The 2024 Conference theme was MANAGING CHAOS: Competitive Strategies in a Disordered World and held at Joint Base Andrews on 29-30 May 2024.
Each year, the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Conference explores the defining features of our time and how they intersect with and frustrate our ability to advance our national security and prosperity.
The 2024 Conference, Managing Chaos: Competitive Strategies in a Disordered World, considered the emerging rulesets of the Information Age, diffusion of power in the international system, and enduring competition with rivals in an “infinite game” that requires us to reformulate legacy notions of “winning” and “losing.” We must also confront the emerging technologies of AI/ML, generative AI, and quantum computing that all promise better sensemaking and decision advantage but possibly at unbearable costs.
Read the speaker and panelist biographies for the 2024 SMA Conference
Panel 1 – CHAOS: A Very Short Introduction
Moderator: Todd Veazie (SMA) Panelists: Elbridge Colby (The Marathon Initiative), Dr. Moises Naim (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Michele Wucker (Gray Rhino & Company)
Abstract: The past 100 years was an American Century in which the United States rose and then dominated global political, military, economic, and cultural systems. That dominance was achieved, in part, by the United States’ ability to craft—and enforce—the rules of a world order. Those rules moderated competition, and they helped foster the political structures that promoted prosperity and security. But human social systems always include elements of both order and chaos, with a constellation of different types of uncertainty in between. That was the case throughout the American Century—and it is the case now. In our new era, rapid change and rising complexity are causing escalating chaos. State and nonstate actors can use new capabilities and ideas to challenge the rules. This panel sets the scene for the conference, and asks: How can the United States and its allies become better competitors in our era, as the balance shifts between the chaotic and the controllable?
Key Takeaways:
- The United States is emerging from a period of globalization and has found itself incredibly fragmented. It is experiencing a decline in its capacity to work together, while the number of global crises that cannot be dealt with by an individual state—such as the climate crisis—is growing rapidly.
- The United States is currently experiencing a crisis that takes the form of a global power transition, as its traditional allies are experiencing a global power decline. The challenge facing the United States and its allies and partners relates to how they can guide an evolution of the current Western-led, rules-based international order towards a version that can better ensure global cooperation and constructive competition.
- Change is inevitable and uncertain. In order for the United States to deal with the changes that it is experiencing, it must work with its allies and partners and ensure that its focus is not so narrow that it fails to examine the wider context of a situation—such as the cultural differences that may impact a cooperative approach.
Panel 2 – Ahead of the Fact: Competitive Strategies
Moderator: Dr. Antulio Echevarria (US Army War College) Panelists: LtGen (Ret) Mike Groen (US Marine Corps), Dave Katz (DARACOM), Lt Gen Michael Plehn (National Defense University), Dr. Jeffrey Starr (USAF SAF/CDM)
Abstract: Strategies are especially about the future. What could we have done ahead of time before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022? What can we do ahead of time before other potential
conflicts, such as over Taiwan? What are competitors like China doing ahead of time across multiple levers of power, and how should our theories of victory adjust? This panel will look at strategies such as integrated deterrence, across the inter-agency, to affect great power adversaries’ decision calculi and capabilities in the infinite game. We want them to say ‘not tonight,’ every night.
Key Takeaways:
- Great power competition requires a comprehensive approach to strategic competition; however, the US grand strategy for competition needs further development. A further-developed US grand strategy may utilize whole-of-government capabilities, as well as international influence, which the United States wields over several international systems that it stewards.
- In addition to developing a comprehensive framework for conducting strategic competition, the United States Government (USG) and DOD must be able to counter and defend against adversary strategies. Additionally, the United States must be flexible and adaptive to changes in the threat environment.
- The USG and DOD must align their strategies with both the organizations that craft them and those responsible for implementing them, focusing on competing in and shaping the environment much earlier in the pre-conflict period than it currently does.
Panel 3 – Fierce Competition in the Information Domain
Moderator: Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (National Defense University) Panelists: COL Joseph Funderburke (National Defense University), Paul Kruchoski (Department of State), Julian Mueller-Kaler (The Stimson Center), LtGen (Ret) Lori Reynolds (US Marine Corps), Dr. Thomas Rid (Johns Hopkins University, SAIS)
Abstract: The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies and the proliferation of mass and social media have opened extensive space for the weaponization of information. Misinformation, disinformation, and influence operations have become pervasive and effective tools for achieving strategic effects. Their use—particularly by the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran—has evolved and become highly sophisticated. Information campaigns have caused confusion and sown discord, complicating Western responses. The United States and its allies and partners have not developed a strategic and synchronized response. The panel will offer a summary threat analysis but focus on potentially effective counter-initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
- While the information domain encompasses many activities, the panel focused on influence operations (IO). Correspondingly, adversarial actors, including states like Russia and China, pose significant challenges in the information domain, especially regarding the erosion of trust in US society and the diminishment of the world’s faith in the United States as a result, in part, of adversarial IO.
- A fundamental objective in the information domain should be sustaining a healthy, pro-social environment centered around truth and inoculating the United States, partner, and ally populations against misinformation, disinformation, and potential malign influence. To address this, consensus for a future vision includes a whole-of-government, if not whole-of-society, organized approach to IO featuring a clear, central authority and an assertive, offensive strategy.
- Measuring the impact and effectiveness of IO remains a formidable challenge. The intangible nature of influence and its resistance to quantification makes this task particularly difficult. Therefore, innovative approaches are needed to overcome this complexity.
Panel 4 – Wisdom Through the Looking Glass: Decision Support Sciences
Moderator: Dan Flynn (SAIC) Panelists: Gregory Gatjanis (Department of Treasury), John Goolgasian (Seerist), Dr. Thomas Mahnken, (Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments), Dr. Michael Mazarr (RAND), Paul Prokop (Department of State)
Abstract: Effective competitive strategies for complex security environments require a coherent theory of success, a proactive mindset, and a clear understanding of Blue’s strengths (to be leveraged) and weaknesses (to be protected). In this sense, achieving decision advantage requires far more than a careful articulation of the threat but also a thorough knowledge of oneself and our place in the global order. America today has very formidable strengths, including the world’s largest economy, most powerful military, and unrivalled scientific base. And, like any state that has ever existed, it has vulnerabilities too. What evidence-based techniques and technologies can help us better understand these challenges. Net Assessment methods have been around for decades—and what is the state of the art they provide to understand ourselves? New AI technologies promise to help us make sense of complicated (and vital) factors such as supply chains within and across borders—can they identify Blue strengths to leverage in an interdependent world, as well as Blue vulnerabilities? How are countries outside the United States approaching this challenge of self-reflection? What are the best methodologies for self-reflection?
Key Takeaways:
- The major theme of the panel was self-reflection in strategic decision-making—or, in other words, examining and understanding Blue’s strengths, weaknesses, and comparative (dis)advantages outside of the military realm.
- The panelists focused on diverse sources of US strength and resilience while emphasizing structural and societal factors (e.g., the United States’ economy, geography, political system), as well as the tools, processes, and frameworks that enable the United States to make good, strategic decisions.
- The panelists touched upon a number of US challenges and weaknesses as well, including governing institutions that are not serving the American people well; assessment processes that underestimate US strengths and overestimate US opponents’ capabilities; information operations carried out by adversaries on US populations that also undermine US strengths; and the need for strategic decision-making to leverage a broader, multidisciplinary understanding of global affairs.
Panel 5 – Defense Industrial Base: Big Beasts Plus Nimble Actors
Moderator: Dr. Nicholas Wright (Intelligent Biology) Panelists: Dr. Cynthia Cook (CSIS), Cheryl Ingstad (DIU), Dr. Sarah Sewall (In-Q-Tel)
Abstract: How do we build what we need—that is innovative enough, adaptable enough, secure enough, and at the huge scale needed to meet the challenges democracies face in our time? On December 7th, 1941 the sleeping colossus of American manufacturing was woken—but today, if there is a sleeping colossus, it is a China that manufactures as much as the next nine countries in the world put together. Western countries have struggled to produce artillery shells at the scale required in Ukraine. And much US R&D is now done commercially in places like Silicon Valley. Yet the United States and its allies and partners retain enormous strengths: in small innovative companies, large corporations, academia, and government. How can the US enhance this ecosystem to put us in a better position ahead of time?
Key Takeaways:
- To encourage private sector cooperation with the DOD and foster innovation, the USG can offer a range of incentives to industry and the commercial sector, particularly in key sectors such as AI, cyber, autonomy, and space. These incentives can make collaboration more attractive and profitable for large, private entities, enabling the USG to leverage their focus on innovation to enhance US national security and technological capabilities in the midst of strategic competition.
- Winning the race for technological advancement is a crucial strategy for maintaining national security and deterring adversaries. The USG can win this race by creating pathways to encourage the transition of talent from the private to the public sector.
- The USG is not inspiring the push for greater innovation in the private sector; instead, the USG is paying for already existent innovations from large corporations, small businesses, and even international companies. The USG needs to implement reforms to increase the speed and scale of innovation while fostering greater alignment between the public and private sectors. On a larger scale, it also needs to pursue a whole-of-government approach to the defense industrial base.
- The structure of the defense ecosystem creates challenges for incorporating innovation. These include the amount of funds spent on large programs with heritage supply chains where incorporating new technologies would mean bumping entrenched suppliers and would likely add risk and cost. Solutions for overcoming for the future include investments in modular open systems architectures (MOSA).
Panel 6 – SMA: Advanced Decision-Making Frameworks for Strategic Success
Moderator: Sarah Canna (NSI) Panelists: Dr. Allison Astorino-Courtois (NSI), Dr. Katy Lindquist (NSI), Todd Veazie (SMA)
Abstract: SMA’s mission is to enable decision makers to develop more cogent and effective strategy, doctrine, and force generation decisions, bridging the gap between the academic research community and operators and planners. It does this by developing frameworks and models—grounded in rigorous social science theory—for senior decision makers facing complex, multi-actor challenges. In the current era defined by strategic competition, where the concept of winning has been replaced by the mindset of an “infinite game,” SMA helps Combatant Commanders optimize their strategies for success. This panel reviews two frameworks recently developed for USSTRATCOM and USAFRICOM respectively: the Defense Analysis Planning Support Environment (DAPSE) model and the AFRICOM Exploitable Conditions Model (AECM). SMA Director Todd Veazie will close the panel by taking a step back from the rigorous models SMA develops for the operational community and place them into the context of the future as a complex adaptive system requiring new tools, methods, and technologies.
Key Takeaways:
- SMA’s mission is to enable decision-makers to develop more cogent and effective strategy, doctrine, and force generation decisions, bridging the gap between the academic research community and operators and planners. One way in which it does this is through decision support tools like the AFRICOM Exploitable Conditions Model (AECM) and the Defense Analysis Planning Support Environment (DAPSE) 2.0.
- AECM is a system of systems model that captures the complex interactions within and between geopolitical, economic, sociopolitical, and environmental systems to facilitate resource allocation, operational assessments, identification of indicators and warnings, and interagency coordination. The model has been implemented by US Africa Command (AFRICOM) with great success thus far.
- DAPSE 2.0 is an eight-step process that enables course of action (COA) development for integrated influence and deterrence operations based on the assessment of likely outcomes from the interests and decision calculi of multiple, diverse actors. The DAPSE tackles the complexities of influence and deterrence in a multipolar world. Updating the DAPSE originated from a request by US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) and has been applied to a use case scenario presented by US Forces Korea (USFK) focused on the potential outcomes stemming from a Chinese reaction to a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Panel 7 – Consolidating the Core: Allies and Partners in Great Power Competition
Moderator: Michael Miklaucic (National Defense University) Panelists: Amb. Catherine Royle (NATO), Andreas von der Heide (Consilio International), Dr. Dov Zakheim (CNA)
Abstract: An authoritarian coalition led by the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China has aggressively challenged the liberal, rules-based global order. Under the guise of “a community of common destiny for mankind,” or “a more just multi-polar world order” Russia and China seek to replace the liberal, rules-based global order with one more conducive to autocratic governance and regional hegemony. This challenge is existential, yet the United States has a unique advantage in the strategic competition with the authoritarian coalition; an extensive network of allies and partners. America’s allies and partners are diverse with distinct and sometimes conflicting interests. This panel will explore approaches to consolidating the core group of allies and partners and strategies for winning over the hedging states.
Key Takeaways:
- The United States needs to carefully examine the dynamics inherent to the current rules-based international order and ask itself what it would like the future of that international order to look like in the face of rising competition with Russia and China.
- The United States must recognize that the dichotomy of the Cold War is not present today and adapt to the current international environment; in other words, many countries will not “choose a side” but rather seek to work with the United States—and its adversaries—on select issues that their worldviews align on.
- In order to work effectively with “contested” nations, the United States, its allies, and its partners must be willing to accept that their worldviews will often not be perfectly aligned and focus on the areas in which their interests align. This may lead to amendments to the rules-based international order or informal agreements rather than formal alliances or partnerships.
- The United States must consider what makes it attractive to other nations, as well as how collective it wants to be, to discern what types of values it should be projecting on the global stage.
Keynote Speakers
The 2024 Conference was pleased to welcome three Keynote Events. Noted author and journalist David Ignatius sat down for a frank conversation with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Christopher W. Grady. Dr. Richard Haass (summary shared below) and DARPA Director Dr. Stefanie Tompkins gave remarks and answered questions from the audience.
Summary of Dr. Richard Haass’ remarks: The best policy is to avoid chaos; managing it if it emerges is a distant second best. There are many challenges to order in the world, including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. And there are actual or potential conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. In his keynote address, Dr. Richard Haass emphasized the importance of deterring, or if need be, defending against geopolitical challenges to order, as well as narrowing the gap between global challenges (such as climate change, health challenges, and regulating new technologies) and arrangements required to meet them. Additionally, he reflected on the evolving role of the United States, which in the current era has yet to find a viable balance between aiming to do too much in the world (in particular wars of choice and attempting regime change) doing too little. The United States also needs to rebuild its defense industrial base, address the national debt, promoting trade, improve the quality of public education (including civics), be willing and able to strengthen the capacities of weak states, and leverage new technologies to slow or turn back climate change. We also need to increase our defense budget and spend it more wisely—and encourage friends and allies to do the same.
Read the speaker and panelist biographies for the 2024 SMA Conference
Previous Conferences
2023 Selected Panels from the 13th Annual SMA Conference
2019 Proceedings of the 12th Annual SMA Conference and 2019 Biographies
2018 Proceedings of the 11th Annual SMA Conference and 2018 Biographies