SMA CENTCOM Panel Discussion- Black Swan Scenarios

Speakers: Dr. Gary Ackerman (University at Albany); Doug Clifford (University at Albany); Dr. David Dorondo (Western Carolina University); Dr. Maorong Jiang (Creighton University); Dr. Larry Kuznar (NSI, Inc.)

Date: 27 March 2020

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a panel discussion as a part of its SMA CENTCOM Speaker Series. The panelists included Dr. Gary Ackerman (University at Albany), Mr. Doug Clifford (University at Albany), Dr. David Dorondo (Western Carolina University), Dr. Maorong Jiang (Creighton University), and Dr. Larry Kuznar (NSI, Inc.). The moderator was Ms. Sarah Canna (NSI, Inc.).

Dr. Dorondo and Dr. Jiang discussed how China’s and Russia’s relationships with key actors in the CENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR) will play out in the short term (2020-2025), the medium term (2025-2035), and the long term (2035-2045). Dr. Dorondo highlighted that, in the short term, one can anticipate a movement from an unstable status quo towards significant change, including a new great power rivalry involving China and Russia (on the same side) and the US. In the medium term, one can expect a “Colder War” political dynamic in the CENTCOM AOR, as well as a transition from a US-centric regional alignment to a Russia-centric regional alignment with Chinese engagement involved as well. In the long term, one can anticipate more authoritarian regimes than democratic states in the region, continued conflict amongst great powers, and a rebalanced regional power structure. Dr. Jiang then stated that China is the stronger of the two powers—Russia and China—even though it still has a relatively new presence in the CENTCOM AOR. Thus far, China has focused on regional security and the expansion of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the area. Dr. Dorondo added that Russia and China will act in pursuit of their goal to weaken US dominance in the CENTCOM AOR and might collectively seek to create new alliances with regional actors. As a result, the US cannot afford to cease defending its interests and maintaining its long-established relationships with nations in the region. Moreover, he US has the ability to counter Russian and Chinese influence by strengthening its own relationships with nations within the CENTCOM AOR and by using Russia’s and China’s shortcomings to  its advantage. To conclude, Dr. Dorondo stated that China’s and Russia’s alliance with key players in the CENTCOM AOR will present a geostrategic challenge to the US. Therefore, an effective overarching strategy must be developed to guide US-China and US-Russia relations moving forward.

Next, Dr. Ackerman and Dr. Clifford presented the results of their Strategic Dynamics Red Teaming (SDRT) event. Dr. Ackerman stated that the purpose of this event was to explore broader strategic dynamics in the CENTCOM AOR with respect to key competitors (i.e., Russia, China, and Iran) following the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani. The team conducted four simulations, each involving a red team (Iran, China, and Russia), a blue team (the US), a green team (Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the EU), and a white team (the rest of the world). The participants received customized background information on their specific nation, consisting of a leadership profile, insights into recent activities and events in the AOR, and the nation’s strategic orientation towards the AOR and the US. Each team also received a primer in order to minimize biases during the red teaming event. Dr. Ackerman explained that during the game, there were three consecutive rounds covering 2020, 2021, and 2022. Participants formulated broad strategies and operational objectives according to interests, communicated with other actors, and responded to the overt and covert actions taken by other players with their own actions. Dr. Clifford then highlighted Dr. Ackerman’s and his primary findings. He highlighted that across sessions, the most common strategic goal among adversaries was to diminish US influence and power in the AOR. Russia and China, namely, both sought to expand their economic growth in the region and increase their status as a regional diplomatic partner. Moreover, the US, Russia, and China all engaged in disinformation campaigns in at least one session. Red actors tended to utilize military covert actions, while green and blue tended to engage in more intelligence-focused actions. To conclude, Dr. Ackerman briefly discussed the prototype natural language processing of the communications and other text-based outputs produced by the participants that he and Dr. Clifford completed after the event.

Dr. Kuznar focused his presentation on black swans and gray rhinos. He and the NSI team employed machine learning techniques and conducted a series of interviews with subject matter expert on a wide range of topics, including climate change and water scarcity, in order to look at gray rhinos and black swans in a variety of ways. to begin, Dr. Kuznar explained that gray rhinos are predictable events that we choose ignore, whereas black swans are surprises generated by complex systems. Complex systems are deterministic, non-linear systems that appear random but are actually not. He noted that individuals’ ignorance is what makes these systems appear unpredictable and random. Keeping these definitions in mind, Dr. Kuznar argued that many events that we consider to be black swans really are gray rhinos. He suggested that there are two types of gray rhinos: lumbering rhinos and sneaky rhinos. Lumbering rhinos are predictable events that individuals ignore and that can be identified via classic statistical modeling, whereas sneaky rhinos are probabilistic threats that individuals can anticipate via rare event models and machine learning. True black swans, in contrast, are surprises resulting from the ignorance of complex systems and can be examined using computational models. Dr. Kuznar then presented a series of probable lumbering gray rhinos in the CENTCOM AOR specifically, including: 1) political instability, which is driven by corruption, food insecurity, water vulnerability, and competition between elites; and 2) terrorism, which is primarily driven by state terror and secondarily driven by both youth bulges and unemployment. He also identified a series of sneaky gray rhinos, including COVID-19 and thresholds related to corruption levels, state terror, temperature, and water. To conclude, Dr. Kuznar stated that CENTCOM can identify potential analytical black swans by looking for those events that emerge from complex systems from non-linear interactions in the region.

Speaker Session Audio Recording

Briefing Materials

Biographies:

Douglas Clifford is Program Manager for the Center for Advanced Red Teaming (CART) at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany (SUNY). In this role, he coordinates the development, implementation, and analysis of all red teaming efforts, and oversees all Research Assistants and Interns. In addition to his role as Program Manager, he is an adjunct faculty member at the college, instructing undergraduate students on exercise design and implementation. Prior to his time at SUNY Albany, he served as a Military Police Officer in the United States Army with the 10th Mountain Division (Light) Fort Drum, NY. This time in service included deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2005, 2007), where he developed and implemented security standards and training for local law enforcement. He received his B.A. (Homeland Security) from the University at Albany.

David R. Dorondo earned the degree of B.A. cum laude in history from Armstrong State College in 1980 and the M.A. in German and European diplomatic history from the University of South Carolina in 1984. From 1984 to 1987, he was a member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford and was admitted to the degree of D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1988. He earned a Fulbright Fellowship to attend the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg in the Federal Republic of Germany for the academic year 1985-1986, having already spent the year 1981-1982 at the same institution as a graduate exchange student. Since
1987, he has served as a member of the Department of History of Western Carolina University and teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in modern European military and political history and the history of international relations. He is a member of US Strategic Command’s Deterrence and Assurance Academic Alliance and serves as a subject-matter expert for, and contributor to the US Joint Staff J39 Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA).

Dr. Maorong Jiang is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations and Director of the Asian World Center at Creighton University. After his graduate studies at the Beijing Foreign Affairs College, he taught international relations as a regular faculty member at the Military College of International Relations in China.

Jiang remained as an active duty PLA officer for ten years and later transferred to the Central Government in Beijing. Jiang was selected as a young government official by the US State Department to participate in the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP) in 1990 and served as a visiting fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for three years. Since coming to the U.S. for his doctoral studies in 1996, Jiang’s counsel has been sought by several government agencies interested in engagement with both China and North Korea. From 2014 through 2016, Jiang served as one of the five supervisors in the US Midwest responsible for the Japan Foundation Outreach Initiative Project and was selected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan to participate in its “Building a Multi-layered Network of Influential Figures” program in 2016. Jiang’s publications and public presentations are mainly on security issues in general and on US-China and US-DPRK relations in particular.

Lawrence A. Kuznar (Chief Cultural Sciences Officer, NSI, Inc., Professor of Anthropology, Purdue University-Fort Wayne) Dr. Kuznar conducts anthropological research relevant to counterterrorism and other areas of national security. His research ranges from advanced statistical and geographical modeling of social instability, to discourse analysis of adversaries, including North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and ISIS (Daesh), to provide leading indicators of intent and behavior. He has developed computational models of
genocide in Darfur and tribal factionalism in New Guinea, mathematical models of inequality and conflict, and integrated socio-cultural databases for geo-spatial analysis of illicit nuclear trade and bioterrorism. Dr. Kuznar’s recent research has been funded by academic sources, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Strategic Multi-Layer Analysis, Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), the Human Social Cultural Behavior (HSCB) modeling program of the Department of Defense, and by the US Army Corps of Engineers. He has also served on the HSCB Technical Progress Evaluation panel and a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) net assessment panel. He conducted extensive research among the Aymara of southern Peru and with the Navajo in the American southwest. Dr. Kuznar has published and edited several books and numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals such as American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology, Social Science Computer Review, Political Studies, Field Methods, and Journal of Anthropological Research. Dr. Kuznar earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Anthropology, and a M.S. in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University. His B.A. in Anthropology is from Penn State.

Ms. Sarah A. Canna is a Principal Analyst at NSI. In this capacity, Ms. Canna applies her open-source analysis skills to regions of vital concern to US Combatant Commands, particularly the Middle East and South Asia. To help military planners understand the complex socio-cultural dynamics at play in evolving conflict situations, Ms. Canna developed a Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa) tool, which is designed to rapidly respond to emergent crises by pulsing NSI’s extensive subject matter expert (SME) network to provide deep, customized, multidisciplinary analysis for defense and industry clients. This tool has been used to study the so-called Islamic State as well as Eurasian cooperation and conflict. Ms. Canna is also a
lead editor and integrator of white papers, reports, and proceedings focused on violent extremism, influence and deterrence, and adversarial intent. Ms. Canna also supported durability analyses using the NSI State Stability (StaM) model for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and (at the megacity level) Dhaka, Bangladesh. Prior to joining NSI, she was an associate within the Social Science Program at Strategic Analysis, Inc. (SA), where she supported multidisciplinary projects ranging from developing and assessing computational social science models, evaluating state instability forecast models, and developing cultural
aptitude taxonomies. Additionally, Ms. Canna provided analytic support to the Defense Science Board (DSB) 2008 task force on Understanding Adversaries, the 2007 DSB summer study on Challenges to Military Operations in Support of US Interests, and the 2006 DSB summer study on 21st Century Strategic Technology Vectors. Prior to joining SA, she was a research associate at Intellibridge Corporation in Washington, D.C. where she provided daily open-source analysis to the Commander, US Southern Command, and the Commandant, US Coast Guard. She also managed a network of 200-plus subject matter experts, upon whose knowledge Intellibridge analysts relied. Ms. Canna has an MA degree from Georgetown University in Technology and Security Studies. Ms. Canna holds a translation certificate in Spanish from American University and is learning Dari.

This speaker session supported SMA’s CENTCOM project. For additional speaker sessions and project publications, please visit the CENTCOM project page.