19: Arnel David on Strategy in the 21st Century

Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Lieutenant Colonel Arnel David, co-author of Strategy in the 21st Century: People, Connectivity, and Competition, discusses the book and offers some tips for junior NCOs and officers in Civil Affairs. Available on Amazon, the book calls for rethinking how the U.S. national security community approaches population-centric warfare and strategic competition in the 21st century.

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Transcript:

a00:00:00   SPEAKER_02
Simply put, I mean, it's the intersection of actors and interests, predominantly in the land and cyber. So, you know, the cyber domain is a thing right now. It's kind of hot. But we're saying that, you know, if you if you look at the construct of all the domains and how we organize, I mean, really, it's humans first that all war is eternally human, a human endeavor. So humans are always a part of this space. But what's happening in the presnt is that. This human domain is shaping, you know, modern competition and conflict faster with the speed of networks and communications. So networks, I mean, networks define the human domain and shape the current character of conflict and competition.

00:00:40    SPEAKER_01
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Arnell David, Lieutenant Colonel in the U .S. Army. and he's currently the chief of the General Staffs Initiatives Group for Army Headquarters UK. Colonel David, thank you for being on the 1CA podcast. Thank you.

00:00:59    SPEAKER_01
Can you tell us about your current position out there in the UK? We know you're a civil affairs officer in the Army. What are you doing in the UK right now?

00:01:09    SPEAKER_02
So I'm a civil affairs officer, but working for the chief of general staff in the British Army on strategy and advising. I'm working on their strategy branch, and we're working on a new strategy for their Army.

00:01:22    SPEAKER_01
Okay. Well, that's a great tie -in to our topic for today, which is your role as author of a book. It's titled Military Strategy for the 21st Century, People, Connectivity, and Competition. And you wrote this book with Charles Cleveland, retired Lieutenant General, Benjamin Jensen, and Susan Bryant. This was published by Cambia Press this last year. We want to dig into why you guys wrote this book, why now, talk about some of the pieces of it, and pique the interest of listeners to go out and buy a copy on their own. So let me start, sir, by asking you, what's your elevator pitch about the book?

00:02:01    SPEAKER_02
Well, obviously the title gives it away a little bit, but I just tell people it's a book about military strategy and human domain. We present some new ways to think about power and influence in this rapidly changing world. And we construct a theoretical foundation for this human domain concept that, you know, not too long ago, you know, had a lot of momentum and attention, but eventually it's fallen from the discourse.

00:02:23    SPEAKER_01
So it's fallen away from discourse. Is that why you wanted to bring up this topic and this topic now? Do you think there used to be a focus in this area and it's fallen away?

00:02:33    SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So, you know, General Cleveland had a good allegory for, you know, to this bowling frog story where, you know, ever vigilant to avoid the gigging stick. The frog's unaware of the rising temperature, and that's how he describes our current situation, you know, the United States and our military, is that we're the boiling frog. We're not really aware of, like, what's really happening, how the changing character of conflict is unfolding before our eyes, but we're not really reacting in a way that makes us relevant. So the four of us, we were together in the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies Group in 2015. We all shared, you know, this common concern that the Army was going to pivot and shift to the... from the experience of our against and of counter -insurgency warfare to you know what we're most comfortable with you know full -scale conventional warfighting and rightly so you know what happened Crimea with Russia and everything and you know this multi -domain battle was emerging as a concept as well as the third offset was taking shape in the Pentagon so all of our collective experience and professional you know instinct told us that this shift this lifted shift you know Well, it might be necessary. You know, we didn't want to lose a lot of the harder insights from what we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. So what started as a series of articles that we were going to start publishing in places like War on the Rocks or Foreign Affairs, it turned into this book, which, you know, after two years, we finally got it published.

00:03:49    SPEAKER_01
Well, congratulations. Two years. To a lot of people, it's probably fast to write a book. It seems like you guys took a lot of those articles and pieced them together and then worked collectively. How did you divide the work? By chapters and focus on different areas?

00:04:04    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so in the beginning, we outlined it by focus areas, chapters. Between two or three of us, we merged chapters. Yeah, it's tough. Four authors, making that coherent. flow throughout a book is quite the challenge. But Ben Jensen was kind of the principal. He's the best writer of us all, or the primary author, stitching everything together. And we met regularly to talk to get us back on. All four of us always agree on everything.

00:04:33    SPEAKER_00
on everything.

00:04:35    SPEAKER_02
But that book, at the end of it all, after two years, I think all of us can say that, yeah, that is definitely representative of all our ideas. And we're in violent agreement of what we're recommending in the book.

00:04:44    SPEAKER_01
That's wonderful. So I know your background in civil affairs. General Cleveland, I believe, is qualified. He's retired now, but was qualified in Special Forces for the Army. Do either Benjamin Jensen or Susan Bryant have a background in civil affairs?

00:04:58    SPEAKER_02
No. So Ben Jensen was a military intelligence officer, or he is a major in the Reserves. He teaches at the Marine Corps University and at American University. He's a prolific writer. He's writing about these topics regularly. Susan Bryant is a strategist. She's helped me become a strategist and influenced me to do it, as well as John Cleveland. She just retired recently as a colonel. She's had experience as a strategist, working with all different types of capabilities to include civil affairs.

00:05:27    SPEAKER_01
What has the response been so far when you're talking about the book and you're sharing with other people in the military community?

00:05:34    SPEAKER_02
It's been quite positive. I don't know if people just don't want to be honest or don't want to give critical feedback. So far on social media and as we marketed and talked to people, I've done a couple of speaking engagements and traveled to talk about the book. I mean, even in Kuwait, I went to a convention in Kuwait, and it was received pretty well, some of the ideas in the book. People kept coming up to me afterwards saying it makes total sense, and hopefully more people will continue to pick it up and read it.

00:06:00    SPEAKER_01
Good. Let's talk about some of the details of the book, and I want to start with the preface. In it, General Cleveland wrote, We lack organizations and leadership. at the highest levels oriented to the most prevalent forms of conflict, irregular and population -centric. Colonel David, why do you think that's the case?

00:06:18    SPEAKER_02
That's a good question. So that point was made early in the book for good reason. I mean, if you look at how things progressed in the global war on terror, there was a lot of initial success. It started with small special operations elements in Afghanistan with the infamous core soldiers with all these moves coming out now, in Iraq with 10th Group and General Cleveland. working alongside the Kurds and Peshmerga, and to the overlooked success of Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines and a similar effort in Colombia. These are all led by special warfare leadership at the operational and tactical levels, not necessarily your civil affairs, your PSYOP, special forces leadership, not necessarily your surgical strike types. They are instrumental to the fighting of irregular population -centric conflicts. But as these things grow in scale, You know, the military response is, you know, like if you look at what happened in Mosul and Iraq when we went back in just recently, I mean, the only things we have to offer are, you know, your brigade, the Beijing Corps, field army headquarters of conventional leaders who are, you know, are charged to lead and prosecute these wars amongst the people. It's not that they are not good leaders, but by no means, I mean, they are the best in the world, but they are the best at bringing the hammer and violence. And these types of conflicts require, you know, those most intimate with its conduct and understand its character. And so a lot of the leaders that, you know, whether it's your special forces group commander or what have you, they might rise up to be a TSOC commander, commanding general. But in terms of managing these larger efforts, I mean, it's not likely the way we're structured right now that they would be in charge of prosecuting that type of war.

00:07:50    SPEAKER_01
And when you look, so that's the U .S. When you look at some of our adversaries, do you think that they're succeeding in having the leadership organizations formed for irregular or population -centric warfare?

00:08:01    SPEAKER_02
and publish such warfare. I mean, it's like what's happened with the Taliban. I mean, even though they're getting some support or external support from whether it's Pakistan or elsewhere, how can we, with all these resources and tremendous might of NATO and the U .S., continue to struggle in dealing with the Taliban and they're able to recruit? So I think they're way effective at controlling the narrative, their information campaigns, the way they're connecting with the people. I mean, they're really good. And one to look out for right now. I mean, for quite some time is Iran. I mean, how they're able to mobilize massive networks of people all over the world with their reach, with Hezbollah and all these different groups that are connected to Iran. I mean, it's pretty impressive. I was at a conference the other day at Chaser at Sandhurst, and this was a big topic of discussion there.

00:08:53    SPEAKER_01
Are there any other adversaries who are doing it well?

00:08:56    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so I mean, there's a host of them, right? The Chinese, they went without fighting. I mean, they're fighting in this threshold below armed conflict with the way they're creating these networks. I mean, we talk about in the book the One Belt, One Road project they have where they're just creating these flows, these big networks, and it's to increase their power and influence in that whole area, the One Belt, One Road, all the different areas it's moving through. Russia, of course, is hybrid warfare stuff that they're doing, trying to avoid. That's a similar threshold of Article 5 with NATO, are doing a number of things in cyberspace and disinformation campaigns, to name a few.

00:09:37    SPEAKER_01
Right. Colonel David, in the book you wrote, America's military needs to be part of a global security network optimized for 21st century influence campaigns backed by military force as opposed to fighting 20th century military campaigns backed by information operations that often do not match the local context. Sir, are you calling for influence before force?

00:10:01    SPEAKER_02
In some cases, yes. I think that the information objective should have primacy and lead off. Ultimately, it comes down to every circumstance is different, and it might be a matter of sequencing, but too often, you know, and I've watched this in a number of campaigns or places I've been on deployments, you know, they plan the kinetic effect or the lethal aspect of the fight, and then they're like, okay, let's sprinkle in some magical IO dust after the kinetic operation. or even to use a little bit of it before. But it might be the main thing, the main object that we need to pursue. So on my last deployment, I was asked as the CIG Chief for Special Operations Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Sajid Afay. I was asked by the CIG to look into information warfare and assess how well we were doing it across not just Sajid Afay, but Resilist Support with NATO and the Afghans. And so I brought a Sergeant Major from Asymmetric Warfare Group, AWG. And we'd go around as we're doing our assessment, and he had a good way, a clever way of explaining it. He would say, hey, if I was, you know, if I just walked up to you and slapped you in the face, you'd be like, why'd you just hit me? But if I said, hey, stop this behavior, and then I walk up and then punch you in the face, you know why it hits you, and then that's kind of the way, you know, what should lead out. So the IO objective or trying to explain, you know, whether it's trying to intimidate or influence or coerce or manipulate. That may lead. That might be the main thing. And then you might be able to accomplish your objectives without even having to physically fight. So I thought it was kind of a clever way of explaining information warfare and why it matters and what should come first, you know,

00:11:36    SPEAKER_01
if that answers the question.

00:11:37    SPEAKER_02
answers the question.

00:11:38    SPEAKER_01
I think it does, and that's built on your experiences and those of the other authors. So let's talk about the three policy recommendations in the book. First, you and the fellow authors advise that we define the human domain. So how would you define it?

00:11:52    SPEAKER_02
So, of course, we define it in the book. But simply put, I mean, it's the intersection of actors and interests, predominantly in the land and cyber. So, you know, the cyber domain is a thing right now that's kind of odd. But we're saying that, you know, if you look at the construct of all the domains and how we organize, I mean, really, it's humans first that all war is eternally human, a human endeavor. So humans are always a part of this space. But what's happening in the present is that. This human domain is shaping modern competition and conflict faster with the speed of networks and communications. So networks define the human domain and shape the current character of conflict and competition.

00:12:30    SPEAKER_01
The second recommendation you have is a public -private partnership for data analysis to map the human domain and roots of instability. And I know there are a lot of contractors out there, a lot of private industry members who have data analytics tools. So there are some partnerships. to some degree, that are already happening. How do you think that's gone so far, and is there support for growing this idea?

00:12:55    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's a good question. So, I mean, I don't know if you've heard of PIX. I think one of your past podcasts might have someone alluded to it or talked about it, but the Protected Internet Exchange PIX by a project being run by the NGA is doing some of this. So it's a collaborative platform, and it's pulling in data and sharing it and managing it. But in the book, so there's that, and there's probably no other examples. But in the book, what we're proposing is just something a little bit bigger. We believe the type of data we want to collect should be called, you know, should be a common resource pool. So in Chapter 5, I put together a graphic illustration of this idea, which is probably, you know, better explains it than me explaining it. But essentially, the DOD or government, you know, if it hosted this enormous data set, it would enable a number of things. For instance, before you deploy, if you want to map out human geography, you can start to ask questions or do that rather quickly because the data is in there. You can run machine learning eventually because this is present technology today. You can run machine learning and algorithms to ask important questions to accelerate your understanding of an area or population. Dr. Ben Jensen, so my buddy Ben, I helped him get this thing going in the future studies group with another major. He's got this Project Athena. where he's taking all the data from war games to join staff to feed it to this AI platform, you know, Athena. So it's pretty exciting, incredible. You'll be able to ask Athena questions, whether you're doing some planning or what have you, you know, kick back some answers and help you, you know, plan or understand what it is that you're doing. So this is what we need to do with Civil Information Management, SEM, and other data we collect is put it into this common resource pool in management. We think that DoD, and we recommend DoD does it because it's the only organization. The level that needs to be managed is we're so big and we have all the data just already, most of the data already. We just need to host it in the cloud somewhere.

00:14:51    SPEAKER_01
Okay. It sounds to me the concept is similar to the way that after 9 -11, Intel communities started to collaborate a lot more on Intel sharing and have more common platforms. We created a whole new structure for that and how to sift through it all and analyze what's important and what isn't.

00:15:11    SPEAKER_02
Exactly. Like, for instance, like in North Korea, or the Koreas, talking to other NCOs and officers that are over there, and they're doing some of this, they're making an effort to, and this needs to be brought up to a higher level where it's being managed more, you know, it's more comprehensive. But, I mean, imagine all the different groups that are going, the charities or different NGOs that are going to North Korea. I mean, we don't have, where's all that data going? Where does it sit? Having all that information will be really helpful whenever the balloon goes up or the crisis comes. We'll be able to deal with it and alleviate suffering and act more quickly and appropriately.

00:15:43    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, good point.

00:15:52    SPEAKER_01
We want to give you a preview of some upcoming episodes of the 1CA podcast. We'll be interviewing authors of the CA issue papers that were presented at the 2018 Symposium at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The winner of that symposium was author Ryan McCannell. and his Evolution of Civil Affairs and Interagency Partnerships in Sub -Saharan Africa. Coming in second place was the issue paper titled Optimizing Civil Affairs Through Branding and Narrative Strategies. Tied for third were papers titled Optimizing Civil Affairs Through Reorganizing the Force and Civil Affairs 38 Golf Functional Specialists, From Strategy to Reality. Rounding out the top five papers at the 2018 symposium, was the paper titled Developing Civil Affairs, Increasing Soldier Flexibility and Doctrinal Specificity. So stay tuned for upcoming episodes of the 1CA podcast and catch up with what's happening in the CA issue papers.

00:17:02    SPEAKER_01
So the third recommendation that you and the other co -authors had in the book was to create an engagement warfighting function. Wasn't that previously considered by the Army and rejected in the last few years? Yeah. So we talk about it in the book.

00:17:15    SPEAKER_02
talk about it in the book. Some of us, a couple, I think Sue Bryant, Ben maybe to a degree, and of course General Cleveland, and I had limited participation in this effort along the way this past several years, but they all touched it in some form or fashion. It was an idea. I mean, it started with like, okay, we need a new warfighting function, special operations. No, don't call it that. Call it human day. No, don't call it that. So it ended up becoming called engagement. And it was going to be engagement influence, but no, engagement was a safer word. And then after they started the capabilities -based assessment,

00:17:47    SPEAKER_02
they started to go on this journey. Eventually, it was just kind of rejected by our kicker. It didn't have sufficient evidence, I don't think. It wasn't organized or coherent in a way for people to understand what the change was, what change was being made. and why the change. So I don't know to foster any why, but that's what I've heard is that it just never made it past the finish line and it stopped. I don't know if it's going to get kicked back on again or if multidimane operation is going to bring this back into the Folsom way. Looking at the initial, you know, this recent release of MVO 1 .5, it looks like there's some elements of that, you know, engagement idea in there. We'll see how it takes shape and form.

00:18:23    SPEAKER_01
Okay. So we have six warfighting functions currently. We have mission command, movement and maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection. Do you think any of the existing warfighting functions cover anything related to the concept of engagement?

00:18:39    SPEAKER_02
So, I mean, the mission command, obviously, a little bit in terms of how you collect and manage and process information for commanding control purposes. But, no, we think that the human domain concept and construct... the theoretical foundation we try to establish in the book, I mean, we propose that you do need some kind of warfighting function for, you know, not just engagement, but engage in influence. I mean, influence is an important thing. We should be, we should have, you know, forces or commands or whatever, whatever units organized and conduct, you know, having a constant stare at how do you influence and how do you, I mean, this, the technology today is changing so fast and it just requires the right type of leadership and talent to, to manage that type of fight. so that we're more effective in the information space. So I think you need some kind of warfighting function, or we need to be organized in that way. Yeah.

00:19:29    SPEAKER_01
So you talked about some of the acronyms, the CBA, Capabilities -Based Assessment, and then ARCIC, the Army Capabilities Integration Center, which is the home for figuring out whether we need something new and how it fits in with what we have currently. How would trying to start a new warfighting function come about? Could you talk about that process? how it was tried with engagement in the past?

00:19:52    SPEAKER_02
That's a big question. Okay. So right now, the Army, in the last job I was in, the Chief of Staff for the Army Future Studies, we were tasked to create, build, plan, and do the research behind the new Army Futures Command. So the whole process of how you build a capability, I want to say that some of that may be changing and unfolding right now as we speak. I mean, ARCHIC is getting ready to get realigned underneath the Army Futures Command. Traditionally, you know, you'd have your capability space assessment, which starts with,

00:20:23    SPEAKER_02
space assessment, which starts with, I think what you said was a functional solutions analysis. But beyond that, I mean, in the back of the book, we have an appendix where we propose a policy brief where we recommend for this exploration to occur, where, you know, define the human domain, assign ownership, you know, whether it's SOCOM or the Army, some part of the Army, the irregular affair. There's parts of this all over already. But what we saw recently with the Peacekeeping Instability Operations Institute possibly going away, I don't know if that was finally decided or not, but, you know, a number of other organizations, you know, they're kind of like disparate efforts that are kind of all over the Army. We think that, you know, we propose in the book, like, a higher level command or element needs to take ownership of this space, this human domain. And, you know, SOCOM kind of has it right now. Maybe it's them. And so, like, for instance, what does that mean to civil affairs? Does that mean that if civil affairs were a critical component of the human domain, mapping out the civil dimension part of it and doing a number of things to map out the networks and such, if that was your craft and now SOCOM owns it, then they need to take ownership of this. Then maybe that starts to realign and reorganize, maybe bring the regiment back together in a way that right now we're kind of fragmented. I think what we're asking for is the journey needs to... I mean, it doesn't need to begin. It already has. It's happened. We have the Strategic Land Power Task Force. We just need to take whatever they did, which I think resulted in the human aspects of military operations and the joint integrated campaigning, the new phasing construct. So those things emerged, but we don't think it's sufficient. I mean, I think that you need to start building organizations and structures and the capabilities to address. the challenges of operating and being more effective in the human domain. So the journey just needs to get re -kicked back on and someone needs to be assigned, you know, the leadership to do it.

00:22:22    SPEAKER_01
Right. So you're talking about a couple different aspects of the acronym that we call DOTMIL PFP. And the first step of that you talked about is the functional solution analysis. And that would be needed if we're going to add a human domain to joint U .S. doctrine. You mentioned that some reorganization may be needed or may be more beneficial than what we have now. The same thing for leadership. When you look at some of the other aspects of it in either what you've talked about in the book or what you've discussed with other people now after the book has come out, what additional training or personnel or policies do you think would be needed for human domain at the joint level?

00:23:00    SPEAKER_02
So we have a lot of it. It's a matter of fusing a lot of these capabilities together. There's a belief I have that if you just say that we're going to focus on... high -end warfighting and combined arms maneuver, and any commander who's in charge of that can do all the other things. It's just kind of the fallacy. In the book, I call it the fallacy, the lesser included. If we do that right, we can do everything else. We'll add it in. Well, I think that whether it's an influence campaign or civil affairs activity that needs to happen for a certain effect in a certain country or theater, I mean, those type of activities, they're so complex and complicated that They need the level of leadership and attention that's required to make sure it brings all those capabilities to bear in a meaningful way so that you get the right type of synergy you want. I think as we go forward and continue the discourse, this multi -domain operations isn't going anywhere. I mean, General Milley is about to be the Joint Chiefs now. And so how we fit into this, I think what we do is we work, and I'm sure it's happening. I'm sure we have some smart folks out there, officers, NCOs that are. A part of this multi -main operations are sitting in places like Archaic or TRADOC or even in Futures Command where we start to become a part of the discussion of what does that mean? And I think there's room in that construct of the multi -main operations to say, hey, this human domain stuff is important. And, of course, information operations and all this other stuff, it all ties in so that we're taking on new approaches. So strategy is all about the art of creating power. So in the book, we talk about these new forms of power, you know, this network making power, network power. It can be pretty decisive for future war.

00:24:41    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's exciting to see. It would be exciting to see how this evolves over time. You talked a little bit about how civil affairs would fit into the mix. And, you know, we'd have to be the ones to analyze the human domain at the tactical level, still engage, obviously, with people on the battlefield to influence what they're doing to our ends. How else do you think civil affairs forces at the tactical operational level would fit into your future of human domain?

00:25:08    SPEAKER_02
We're doing a lot of this already. We're out there working with different partners. I mean, we're not out there doing things unilaterally, even bilaterally. It's multilateral. And so, General Milley, I'll just make one point going back to this, like, what, you know, China, Russia, and he's now going to be the Joint Chiefs. So, when I was with him in... My new boss, the British chief of their army, General Carlton Smith, General Milley made a point of saying, this is back, I think, in October, and he said, hey, look, our network, with all the combined countries and allies, I mean, we're like 10 times, I think 10 or 12 times more powerful than the Russians or Chinese. So that's something, that's an interesting point that he makes, and a powerful one, is that, so it goes back to, like I said earlier, is that this, for us, we're already doing it. We're partnered. But it's taking these networks of partners and mapping it in a way that you can, you know, you start to see the value of it so that when people are like, well, I don't know if the seed thing is something we need, you know, this is irrelevant. Like, well, geez, like look at these overlapping networks of people that they're touching and managing in a number of regions. I mean, that's a powerful thing. And it's making a big difference in different parts of the world, in Ukraine to, you know, up in, you know. the Baltics to all the way in every theater, we have forces doing all this stuff. So I think our forces as a critical component of the human domain in creating this capability of these networks that are able to influence, it's just how do you package that and market it in a way that people start to understand what it is that we bring to the table.

00:26:46    SPEAKER_01
Colonel David, if at all, do you think and how should civil affairs forces and their supporters start their own influence campaign? to increase the demand for human domain and joint U .S. doctrine.

00:26:58    SPEAKER_02
Right now, running this platform and getting a podcast going where we're able to tell our stories and shares is a big part of that. I always constantly mentor a number of captains, invaders, and NCOs connected with over time and help them balance, talk through ideas and debate about things and honestly help them publish sometimes and just get stuff out there. So I think that we should constantly think, read, and write, and publish. if we can these ideas and just be a part of the discourse it's pretty powerful i mean there's some people i've talked to in the past senior leaders like oh no one reads stuff and it's not i mean i i'll tell you right now that there's things that i've published and they've been pretty influential to where you know that for instance like uh this information operation stuff in afghanistan you know we're going to brief the com rs the commander for resident support general nicholson and i published an article on real clear defense and you know it was forwarded to him like several times by a number of other generals so like i know it works if you get the right audience and you get the right you know publication meaning you know your ideas are pretty clear and it's meaningful it might get shared so i think contributing to the dialogue and it just makes us improve each other's ideas so refine it you know build off each other so that's one way is just publishing right and get it out there right so how in some uh

00:28:12    SPEAKER_01
so how in some uh senior NCOs, mid -grade NCOs, or officers who are in the Civil Affairs Force in the Army and the Marine Corps, or people who care about civil affairs issues. Are there any advice that you'd have for them for getting over the hump of they've got some idea in the back of their mind or they've written it down on a napkin just to put it on paper and submit it? Is there any reluctance that you've heard from people to do that?

00:28:36    SPEAKER_02
So that's a fantastic question, man. I mean, it takes a lot of courage to write and publish and put your ideas out there, right? When you put it out there, it's out there. So it takes enormous courage. I would say find a mentor. There's plenty out there. Like I said, I've helped a bunch of people get stuff out there on different mediums, a smaller journal, War on the Rocks, and what have you. Get with people that have similar interests or can help or even red team your idea before you put it out there. And the Civil Affairs Association, Chris Holschick. John Church, a number of leaders on the reserve side that are retired have been very helpful. The late Dr. Mueller, Kurt Mueller. So get with mentors. Get with people like Dr. Kurt Mueller and Chris Holschick who are willing to take the time to help read, mentor the civil affairs essay papers, contributing to those, giving those a shot. I think that we're getting way better at this. We're starting to see a larger volume of people write and contribute stuff. So that's really good. I mean, participate in the podcast and just learn from each other, just help each other out. We need to be a learning organization.

00:29:46    SPEAKER_01
Sir, I wanted to ask you one other question. Do you have any advice for officers or NCOs coming up in the Civil Affairs Force today?

00:29:53    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, sure. I think one of the big misnomers is that you have to stay close to the mothership at Fort Bragg and stay NCA units to help influence things. And to be honest, like what I've discovered is that some of my, I think my biggest influence or contributions to civil affairs have been my time outside the branch. So I guess my biggest recommendation to those coming up is, you know, do your time, enjoy your tea time, enjoy your time within civil affairs company and doing civil affairs stuff. But as you a little more older, like, don't be afraid to venture out. And we need good talent in places that are outside the branch, at the T -SOCs or at, you know, Theater Special Operations Command or, you know, Army Component Commands. We need good leaders there, too, to help influence things. So don't be afraid to venture out. Thanks for asking that question.

00:30:41    SPEAKER_01
Lieutenant Colonel Arnell David, co -author of Military Strategy for the 21st Century, People, Connectivity, and Competition. Sir, you're doing it right now. I congratulate you and your co -authors for getting this book out, for sharing the word, pushing the ideas that you have. And thank you very much for being on the 1CA podcast.

00:30:58    SPEAKER_02
Thank you, John. Appreciate it.

00:31:06    SPEAKER_00
Thank you for spending some time with us. Please subscribe and come back for another installment of 1CA. Until then, be safe and secure the victory.