• “I think we need to give the NCO corps a lot more latitude.”
• “If people know you can get to them quickly, they have to calculate for that.”
• “At the end of the day, most of the stuff we’re fielding right now is not going to survive first contact.” 
• “Ultimately, you have a less trained force.” 
• “SOF, cyber, intel, information and economics. That’s how you’re going to win the competition fight.”
• “I just think this is the Special Ops time.”

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Our SOF Week 2025 Series is made possible in part by Accrete.ai; solving business’s most complex challenges today through technology of tomorrow.

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