Registration Open! 17-18 June 2025
To register email Mariah.c.yager.ctr@mail.mil
Theme: CREATING REVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE: Strategic Alchemy in Global Competition
Location: Gen Jacob E Smart Conference Center, 1359 Arkansas Rd, Joint Base Andrews, MD 20762
Date: 17-18 June 2025, 0830-1630
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.
In June, we explore how war, conflict, and competition will be influenced by revolutionary changes across multiple fields, including the military, industrial, diplomatic, economic, and technological. Such revolutionary changes profoundly influence emerging patterns of thought, behavior, and action, both now and into the future. Our national security and defense systems are not immune to these revolutions. Indeed, national security and defense systems frequently initiate, reinforce, or adapt to disruptive change with compounding effects. Successfully supporting the warfighter will rest, in large part, on how effectively we can anticipate and generate revolutionary changes—and so transform change into true “revolutionary advantage.”
To register email Mariah.c.yager.ctr@mail.mil
Keynote
SMA welcome Major General Steve “Bucky” Butow, USAF, Military Deputy of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
Panel Descriptions
Panel descriptions are working and may change.
Panel 1 Cooking up the Next Revolutions
Change always happens. Most of the time change is slow, meandering or incremental. Occasionally, change is rapid, transformative and revolutionary. This panel introduces the concept of revolutions—military, industrial, political, organizational, or from fields intertwined—and explores what is happening today that seems most likely to revolutionize the operating environment looking forward from today. Research and recommendations in the military lane, international political economy, and across the other national security levers can provide options for advantage. New technologies are necessary, but tech alone is insufficient to drive transformative advantage. For example, interwar France had cutting edge technology but failed to innovate like the Germans (Blitzkrieg) or the British (RAF Fighter Command). Indeed, the first military revolution around 1600 centered on new organization and training entwined with portable firearms to create standing professional armies—changing the character of the state and society forever., Two centuries later it was revolutionary France’s social and political changes that drove military transformation. As a current example, Artificial intelligence (AI) seems potentially revolutionary today—but is it the holy grail that creates the next advantage? This panel is charged with thinking about what is next, and how should we play our gambles as we bridge the Mind-Tech Nexus between humans and new technology. Stated another way, what about the next revolution are we missing, what should stay the same, and how might we know in time, so that we can transform change into advantage? Moderator: Colonel Rich Butler (U.S. Army, Retired)
Panel 2 From Base to Gold: How can the United States Create Revolutionary Advantage?
How can the United States create revolutionary changes that help it gain strategic advantage? This could include technological innovation, the use of radically different trade policies, or new diplomatic moves. Revolutionary changes are often not recognized until they have happened. What are the indicators of revolutionary change—and once recognized, how can the United States harness the benefits of revolutionary changes and mitigate their risks? The US military must, for example, adapt fast enough to compete and also be ready to fight tonight if it must. What are the roles of the private sector and government as we go from 0 to 1, to 100, and 10,000,000? What are the impediments to adopting change, especially when it is revolutionary, and how can these be overcome? Moderator: Alexa Courtney (Frontier Designs)
Panel 3 Revolutionary Robots and China as a Manufacturing Superpower
What happens if you’ve built the Maginot Line—and the other side has developed Blitzkrieg? Or if you have stealth aircraft—and they have quantum sensors? The United States and its allies won’t always be the alchemists behind revolutionary surprises. What revolutionary changes may be in the pipeline from competitors like China? One example of how China has the ingredients for revolutionary advantage is its ability to churn out newer and better robots at revolutionary scale: China is a manufacturing superpower that produces more goods than the next nine countries combined, it instals more industrial robots than every other country combined, and it dominates mass drone manufacturing. Massed robots may provide the massive data that can itself provide the next leap in AI—and together the hardware improvements and AI improvements can spiral onwards to leave the rest of the world in the dust. How else might China leverage its dominance at the center of world manufacturing? And China is not alone. What other revolutionary surprises may emerge from US competitors, singly or in concert? How can the United States be resilient enough to survive competitors’ revolutionary surprises, and adapt fast enough to outmatch them? Moderator: Dr. Nicholas Wright (Intelligent Biology)
Panel 4 The Alchemy of Military Revolutions for Great Power War
What revolutionary or transformative changes are afoot now, or in the near future, that could affect war between fully great powers such as the United States and China? How might these revolutionary changes affect the ability to conduct strategically desirable offensive operations; or to conduct defensive operations; or affect the offense-defense balance? How might these changes create revolutionary advantage in a great power war at day 30, day 100, and day 2000? How can we better identify and adapt to these potential changes today, before conflict, to better prepare and deter? Moderator: Dale Rielage (OSD Red Team)
Panel 5 Recipes for Order: Revolutionary Ingredients and the Alchemy of Rules
This integrative panel steps back to look at the bigger picture, to ask: how can the United States’ security apparatus look across the elements of national power that can undergo revolutionary change in the United States or its competitors, in order to harness them for strategic advantage? Moreover, part of that bigger picture are the unwritten and written ways of operating in the world order—and given that these rulesets can undergo revolutionary change (e.g., post-World War Two), how can the United States anticipate, cope with and benefit from such revolutionary changes in the world order? And even if the world order is not revolutionized, how can the United States gain advantage from power shifts in the global order that accompany other revolutions, such as military revolutions, political revolutionary movements (e.g. Communism or fundamentalist Islam), or industrial revolutions? In a big and complex world, how can the United States think differently to see the bigger picture and act at the level of the global system? Moderator: Captain Todd Veazie (USN, Retired)
Panel 6 SMA Showcase: Strategic Multilayer Alchemy Supporting the Warfighter
SMA supported the warfighter in unique ways over last year. The work requested by the Combatant Commanders and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff showed the utility of analytic support provided by the decision-making sciences. We would like to share our efforts with our community of interest (COI) to continue to learn and support each other. Key projects included: Completing Strategic Deterrence Frameworks project; Developing and using our Automated Conditions Modeling Environment (ACME) complex systems model; and developing and using our Defense Analysis Planning Support Environment (DAPSE) model and application. SMA project leads will briefly describe these projects and their key findings to solicit feedback from our COI. SMA also anticipates an exciting future providing novel support to the warfighter. COL (Ret) Rich Butler will offer thoughts on SMA’s anticipated projects and propose ways that SMA products can be even more thoroughly integrated into planning processes and DOD software applications. With transformative changes in the strategic environment, SMA will continue to apply decision making sciences research across the seams between national policy, strategy, and operational art—all ingredients for the alchemy that can solve the warfighter’s most pressing challenges. Moderator: Dr. Larry Kuznar (NSI)
Panel 7 Command Perspectives
Conversation with representatives from the Combatant Commands and Services on the issues keeping the commander up at night.
Previous Conferences
2024 Selected Panels from the 14th Annual SMA Conference
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