Conversations on Strategy Podcast

Integrating artificially intelligent technologies for military purposes poses a special challenge. In previous arms races, such as the race to atomic bomb technology during World War II, expertise resided within the Department of Defense. But in the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race, expertise dwells mostly within industry and academia. Also, unlike the development of the bomb, effective employment of AI technology cannot be relegated to a few specialists; almost everyone will have to develop some level of AI and data literacy. Complicating matters is AI-driven systems can be a “black box” in that humans may not be able to explain some output, much less be held accountable for its consequences. This inability to explain coupled with the cession to a machine of some functions normally performed by humans risks the relinquishment of some jurisdiction and, consequently, autonomy to those outside the profession. Ceding jurisdiction could impact the American people’s trust in their military and, thus, its professional standing. To avoid these outcomes, creating and maintaining trust requires integrating knowledge of AI and data science into the military’s professional expertise. This knowledge covers both AI technology and how its use impacts command responsibility; talent management; governance; and the military’s relationship with the US government, the private sector, and society.Read the monograph: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/959/Keywords: artificial intelligence (AI), data science, lethal targeting, professional expert knowledge, talent management, ethical AI, civil-military relationsEpisode transcript: Trusting AI: Integrating Artificial Intelligence into the Army’s Professional Expert KnowledgeStephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Joining me today are Doctor C. Anthony Pfaff and Colonel Christopher J. Lowrance, coauthors of Trusting AI: Integrating Artificial Intelligence into the Army’s Professional Expert Knowledge with Brie Washburn and Brett Carey.Pfaff, a retired US Army colonel, is the research professor for strategy, the military profession, and ethics at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute and a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.Colonel Christopher J. Lowrance is the chief autonomous systems engineer at the US Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center.Your monograph notes that AI literacy is critical to future military readiness. Give us your working definition of AI literacy, please.Dr. C. Anthony PfaffAI literacy is more aimed at our human operators (and that means commanders and staffs, as well as, you know, the operators themselves) able to employ these systems in a way that not only we can optimize the advantage these systems promise but also be accountable for their output. That requires knowing things about how data is properly curated. It will include knowing things about how algorithms work, but, of course, not everyone can become an AI engineer. So, we have to kind of figure out at whatever level, given whatever tasks you have, what do you need to know for these kinds of operations to be intelligent?Col. Christopher J. LowranceI think a big part of it is going to be also educating the workforce. And that goes all the way from senior leaders down to the users of the systems. And so, a critical part of it is understanding how best AI-enabled systems can fit in, their appropriate roles that they can play, and how best they can team or augment soldiers as they complete their task. And so, with that, that’s going to take senior leader education coupled with different levels of technical expertise within the force, especially when it comes to employing and maintaining these types of systems, as well as down to the user that’s going to have to provide some level of feedback to the system as it’s being employed.HostTell me about some of the challenges of integrating AI and data technologies.PfaffWhat we tried to do is sort of look at it from a professional perspective. And from that perspective, so I’ll talk maybe a little bit more later, but, you know, in many ways there are lots of aspects of the challenge that aren’t really that different. We brought on tanks, airplanes, and submarines that all required new knowledge that not only led to changes in how we fight wars and the character of war but corresponding changes to doctrine organizational culture, which we’re seeing with AI.We’ve even seen some of the issues that AI brings up before when we introduce automated technology, which, in reducing the cognitive load on operators introduces concerns like accountability gaps and automation biases that arise because humans are just trusting the machine or don’t understand how the machine is working or how to do the process manually, and, as a result, they’re not able to assess its output. The paradigm example of that, of course, is the USS Vincennes incident, where you have an automated system. Even though there was plenty of information that it was giving that should have caused a human operator not to permit shooting down what ended up being a civilian airliner. So, we’ve dealt with that in the past. AI kind of puts that on steroids.Two of the challenges that I think that are unique to AI, with data-driven systems, they actually can change in capabilities as you use them. For instance, a system that starts off able to identify, perhaps, a few high-value targets, over time, as it collects more data, gets more questions. And as humans see patterns, or as a machine identifies patterns, and humans ask the machine to test it, you’re able to start discerning properties of organizations, both friendly and enemy, you wouldn’t have seen before. And that allows for greater prediction. What that means is that the same system, used in different places with different people with different tasks, are going to be different systems and have different capabilities over time.The other thing that I think is happening is the way it’s changing how we’re able to view the battlefield. Rather than a cycle of Intel driving OPS, driving Intel and so on, with the right kind of sensors in place, getting us the right kind of data, we’re able to get more of a real-time picture. The intel side can make assessments based on friendly situations, and the friendly can make targeting decisions and assessments about their own situation based on intel. So, that’s coming together in ways that are also pretty interesting, and I don’t think we fully wrestled with yet.LowranceYeah, just to echo a couple of things that Dr. Pfaff has alluded to here is that, you know, overarching, I think the challenge is gaining trust in the system. And trust has really earned. And it’s earned through use is one aspect. But you’ve got to walk in being informed, and that’s where the data literacy and the AI literacy piece comes in.And as Dr. Pfaff mentioned, these data-driven systems, generally speaking, will perform based on the type of data that they’ve been trained against and those types of scenarios in which that data was collected. And so, one of the big challenge areas is the adaptation over time. But they are teachable, so to speak. So, as you collect and curate new data examples, you can better inform the systems of how they should adapt over time. And that’s going to be really key to gaining trust. And that’s where the users and the commanders of these systems need to understand some of the limitations of the platforms, their strengths, and understanding also how to retrain or reteach to systems over time using new data so that they can more quickly adapt.But there’s definitely some technical barriers to gaining trust, but they certainly can be overcome with the proper approach.HostWhat else should we consider, then, when it comes to developing trustworthy AI?PfaffWe’ve kind of taken this from the professional perspective, and so we’re starting with an understanding of professions that a profession entails specialized knowledge that’s in service to some social good that allows professionals to exercise autonomy over specific jurisdictions. An example, of course, would be doctors and the medical profession. They have specialized knowledge. They are certified in it by other doctors. They’re able to make medical decisions without nonprofessionals being able to override those.So, the military is the same thing, where we have a particular expertise. And then the question is, how does the introduction of AI affect what counts as expert knowledge? Because that is the core functional imperative of the profession—that is able to provide that service. In that regard, you’re going to look at the system. We need to be able to know, as professionals, if the system is effective. It also is predictable and understandable. I am able to replicate results and understand the ones that I get.We also have to trust the professional. That means the professional has to be certified. And the big question is, as Chris alluded to, in what? But not just certified in the knowledge, but also responsible norms and accountable. The reason for that is clients rely on professionals because they don’t have this knowledge themselves. Generally speaking, the client’s not in the position to judge whether or not that diagnosis, for example, is good or not. They can go out and find another opinion, but they’re going out to go seek another profession. So, clients not only need to trust the expert knows what they’re doing but there’s an ethics that governs them and that they are accountable.Finally, to trust the profession as an institution—that it actually has what’s required to conduct the right kinds of certification, as well as the institutions required to hold professionals accountable. So that’s the big overarching framework in which we’re trying to take up the differences and challenges that AI provides.LowranceLike I mentioned earlier, I think it’s about also getting the soldiers and commanders involved early during the development process and gaining that invaluable feedback. So, it’s kind of an incremental rollout, potentially, of AI-enabled systems is one aspect, or way of looking at it. And so that way you can start to gauge and get a better appreciation and understanding of the strengths of AI and how best it can team with commanders and soldiers as they employ the systems. And that teaming can be adaptive. And I think it’s really important for commanders and soldiers to feel like they can have some level of control of how best to employ AI-enabled systems and some degree of mechanism, let’s say, how much they’re willing to trust at a given moment or instance for the AI system to perform a particular function based on the conditions.As we know as military leaders, the environment can be very dynamic, and conditions change. If you look at the scale of operations from counterinsurgency to a large-scale combat operation, you know those are different ends of a spectrum here of types of conflicts that might be potentially faced by our commanders and our soldiers on the ground with AI-enabled systems. And so, they need to adapt and have some level of control and different trusts of the system based on understanding that system, its limitations, its strengths, and so on.HostYou touched on barriers just a moment ago. Can you expand a little bit more on that piece of it?LowranceOften times when you look at it from a perspective of machine-learning applications, these are algorithms where the system is able to ingest data examples. So basically, historical examples of conditions of past events. And so, just to make this a little bit more tangible, think of an object recognition algorithm that can look at imagery and that (maybe it’s geospatial imagery for satellites that have taken an aerial photo of the ground plane) you could train it to look for certain objects like airplanes. Well, over time, the AI learns to look for these based on the features of these examples within past imagery. With that, sometimes if you take that type of example data and the conditions of the environment change, maybe it’s the backdrop or maybe it’s a different airstrip or different type of airplane or something changes, then performance can degrade to some degree. And this goes back to adaptability.How do these algorithms best adapt? This goes back to the teaming aspect of having users working with the AI recognizing when that performance is starting to degrade, to some degree, kind of through a checks-and-balances type of system. And then you give feedback by curating new examples and having the system adapt. I think giving the soldiers/commanders, for instance, the old analogy of a baseball card with performance statistics of a particular player, where you would have a baseball card for a particular AI-enabled system, giving you the types of training statistics. For example, what kind of scenario was this system trained for? What kind of data examples? How many data examples and so on, and that would give commanders and operators a better sense of these strengths and limitations of the systems, where and under what conditions has it been tested and evaluated. And, therefore, when it’s employed in a condition that doesn’t necessarily meet those kinds of conditions, then that’s an early cue to be more cautious . . . to take a more aggressive teaming stance with the system and checking more rigorously, obviously, what the AI is potentially predicting or recommending to the soldiers and operators.And that’s one example. I think you’ve got to have the context where, most instances, depending on the type of AI application, if you will, really drives how much control or task effort you’re going to give to the AI system. In some instances, as we see on the commercial sector today, there’s a high degree of autonomy given to some AI systems that are recommending, for instance, what you maybe want to purchase or what movie you should shop for and so on, but what’s the risk of employing that type of system or if that system makes a mistake? And I think that’s really important is the context here and then having the right precautions and the right level of teaming in place when you’re going into those more risky types of situations.And I think another final point of the barriers to help overcome them is, again, going back to this notion of giving commanders and soldiers some degree of control over the system. A good analogy is like a rheostat knob. Based on the conditions on the ground. Based on their past use of this system and their understanding, they start to gain an understanding of the strengths and limitations of the system and then, based on the conditions, can really dial up or dial down the degree of autonomy that they’re willing to grant the system. And I think this is another way of overcoming barriers to, let’s say, highly restricting the use of AI-enabled systems, especially when they’re recognizing targets or threats as part of the targeting cycle, and that’s one of the lenses that we looked at in this particular study.PfaffWhen we’re looking at expert knowledge, we break it into four components—the technical part, which we’ve covered. But we also look at, to have that profession, professionals have to engage in human development, which means recruiting the right kinds of people, training and educating the right kinds of ways, and then develop them over a career to be leaders in the field. And we’ve already talked about the importance of having norms that ensure the trust of the client. Then there’s the political, which stresses mostly how the professions maintain legitimacy and compete for jurisdiction with other professions. (These are) all issues that AI brings up. So those introduce a number of other kinds of concerns that you have to be able to take into account for any of the kinds of things that Chris talked about for us to be able to do that. So, I would say growing the institution along those four avenues that I talked about represents a set of barriers that need to be overcome.HostLet’s talk about ethics and politics in relation to AI in the military. What do we need to consider here?PfaffIt’s about the trust of the client, but that needs to be amplified a little bit. What’s the client trusting us to do? Not only use this knowledge on their behalf, but also the way that reflects their values. That means systems that conform to the law of armed conflict. Systems that enable humane and humanitarian decision making—even in high intensity combat. The big concerns there, (include) the issue(s) of accountability and automation bias. Accountability arises because there’s only so much you’re going to be able to understand about the system as a whole. And when we’re talking about the system, it’s not just the data and the algorithms, it’s the whole thing, from sensors to operators. So, it will always be a little bit of a black box. If you don’t understand what’s going on, or if you get rushed (and war does come with a sense of urgency) you’re going to be tempted to go with the results the machine produces.Our recommendation is to create some kind of interface. We use the idea of fuzzy logic that allows the system and humans to interact with it to identify specific targets in multiple sets. The idea was . . . given any particular risk tolerance the commander has because machines when they produce these outputs, they assign a probability to it . . . so for example, if it identifies a tank, it will say something to the effect of “80% tank.” So, if I have a high-risk tolerance for potential collateral harms, risk emission, or whatever, and I have a very high confidence that the target I’m about to shoot as legitimate, I can let the machine do more of the work. And with a fuzzy logic controller, you can use that to determine where in the system humans need to intervene when that risk tolerance changes or that confidence changes. And this addresses accountability because it specifies what commander, staff, and operator are accountable for—getting the risk assessment right, as well as ensuring that the data is properly curated and the algorithms trained.It helps with automation bias because the machine’s telling you what level of confidence it has. So, it’s giving you prompts to recheck it should there be any kinds of doubts. And one of the ways you can enhance that, that we talked about in the monograph, is in addition to looking for things that you want to shoot, also look for things you don’t want to shoot. That’ll paint a better picture of the environment, (and) overall reduce the kind of risk of using these systems.Now when it comes to politics, you’ve got a couple of issues here. One is at the level of civ-mil relations. And Peter Singer brought this up 10 years ago when talking about drones. His concern was that drone operation would be better done by private-sector contractors. As we rely more on drones, what it came to mean in applying military force would largely be taken over by contractors and, thus, expert knowledge leaves the profession and goes somewhere else. And that’s going to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the profession with political implications.That didn’t exactly happen because military operators always retained the ability to do this. The only ones who are authorized to use these systems with lethal force. There were some contractors augmenting them, but with AI right now, as we sort through what the private sector/government roles and expertise is going to be, we have a situation where you could end up . . . one strategy of doing this is that the military expert knowledge doesn’t change, all the data science algorithms are going on on the other side of an interface where the interface just presents information that the military operator needs to know, and he responds to that information without really completely understanding how it got there in the first place. I think that’s a concern because that is when expertise migrates outside the profession. It also puts the operators, commanders, and staffs in a position where (A.) they will not necessarily be able to assess the results well without some level of understanding. They also won’t be able to optimize the system as its capabilities develop over time.We want to be careful about that because, in the end, the big thing in this issue is expectation management. Because these are risk-reducing technologies . . . because they’re more precise, they lower risk to friendly soldiers, as well as civilians and so on. So, we want them to make sure that we are able to set the right kinds of expectations, which will be a thing senior militaries have to do. And regarding the effectives of the technology, so civilian leaders don’t over rely on it, and the public doesn’t become frustrated by lack of results when it doesn’t quite work out. Because the military, they can’t deliver results but also imposes any risk to soldiers and noncombatants alike is not one that’s probably going to be trusted.LowranceRegarding ethics and politics and relations to AI and the military, I think it’s really important, obviously, throughout the development cycle of an AI system, that you’re taking these types of considerations in early and, obviously, often. So, I know one guiding principle that we have here is that if you break down an AI system across a stack all the way from the hardware to the data to the model and then to deployment in the application, really ethics wraps all of that.So, it’s really important that the guiding principles already set forth through various documents from DoD and the Army regarding responsible AI and employment that that is followed in the hereto. Now, in terms of what we looked at from the paper, from the political lens, it’s an interesting dynamic when you start looking at the interaction between the employment of these systems. And really from the sense of, let’s say, of urgency of at least leveraging this technology from either a bottom-up or a top-down type of fashion. So, what I mean by that is from a research and development perspective, you know, there’s an S and T (or science and technology) base that really leads the armies—and really DoD if you look outside from a joint perspective the development of new systems. But yet, as you know, the commercial sector is leveraging AI now, today, and sometimes there’s a sense of urgency. It’s like, hey, it’s mature enough in these types of aspects. Let’s go ahead and start leveraging it.And so, a more deliberate approach would be traditional rollout through the S and T environment where it goes through rigorous test and evaluation processes and then eventually becomes a program of record and then deployed and fielded. Whereas it doesn’t necessarily prohibit a unit right now that obviously says, “Hey, I can take this commercial off-the-shelf AI system and start leveraging it and go ahead and get some early experience.” So, I think there’s this interesting aspect between the traditional program of record acquisition effort versus this kind of bottom-up unit level experimentation and how those are blending together.And it also brings up the role, I think, of soldiers and, let’s say, contractors play in terms of developing and eventually deploying and employing AI-enabled systems. You know, inherently AI-enabled systems are complex, and so who has the requisite skills to sustain, update, and adapt these systems over time? Is it the contractor, or should it be the soldiers? And where does that take place? We’ve looked at different aspects of this in this study, and there’s probably a combination, a hybrid.But one part of the study is we talked about the workforce development program and how important that is because in tactical field environments, you’re not necessarily always going to be able to have contractors out present in these field sites. Nor are you going to have, always, the luxury of high bandwidth communications out to the tactical edge where these AI-enabled systems are being employed. Because of that, you’re going to have to have the ability to have that technical knowledge of updating and adapting AI-enabled systems with the soldiers. That’s one thing we definitely emphasized as part of the study of these kinds of relationships.HostWould you like to share any final thoughts before we go?LowranceOne thing I would just like to reemphasize again is this ability that we can overcome some of these technical barriers that we discussed throughout the paper. But we can do so deliberately, obviously, and responsibly. Part of that is, we think, and this is what one of our big findings from our study is, that from taking an adaptive teaming approach. We know that AI inherently, and especially in a targeting cycle application, is an augmentation tool. It’s going to be paired with soldiers. It’s not going to be just running autonomously by itself. What does that teaming look like? It goes back to this notion of giving control down to the commander level, and that’s where that trust is going to start to come in, where if the commander on the ground knows that he can change the system behavior, or change that teaming aspect that is taking place, and the level of teaming, that inherently is going to grow the amount of trust that he or she has in the system during its application.We briefly talked a little bit about that, but I just want to echo, or reinforce, that. And it’s this concept of an explainable fuzzy logic controller. And the big two inputs to that controller are what is the risk tolerance of the commander based on the conditions of the ground, whether it’s counterinsurgency or large-scale combat operations versus what the AI system is telling them, Generally speaking, in most predictive applications, the AI has some degree of confidence score associated with its prediction or recommendation. So, leverage that. And leverage the combination of those. And that should give you an indication of how much trust or how much teaming, in other words, you know, for a given function or role, should take place with this AI augmentation and between the soldier and the actual AI augmentation tool that’s taking place.This can be broken down, obviously, in stages just like the targeting cycle is. And our targeting cycle and joint doctrine is, for dynamic targeting, as F2T2 EA. Find fix, track, target, engage, and assess. And each one of those, obviously more some than others, is where AI can play a constructive role. We can employ it in a role where we’re doing so responsibly and it’s providing an advantage, in some instances augmenting the soldiers in such a way that really exceeds the performance a human alone could do. And that deals with speed, for example. Or finding those really hidden types of targets, these kinds of things that would be even difficult for human to do alone. Taking that adaptive teaming lens is going to be really important moving forward.PfaffWhen it comes to employing AI, particularly for military purposes, there’s a concern that the sense of urgency that comes with combat operations will overwhelm the human ability to control the machine. We will always want to rely on the speed. And like Chris said, you don’t get the best performance out of the machine that way.It really is all about teaming. And none of the barriers that we talked about, none of the challenges we talked about, are even remotely insurmountable. But these are the kinds of things you have to pay attention to. There is a learning curve, and to engage in strategies that minimize the amount of adaptation members of the military going to have to perform, I think it will be a mistake in the long term even to get short-term results.HostListeners, you can learn more about this, if you want to really dig into the details here, you can download the monograph at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/959. Dr. Pfaff, Col. Lowrance, thank you so much for your time today.PfaffThank you, Stephanie. It’s great to be here.HostIf you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.About the Project Director Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff (colonel, US Army retired) is the research professor for strategy, the military profession, and ethics at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute and a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of several articles on ethics and disruptive technologies, such as “The Ethics of Acquiring Disruptive Military Technologies,” published in the Texas National Security Review. Pfaff holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and economics from Washington and Lee University, a master’s degree in philosophy from Stanford University (with a concentration in philosophy of science), a master’s degree in national resource management from the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, and a doctorate degree in philosophy from Georgetown University.About the Researchers Lieutenant Colonel Christopher J. Lowrance is the chief autonomous systems engineer at the US Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center. He holds a doctorate degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Louisville, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from The George Washington University, a master’s degree in strategic studies from the US Army War College, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Virginia Military Institute.Lieutenant Colonel Bre M. Washburn is a US Army military intelligence officer with over 19 years serving in tactical, operational, and strategic units. Her interests include development and mentorship; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the digital transformation of Army intelligence forces. Washburn is a 2003 graduate of the United States Military Academy and a Marshall and Harry S. Truman scholar. She holds master’s degrees in international security studies, national security studies, and war studies.Lieutenant Colonel Brett A. Carey, US Army, is a nuclear and counter weapons of mass destruction (functional area 52) officer with more than 33 years of service, including 15 years as an explosive ordnance disposal technician, both enlisted and officer. He is an action officer at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (homeland defense integration and defense support of civil authorities). He holds a master of science degree in mechanical engineering with a specialization in explosives engineering from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America identifies China as the “pacing challenge” for the US military. This podcast examines the process by which China’s military capabilities are developed, the capabilities China’s military is seeking to acquire in the future, and the resulting implications for the US military. To date, all the extant studies have merely described the capabilities the People’s Liberation Army is currently acquiring. The monograph goes further by drawing on the Chinese military’s publications to identify and discuss the capabilities the People’s Liberation Army seeks to acquire in the future. The monograph finds China’s military is engaged in a comprehensive program to field a dominant array of military capabilities for ground, sea, air, space, and cyberspace warfare. Countering these capabilities will require the United States and its allies to engage in an equally comprehensive effort. The monograph’s findings will enable US military planners and policy practitioners to understand the long-term goals of China’s development of military capabilities and to anticipate and counter China’s realization of new capabilities so the United States can maintain its military advantage over the long term.Read the monograph: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/960/Keywords: China, PLA, People’s Liberation Army, cyber warfare, spaceEpisode Transcript: China’s Military CapabilitiesStephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government.Joining me today is Dr. Roger Cliff, a senior intelligence officer and former research professor of Indo-Pacific affairs in the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College. He’s the author of China’s Future Military Capabilities.It’s great to talk with you again, Roger. Thank you for making time to speak with me.Dr. Roger CliffI’m glad to have this opportunity.HostLet’s get right to it. Why did you write this monograph? Why now?CliffThis monograph was prompted by my observation that many of the US Army’s long-term planning documents had set the year 2035 as the target for the capabilities that they described the Army seeking to develop. And that struck me because the Chinese military has also identified 2035 as the target year for its modernization program. So, they have a three-step program, the first step of which I guess is now complete, which was to largely complete the process of mechanization by 2020 and then to have basically completed its overall modernization progress by 2035 and then to become a world-class military by mid-century. So, I was struck by the coincidence that both the (US) Army and the Chinese military had chosen 2035 as their target years.HostWhat do we know about China’s process for developing military capabilities?CliffWe actually know quite a bit about this process. It starts with the issuing of what are called the military strategic guidelines. These are a set of principles that the Chinese top leadership issues that describe the types of military conflicts the Chinese military needs to prepare for, who the most likely adversaries are, and what the nature of future military conflict is likely to be. They are not issued on a regular basis. They’re issued whenever the leadership feels like they need to be revised or reissued. The most recent revision occurred in 2019. Prior to that, it happened in 2014, 2004, and 1993. So, you can see there isn’t any specific pattern other than I t generally happens about once every 5–10 years. The rest of the process, however, is quite regularized, and it’s tied to the Chinese government’s overall 5-year plan cycle. So, every 5 years, each of the services and the Chinese military issues an overall service strategy, which looks out at the next 20 years and the types of capabilities and port structure the service is going to need over that period. And then, based on that strategy, 10-year plans and 5-year programs are developed. And then, finally, based on those, the specific budgets in terms of research and development, equipment acquisition, and so on are issued for each individual year.HostBased on your current research, can you give us an idea of what China’s future military might look like?CliffSo, the Chinese military in the future is going to look quite a bit like the US military. And for the US military of today, in particular, they are seeking to acquire many of the same capabilities that we have. Up until today, they have been largely focused on potential conflicts in their backyard, if you will, but they are developing more and more in the direction of being a global military power with long-term power projection assets like aircraft carriers, long-range bombers, aerial refueling aircraft, and those sorts of things. They really seem to aspire to be a military that is in many ways comparable and, of course, hopefully, from their perspective, one day, superior to the US military.HostHow can the United States and its allies, then, prepare for and counter the PLA of the future?CliffThe most important thing to do is recognize what the PLA’s long-term goals are. And by PLA, I mean the People’s Liberation Army, which is what the Chinese military calls itself. I think there’s a lot of focus from the US perspective on the current capabilities of the Chinese military or those capabilities likely to emerge in the next few years. The problem with that approach is for the US to develop capabilities takes much more than just a few years, and the same is true in the Chinese military. So, we need to look at where they’re going over the longer term and not be developing a military to counter the Chinese military of today because when we get to 2035, they will be quite a bit different than they are today. So that’s maybe the most basic principle. But, as I said, the US needs to start thinking about a world in which the Chinese military isn’t going to be just a regional power but a global power. And the US military is likely to encounter the Chinese military increasingly around the world. So this is likely to develop into a global contest for military superiority in which both of the nations are projecting power far abroad. Now, the US has been doing that for many years, but we’ve also become accustomed to being the only nation that’s doing that, especially since the end of the Cold War. And those days are coming to an end. We are going to see a Chinese military in the future, assuming everything goes according to plan, that is very much a worldwide rival to the US military.HostWhat else do we need to know or consider?CliffAn important thing to recognize is that a lot of where the Chinese military is going isn’t really a mystery. If you look into their own publications, they tell us what they are planning on doing. They don’t make nearly as many things public as the US military does, so you can’t go on the worldwide web and download all those planning documents that I talked about earlier, but if you look at textbooks, the white papers that the Chinese military publishes periodically, and so on, you can get a pretty good sense of what their intentions are. We need to take those documents seriously and start to prepare now based on what they’re telling us they intend to do in the future.HostDo you have any final thoughts you’d like to share before we go?CliffI just want to thank the War College for the opportunity to do this kind of research. This is the type of long-term, in-depth research that one cannot do at very many places. For me, it was tremendously satisfying to have this opportunity, but I think, also, it shows if we devote the time and resources to analyzing the publications of the Chinese military, it’s possible to learn quite a bit of value to the US military-zone planning processes.HostIf you’re interested in reading the monograph, you’ll find it at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/monographs, and it’s called China’s Future Mililitary Capabilities. Roger, it’s always a pleasure working with you. Thank you so much.CliffThank you. It’s great to be here.HostIf you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform. About the author: Roger Cliff is a senior intelligence officer and former research professor of Indo-Pacific affairs in the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College. His research focuses on China’s military strategy and capabilities and their implications for US strategy and policy. He previously worked for the Center for Naval Analyses, the Atlantic Council, the Project 2049 Institute, the RAND Corporation, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds a PhD in international relations from Princeton University; a master of arts degree in Chinese studies from the University of California, San Diego; and a bachelor of science degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College. He is fluent in spoken and written Mandarin Chinese

In this podcast, Zenel Garcia and Kevin Modlin draw on recent visits of Chinese officials to Russia to support their contention that Sino-Russian relations are a narrow partnership centered on accelerating the emergence of a multipolar order to reduce American hegemony and illustrate this point by tracing the discursive and empirical foundations of the relationship. Additionally, they highlight how the war has created challenges and opportunities for China’s other strategic interests.Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss3/4/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341254/-1/-1/0/COS-19-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT_GARCIA_MODLIN.PDFKeywords: China, Russia, Ukraine war, strategic partnership, multipolarityAbout the authors: Dr. Zenel Garcia is an associate professor of security studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College. His research focuses on the intersection of international relations theory, security, and geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia.Dr. Kevin D. Modlin is an instructor at Western Kentucky University, where his research interests focus on security studies and international political economy. He holds a PhD in international relations from Florida International University and a master’s degree in economics from Western Kentucky University. He also served as a senior legislative aide for retired Congressman Ron Lewis.

In this episode of Conversations on Strategy, Lucas Cox shares his thoughts on being an intern working on two collaborative studies for NATO.Read the collaborative study Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2) here.Read the collaborative study What Ukraine Taught NATO about Hybrid Warfare here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/956Episode Transcript: On Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield and Critical Infrastructure Security and ResiliencyStephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government.Today I’m talking with Lucas Cox, who at the time of this recording was an intern with the Strategic Studies Institute and a graduate of the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He assisted with two collaborative studies: What the Ukraine, Taught NATO About Hybrid Warfare and Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security Resiliency.Welcome, Lucas.Lucas CoxIt’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.HostTell us how you ended up working on not one, but two books for the Army War College.CoxSo, this is all a great opportunity from my dear professor and mentor Dr. Sarah Lohmann. She’s a University of Washington professor at the Jackson School, which is where I got my undergrad in international studies. And so, we do this great project called “the task force.” It’s sort of a capstone project. And it’s a great opportunity to work as a team and to get into the real sort of meat of policy issues and present our findings to actually someone on the ground, someone that’s actually in the field, which is something that you don’t really get at four years in the university, especially in Washington state where we’re away from the the policy world.And so, I had the privilege of being in her task force and being chosen as the chief liaison for our task force to deal with NATO Center of Excellence for Defense Against Terrorism (COE-DAT), as well as everyone here at SSI under the guidance of Dr. Carol Evans. That led to me leading the writing of the first chapter of this main book.I was able to present our findings on that chapter remotely at two conferences in Turkey at the COE-DAT at conferences over there and there’s another one coming up in October, which I’d love to attend as well. And so that led me to the great opportunity that Dr. Evans and Dr. Lohmann said, “Why don’t you come aboard and keep working on these projects and sort of see the project through for that book at least?”And then the energy security hybrid warfare book is another project of Dr. Lohmann’s that she’s been working on for the last couple of years, at least, with NATO Science and Technology Organization. Those are two simultaneous projects, and I volunteered to help in any way I could with those. It’s been really exciting.HostIt sounds exciting. What do you see as the most important take away from the chapter you wrote for the critical infrastructure book?CoxI had the great pleasure of wrapping up my internship here over in Upton Hall at the US Army War College, and I chose the issue of foreign acquisition of European infrastructure. And so, this is an issue that has to do . . . it’s continent wide . . . it has to do with the EU and with NATO and with the US, as well. Is that over the past few decades, a lot of critical infrastructure (and when we say that a lot of it is infrastructure that’s needed for military operations), it’s become privatized, which is great for competition and consumer choice and innovation and all that stuff. But it also means that sometimes you sacrifice resilience and redundancy for profit and price in a way that you wouldn’t if it were under government leadership with the security apparatus in place. And more than that, since . . . mostly since the early 2000s, a lot of that has come under foreign control.So, you think about Russian gas pipelines and being able to get a hold on an energy supply for Europe because a lot of not only the gas and the oil, but the infrastructure that delivers it, is at least partly owned by Russian companies. And so, there’s that as well as a lot of Chinese firms are coming into Europe and buying infrastructure and constructing ports. It’s part of that Belt and Road Initiative that is so in the news. It’s a huge decades-long project for the PRC (People’s Republic of China). A lot of those concerns come from the closeness or direct supervision of these firms from the Chinese government and fears that either through direct control or through political influence or predatory financing, especially in countries that are strapped for cash and need new infrastructure, that those pieces of critical infrastructure being under control of Russia and China pose real threats to their usability and their reliability for European defense. And a lot of these points are a port or a railway where if that goes down or that’s unable to be used, then a whole NATO or US or local military mission could collapse. We made a few policy recommendations for NATO to take a more assertive role as an advisor and as a supervisor working together with the EU because the EU is the one that has authority over laws and regulations in Europe but NATO also having an important role to play in, hopefully, guiding that process in a way that local governments can’t or don’t when they have their own local standards that may not be up to snuff.HostWhat was your experience like doing analyst work for the first time and on such an important project?CoxIt was daunting, but also really exciting. Probably my favorite thing, despite all of the crazy deadlines and the 300 pages of spellchecking that I just came here from doing was really the delegation of Dr. Lohman to me to be able to do some of the real important work. It took me a little bit by surprise, but definitely not surprised by her trust in me—and her guidance.So, a previous intern had constructed these maps in the hybrid warfare energy security book where we’re looking at vital points of European infrastructure for each of the 12 case studies that authors have written. And so there were, say, ports or energy grids or pipelines detailed on these maps, and we were assigned with giving them a threat assessment, are these under cyber risk or disinformation risk in a time period of six months, a year, two years. That was especially difficult being assigned that and, for example, here are all these energy grids and wind turbines and nuclear plants in Germany and Poland and Belgium. And my job was to learn as much as I could about them, learn as much about the overall security situation and come up with a threat assessment—whether these places were going to be attacked in six months by Russian cyber operations or disinformation. And so that was really important work to do for an intern. But I was very honored to have that role and, going forward, hopefully in my career will be sort of a great foundational experience.HostWhat’s next for you? What are your future plans?CoxI am finishing up here at the Army War College, going home to Seattle, and then I’m going to be traveling a bit starting in September, ultimately to end up in Brussels working as an intern, which this experience allowed me to do with the Science and Technology Organization, which is the outfit that is overseeing and partnering with us for that hybrid warfare energy security book.I am very excited for all the work that they do. I know it’s a small office in Brussels, sort of in the middle of the action at NATO headquarters, which is very exciting for me. It’s been a dream to work for that organization for a long time and then after that we’ll see.HostThis was a real treat. Thanks, LucasCoxIt’s so nice to talk to you.HostListeners, if you’d like to read the collaborative studies, visit press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.About the author: Lucas M. Cox, at the time of writing this publication, was an intern with the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College and a graduate of the University of Washington Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies with a degree in international security, foreign policy, peace, and diplomacy and a double minor in political science and Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian studies with a focus on the former Soviet economic and security spheres. He is also the 2023 University of Washington Triana Deines Rome Center Intern and will begin an internship at NATO’s Science and Technology Organization in April 2023.

The remarkable life of early-twentieth-century British adventurer Gertrude Bell has been well documented through her biographies and numerous travel books. Bell’s role as a grand strategist for the British government in the Middle East during World War I and the postwar period, however, is surprisingly understudied. Investigating Gertrude Bell as both a military strategist and a grand strategist offers important insights into how Great Britain devised its military strategy in the Middle East during World War I—particularly, Britain’s efforts to work through saboteurs and secret societies to undermine the Ottoman Empire during the war and the country’s attempts to stabilize the region after the war through the creation of the modern state of Iraq. As importantly, studying the life and work of Bell offers a glimpse into how this unique woman was able to become one of the principal architects of British strategy at this time and the extraordinary set of skills and perspectives she brought to these efforts—particularly, her ability to make and maintain relationships with key individuals. Bell’s life and work offer insights into the roles women have played and continue to play as influencers of grand strategy.Read the monograph here.Episode Transcript: On The Grand Strategy of Gertrude Bell: From the Arab Bureau to the Creation of IraqStephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Conversations on Strategy welcomes doctors Heather Gregg and Jim Scudieri. Gregg is a professor of irregular warfare at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security and the author of The Grand Strategy of Gertrude Bell: From the Arab Bureau to the Creation of Iraq.Scudieri is the senior research historian at the Strategic Studies Institute. He’s an associate professor and historian at the US Army War College. He analyzes historical insights for today’s strategic issues.Heather, Jim, thanks so much for being. Here I’m really excited to talk to you today.Dr. Heather S. GreggIt’s great to be here. Thank you so much.Dr. James D. ScudieriLikewise, thank you for taking the time to meet with us.HostWhat did the Middle East look like in the lead up to World War I? Who were the major players in the region?GreggUnlike the Western Front, the war was very different in the Middle East. And I would say this was a big game of influence. And you had major European powers. You had a declining Ottoman Empire. You had the rise of Arab nationalism. And all of this kind of came into a very interesting confluence of events during World War I.ScudieriAnd complicating that amongst major players are … the British don’t have a unified position, so if you look at stakeholders, you need to distinguish between the British leaders in London, those in Cairo, and those in India.GreggThat’s a huge point that there is a great power struggle between these three entities over who should be controlling the Middle East and why. And this becomes important for the story of Gertrude Bell.HostThe manuscript is divided into three periods—during World War I, the period of British military occupation of Mesopotamia, and Britain’s creation of the State of Iraq during the mandate era. Let’s discuss British military and grand strategy in each period. What was British military strategy in the Middle East during World War I?ScudieriSo, there’s still a lot of historical debate on exactly what the strategy was. Some would say there wasn’t much of a strategy, but part of that is strategic games changed as the war progressed, and the war was not going well for the Allies in the early years. And even through 1917 there was a concern that they might lose. So those strategic objectives in the Middle East change as they determine that they will not lose. And not only that, but if you win, what do you want the post-war world to look like?GreggSo yeah, I would add to this that there were some really interesting constraints on Britain and other actors. They didn’t have the manpower to put into the Middle East because it was all being dedicated to the Western Front—or most of it was. They weren’t entirely sure, I would echo Jim’s comments here, about what the strategy should be, just that they wanted to frustrate and try to undermine Ottoman authority in the region. They devised a strategy that worked with and through the Arab population to try to undermine Ottoman authority. So, this is what we would call an unconventional warfare strategy today. But that was supposed to be cheaper and require less manpower than actually deploying British troops, and this is particularly true after what happened at Gallipoli, (which was) for all intents and purposes, a pretty colossal failure.HostSo, this whole podcast is built on your monograph about Gertrude Bell. Let’s talk about her a little bit. How did Gertrude Bell contribute to the unconventional warfare strategy Britain created?GreggGertrude Bell is a fascinating individual. She was a British national. She was one of the first women to go to university at Oxford University. She got a First Class in modern history. She spoke languages. She traveled throughout the region. And she was hired first by the British Admiralty but then became part of a small group in Cairo called the Arab Bureau. And their job was to devise some sort of strategy to undermine Ottoman authority. And there she worked with someone we all know—T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia. And together, with a small team of between 7 to 15 people, they helped devise this unconventional warfare strategy of working by, with, and through local Arab leaders to try to undermine Ottoman authority.ScudieriShe’s a fascinating character because it reminds historians that you cannot predict the future. You cannot predict it with regard to strategy; you also can’t predict it, with regard to some individuals’ career paths.HostWhy did the initial plan not succeed? How did they adjust it?GreggSo, there was this effort to work through the Sharif of Mecca. This was a family that was in charge of the two holy sites in Mecca and Medina. The father’s name was Hussein, and he had two sons that were very active in trying to foment an uprising within the Ottoman military with Arab officers. Hussein promised that there were hundreds and hundreds of Arab officers that were part of secret societies that he could encourage to rise up against the Ottoman Empire. And it ended up that this just wasn’t true. He over promised what he could achieve. The strategy was largely unsuccessful, this initial strategy.ScudieriThis experience highlights how nothing is easy, and things are hard.HostSo true.ScudieriThe ability to have British support brings not only weapons and equipment, but it brings lots of money.GreggAnd with that, the potential for corruption, making promises to get money to get weapons. And Britain promised, in a series of correspondence between McMahon and Hussein that he would have his own independent Arab state after the war in exchange for this uprising, which, in about a year’s time, did not succeed.So, the second approach was T. E. Lawrence and Hussein’s son decided to engage in basically sabotage against lines of communication, particularly railway lines. And this is what the famous movie Lawrence of Arabia captures. And this was more successful in combination with other things that were dragging down the Ottoman Empire.ScudieriThe success of the strategy underlines how sometimes a better approach is counterintuitive because by focusing on the sabotage, they wanted to starve the Turkish forces in the area of resupply versus the more traditional trying to focus on annihilating the enemy army, which they did not have the power to do.GreggA really interesting observation. And a lesson that still holds today.HostThe British military successfully captured Baghdad in March of 1917, along with Basra, which it captured in 1914. It put two of the three Ottoman vilayets of Mesopotamia under its control. How did Belle help shape British military strategy to address this reality?GreggSo, I would like to echo back Jim’s point that, fascinatingly enough, it seemed that Britain had not devised a strategy for military occupation, even though this became their goal—to take Baghdad. And then they already had Basra. And so, Bell, together with someone named Percy Cox, had to very quickly devise a strategy of, essentially, occupation. And this also didn’t go necessarily well, and I think it forced them (until the mandate era) to really try to keep things in line rather than make things prosper. I don’t know, Jim, what your thoughts are on that.ScudieriSo, mine would be very similar. It’s interesting in some of the primary sources we can see how relatively rapidly the British put together an occupation plan and also tried to pool available talent. And they get by in the course of the war. But the challenges associated with long-term occupation and that transition to mandate, and then some missteps, really blow up after the war.HostWhat were some of the challenges and opportunities in this period?GreggI would say some of the really interesting challenges were also opportunities that might have been missed. So, there was some local leadership and local talent that I think could have been very useful had the British reached out and engaged some of that leadership. From my read of Gertrude Bell, she was rather suspicious of the Shia population and Shia leaders. So, there were some missed opportunities to try to engage the Shia population, which was a good chunk of the population that they controlled. And so, for me, both the big challenge and the missed opportunity was what to do with the local population (and) how to engage the local population and harness local leadership.ScudieriThere’s also some confusion associated with thinking in terms of Arab kingdoms because there’s no unitary Arab nationalism right now. The Kingdoms of British support in the post-war period are really Hashemite. And that doesn’t take account of a very conflicting sense of loyalty to various different tribes and ethnicities, and so on and so forth. And perhaps the biggest one is a difference between the Hashemites and the House of Saud.GreggJust to build on this, and this is an excellent point . . . this was a really interesting decision that Gertrude Bell and T. E. Lawrence actually made, which was to engage Faisal, who was the son of Hussein. And to promote him to be the first king of Iraq. And as Jim just mentioned, he was a Hashemite. He had never actually been to Iraq and was given this leadership position. The British gave him that, and this ended up being a really difficult thing . . . so bypassing local leadership and choosing to engage the leaders they knew as opposed to the leaders, the local people knew.ScudieriThe British also confronted a major problem in the post-war discussions, and that was as they now win the war, and they’re trying to come up with these friendly kingdoms, they have big issues with what are those borders going to look like with France. Their long wartime ally is now going to be a post-war if not adversary, there’s some major post-war disagreements, and you can see that by looking at the documents that talk about (1) The Mosul vilayet, which had unclear borders. At first it wasn’t even clear if that area would be part of Iraq, and if so, where the border would end. And likewise with the borders with Palestine.GreggThis is a really excellent point because then you had the birth of the Republic of Turkey and Atatürk, who also made claim to Mosul. So, you add a really interesting scramble over borders. Over territory. Overlapping claims and rights to it. This was a huge mess that took, in many cases, decades to sort out. Some would argue some of this is still being sorted out.ScudieriA good example of what kind of a wicked problem all of this became was most folks will talk about the Treaty of Versailles, but it took five treaties to end the First World War and it took two with Turkey because Turkey refused to sign the first one.GreggI think this is a fascinating story, too, that you had the collapse of four empires in World War One, right? The Ottoman Empire was just one that collapsed. You had the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian, the Hapsburg, and the Prussian empires all collapsed as a result of World War I. And Europe was left trying to sort out what to do with all these lands and their colonies. And it was a huge challenge.ScudieriAnd some of the Allied discussions included Russia, and Russia is now off the table because of the Bolshevik revolution.HostLet’s talk about the third period from the monograph. The war ends in 1918 and the 1919 Paris Conference and Versailles Accords created the mandate system, which required European powers to transition most former colonies and territories of the Ottoman Empire into self-ruled states. How did Gertrude Bell help shape Britain’s vision for transitioning Mesopotamia into the state of Iraq?ScudieriI would suggest that using the term vision might be a bit premature given how quickly events change from trying not to lose the war to figuring out how to win the war and then trying to sort out what the post-war world would look like. But Gertrude Bell is an especially fascinating individual case study because she immersed herself in the culture, in the local conditions, and tried to translate that into the strategic vision for Iraq, which was a very unclear path, in large measure, because of the disagreements between the French and the British, and what that post-war world would look like in the region.GreggI think for me, the thing that was so puzzling about what Gertrude did in this period was, I believe she cared deeply about the people and the region. And you know, she ends up dying in Iraq. She’s buried there to this day. And I believe she cared about the people in the region. However, some of the decisions she made in this period just seem very counterintuitive to me. And the biggest one was creating a Kingdom and putting a foreign individual on the throne as the king. And this was against many Shia leaders wishes. There was an individual named Sayyid Talib (al Naqib). He was deported to Ceylon, which is Sri Lanka today. They got rid of him because he didn’t agree with this decision, and I think, at the end of the day, Gertrude Bell had to weigh, on the one hand, what it meant to be a British national and serve British interests, and, on the other, what was in Iraq’s interest. And I think being a British national was what won in the end.ScudieriAnd for us to understand that I think we should avoid a clear black-and-white dichotomy because it was a lot more complicated than that. And I would return to the post-war competition between Britain and France because that Arab Kingdom was supposed to be in Syria. But the French dug their heels in.GreggThey actually were able to create a kingdom, but it lasted less than a year in Damascus. And then Faisal was deposed by the French and then the British. And it’s, I think, this is a big question of debate, but the British then embraced him to be the king of Iraq.HostWhat were the priorities? What was at stake.GreggSo there’s a big debate on this, too, a big, hot debate on this, that I’ve learned. In the primary source documents, I identified two or three big things at stake. The first is military bases. Britain wanted a seaport, but also wanted air bases. The British Air Force was created in 1918. The first Air Force. They needed a land route in which to get from the Middle East to India, and the bases in Iraq seemed to matter a lot. This came up a lot in discussions. The second thing I would add, and this is the controversial thing, is that I believe oil was a big concern. Britain converted its naval fleet from coal to oil before World War I, and they were coal rich but had no oil. So, the pursuit of oil and securing oil mattered. Everyone was fighting over Mosul because they suspected there was oil. There and that proved to be true. But oil became a major concern. There’s a third argument, which is that markets mattered and being able to have yet more people that could be markets for the British Empire seem to matter. Last, but not least, and I think this is the one piece, hopefully, maybe Jim and I will agree on, is that Britain was an empire and it managed to survive World War I, and it wanted influence in that region. A lot was at stake for Britain, just as an empire, and its ability to wield influence.ScudieriHeather’s made some interesting points there, because those RAF bases are part of having a system that goes hand-in-hand with friendly regimes because the mandate system aren’t going to become long-term colonies. They did understand that at the time. Oil is another interesting point about how priorities change. In 1914, oil wasn’t such a big deal, but the British already did have interest with the Anglo Persian oil company. But war sometimes accelerates change, and the First World War accelerated the importance of oil because the prewar British conversion of the Royal Navy to oil had barely begun . . . about 100 ships, none of the battleships in 1914, are fired on oil in the new class that will come in in 1915 and later will be the first ones that are oil-fired. But the explosion and the demands of oil because of not, just the Royal Navy conversion, but the motorization from horse transport, means oil will have a far more central role in the post war world than it did in the prewar. And even during the war.HostSo let’s Fast forward a little bit. How did it unfold?GreggWell, it didn’t go great. I think it’s fair to say, and, I think for me, this was a very humbling story about you can have good intentions, you can have experts, but this is extremely difficult to do. And obviously, as an American, in the back of my mind is always what happened between 2003 and 2011 and beyond and our efforts to try to stabilize Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. But you end up having a major uprising in Iraq that was actually put down by the persisting presence of the Royal Air Force. You have challenges to Faisal’s leadership. You end up, by 1958, the entire royal family is murdered, and Iraq becomes a Republic. You have lingering political instability and ethnic tensions that I think were not a done deal but got exacerbated. By a lot of the decisions made during this period.ScudieriAll of this turmoil is on top of the turmoil going on in the rest of the world. Most people don’t realize how much fighting around the world continued after 1918. There’s still a lot of instability and unreconciled issues around the world. The US has gone largely isolationist. The French, who though determined that they would stay in Syria, if not Lebanon, are really focused on European security because they do not want to allow Germany to rise again. So that’s your primary concern—just trying to contemplate the sheer losses of the war and what came from it. And I’m not sure to what extent they could have forecast in that region, how Arab would be fighting Arab, such as between the Saudis and the kingdoms of Transjordan and/or Iraq.HostWhat are the takeaways? What can we learn from Bell and the British military and grand strategy during this period?GreggI think there’s a lot of really, really valuable lessons here. Some of the positive things . . . I go back to the Arab Bureau; I appreciate that the British military was not afraid to bring in civilians and get a civilian voice. They built a really agile, small, and diverse team. They would bring experts in for certain questions and then send them home and bring other experts in. I think there’s a really interesting story there about team building and problem solving. I think that there are a lot of other very humbling lessons to learn. For me, an eerie similarity to, perhaps what the United States did, was not including the population enough in the stabilization process and in the postwar peace, I think that really undermined British efforts. And needing to work by with them through the population, not just during the war but after is deeply important.ScudieriI would echo Heather’s comments as well as the fact that Gertrude Bell is a fascinating case study in talent management. She had no specialization or training in terms of Mesopotamia, per se. She was brought in as an outsider based on some of her educational background that she might be able to help think through the problem set, and then she winds up becoming a subject matter expert on Iraq.GreggAlthough I would add a little caveat to that, which is that she had traveled through the Middle East in 1911-12 time frame, and she had mapped the human terrain. This is something that we also tried to do in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And so, she had gained attention because she had made this trip. That doesn’t make her an expert, I agree. But she had some on-the-ground knowledge of the population’s tribal dynamics that no one else seemed to have. And then that was a great starting point from which then she built her expertise.ScudieriSo that’s an interesting learning point on how, in the midst of war, you can still pull talent management to try to get the biggest bang for the buck and save some effort.GreggThat’s a great point. I love that.HostAbsolutely. I’m just going to plug the monograph right here. You can download it at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs. Thank you both so much. What a treat. I’m sorry we had so little time to cover such an expansive and interesting topic.GreggThank you so much for this opportunity. It was, it’s great to be with you both. Thank you, Jim for a wonderful conversation.ScudieriWell, Many thanks for the ability to share this time together.HostIf you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on. Any major podcast platform.About the authors:Gregg is a professor of irregular warfare at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security and the author of The Grand Strategy of Gertrude Bell: From the Arab Bureau to the Creation of Iraq. Gregg earned a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in Islam from Harvard Divinity School, and a bachelor’s degree (with honors) in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is the author of Religious Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2020), “Religiously Motivated Violence” (Oxford University Press, 2018), Building the Nation: Missed Opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), and The Path to Salvation: Religious Violence from the Crusades to Jihad (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) and coeditor of The Three Circles of War: Understanding the Dynamics of Modern War in Iraq (Potomac Books, 2010).Scudieri is the senior research historian at the Strategic Studies Institute. He’s an associate professor and historian at the US Army War College. He analyzes historical insights for today’s strategic issues. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Saint Peter’s College, now University (1978); a Master of Arts degree in History from Hunter College, City University of New York (1980); a Master of Military Art and Science degree from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (1995); and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in History from the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York (1993).

Every day, malicious actors target emerging technologies and medical resilience or seek to wreak havoc in the wake of disasters brought on by climate change, energy insecurity, and supply-chain disruptions. Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield is a handbook on how to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in an era of emerging threats. The counterterrorism research produced for this volume is in alignment with NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept, which details how NATO Allies can transform and maintain their advantage despite new threats for the next two decades. The topics are rooted in NATO’s Seven Baseline requirements, which set the standard for enhancing resilience in every aspect of critical infrastructure and civil society. As terrorists hone their skills to operate lethal drones, use biometric data to target innocents, and take advantage of the chaos left by pandemics and natural disasters for nefarious purposes, NATO forces must be prepared to respond and prevent terrorist events before they happen. Big-data analytics provides potential for NATO states to receive early warning to prevent pandemics, cyberattacks, and kinetic attacks. NATO is perfecting drone operations through interoperability exercises, and space is being exploited by adversaries. Hypersonic weapons are actively being used on the battlefield, and satellites have been targeted to take down wind farms and control navigation. This handbook is a guide for the future, providing actionable information and recommendations to keep our democracies safe today and in the years to come. Click here to read the book.Click here to watch the webinar. Episode Transcript: “Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2) Stephanie Crider (Host) You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m here with Frank Kuzminski, today, US Army officer and strategist, and author of “NATO Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency. Thanks for making time for this today, Frank. Frank Kuzminski Thank you for having me. Host Space is a relatively new operational domain. Since 2019, you note in your chapter. Through the lens of those core missions of deterrence and defense, what do our listeners need to know about space? Kuzminski Space is relatively new in terms of the overall history of the alliance. And that really stems from the NATO ministerial meeting in December 2019, where they declared space as an operational domain. And then, more importantly, in June 2021, NATO issued a communique after the NATO summit that the mutual defense provisions of Article 5, which treats an attack on one as an attack against all, would apply to the space domain as well. And they specifically mentioned that any attack to, from, or within space could be as harmful as a conventional attack, and therefore warrant an Article 5 response. And that’s important because space really touches nearly every aspect of daily life in modern society, (including) commercial activities, economic activity, information, communications, and especially national security and defense. And so today, more than ever, NATO as an alliance, depends more than ever on space-critical infrastructure for its core missions of deterrence and defense. Host Let’s talk a little bit more about space critical infrastructure. Can you give us an overview? Kuzminski So, space critical infrastructure comprises the physical systems, the orbital platforms, and the data transmission networks and the people that work across the four segments of a space system to provide the space domain capabilities that we rely on. There is this space segment, which consists of the satellites, spacecraft, and technical payloads that occupy the different orbits. There’s a user segment, which refers to any user or person or system that relies on satellite information or satellite signals to function. This includes military forces as well as ordinary people—businesses, organizations, countries, people who use smartphones, etc., or the Internet. There’s the ground segment, which includes the physical elements of space infrastructure on Earth, everything from launch facilities to Mission Control centers, to tracking stations around the world. And then finally, there’s the link segment. And this is the data transmission networks that connect the other segments together and through which we derive the systems. And so the space domain operations and space-based capabilities require all four segments of space critical infrastructure to provide the core functions and capabilities that the alliance and that the world relies on. Host You talked about in your article, these five core capabilities. Let’s walk through them. Let’s start with secure communication. Kuzminski Satellite communications, or SATCOM for short, is vital for the effective command and control of military forces today across large areas, regardless of terrain. It really helps overcome the line-of-sight problem, but also facilitates the use of remote weapon systems such as drones. It’s also important to note that secure communications is where the space and cyber domains intersect because the data transmissions on the link segment that we talked about that provide this space capability by transmitting data utilize the communications protocols that have been derived from the cyber domain and the Internet. And so the vulnerabilities that exist in the cyber domain are also inherent to the space domain for that reason. Host Positioning, navigation, timing, and velocity. What do we need to know? Kuzminski So simply speaking, this is GPS. We know it as plugging an address into our phone and letting it direct us to our destination. But for military forces who rely on PNT for short for targeting and precision strike, advanced conventional munitions rely on GPS to precisely strike a target. Military forces also rely on time reference from GPS satellites for encryption purposes. It’s also important to note that GPS (Global Positioning System) is an American military system that the Department of Defense provides for everyone’s use. There are other systems out there that other countries operate, for example, the European Union has a global navigation satellite system called Galileo. The Russians use a system called GLONASS, and the Chinese recently have deployed a system called Baidu, and they all generally provide similar functions, but it’s important to note who kind of manages these constellations. Host The next step is integrated tactical warning and threat assessment. Kuzminski Space systems are important for detecting missile launches and, therefore, providing the earliest possible warning of a missile attack. We’re talking about strategic nuclear attack, intercontinental ballistic missiles—the kind of broad early warning networks that were common during the Cold War but are still very important today to deterrence and defense today. These space systems are a really integral part of that and help provide ballistic trajectories and provide the decision space for senior leaders. Host How does environmental monitoring fit into the picture? Kuzminski This is commonly known as weather forecasting, but space systems enabled meteorological operations and the kind of weather forecasting that’s important because weather, of course, can affect military operations on land, sea, and in the air. Accurate environmental forecasting also can help reveal longer-term climate trends that might affect agriculture or food supplies in different parts of the world, which may have security implications for NATO and the alliance. Host Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Kuzminski ISR for short. Space-based ISR, we think about satellite imagery. So again there are commercially available options such as Google Earth, but this goes back to the earliest days of the space age when the United States and the Soviet Union deployed a variety of satellite intelligence platforms and photo reconnaissance platforms to not only provide detailed mission planning and help forces understand the effects of terrain on land-based operations but also to provide indications and warnings of potentially threatening behavior. I mean, one of the reasons the alliance in the United States were able to anticipate Russian aggression in Ukraine last year was because they were able to monitor force movements through the use of space-based ISR. Host What are some examples of threats and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed? Kuzminski Space systems are especially vulnerable to both kinetic and non-kinetic threats. So in the chapter we talk about how terrorists and hackers might possess some of these capabilities that could affect one or more of the space segments. But the overall impacts to a terrorist attack on space critical infrastructure would be pretty low. The real threat here is state actors, specifically, the great powers, who both possess the kinetic and non-kinetic destructive capabilities and the capacity that could seriously damage space critical infrastructure. In terms of non-kinetic threats, we talked about the intersection of the space and cyber domains. And so many of the vulnerabilities, cyber vulnerabilities, that an adversary could exploit through hacking or other malicious software or malware could also be deployed against this space system and disrupt a particular satellite capability. In terms of the kinetic capabilities, the most obvious ones are direct-assent anti-satellite weapons or ASATS. And this is, effectively, a missile that’s launched from the Earth that would be targeting a satellite in orbit, destroy that satellite and then render a large debris field that could pose risks to other space systems. As of today, there are only four countries that have demonstrated an actual ASAT capability. That’s the United States, China, India, and Russia. There are also orbital intercept and satellite capture technologies out there through what we call rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO for short. The nature of orbital mechanics makes it that satellite trajectories are predictable, and, therefore, targetable. There is also the technology either exists or might soon exist for some kind of directed energy or laser weapons on orbital platforms. Now, we haven’t seen evidence of an active system as of yet, but this goes back to the 1980s in the Strategic Defense Initiative that envisioned the constellation of orbital lasers to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. So, it’s not a new idea, it’s just something that people are talking about. I’d also like to mention the problem of orbital debris, or space junk. This is more of a space safety issue than a space security issue, but it’s very real and it is a pernicious problem that affects everybody indiscriminately. There are over 30,000 pieces of space junk ranging from the size of a softball to larger than a school bus. Basically, anything that gets thrown up into orbit kind of stays there and decays over years—decays in orbit. The reality is that there just hasn’t been enough of a problem to really warrant any kind of multilateral action. And so ,it’s one of those problems that we’ll just wait and see what happens. Host I’m glad you mentioned Ukraine a little bit earlier because you used Russia as a case study in your paper, and I would love to hear more about that. Kuzminski We already talked about our state actors are the biggest threat, and Russia really has been the most active and threatening actor in this space domain in recent years. For the current war in Ukraine, there was a very specific example. In February of last year leading up to the attack, Russian hackers disrupted the commercial ViaSat satellite communications network, which is a commercial satellite communications provider that the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian government was contracting for their communication purposes. It was part of a coordinated effort to disrupt Ukrainian command and control and defensive operations leading up to the Russian attack. There are two other examples that are worth mentioning. In November of 2021, Russia conducted an ASAT test that we talked about, and it targeted one of its derelict satellites in orbit. But this event created a substantial debris field that threatened the International Space Station to the point where NASA actually had to wake up the astronauts and tell them to get into their emergency escape capsules in the event that there was some sort of catastrophic collision. Thankfully nothing happened, but this reveals the kind of potentially nefarious effects of an ASAT—even if it’s not targeted against an opponent system. And then lastly, I just wanted to mention that in 2018 the French government accused Russia of spying on one of their military communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is the farthest out orbit. The French space agency had observed what they called a Russian “inspector satellite” that had maneuvered and changed its orbits to within a few 100 meters to drops of communications. Geosynchronous orbit is a stationary orbit. So the fact that these satellites had maneuvered into place was really indicative of some sort of potentially hostile behavior. And this is an example of these rendezvous and proximity operations that we spoke about earlier. Host Lots of scenarios here, lots of threats, potential vulnerabilities. Kuzminski We talked about how states such as Russia and China remain the greatest threat to space critical infrastructure. Increasing resilience across all the space segments is probably the best way to enhance deterrence by denial. And what I mean by that is ensuring that the specific capabilities that we discussed have enough redundancy in systems, whether in orbit or on the ground through different pathways and through different partners, not just American systems. But partnering with our allies and also through commercial operators is the best way to ensure that these critical functions will remain online in the event of an attack. There’s also an opportunity for some degree of international partnership or multilateral initiative to help prevent the rampant weaponization of space or some sort of new arms race. This was a problem in the 80s because the reality is that the only space treaty that’s been ratified in the international community is the Outer Space Treaty, which was signed in 1967. And although that prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons in space and on the moon, it hasn’t really been updated to reflect some of the more current threats that we talked about. There have been a few ongoing efforts to limit weapons proliferation in space under the auspices of the United Nations, but they’ve been problematic and generally weak. True progress will really require commitment and leadership by the great powers, not only the US and its European partners, but also Russia and China. And the current situation right now doesn’t look like there’s any prospect for that. Host Give us your final thoughts before we go. Kuzminski I think it’s important to remember that space critical infrastructure, like all critical infrastructure, is something that we all tend to take for granted. We don’t really think about it. It’s just kind of there and we just use it. But we already talked about how vulnerable it is. And it’s important to remember that it wouldn’t take a whole lot for an adversary or some sort of malicious actor to disrupt the capabilities that we rely on on a daily basis. This isn’t specifically for military forces, but also just for everyday people and large segments of modern society. I think it’s worth thinking about how someone might react if their smart board stops working or the credit card stops working or the Internet stops working or the planes stop flying, not only for individuals but also for states. But I don’t want to be super pessimistic. I do think that the future is exciting and offers a lot of potential for the benefit of mankind because the threshold for access to space and space-based capabilities is being lowered every day, especially through the growth of commercial operators and service providers. And I really think that the more access to these capabilities that exist and the more people that have access to these capabilities, it just helps level the playing field, not only in the security dimension, but also in economic and societal and commercial spheres. And I think that translates to better economic opportunities, especially for the developing world. And generally, a higher quality of life for most people. And I think that’s a good thing. I think there’s definitely a lot of things to be optimistic about when it. Comes to space this. Host This a very full chapter about critical infrastructure, security and resiliency. Listeners, if you’re interested, you can download it at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/957. Thanks for sharing your insights with us today, Frank. Kuzminski Thank you for having me. Host If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform. About the author: Frank J. Kuzminski is a US Army officer and strategist. A native of Poland, he emigrated to the United States in 1990. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2004 with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and was commissioned as an Infantry officer. After serving in multiple operational assignments worldwide, Kuzminski was assigned to the Army Staff at the Pentagon, and he later served as a strategic plans officer with I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He is currently a doctoral candidate in international studies at the University of Washington. He holds a master of public administration degree from Harvard University. He is married with two children and speaks Polish and French.

Wuraola Oyewusi Medical resilience is a key critical infrastructure in a nation’s preparedness against vulnerabilities. Pandemics such as COVID-19 are potent disruptors of this infrastructure. Health systems that are considered low-resourced have adapted and deployed seemingly simple but effective methods to survive such disruptions.Read the collaborative study here.Episode Transcript: Medical Resilience in PandemicsStephanie Crider (Host)The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy.Today, I’m talking with Wuraola Oyewusi, author of “Medical Resilience and Pandemics,” in Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure and Resiliency Handbook Two (Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency Handbook 2). Welcome to Conversations on Strategy. I’m really glad you’re here.Wuraola Oyewusi Thank you, Stephanie. I’m glad I’m here too.Host Your chapter explores medical resilience as a component of critical infrastructure as well as using low-resourced health systems to build resilience. Will you please briefly expand on that?Oyewusi The work on this chapter focuses on a low-resourced health system (that) has managed to build a resilience against a disruption—this time around, a pandemic—uh, specifically, (coronavirus disease 2019 or) COVID-19. We explored Nigeria as a system that . . . it’s definitely not high resourced. The health-delivery system is not high resourced. And we explored some of the things that were done during the COVID-19 pandemic.Host Let’s talk about that in a little bit more detail. Like you said, your case study focused on Nigeria and COVID-19. How did Nigeria handle COVID-19?Oyewusi So, I’m going to give a bit of context.The first COVID-19 case—recorded one, I think we should emphasize that—was in February . . . February 27, 2020. Right when the whole world was finding out, that was when we found out about that in Nigeria, too.Another clear context that we should have as we go into our discussion is that Nigeria’s epidemic response is carried out in the context of a fragile and underresourced, existent health-delivery system. That means that, even before the pandemic, the system was overstretched, there was a lot of people. There were challenging fault lines already, and then we now had the disruption like COVID-19.So to help you understand this use case, one of the indexes that was used to gauge a country’s preparedness during the pandemic was the number of (intensive-care unit or) ICU beds to the population. Germany had about 29 beds to 100,000 people. The US had about 34 to 35 ICU beds to 100,000 people. Turkey had 48 beds to 100,000 people. But in Nigeria, we had about 0.07 beds to 100,000 people.So, I think that would lay down a context for why we are discussing this and how a disruption to critical infrastructure, like a pandemic, was done in Nigeria.Host What are some key lessons learned from Nigeria on managing pandemics?Oyewusi I’m going to discuss that on the three key items. The first one: There was leveraged experience and infrastructure. The second one: There was civilians, data analysis, and public data sharing. And the third one, which is probably one of the most interesting, are the nonpharmacological interventions. We have established that the system is overstressed. And, given the proportion of ICU to 100,000 people, the country knows; the people know. We had a vague idea of what we were in for, and, you know, it is one of the most interesting things that we did.One of the experiences that help us as a country—despite this fragile health system, this low-resourced health system—was we have some experience managing pandemics (for example, the Ebola of 2014 [Ebola outbreak of 2014–16]). So, the preparedness wasn’t just from the side of the health system professionals. The country had an idea. We have experienced with Lassa fever. We have experienced with cholera. So, one of the key things that happened there: There was a coordinated national effort by the national center for disease control, the Federal Ministry of Health, and the state ministry of health.And then, for example, for data collection and analysis, there was a software that was used during Ebola called SORMAS—SORMAS is Surveillance Outbreak Response Management (and Analysis System). A very interconnected system that was used to collect data from smaller places to bigger places and tracked preparedness for things like, you know, we had anticipated that there would probably be no light. There is usually a lot of outages. There is a lot of issues like that. But this system had been tested during Ebola, so it was like the country spun it up again now that we have another pandemic.The third one is nonpharmacological intervention. For example, there were things like hand washing and face mask. Even though I know it’s global, people had hand sanitizers. There was lockdown. There was restrictive public gathering. There was social culture communication. You know, for example, more than 500 languages are spoken. That means that in villages and religious houses, people were talking about COVID-19, “We think we should wear your mask,” through those channels.In public places, you could wash your hands outside. That means if you are going to the bank—it might not be the prettiest setup—but every public place, public parks, there was “You need for you to wash your hands.” And then, like I said, people remembered from Ebola. That means that there was general knowledge about it and (people knew) to prepare hand sanitizers. “We think there is something dangerous out there. We have heard about it and, you know, just like the other times, we should wash our hands often. We should wear our mask.” You know, there were makeshift masks because a mask (availability) hasn’t happened yet, and, you know, some were made from fabric. Some of them were not the prettiest, but people were wearing their mask in many places. The bulk would put a makeshift bucket. You know, in some public places, it would just be a makeshift bucket with a tap, some soap to wash our hands. But this scaled across the country because they were easy to deploy.And then, information through radio. People were hearing about COVID-19. I remember, in the textbook, I put some examples of the flyers that went around that “This is dangerous.” “We are not always confident that you have the support that you need in the health system, but if you can try those things, if you can stay at home more . . .”Of course, there was the economic downside of people staying at home, but if you don’t have to be out . . . Some states were running, “We’re not closing finally, but can you be home by six?” “Clubbing.” “No parties.” Uh . . . “No big church gatherings.” “No big religious gatherings.” “Can you just pray at home?”This may be for people who could read, but then there was the daily updates by the disease control center. You know, you would know the number of people that died, the number of people that were diagnosed. “What should you do if someone is infected?” “If you suspect there is . . .” It was in public places. “Someone has been coughing, sneezing . . .” “We think this person may have this . . .” The nearest health center.So those are some of the nonpharmacological solutions that kind of worked well for us.Host Do you have any final thoughts that you want to share about this before we go?Oyewusi I have experienced working in a low-resourced health system. You know, I have gone on to other things. But I have always been a believer of, uh, in every pandemic—in every disruption, especially—learning from the experience of where we already know that this is low. It’s not bad because there was pandemic; that was all happened . . . Also, there are usually the low-hanging fruits; countries should embrace them. There is also NATO. NATO should embrace them. Tell people on the radio. Help everybody in their language.I understand that—even in countries where people speak the same language—there are regional nuisances. You know, for example, in Nigeria, local leaders were telling their communities about these. I’m not saying that, “Oh, everyone did that,” but it was common . . . So it’s common knowledge that we should do that.In pandemics, everyone is as confused. It’s not like everyone knows what to do. But for every disruption, one of the key learnings from a low-resourced system like that is that there are the low-hanging fruits, and they should be embraced.Host Thank you for being here today and sharing your ideas and your insights.Oyewusi Nice to be here.Host Listeners, find out more about managing pandemics at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/957. Read about it in chapter six.If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.About the author: Wuraola Oyewusi is a Nigerian pharmacist and data scientist with expertise in clinical health care and the application of data-science methods. Her research spans a range of use cases from natural language processing (NLP) to health care and data curation. She lives in the United Kingdom and is the recipient of the Global Talent Visa in AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science.

Every day, malicious actors target emerging technologies and medical resilience or seek to wreak havoc in the wake of disasters brought on by climate change, energy insecurity, and supply-chain disruptions. Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield is a handbook on how to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in an era of emerging threats. The counterterrorism research produced for this volume is in alignment with NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept, which details how NATO Allies can transform and maintain their advantage despite new threats for the next two decades. The topics are rooted in NATO’s Seven Baseline requirements, which set the standard for enhancing resilience in every aspect of critical infrastructure and civil society.As terrorists hone their skills to operate lethal drones, use biometric data to target innocents, and take advantage of the chaos left by pandemics and natural disasters for nefarious purposes, NATO forces must be prepared to respond and prevent terrorist events before they happen. Big-data analytics provides potential for NATO states to receive early warning to prevent pandemics, cyberattacks, and kinetic attacks. NATO is perfecting drone operations through interoperability exercises, and space is being exploited by adversaries. Hypersonic weapons are actively being used on the battlefield, and satellites have been targeted to take down wind farms and control navigation. This handbook is a guide for the future, providing actionable information and recommendations to keep our democracies safe today and in the years to come.Read the Book: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/957/Watch the Webinar: https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/2022/european-security/nato-transatlantic-relations/countering-terrorism-on-tomorrows-battlefield/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341253/-1/-1/0/COS-14-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-LOHMANN-COUNTERING-TERRORISM.PDFKeywords: counterterrorism, NATO, critical infrastructure, hypersonics, drones

For over a quarter century the United States and the European Union have been diligently planning and implementing policies and procedures to protect the critical infrastructure sectors that are vital to the prosperity and security the majority of their citizens enjoy. Given the evolving nature of threats against critical infrastructure, recent US and EU efforts have focused on enhancing collective critical infrastructure security and resilience (CISR) posture. The core objective of these CISR initiatives is to strengthen their ability to deter, prevent, reduce the consequences of, respond to, and recover from a broad array of vulnerabilities, hazards, and threats to critical infrastructure. Any such disruptions to or destruction of these critical infrastructure systems and assets can have damaging impacts on individual nations, the transatlantic economy and security environment, and the ability of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to fulfill its core tasks.This podcast is based on Chapter 10 in Enabling NATO’s Collective Defense: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 1). The goal of this chapter ultimately is to help Allies and partners better understand these two frameworks and apply their key principles and tenets to enhance the CISR posture in their respective countries.Click here to read the book.Click here to watch the webinar.Episode Transcript: “Comparing Policy Frameworks: CISR in the United States and the European Union”Stephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Conversations on Strategy welcomes Dr. Alessandro Lazari, coauthor of “Comparing Policy Frameworks: CISR in the United States and the European Union.”Lazari’s been working as a specialist in critical infrastructure protection, resilience, and cybersecurity since 2004. He is currently a senior key account manager at 24 AG (F24 AG), focused on incident and crisis management in Europe.Alessandro, welcome to Conversations on Strategy. I’m glad you’re here.Alessandro LazariThank you very much indeed for inviting me over. It’s a pleasure to be here.HostYou recently contributed to the book Enabling NATO’s Collective Defense: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency. The chapter you worked on compares policy frameworks of critical infrastructure security and resiliency in the US and the EU. The US (critical infrastructure security and resilience or) CISR framework: What do we need to know?LazariI mean, thanks for asking about this. This has been part of my PhD studies—to go on deep between the lines about everything that the US has built in the past decades—and I have to say that this is really considerable. If you think that the (Presidential Decision Directive 63 or) PDD-63, just to give an example . . . presidential directive signed by (Bill) Clinton in May ’98 still stands as one of the brightest examples of CISR policies for a while—if you look at it nowadays, after so many years, you see how very well defined is the problem, how very well defined the mechanism to tackle it and to, you know, deal with it and to improve the overall posture of US against the threat of, you know, any potential attack to national critical infrastructure.I mean, there is many examples in . . . in the US policies of things that really worked. I can tell that they constitute a milestone to which many, many countries are looking at because of the comprehensiveness. Because I can tell also that due to its particular system, (the) US has experienced a wide range of events that span across all the potential threats of critical infrastructure in the 50 states and as a federal system, so they’ve really wanted to organize something that is really very, very big.Last but not least, the US has also considerable experience in maintaining the infrastructure. One of the greatest examples is the renovation that the US government did in the old railroad . . . you know, riverways in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s is one . . . also a considerable milestone of the experience in the US. So, it’s very much worth looking at it because there is many countries that are now in the condition of tackling those challenges nowadays. So really, throughout the entire lifespan, you know, a lot of things that are really, you know, in use nowadays that really can provide example to the way the countries should deal with CISR nowadays.HostLet’s go into a little bit more detail. What currently guides the US CISR policy?LazariOne of the latest milestones in . . . in the US CISR policy is (Presidential Policy Directive 21 or) PPD-21, signed by Barack Obama in 2013. I mean, that can be considered one of the examples of the maturity of the policy in the US. You know, in announcing all the functional relationships among the very stakeholders involved in the life cycle of critical infrastructure security and resilience, there’s so many from both public and private side. From the public side, you have (the Department of Homeland Security or) DHS and all the departments that are involved, all the agencies, and from the other side, all the operators and the critical nodes within the country and so on and so forth. So, there is a considerable amount of stakeholders that need to talk to each other to be really aligned to do better. And here, we come to the second pillar that is information sharing.Once you have identified all the functional relationship nodes, you absolutely need to cut short the distance between them. So they need to become closer and closer because they need to talk to each other, and in a country like (the) US, it’s very difficult because it’s a very big country with a big number of stakeholders involved. So for sure, this is also a challenge. And last but not least, after you have enabled, you know, the recognition of the functional relationship and the improvement of the information sharing, you then need to enable one very important pillar that is always mentioned in PPD-21: that is analysis of incident threats and emerging risk. Because you do not only deal with today, you also deal with the future. So you need to understand with . . . how, you know, uh, risks are evolving, so the emerging one . . . and you need to analyze all the incidents and threats constantly because the threats evolve as much as the society because, you know, we have new enemies, new ways to attack the systems, and history evolves; we all know that. So once you put together really this critical mass of activities and knowledge, you can say you are really structuring well all your policy on . . . on CISR.HostTell me about the EU framework: European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection.LazariThe EU, it’s based on the membership of the member states that are part of the EU. There were 28, and, after the Brexit, now it’s 27. You know, every time, the negotiation of each steps of the policy is something that really seeks for the involvement of them all on proposal from the European Commission that is normally proposing new pieces of policy and regulation in this field. But this entails every time that member states are involved because they have a stake, they take a joint decision. But the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection is really the very first milestone. As much as it is for PDD-63 in the case of US, it is really the very first piece of joint policy on critical infrastructure protection on the European side.And this really comes immediately after the September 11 attacks to, you know, London and Madrid in 2004, 2005. It really starts from an all-hazard approach with a clear intent of fighting against terrorism. So, financing of terrorism, all aspects of dealing with terrorism and the impact of terrorism, terrorism of critical infrastructure. Then, immediately, the EU recognized within the program that the all-hazard approach really needs to be developed because it’s not only terrorism that can threaten the continuity, you know, and the existence itself of critical infrastructure, but there is many other threats that can really disrupt or create issues. So, the European program has really put together the member states for the first time ever in discussing the critical infrastructure protection.This is still, nowadays, mainly the international level. The first thing you need: competency. It still relies on the member states that are part of the EU, but the program has, really, the 27 in the condition to discuss together all the challenges, all the state of play of each one of them. So to set new goals that are not overambitious for some of them, because you have to imagine when, in 2008, the European program was launched, there were five or six member states that really had a national framework for critical infrastructure protection, and many others that didn’t have one, or, you know, they really needed to amend it heavily because it was obsolete or not taken care of on all aspects.It can be said that the European program has really created that first spark that has enabled the EU to be in the state of play it is nowadays because, for the first time, it has really asked the member states to discuss national security outside of their own border, but in a joint, coordinated manner.HostSo, there were some significant changes to the program in 2016 and 2020. I would love to hear about them.LazariAfter a very long journey between 2008 and 2016, the EU in, um, 2016 has decided to move a little bit to focus not only on the critical, physical aspect of critical infrastructure but also on the cyber dimension. Of course, the member states were already dealing with that, but the real pro of the EU is that there is a harmonization effort going on.In 2016, we had the promulgation of the so-called Network and Information Security Directive. This really adds an important layer now on top of the CISR policy, which is very focused on cybersecurity or what we call “operator of essential services.” This new term that is different from critical infrastructure has been introduced to identify all of those services that are delivered through the mean of the network and information system. So, really, to narrow down the focus on the cyber dimension, of course, completely integrated together with the physical aspect, because these are absolutely complimentary. We cannot deal with one or just the other. You need to deal with all of them.And it is very important to notice that even though this first NIS—Network and Information Security—Directive was promulgated back in 2020, on the 16th of December, 2020, the European Commission proposed already an amendment of this directive to launch the second directive, the so-called (Network and Information Security 2 or) NIS 2.You can see that, here, the policy life cycle has been shortened because, normally, there is a very long policy cycle between one policy and another. You have an average of eight to nine years, even 10 sometimes. Here, you see that between 2016 and 2020, you have the promulgation of the first directive, already, in 2020, the proposal. And it’s very likely that in early 2023, this will alter its course, partially substituting the first one, but adding a lot more efforts and a lot more sectors. They go from 19 to 35, so there is a huge recognition and an improvement in the terms of sector.There is also the intent to differentiate between coverage of an essential service and important service. So to create also sort of criticality assessment between the two lists of designated operators. So, I think this is very important. There is also the announcement of the cooperation among the countries, the announcement of the functioning of the EU Computer Security Incident Response Teams—so, better sharing of information regarding the incident and some support.Last but not least, also, I can tell that, uh, 16th of December 2020 can be remembered as one of the really landmark of the EU CISR because on the very same day, apart from the proposal on the NIS 2 directive, same European Commission, sending a very strong message, published the proposal also for the . . . for the so-called Critical Entities Resilience Directive.Also, here, you see a new terminology, critical entity and resilience, that goes . . . it’s very far from critical infrastructure protection. So not only we move, like, the focus is really on resilience, so in being able to withstand, to bounce back after something has gone wrong, but, also, the commission introduced the term “entity.” This is also a clear message that the type of infrastructure that we can designate is not only old style, like we only operate private operator, but entity has been used also to identify offices, departments of the public administration and the government that are really pivotal for the functioning member states and the new institution and so on, so forth.So you see that we move from operator to entities and from protection to resilience. So I think this really be remembered what . . . of the days in which really the EU has recalled the importance of the complementarity of the physical and cyber protection and resilience and the importance, also, of the states and the public administration and the governments in securing national security, EU security, and the international security because, of course, this go beyond that.HostGoing forward, what does critical infrastructure security and resilience look like for the US and the EU?LazariEven though we have this really great example of the European program for critical infrastructure protection, the PDD-63, all the executive orders, you know, every one of them in the US are very comprehensive in, you know, tackling the problem in the way it should be tackled and with all the effects that they have on the European Union, on the allied countries in NATO and so on, so forth.I think that there is some things that . . . on which we . . . we really need to improve. One of these is hybrid threats because we often talk about physical and cybersecurity, but we do not consider the hybrid threats that are all these actions below the threshold of warfare that are still to the entity or to the state or to the operator that is targeted. There is no clarity which is who’s behind these actions. It . . . these actions are also coordinated. So, there could be a state or nonstate actor that has decided to put under pressure certain systems, certain layers of our modern society, and it can be done with a combination of conventional and unconventional types of plot. And this is, for sure, one of the hot topics.The European Union has already recognized the importance of hybrid threats in 2016, and, in 2020, there is two specific documents that are being released on the point they’re working out in creating a framework for governments and public administration to try and recognize some key indicators that there is hybrid threats, that you are subject to hybrid threats, because you haveto . . . to imagine this extremely complex type of environment. It’s a number of events that are not correlated because they’re happening here and there. Therefore, you don’t have control on all of them, and, therefore, you cannot really see through the fog what’s going on. You just see the vertical events, but you don’t see the horizontal plot. Social tension, fake news propaganda—they are all part of this big element.Another thing that I think is part of the hybrid threat but is not properly dealt everywhere is that nonfinancial side. We know that all these operators of critical infrastructure, the way you want to call them, or critical entities or operators of essential services—they are companies. They may be on . . . on regulated market, on the stock exchange, on support. Therefore, someone may acquire them, part of them, part of the ownership.To me, the way we scrutinize a certain operation on national critical infrastructure is not yet clear because certain strategic infrastructure should remain of national property. I don’t mean it should be public. I mean that it should have national shareholders with minimum shareholders from abroad because they are strategic infrastructure on which, first of all, speculation shouldn’t take place, but, also, you have to imagine that once you see someone in the, you know, in the board of directors, everything is discussed there, immediately goes as to where as soon as the meeting is over. This shouldn’t really happen. And this is not only happening at the scrutiny, it’s already taking place for big infrastructure. For example, Italy has procedures for that. It’s very advanced, but the . . . the way the . . . the law is tuned on very big operations leaves every small operation outside.Here, we fall into another problem: third parties. It’s not only about critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure relies on a constellation of third parties. Sometimes, they are also very small companies. They are very important in the supply chain. We don’t know who owns them. There is a little bit of scrutiny the company does on those other companies, third parties, but it’s not enough. So, the vetting procedure, the scrutiny procedure, they should really improve because we need to be sure that we are relying on the right people—that when something is going wrong, will help us out of the mud instead of leaving us in there. To identify friend or foe, as the . . . the military would say. So, this is, to me, among the hybrid threats, the financial aspect—also, the financial or third party. So, trustworthiness of the third party. Third-party risk assessment, to me, is fundamental.HostDo you have any final thoughts before we go?LazariOne last thing that is taking place anyway because of our footprint on planet Earth is climate change. To me, we need to work on the sustainability of critical infrastructure, and we need to do climate change risk assessments. This is something that already the Critical Entities Resilience Directive will ask to critical entities that will be designated under this directive in the future to do.So, to assess what is the impact of climate change on critical infrastructure, you have to imagine that the weather, among other things, is considerably changing. Fifteen years ago, no one could hear about, you know, medicane—that is, the . . . this Mediterranean hurricane, for example, in the Mediterranean. I come from the south of Italy, I’ve never heard about. We never heard “hurricane,” but, all of a sudden, in the last five years, we have initial glimpse of what it could look like, hurricanes. Of course, the proper hurricane, the one that you are experiencing in the US, you know, are much, much different, and their force of devastation is much higher. But, still, I can tell that these medicanes are already threatening our critical infrastructure because they have not been designed to withstand this type of event.Even though some of those that are designed for withstanding certain types of very severe weather events, they can be still disrupted, but ours are not designed at all. So, you can imagine the impact of if these hurricanes keep coming, and they keep increasing in . . . in their strength, the way they . . . we see them behave in other countries that are severely hit by hurricanes, this could really pose a threat to our critical infrastructure.So, for sure, the climate change has to be assessed. We will find ourselves with operators that have been used, like, operating extreme cold and in heat wave and the other way around. Operators used to work in extreme hot having cold wave, and, therefore, the reliabilities of these infrastructures may change, may be really threatened because they are not designed to operate in different condition or in very severe warm or cold. So yeah, that’s another thing that I would definitely take into account that will challenge critical infrastructure in the future.HostThank you for your time. Thanks for your contribution. This was a real treat to talk with you.LazariThank you very much indeed, once again, for inviting, and, uh, all the best.HostLearn more about the CISR frameworks of the United States and the European Union at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/955.If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.Author information: Alessandro Lazari has been working as a specialist in critical infrastructure protection, resilience, and cyber security since 2004. He is currently a senior key account manager at 24 AG, focused on incident and crisis management in Europe. From 2010–19, he provided policy support to two key initiatives at the European Commission: the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Strengthening Europe’s Cyber Resilience. Lazari is a fellow in legal informatics at the University of Lecce’s School of Law (Italy) and a lecturer at COE-DAT’s Protecting Critical Infrastructure Against Terrorist Attacks course. He is the author of European Critical Infrastructure Protection, published in 2014 by Springer Inc. He holds a master’s degree in law and a PhD in computer engineering, multimedia, and telecommunications.

In most urbanized societies, water is taken for granted and little thought is given to how fragile the supply of this vital resource can be. A water emergency, however, such as a treatment plant outage, a water source contamination event, or natural disaster has the potential for significant disruption to society and the infrastructure that depends on water to function. Most other sectors of critical infrastructure, as well as activities of daily living, are highly dependent on the water sector. As a result, consequences of a water emergency can be significant and may occur immediately without notice depending on the nature of the event. Thus, the security and resilience of the water sector is a key component of a nation’s civil preparedness that can have military and international implications as well. Terrorist threats to water delivery or contamination of water sources as a terrorist act can impact a nation’s ability to move and sustain its military forces and project military power when required. From the perspective of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), threats to the water sector in one member state could have ripple effects that limit or diminish NATO’s military mobility and force projection in support of its essential core tasks.Therefore, it is important to understand water sector risks and find ways to effectively mitigate them. While this chapter focuses on the US water sector and uses a case study from one of its most important metropolitan areas, the chapter provides a helpful framework for other Allies and partners to understand, adapt, and employ to their specific circumstances.This podcast based on Chapter 8 in Enabling NATO’s Collective Defense: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 1) provides a foundation from which to better understand the criticality of water sector resilience. While this chapter focuses on the US water sector and uses a case study from one of its most important metropolitan areas, the chapter provides a helpful framework for other Allies and partners to understand, adapt, and employ to their specific circumstances.Watch the webinar: https://youtu.be/G1OD24HEh94Read the book: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/955/Keywords: critical infrastructure, crisis management, security risk assessment, water sector resilienceEpisode Transcript:“Water Sector Resilience in the Metropolitan Washington Case” from Enabling NATO’s Collective Defense: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 1)Stephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Conversations on strategy welcomes Steve Bieber, author of “Water Sector Resilience in the Metropolitan Washington Case.” Bieber has more than 30 years of experience in leading development and reform and water security, public policy, and environmental regulation. He’s currently the water resources program director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.Welcome to Conversations on Strategy, Steve. Thanks for joining me today. You recently contributed to the book Enabling NATO’s Collective Defense: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency. Your chapter is about water sector resilience. Give us an overview of the water sector, please.Steve BieberSure, so thanks for having me on. You know, water includes both water you drink and (water) you use for bathing and cooking and so on. But obviously when you’re done doing all of that stuff, it has to go somewhere—which is down the drain and to a wastewater treatment plant. But probably the other part that folks don’t think about a whole lot is the source of the water in the first place. When you think of the water system and working with water utilities, usually the three biggest components are the source of it, collection and treatment of that, distributing it, and then treatment at the end when you’re done using the water.Just to give folks a little bit of perspective, here in the Metro Washington region, the average daily demand for drinking water (and it goes up and down depending on the time of year) is close to 500 million gallons a day. We’ve got over 14, 500 miles of water mains (so that’s more than the miles of roads we have in the region) and almost 120,000 fire hydrants. So if you ever think about the challenge of maintaining something like that … you know, and over 1,000,000 metered accounts and a little more than 5 million people who are served by public water and sewer.HostTalk to me about the risks and threats of the water sector.BieberYou know, I’m sure people have seen in the news lately—especially with what happened in North Carolina (electrical substation attack in Moore County on December 3, 2022)—you know, a lot of terrorism and Black Sky events are in the news. Those things can be a threat to the water sector as well. So there’s physical security threats like that but also things like climate change, rising sea level, aging infrastructure, you know. We have some infrastructure here in the Metro Washington region that dates back to the 1800s, and there are instances that sometimes they find pipes made out of wood when they’re doing main break repair.You can imagine trying to keep up with operations maintenance. And just repairing things like that over such a vast network is pretty hard. And so, from the utility perspective, you’re dealing with all sorts of threats. You know, natural threats, man-made threats, accidents that happen (whether it’s a contractor striking a pipe and breaking it or an oil spill in your source water, all sorts of things) and you have to be prepared to deal with all of it.HostSpeaking of dealing with it, what are the key steps in resiliency planning?BieberSure, so I’ll start out maybe by saying a little bit about what resiliency is. So for the water sector, broadly, you can define it as the ability for a water utility to maintain their operations despite a challenge like, say, a water main break, and recover from the event as soon as possible. And we already talked about the stressors. Whether it’s weather, accidents, or some kind of intentional act, the idea is to be able to bounce back as quickly as you can.The other thing to be mindful of is resilience extends beyond just the utility and encompasses dependent and interdependent sectors, so things like the energy sector, health care. A big one in our region here is data centers, which are very dependent on water for cooling. All those local and regional assets are connected. And sometimes seemingly distant threats to resilience in another region can affect utilities here. So, for example, a spill in West Virginia could affect our water supply here in Metro DC, just as one example. And a lot of times these cross-sector dependencies are deep and complex, so it’s really important to think about those when you’re looking at doing resiliency planning.So here in the Metro Washington region, we actually do studies routinely to look at things like adequacy of our water and wastewater infrastructure to meet demand. So say we’re forecasting out to 2050. Do we have enough treatment? Enough distribution? Enough collection system to meet growing population and employment and all of that?We’ve historically looked at things like drought, which we know happens from time to time. And we do studies on that every five years to see do we have adequate infrastructure in place to be resilient against the drought of record. But one thing we decided to do a few years ago is expand that and take more of a system resiliency approach to look at other threats and hazards, not just drought, and see where we maybe have vulnerabilities and also see where we could make investments to buy down the risk from certain threats.So we got some federal grant money to do that. And let’s say you could kind of break down the steps into five phases. So, the first one was data collection and establishing system capabilities. So that was working with all the water utilities in our region. We held a series of workshops and determined, sort of, what do you have in terms of water treatment? Where do you get your source water from? How much distribution capacity do you have? Collect that all into one database, so we have a good baseline of what’s the capability that we have now. And then the second step was establishing a risk framework and defining a level of service. So basically, thinking about different failures events, how likely are they to happen, and what level of service do we want to have in the event that those things did happen? That’s really an important driver because I’ve seen utilities that use as their level of service in an emergency one gallon per person per day. I’ve seen others that have planned around 20 percent of your average daily demand. So as an example, if the average household uses 100 gallons a day, being able to provide 20 gallons a day, well, that’s 20 times more than one gallon.We used here, for our planning purposes, Average Winter Day demand, which would be even more than that. So as you can imagine, when things are changing by 20 times or 30 times, you’re planning assumption the capability you need to have to meet that demand is going to be vastly different, too. So once you’ve defined, you know kind of your level of service, the different failure events or scenarios you’re planning around (whether it’s intentional events, accidental events, weather events), you need to look at all of those and define what would the consequence be if those different things happen. For our purposes, we measured as how many days would people be out of water, and we called it people outage days. So it’s a combination of how many customers are affected? How many days would they be out before you could restore the water? And you can also use that to figure out an economic impact using some figures that FEMA and others put out. What would the cost to the region be under those different scenarios? So you can put a dollar amount on it.There’s other ways that you could quantify consequence. It could be things like, is there some critical mission in your region that if this happened you wouldn’t be able to fulfill? So say like for a military installation or something, or a nationally significant piece of critical infrastructure, and if the water was out it would impact that nationally significant infrastructure. So there’s other ways to measure it, but that’s the way we went about it.Once we had the scenarios we’re planning around, the likelihood of those things happening, and the impact, basically, if they happened, we identified different improvements you could make to mitigate those risks. So, it could be anything from interconnections between the different water systems and improving those to building more storage so you’re not dependent, say on just one water source, but you have storage, say in our case, like we use the Potomac River as a major source of our drinking water, having more storage off the Potomac River so if for some reason it wasn’t available, you’ve got an alternate source you can go to for a long period of time or a longer period of time. And then we used some simulation modeling to figure out which combinations of improvements (so whether it’s storage, interconnections, other types of improvements), which ones actually buy down the risk the most? Are there combinations of things you could do that buy it down even more? And you can basically put things into what I would call different buckets of combinations of scenarios, compare the benefits of one to the other, you can also see if there’s synergies of doing things in a particular sequence. And then you can find out which one basically has the best benefit-cost ratio. And once you have that information, you can come up with a plan for improvements of how you want to make your infrastructure more resilient.We kind of put ours into three categories. One was what we called “no regrets” improvements. So those would be things that the benefit-cost ratio is very high. It’s probably something you could get done quickly, and there’s an operational benefit to it. So even if the scenario you were planning around, say, a spill event or some kind of an attack, never happened the benefits to it still make it worth doing anyway. And then we had some that were more short-term—so things that had a high benefit-cost ratio and could be accomplished pretty quickly just because either the cost was low or there’s just not a long lead time to plan it and execute the improvement. And then there were other things that were sort of longer-term. If you’re looking at, say, building a new reservoir or something like that. That’s a major capital project. It’s not going to happen quickly, and you have to build that into your risk modeling. If it’s going to take 10 years to build something, you’re carrying the risk for that 10-year period until it’s built. And so you have to factor that in in determining which things you’re going to pursue. But we ended up with a mix of things that could happen quickly, kind of medium-term and longer-term.HostYour chapter uses Washington DC as a case study. I would love to hear more about this.BieberYou know the Metro Washington region, I think we’re the 6th largest metro region in the country, and, of course, on top of that, the home of our nation’s capital, a lot of the federal agencies, and we have a number of military installations in the region, too, and some nationally significant critical infrastructure. And we also have a long history of cooperating among the water and wastewater utilities here. We have agreements that go back several decades, cooperative water supply, cooperative wastewater treatment—different things like that. So we’re used to working together in the water sector to solve big problems.Especially since 9/11, everyone’s had more of a focus on security. But I would say in the last five or so years, that’s really shifted to not just security but security and resilience. And so that’s why we wanted to work together to look at what opportunities are there, not just at one utility alone but as a system in the region to collaborate and make improvements so that the system that serves the whole region is more resilient as a whole. And so that’s what drove us to take the systemresilience approach I talked about a moment ago—looking at things that are cross-cutting across the region, and that we could collaborate on together, which complements the individual utility vulnerability assessments and planning they’ve each done on their own. So, it was kind of another layer on top of that to identify things that are more regional system-wide, and bigger impact. And things that also, you know, you could work with your neighbor, maybe, to buy down the risk and be more resilient. More so than doing something on your own.HostYou talked about simulations and planning and resiliency. How do you test for this? Do you have to wait for an event to happen? Is there a way to do a test run?BieberYeah, that’s a really good question. So no, you don’t have to wait for an event to happen. Most risk-based approaches, whether it’s the one we used, or there’s some slightly different ones that are used in other sectors, but they have a lot of things in common. And one of those things is getting a group of subject matter experts together.In this case, it was our utility companies together, talk about scenarios of events they’re concerned about. In some cases, this is things that have actually happened before. So, say, like an oil spill or a water main break or a failure of equipment—like a pump failure or something like that. And they have a pretty good idea of how often does that happen? How likely is it to happen? If it happens, what are the consequences of it happening? And so those are real events that we have data on, and we can put a pretty good number to it. But then there’s other things that you also want to look at that are more hypothetical.So how likely is it that a rail car could fall in the Potomac River? Or how likely is it that you’d have a terrorist attack? You know you can go down the list (not an endless list of scenarios, but of scenarios that are things that maybe keep utilities up at night). You know it could happen and it would be, even though it’s a low probability, a very high impact event. And using this same group of subject matter experts, kind of put a number to each of those.So, in our case, we kind of had bins of things of like, “it happens once every 10 years,” “it happens once every 30 years,” “It happens once every 100 years.” Or maybe it’s less than one every 100 years, but you can get an idea of sort of how you would figure out how likely is it to happen. And then you can combine that with your estimate of if event A happened, how many people would be out of water? How long do we think it would be before we’d be back on our feet, and we’d restore water service? And then you can combine those things. So, the likelihood of it happening, the consequence of it happening. And you can get a sense of between those two things how worried are we about that and begin to come up with a list of which things are the most concerning, which things are the least concerning, and a bunch of stuff in between.And you can also put costs to all of that, which allows you to get to the benefit-cost of here’s how much it would cost. Here’s how likely it is to happen, (and) the impact of it, and you can calculate a benefit-cost ratio that. We used a pretty sophisticated modeling approach, but my point of bringing this up is if you’re a smaller utility or you just don’t have the resources to do that right away, it’s not like you need to throw up your hands and go, “Oh well, I can’t do anything.” Because you can get a group of your own employees together and just use your best professional judgment on which things are we most worried about? How likely do we think they are to happen one relative to the other? What would the impact be if it happened? How much would it cost us to bounce back from it, or to mitigate it? And what’s the cost to our customers, even if it’s just how long they would be out of service? And you can use that to come up with a pretty good list of priorities that’s probably going to be very close to what you would come up with if you used the more sophisticated modeling approach. And at least it gets you started.HostWhat are your recommendations for water security and resilience?BieberI’m a big proponent of data-driven decision making and using a risk-based approach. In the water sector— all public utilities—they’ve all been required already to do a vulnerability assessment to come up with security plans, different things like that. So, you already will have a lot of the data you need to get started, but, of course, the landscape is dynamic. It’s always changing. You know you may have the vulnerability assessment you did a year ago. Maybe it was five years ago. But it at least gives you a starting point. And then I would say take that, get a group of subject matter experts together, and just start going on developing a risk-based approach to planning. And there are a lot of good resources available online.American Water Works Association actually has standards for the J 100 standard for doing this kind of planning. So that’s one standard that’s widely followed in the water industry, but there’s also tools that are available for free. So, if you go search US EPA and water resilience, you’ll find a couple of tools they have online that you can get started with today. It will ask you questions. You fill it in as you go along, and you’ll get some recommendations out at the end. They have one that’s specific to climate change and building in resilience to that and another that’s more generic and more geared toward the types of events like we’re talking about, you know, whether it’s intentional or accidental events.Yeah, you do a little poking around online, you’ll find more tools, too. Another good resource that a lot of the utilities here in our region have taken advantage of, and if you’re in the US is available to you for free, is connecting with your protective security advisor. So, the DHS cyber and Infrastructure Security Administration they have protective security advisors in every state. In our case here in the DC metro region, we actually have three. They will come out and do a risk and resilience assessment of your infrastructure at no cost. And they can cover all sorts of things from physical security, other types of events like spill events, or other things like that. They can even come out and do a cyber assessment if you’re more worried about cyber risk and how to mitigate that. They’re free. It’s a good way to get started, rather than waiting and not doing anything.Whether it’s online, someone coming out for free, hiring a contractor, getting started with your own employees, there’s lots of ways to get going and take a risk-based approach and see where the opportunity is to make yourself more resilient. You know, buy down the risk on things you think are either most impactful or most likely to happen.HostWhat a great list of resources. Thank you for sharing that. Also, thank you for your time today.BieberYeah, I appreciate having the chance to talk today and look forward to working on more of this in the future.HostLearn more about water sector resilience at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs.If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.Author information: Steve Bieber has more than 30 years of experience in leading development and reform in water security, public policy, and environmental regulation. He is currently the water resources program director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) and is responsible for managing its water resources programs, including the regional Anacostia Restoration Partnership, water security programs, drinking water and wastewater planning, drought management, urban stream restoration, and other related environmental programs for local governments and water utilities in the Washington, DC, area. Bieber holds a bachelor of science degree in zoology from Michigan State University, a master of science degree in oceanography from Old Dominion University, and a master of public administration degree from the University of Baltimore.