The way forward
I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years considering our current state. By ours, I mean humanity, biased towards that fragile state of human freedoms we have in the West, but nonetheless all of us, because, let's face it, we are all in it together at the end of the day.
It's pretty easy to get down about our state of affairs, even before the pandemic. Even if we in the West were to leave off climate change, as we are wont to do, we still face near peer adversaries that outmaneuver us. Russia successfully uses our technology to sow division amongst us, and erode our momentum, while China plays a long term cohesive stand-off strategy that is harmonized across multiple sectors of their economy and stages of their populace (education through industry and defense; cradle to grave).
Meanwhile we bounce to and fro, with different strategies with each administration, and within each sector, and little appearance of a long term coherent national/global strategy. DoD strategy focuses on near peer adversaries, but doesn't take into account that near peers fight through non-near-peer proxies, in both the physical and cyber domains. Smaller parties that take issue with our national strategy, from both domestic and abroad, don't rise to the level of which we can effectively engage, because they are too small and numerous, and fragmented. While our domestic and global adversaries rally behind simple common rallying cries, we face the world organized according to priorities viewed through a complicated set of lenses that change over distance, culture and time.
While I opine at length about this in other venues, with more rigor and practicality, let me share here one little siren call for the future, for the geeks amongst us, from Gandalf, as he considered how to offset the great evil he saw building in the world:
(Some believe) "it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. "
Call me na?ve, but that is part of the organizing principles that I see drawing us together as we move forward towards a more wide-spread flourishing human future.
Feel free to check in with me on my other thoughts for more practical, rigorous, non-fiction and Machiavellian responses to our current state of affairs, but humbly and naively I hope that this one be the shining light that leads us forward.
Associate Professor of Economics at United States Military Academy
3 年The national security strategy has not swung from administration to administration. The national security bureaucracy and industrial base is large and hard to repurpose easily. It is very long term consistent by virtue of inertia. This says nothing of whether it is appropriately focused, but like China's it is time consistent and co-integrated.
Digital Innovation/Technology Leader
3 年Looking at you, ???? Luke Shabro, David Bray, PhD, and Melissa Flagg to poke fun of me here for my naivete, or if you are feeling your inner geek and philosopher soul, to build on or correct this :) And my esteemed philosophers out there, like Dr. James Giordano, Andreas Widmer, Katina Michael, Michael Ross, MSW, LCSW and Chris Mayer. If nothing else, this post may give you 5-10 seconds today to contemplate the higher ground and the path less traveled in these debates.