5th Annual SMA Conference – State/Non-State Actors

5th Annual SMA Conference.

Author | Editor: Canna, S. & Popp, G. (NSI, Inc).

The 5th Annual Strategic Multi-layer Assessment (SMA) Conference was held at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland from 29-30 November 2011. The SMA program is prioritized by the Joint Staff (JS/J-3/DDGO) and executed by ASD (R&E) RFD. The focus of the SMA Conference was on influence strategies of state and non-state actors as well as the impact of the social and neurobiological sciences on key aspects of national security. The conference also hosted special sessions on geospatial applications, influence and deterrence in cyber space, and complex adaptive systems. Each session was designed to draw on diverse perspectives and insights from across the United States Government (USG), industry, and academia as well as from around the globe.

The Joint Staff, in partnership with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), has developed a proven methodology merging multi-agency expertise and information to address complex operational requirements that call for multi-disciplinary approaches utilizing skill sets not normally present within any one service/agency. The SMA process uses robust multi-agency collaboration leveraging intellectual/analytical rigor to examine factual/empirical evidence with the focus on synthesizing existing knowledge.The end product consists of actionable strategies and recommendations, which can then be used by planners to support Course of Action (COA) Development.

LTG Michael Flynn, Assistant Director for National Intelligence, provided the keynote speech that covered the changing threat environment, which is creating new demands on the intelligence community and requiring a critical look at the many dimensions of the complex, human-dominated world. He provided four core insights into this complex environment.

1. The threat environment is highly asymmetric, amorphous, complex, rapidly changing, and uncertain.
2. There is a greater need for speed and flexibility in US intelligence gathering and decision making
3. Current analytic deficiencies arise from the Cold War structure and insularity of the intelligence community, complexity of the environment, and how we currently think about threats
4. New thinking needs to consider populations as important actors (e.g., mobilization via social media, etc.) and the social and resource inequities and grievances that spawn conflict

A significant portion of the conference focused on soliciting and discussing the needs of the Combatant Commands (COCOMS) to inform how the SMA program can best support the operational community. The panel was moderated by BG Mike Nagata, JS J37 DDSO, and drew on the experiences and insights of various representatives from across the Combatant Commands. The panelists are listed below.

• BG Mike Nagata, JS, J37, DDSO (moderator)
• COL Carl Trout, JS, J7
• Mr. Aaron Meyer, PACOM
• CAPT Todd Veazie, SOCOM
• Mr. Marty Drake, CENTCOM
• LTC Gerald Scott, JS, J3
• Mr. Roger Baty, NORTHCOM
• LtCol Scott Tielemans, CENTCOM
• Mr. Juan Hurtado, SOUTHCOM
• Master Chief Dave Cooper, SOCOM
• LtCol (Dr.) Rob Renfro, CENTCOM

Several key themes emerged from the panel discussion.

1. Issues and questions from the operational community must be well framed to ensure analytic responses meet the COCOMs’ needs. Answers are only as good as the question asked.
2. The operation community needs tools and models to aid complex planning and decision- making. These tools and models need to be able to
• Deal with complexity and uncertainty;
• Incorporate various perspectives;
• Operate dynamically and across multiple dimensions;
• Be easily and quickly learned;
• Focus left of boom;
• Help operators to better understand others as well as ourselves; and g. Make information more digestible through better visualization.
3. Officers need to be trained how to use social science tools so that they will feel comfortable employing these decisions and planning aids to maximize operational success.
4. Solutions to complex national security issues, particularly with regard to population-centric challenges, should be sought from a broad community of potential contributors including academia, industry, think tanks, and other non-traditional sources. A community, or communities, of interest must be built and sustained.
5. Cyber threats have the potential to alter the types of problems the operational community faces in the future. They are a potential game changer.
6. Building and fostering personal relationships across militaries and governments is the key to success when operating left of boom.

The panelists agreed that programs, like SMA, that seek solutions to the nation’s complex strategic issues using rigorous, diverse analytic methods drawn from a large community of government and non-government contributors provide a template for 21st Century strategic thinking.

The Influencing State and Non-State Actors session consisted of a two-part introduction followed by three panels. The session’s objective was to explore and discuss the fundamentals of analytic approaches for deriving and assessing actions to influence and deterring state and non-state actors. The first part of the introduction explored the methodological and conceptual challenges of tackling an extraordinarily complex dynamic problem space that consists of a wide range of actors (e.g., nuclear powers, failing states, non-state organizations, virtual actors), U.S. objectives (deterrence, assurance, defeat, counter-terror, non-proliferation), competing interests, and anticipated and unanticipated effects. Maj. Gen. Joseph Reynes, AJFC, Netherlands, supplemented this conceptual discussion with a view of the real world practicalities of thinking about and conducting deterrence and influence operations.

Panel One, moderated by Mr. Pat McKenna, STRATCOM, reviewed recent efforts on behalf of various COCOMs to envision the complex system of state and non-state actors and their interests that must be considered in nearly any analysis in support of deterrence or influence operations. Discussion centered around critical, but often inadequately defined, basic concepts and language of deterrence and influence. Panel Two,, moderated by Mr. Dan Flynn, ODNI, focused on the practical questions of generating sufficient relevant data and the use of appropriate, creative analytic techniques (e.g., crowdsourcing, war gaming, simulation and computer-based modeling) for developing influence and deterrence operations COAs. Panel Three, moderated by Dr. Allison Astorino-Courtois, NSI, discussed the prospects for developing readily accessible tools and models to help operators tackle the dynamic threat environments faced by the U.S. while avoiding unfavorable and unintended consequences. Further discussion touched upon the real-world impediments to including modeling and other multi-input analyses in (non-kinetic) effects planning.

Mr. Pat McKenna summarized the key insights from Panels One, Two, and Three.

• The nation can prepare for the future, but it cannot predict it.
• Operational environments are much more complex today than they were in the past.
• The threat is constantly evolving and the threat environment is becoming more complex.
• The U.S. needs to be agile.
• No single model can capture all of the complexities; there is no universal method.
• Analysts are trying to provide insights not solutions.
• Ultimately, analysts, modelers, and planners are providing information to enhance decision-making.

Mr. McKenna then noted the challenges that arose throughout the discussions. These challenges are listed below.

• There is a need to focus on being left of boom.
• It is important to determine how to balance agility versus comprehensiveness.
• Investments need to be made in the analytic community even with shrinking budgets.
• It is crucial to have critical thinking people and utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches.
• There is a need to obtain more complete data and determine how to know if it is authoritative and unbiased.
• Authoritative data must be incorporated into models.
• Techniques that are not singularly focused must continue to be used.
• Deterrence must be balanced in terms of other forms of influence.
• The integration of multiple tools must occur.
• There is a need to determine if tools are valid and the proper ways to deal with uncertainty within these tools.

A session on Geospatial Applications for Population Centric Assessments, moderated by Ms. Elizabeth Lyon, OSD, and Dr. Bert Davis, United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), examined geospatial data, geospatial methods (including data collection), and geospatial applications for defining place including elements such as the physical and social environments and factors leading to understand stability and security in places that are either currently stable, transitioning, or in conflict.

Additional panels were held throughout the conference to provide further perspectives and insights. The panel on Implications of Recent Advances in Social, Cognitive, and Neurobiological Sciences to National Security, moderated by Dr. Diane DiEuliis, NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), discussed cutting edge scientific research in the areas of political violence, radicalization, and deterrence. The panel examined how recent scientific discoveries might inform our understanding of violence in general and, more specifically, issues of national security relating to political violence. Dr. Bill Casebeer summarized the key findings and insights from the Neurobiology panel.

• Neurobiological research helps the operational community understand the mechanisms that underlie higher order phenomena
• The amygdala plays a key role in response to threats
• Emotional triggers can be subconscious
• Out-group members trigger more amygdala activation than in-group members
• Disinhibition contagion is a neurobiological process, which can result in friendly fire
• Leader fires first and releases the inhibition of others to use force
• Understanding neurobiological processes will help the DoD formulated Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to limit collateral damage
• Narratives and stories are important psychologically and neurobiologically; they…
• Influence how one remembers things and helps humans make judgments about who it is permissible to kill
• Could have implications for influence campaigns

The panel on Influencing Violent Extremist Organizations (IVEO) Neurobiology Pilot Effort, moderated by Ms. Abigail Chapman, NSI, discussed results from the quick turnaround effort designed to provide a multi-method, multi-disciplinary exploration of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The panel on Influence and Deterrence in Cyber Space, moderated by Dr. William Casebeer, DARPA, addressed the core questions facing the operational community today with regard to influence and deterrence in cyberspace. The panel on Complex Adaptive Systems, moderated by Lt Col David Lyle, United States Air Force (USAF), examined the importance of understanding human complexity in the operational environment. The panel further discussed ways in which visualizations inspired by complex science innovations could help to combine and present vast amounts of complex data in new formats, helping the observer intuitively understand the key nodes, linkages, and dynamics of complex systems of all kinds.

The proceedings with all slides and videos will be posted on the SMA SharePoint site (https://nsiteam.net/x_sma/default.aspx). If you do not have an account, you can register for one by going to https://nsiteam.net/newAcct. If you already have an account and cannot recall your password, please visit this URL: https://nsiteam.net/reset.

 

Download Publication