The #BruteCast

For those of you who joined us for the historical case study that looked at the Tentative Manual for the Defense of Advanced Bases, this epiusode brings something in the same line, except this time in execution. Mr. Timothy “Skip” Crawley will take us through the defense of Wake Island. Skip Crawley is a former Infantry Officer who lived “Expeditionary Force-in-Readiness”. On 31 July 1990, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines was finishing up the Summer Package at Bridgeport and 15 days latter 1/7 was getting off of airplanes in Saudi Arabia. Skip was the Platoon Commander of Weapons Platoon, Alpha Company, 1/7 and Desert Shield/Desert Storm was the highlight of his career. Skip has studied military history since his youth, and regularly publishes in the Marine Corps Gazette. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

Welcome to another installment of the MES Research Talk series! In this lecture, Ms. Yun Sun focused on China's strategic vision for Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, including its planned political, economic, military, and diplomatic engagement and planning, which is happening on several levels: unilateral, bilateral, multilateral, regional, and global. Ms. Sun also discussed China's contingency planning on Afghanistan, especially in the event of renewed civil unrest on the ground or terrorist attacks against China. Ms. Yun Sun is the Director of the China Program and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. Her expertise is on Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and China's relations with neighboring countries and authoritarian regimes. Previously from 2011 to 2014 she was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution with a joint appointment with the Foreign Policy Program and the Global Development Program where she focused on Chinese national security decision-making processes and China-Africa relations. From 2008 to 2011 she was the China Analyst based in Beijing for the International Crisis Group specializing on China's foreign policy towards conflict countries and the developing world. She holds a master's degree in international policy and practice from The George Washington University and an MA in Asia Pacific Studies and a BA in international relations from Foreign Affairs College in Beijing. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

We’re excited to wrap up our focus on wargaming by welcoming #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellow Sebastian J. Bae back to the #BruteCast. Sebastian is a research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), where works in wargaming, emerging technologies, the future of warfare, and strategy and doctrine for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. He also serves as an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, where he teaches a graduate course on designing educational wargames. He teaches similar courses at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the U.S. Naval Academy. Sebastian is also the faculty advisor to the Georgetown University Wargaming Society, the Co-Chair of the Military Operations Research Society Wargaming Community of Practice, and serves on the Executive Committee for the Educational Wargaming Cooperative. Previously, he served six years in the Marine Corps infantry, deploying to Iraq in 2009 and leaving as a sergeant. Sebastian talks about how he designed the educational wargame FMF INDOPACOM, which went from being a COVID interest project to a tool whose use across the Marine Corps and joint force has grown exponentially in the last year. The Georgetown University Wargaming Society (GUWS) has been a key #TeamKrulak partner in sharing #wargaming knowledge and opportunities. Learn more about GUWS here, and check out their extensive library of #wargaming videos here. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

This episode continues our recent wargaming theme, and hones in on one of the most challenging topics to effectively wargame: cyber operations. To help us better understand how we can the realms of cyber and wargaming to work with each other, we were excited to welcome two faculty members from the Naval War College. Our first guest was Professor Benjamin Schechter, who is an instructor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a founding faculty member of the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute. His research interests include cyber, wargaming and political psychology. His recent work has focused on experimental wargaming and methods for cyber wargaming. Prior to joining the U.S. Naval War College, he was a research specialist supporting the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Our second guest was Dr. Nina Kollars, who first and foremost, at least in our book, is one of our Krulak Center Non-Resident Fellows. Dr. Kollars is an associate professor in the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute. She holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in political science and an M.A. from GWU in international relations. Along with being one of our Non-Resident Fellows, Dr. Kollars is also a senior adjunct scholar at Center for a New American Security; an executive board member of Cyber Conflict Studies Association; and an editorial board member for Texas National Security Review. She publishes on cybersecurity, hackers and military innovation. She presented her own hacker project at DefCon27, "Confessions of a Nespresso Money Mule." She will soon publish “Trustworthy Deviants: White Hat Hackers and Security.” Foundational content for this episode came from a joint report our guests published earlier this year: Pathologies of Obfuscation: Nobody understands cyber operations or wargaming Our guests also referenced the 2019 dissertation by Andreas Haggman: Cyber Wargaming: Finding, Designing, and Playing Wargames for Cyber Security Education. Finally, the offered the east coast hacker conference ShmooCon as a resource for further information on this topic. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

We talk a lot at the Krulak Center about educational wargaming and wargaming mechanics; but there are other games, and thus other game mechanics, that the educator can use to enhance the learning experience from a vanilla wargame. To lay this out for us, this episode features #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellow and #BruteCast alum Dr. James “Pigeon” Fielder!   Dr. James "Pigeon" Fielder joined Colorado State as an Instructor after retiring from the U.S. Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel and Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is also serving as a Marine Corps University Non-Resident Krulak Fellow for academic years 2021-2023, develops organizational wargames under the name Liminal Operations, and is a roleplaying game content creator for Evil Beagle Games. Pigeon researches interpersonal trust and emergent political processes through cyber-based interaction and through tabletop and live-action gaming as natural experiments, with recent project including an ethnographic study of live-action role-players published in "The Politics of Horror" and a manuscript under review on player coordination in EVE Online. Pigeon has over two decades of experience designing, executing, and assessing training exercises and wargames, from small-group tabletop discussions to multi-day exercises engaging 5,000+ participants, and is a co-editor of the forthcoming book "Games without Frontiers: Simulations in the Political Science Classroom" with Mark Harvey and Ryan Gibb.  Dr. Fielder references a game design checklist in the presentation, which can be downloaded here. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

This episode features a return guest to the #BruteCast, and if you joined us last summer for our wargaming panel, you’ve seen some of his work. Dr. Andrew Reddie is an assistant professor of practice at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information and senior engineer at Sandia National Laboratories where he works on projects related to cybersecurity, nuclear weapons policy, wargaming, and emerging military technologies. Andrew is currently a Bridging the Gap New Era fellow, Hans J. Morgenthau fellow at Notre Dame University, a non-resident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center at Marine Corps University, and research director at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. His work has appeared in Science, the Journal of Cyber Policy, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists among other outlets and has been variously supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, MacArthur Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Science and Security Consortium. So, on our wargaming panel you got a taste of his work; this episode is a deep dive, in his discussion on From Art to Science: Analytical Wargaming and Behavioral Research. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

This episode introduces the last of our new cadre of #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellows, Capt Walker Mills, USMC. Capt Mills is a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer serving as an exchange officer in Cartagena, Colombia and is the 2021 Military Fellow with Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, and a Non-Resident WSD-Handa Fellow at Pacific Forum. He has published over 50 essays in articles in outlets like War on the Rocks, the Marine Corps Gazette, USNI Proceedings and Military Review.   It’s in that capacity as published writer that Capt Mills talked to us, to share some his insights on what it takes to get one’s foot in the door of the world of professional military writing.   Check out some of Capt Mills' greatest hits below: “Illegal Fishing is a National Security Problem,” Defense One, 29 April 2021. “The Future is Unmanned: Why the Navy’s Next Generation Fighter Shouldn’t Have a Pilot,” with Trevor and Dylan Philips-Levine, CIMSEC, 25 February 2021. “Sustainment Will Be Contested,” with Erik Limpaecher, USNI Proceedings, Vol 146, No 11, November 2020. “Cocaine Logistics for the Marine Corps,” with Dylan Phillips-Levine and Collin Fox, online, War on the Rocks, July 22, 2020. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

In this discussion, Dr. James Holmes, a leading authority on maritime strategy and the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, dives into the intricacies of China's sea power. He explains China's 'active defense' strategy and how historical military tactics, likened to Muhammad Ali's boxing style, influence their maritime approach. The conversation touches on the risks of U.S.-China tensions, especially regarding Taiwan, and emphasizes the need for strong U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific. Communication in military operations also takes center stage.

In this special episode of the #BruteCast, Dr. Amin Tarzi, director of Middle East Studies at the Krulak Center and Marine Corps University, provides background, context, and key analyses of the Islamic State - Khurasan Province (ISKP), the terrorist group responsible for the recent bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 13 American Servicemembers, dozens of Afghans, and wounded hundreds more. Several of Dr. Tarzi's written assessments of ISKP are available on our website at The Landing here. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

In this episode, we are excited to welcome another member of the newest cadre of #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellows. We were joined from down under by Group Captain Jo Brick. Group Captain Brick is a Legal Officer in the Australian Air Force. She has served from the tactical to strategic levels of the Australian Defence Force, and has deployed on a number of domestic and international operations, including Iraq and Afghanistan. She is a Senior Editor for The Strategy Bridge, and an editor for The Central Blue, which is a forum designed to promote informed discussion of air power issues affecting Australia; and to enhance professional development of Air Force personnel in order to create a new generation of air power thinkers. Her interests are in military law and ethics, strategy, remote warfare, and wargaming and education. This #BruteCast focuses on the intersection of two those of interests; specifically, military ethics and wargaming. Behaving ethically and making ethical decisions are responsibilities of military leaders regardless of rank. They are also inherently practical matters that can’t be learned solely through books and lectures. As such, ethical behavior is a 'practice' that can be tested and exercised through the use of wargames. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic