This Conference assessed what today we rightly or wrongly perceive as historically unprecedented changes from the perspectives of politics and history, sociology, biology, information science, and technological innovation. There is a large body of scientific work that supports the notion that human societies are complex adaptive systems with emergent properties that contain core commonalities, but the actions of which cannot be predicted with certainty. Given the properties of human cognition and social behavior, the question remains: How might nations and societies best position themselves to prepare for and manage the risks associated with rapid change under conditions of fundamental uncertainty? The conference speakers and panelists addressed these issues relevant to key domains and dimensions of global security.

The Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) office hosted the 10th Annual SMA Conference on 25-26 April 2017 at Joint Base Andrews. This year’s conference, formally titled “From Control to Influence? A View of—and Vision for—the Future,” brought together a multidisciplinary group of participants to consider how the US and its allies can more effectively counter the influence that recently re-emerging, capable states (such as China and Russia) and non-state actors (such as ISIS) exert on their neighbors and/or third parties through multiple elements of power.

On 11 May 2017, NPS convened a panel session and discuss areas related to the 4th round of CENTCOM Reach Back Cell Questions. The speakers are listed below, and their biographies are available in Appendix A.

This report represents the views and opinions of the participants. The report does not represent official USG policy or position. At the request of United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), the Joint Staff (JS), and jointly with other elements in the JS, Services, and US Government (USG) Agencies, the Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) team established a virtual Reach Back Cell. This initiative, based on the SMA global network of scholars and area experts, has provided USCENTCOM with population based and regional expertise in support of ongoing operations in the Iraq/Syria region. This Panel will discuss the main findings from the SMA Reach Back Cell.

At the request of the Commander, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) team initiated an effort, titled Gray Zone Conflicts-Challenges and Opportunities-A Multi-Agency Deep Dive Assessment, focused on assessing gray zone conflict. The overall objective of this SMA gray zone effort is to determine how the United States Government (USG) can identify, diagnose, and assess indirect strategies, as well as develop response options against, associated types of gray zone conflicts.

Since the end of the Cold War and with the advent of the new century, new geopolitical realities have emerged that have made classical wars with national military forces pitted against each other far less likely. What we are witnessing are new categories of conflict that cannot be considered full1scale wars in the classical sense but cannot be described as “peace” either. Small1scale conflicts are complemented with intense engagement in the Information and other Spheres. These will almost certainly have great implications in the legal domains as well new forms of alliances. Multiple factors have come into play for these trends to emerge. This is a story of change versus continuity, and the conference focused on what has changed since the collapse of the USSR. As such, there are structural and intellectual challenges that prevent the United States Government (USG) from adapting and thriving is this new environment.

We live in an age characterized by the reshaping of society through the presence of information and networks. The proliferation of information technologies from the micro and instantaneous to the insights hidden in “big data” has generated a range of new issues with implications for global transformation and political power shifts, patterns of conflict and warfare, and potential opportunities for enhancing global stability. The time is right for a thorough consideration of the implications of this “age” on US national security issues. How can we best understand the near-term and long-term consequences of these changes? What adaptations to our current intellectual frameworks, intelligence processes, organizational structures, command and control practices and planning approaches may be necessary? In short, how can the United States Government (USG) and its allies recognize the risks as well as the opportunities for enhanced global security presented by fuller realization of the “information age”?

The 6th Annual Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Conference was held at Joint Base Andrews from 6-8 November 2012. The theme of the conference was A World in Transformation: Challenges and Opportunities. A significant portion of the conference addressed the needs of the Geographical Commands. Days One and Two were unclassified, while Day Three was held at the SECRET level.1 As in previous years, representatives from the Geographical Commands were present throughout the conference. On Day Two and on Day Three, representatives discussed the Geographical Commands’ pressing needs to provide the SMA community with an opportunity to mine its wide network of experts to assist in identifying capabilities that can match the Commands’ needs. What resulted was a lively discussion, which is captured in this document.

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 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 Use of Remote Sensing to Support the Assessment of Political Durability Pilot Workshop was held jointly by the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Office and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) from 7-8 December 2010 in Arlington, Virginia. The workshop is part of a proposed effort called Observable Manifestations of Hearts & Minds: Identifying Opportunities for Remotely Sensing Popular Perceptions Effort.

The Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) program provides planning support to COCOMs and warfighters. The program coordinates with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and STRATCOM to support global mission analysis and to develop new analytic capabilities in support of specific tasking. These analytic capabilities seek to orient the commander to a decision for action. SMA develops multi-disciplined, multi-organizational teams for specific projects. It emphasizes the integration of human, social, cultural, behavioral, and physical sciences factors through participation of sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and physicist/engineers as well as universities, non-governmental organizations, and various interagency partners. SMA efforts produce focused, multi-disciplined strategic and technical assessments as well as documentation, training and education in the application of newly developed analytic tools.</p>,

Dr. Hriar Cabayan, OSD, welcomed the participants on behalf of the Department of Defense (DoD), the State Department (DoS), and the RAND Corporation to the Defining a Strategic Campaign for Working with Partners to Counter and Delegitimize Violent Extremism workshop held from 19-20 May 2010 at Gallup World Headquarters in Washington, DC. The workshop focused on strategic communications and violent extremism and was designed to inform decision makers and was not intended as a forum for policy discussion. The workshop emerged from an SMA- and AFRL-sponsored white paper entitled Protecting the Homeland from International and Domestic Terrorism for Counter-radicalization and Disengagement. As the white paper was being written, it came to Dr Cabayan’s attention that Dr. Paul Davis at the RAND Corporation was writing an integrative literature review on the subject. The RAND report was entitled Simple Models to Explore Deterrence and More General Influence in the War with Al-Qaeda. Building on that, CAPT Wayne Porter wrote a paper on the strategic campaign to counter and delegitimize violent extremism, which resulted in the genesis of this workshop.

The Neurobiology of Political Violence: New Tools, New Techniques workshop hosted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the Joint Staff, and the Strategic Multilayer Assessment Office (OSD) brought together nearly 80 representatives of government, academia, and industry in Bethesda, MD from 1-2 December 2010. The workshop facilitated a broad discussion of the current state of the art within the related fields of neuroscience, neurobiology, and social psychology as it relates to deterring political violence. While most panelists emphasized the prematurity of applying current research to real world problems within the national security and homeland defense space, they all agreed that the tools of neuroscience and related fields would serve to better inform current deterrence and messaging strategies.

The objective of Helmand Deep Dive Development and Governance Workshop was to examine academic works and newly generated data and models and to develop guidelines and recommendations for low-cost development project implementation. The Helmand Deep Dive effort focused on water, governance, reconstruction, and job creation.

The Overcoming Information Challenge in Federated Analysis: from Concepts to Practice workshop, held on 27-28 August 2008, was convened in response to requests from US Special Operations Command and US Strategic Command, Lieutenant General Carter F. Ham, Director of Operations, J-3, Joint Staff. The workshop is part of an effort to develop national-level capability to identify and anticipate the action of Violent Non-State Actors (VNSA) with regard to their intent and capability to acquire, build, store, employ, deploy, or supply weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In support of this effort, the workshop was sponsored by a multiagency team and hosted at the Directed Technologies Incorporated (DTI) facility in Arlington, Virginia.

One of the major challenges the US has faced during the opening decades of the 21st Century is the growth in the number and international reach of insurgents, terrorists, WMD proliferators and other sorts of nefarious groups. Among many others, the current situation in Iraq illustrates the difficulty of countering insurgencies once they have become violent and operationally well-established. The apparent transition of contemporary war away from the traditional physical battlefield towards the human element as the battlefield poses new challenges for both intelligence and operations – collections and analysis within the human domain requires new thinking and new methods.

The Social Science Modeling and Information Visualization Workshop provided a unique forum for bringing together leading social scientists, researchers, modelers, and government stakeholders in one room to discuss the state-of-the-art and the future of quantitative/computational social science (Q/CSS) modeling and information visualization. Interdisciplinary quantitative and computational social science methods from mathematics, statistics, economics, political science, cultural anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, and modeling and simulation - coupled with advanced visualization techniques such as visual analytics - provide analysts and commanders with a needed means for understanding the cultures, motivations, intentions, opinions, perceptions, and people in troubled regions of the world.

The 12th Annual SMA Conference, entitled “The Evolving Anatomy of Conflict in a Dynamically Changing World,” was held 21-22 May 2019 at the General Jacob E. Smart Conference Center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The conference theme was defined as:

On 27 February 2019, the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA, Joint Staff, J39) office—with the support of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and National Defense University (NDU) – convened a panel discussion on China in support of the SMA Future of Global Competition and Conflict effort. The scope of the day’s event was to assess how the United States Government (USG) should consider China’s power in relation to other states for the purpose of understanding the implications for future geopolitical competition.

On 8 May 2019, the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA, Joint Staff, J39) office, with the support of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and National Defense University (NDU), convened a panel discussion on Russia in support of the SMA Future of Global Competition and Conflict effort. The scope of the day’s event was Russian activities in the Gray Zone, its perception of global competition and conflict worldwide, and its long-term growth trends, economic activities, and diplomatic affairs. The event convened speakers from government, think tanks, and the academic community; each speaker offered prepared remarks, and then assembled to debrief and take questions.