The Convergence - An Army Mad Scientist Podcast

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist continues our series of blog posts and podcasts in the run up to our Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference, co-hosted with the Georgetown University Wargaming Society, on 6-7 November 2024 — additional information on this event and the link to our registration site may be found at the end of this post (below).

In today’s episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist welcomes back COL Arnel P. David, a frequent contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory and returning podcast guest, to learn how NATO is injecting new technologies into wargaming to integrate and build staff proficiency across the Alliance’s 32 member nations’ militaries — Enjoy!]

[If the podcast dashboard above is not rendering correctly for you, please click here to listen to the podcast.]

COL Arnel P. David is the Director of the Strategic Initiatives Group at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). He is a distinguished military graduate from Valley Forge Military College, completed a Master of Arts from the University of Oklahoma, a Master of Military Art and Science in the Local Dynamics of War Scholars Program at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and is a distinguished graduate of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) where he was a National Defense University Scholar and completed a Master of Science in Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy. COL David is a PhD candidate with King’s College London. He is the cofounder of Fight Club International, a global gaming network seeking to improve the efficacy of warfighting across the spectrum of conflict and competition — find information on Fight Club‘s current online Tactical Decision Game at the end of this post.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with COL David to discuss his views on wargaming in the U.S. Army and NATO, how technology is shaping its evolution, and how to push it to the forefront of Professional Military Education (PME). The following bullet points highlight key takeaways from our conversation:

• NATO SHAPE recently stood up a wargaming department. They are creating and prototyping games at the strategic level that can incorporate many of the 32 member countries as well as counter-terrorism games.This nascent team is just beginning to build out its wargaming capability and is looking for experts to contribute to its mission.
• The aforementioned wargaming department is crowdsourcing input to help better understand “what Multi-Domain Operations(MDO) looks like.” They plan to take the information they collect and use it to construct games that will help explore the crowdsourcing prompt. Additionally, the best ideas will be evaluated and briefed out to Senior U.S. Army and NATO leaders.
• A mixed-method approach to wargaming is best. The wargame itself is not the end state; rather, the post-game analysis and the lessons learned from multiple iterations is what is important. For wargames that focus on the Balkans, NATO incorporated large-language models (LLMs) to create psychometric profiles on different ethnic groups in the region to help better understand customs, traditions, and norms to be played in a contested-narratives environment within the game.This not only allowed them to test out military operations, but also to test out specific narratives to see what is effective and what is not in countering an adversary’s information operations.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not supplanting human expertise in wargaming, but rather allowing much of the preparation to be completed more quickly. Orders of battle, rules, and doctrine can be loaded into the system and incorporated instantly, allowing more iterations of games to run and reducing the time spent during games discussing semantics and administration.
• There are still significant challenges in incorporating advanced technology onto secure systems.However, there is urgency to seek solutions as potential adversaries are already working toward th...

[Editor’s Note: Regular readers of the Mad Scientist Laboratory are familiar with the potentially disruptive effects of cognitive and neurowarfare. As guest blogger Robert McCreight observed, “Most non-kinetic threats — or the NKT spectrum — consist of silent, largely undetectable technologies capable of inflicting damaging, debilitating, and degrading physical and neural effects on its unwitting targets... A determined and patient covert enemy can inflict strategic damage non-kinetically before we can recognize the attack, resist it, or recover from it.” Overmatch in the Land, Air, Sea, Space, and Cyber Domains is irrelevant if our adversaries can harness and unleash capabilities that manipulate the brains of our Leaders.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we sit down with Dr. Guosong Hong, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, to explore emergent research behind one such NKT — brain manipulation. Dr. Hong discusses neuro-engineering tools, controlling brains from a distance, and how the Army might one day need to protect our Soldiers and Leaders against mind control — Read on!]

Dr. Guosong Hong is Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. His research aims to bridge materials science and neuroscience, and blur the distinction between the living and non-living worlds by developing novel neuro-engineering tools to interrogate and manipulate the brain. Specifically, the Hong lab is currently developing ultrasound, infrared, and radiofrequency-based in-vivo neural interfaces with minimal invasiveness, high spatiotemporal resolution, and cell-type specificity.

Dr. Guosong Hong received his PhD in chemistry from Stanford University in 2014, and then carried out postdoctoral studies at Harvard University. Dr. Hong joined Stanford Materials Science and Engineering and Neurosciences Institute as an assistant professor in 2018. He is a recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award, the MIT Technology Review ‘35 Innovators Under 35’ Award, the Science PINS Prize for Neuromodulation, the NSF CAREER Award, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award.

Army Mad Scientist sat down with Dr. Hong to discuss neuro-engineering tools, controlling brains from a distance, and how the Army might one day need to protect Soldiers against mind control. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• During Dr. Hong’s pursuit of his PhD at Stanford University, he createda method using short wave infrared light to non-invasively observe rodent brains without removing the scalp and skull, which was traditionally necessary. During his post-doctoral studies, he created ultra-small devices that can be loaded into a syringe and injected directly into the subject’s brain to stimulate and observe neural activity.
• As a faculty member at Stanford, Dr. Hong developed nano particles to inject into the bloodstream which convert ultrasound into local light emission. This allows for optogenetic stimulation based on ultrasound alone.
• Rattlesnakes have the unique natural ability to sense infrared radiation. This assists them when hunting for prey – like mice. Dr. Hong was able to use the same ion channels that rattlesnakes use to see this infrared light and inject them into the brain of a mouse. These ion channels are sensitive to the nanometer wave lengths he uses in his experiments and will activate when the light hits them. Controlling the activation allows him to modulate mouse brain activity.
• There are several roadblocks that must be overcome to realize potential human applications.Though the procedure is mostly non-invasive, the rattlesnake ion channels still need to be injected into the subject. Gaining approval for human subjects testing from the FDA and other boards of oversight will be difficult – and rightfully so. The size of a human brain compared to a mouse brain is also significant. Penetrating a mouse brain using nanometer wavelengths of light is much easier than penetrating the depth of a human-sized brain. Light at that wavelength won...

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk to research fellows from The College of William and Mary’s Project on International Peace and Security (PIPS). PIPS is one of the premier undergraduate think tanks in the country. Based at W&M’s Global Research Institute, PIPS is designed to bridge the gap between the academic and foreign policy communities in the area of undergraduate education. PIPS research fellows identify emerging international security issues and develop original policy recommendations to address those challenges. Undergraduate fellows have the chance to work with practitioners in the military and intelligence communities, and they present their work to policy officials and scholars at a year-end symposium in Washington, DC.

In this episode, we discuss biotechnology, artificial intelligence in the DoD, and authoritarianism affecting the U.S. with Marie Murphy, Clara Waterman, Caroline Duckworth, and Katherine Armstrong. Highlights from the conversation include:

• The US can be outcompeted in certain biotechnologies and become dependent on other countries for their access. States with different ethical standards and regulations compared to the United States could more quickly pursue and adopt these technologies, possibly resulting in novel bioweapons. Eventually, bioweapons will be able to target people based on their genetic code. Biotechnology is becoming a democratized technology.
• Data is the most critical component of artificial intelligence. However, much of the DoD’s data is inaccessible in stovepiped repositories, while that which is accessible has not been vetted — you don’t really know who’s had it or where it’s coming from. There is also a huge gap between those who are technically informed and those who are technically literate.
• Transnational authoritarianism is the targeting of co-ethnics and co-nationals; for the United States, these co-ethnic and co-national targets are US citizens and residents. The U.S. government and the public need to recognize this phenomenon, which has often been overlooked as isolated incidents, as cybercrime, as a civil society issue, and as infighting between outsiders.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory, as we will be releasing Part 2 of this podcast with the PIPS research fellows next week!

If you enjoyed this post and podcast, check out our GEN Z and the OE event page on the Mad Scientist APAN site to read each of the PIPS research fellows’ abstracts...

... and watch Panel 1 and Panel 2 as they discuss the ramifications of their research on the OE and the changing character of warfare.

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Lisa Kaplan, who founded Alethea Group to help organizations navigate the new digital reality and protect themselves against disinformation. Ms. Kaplan served as digital director for Senator Angus King’s 2018 campaign, where she designed and executed a strategy to identify, understand, and respond to disinformation. She is one of the few people who has firsthand experience combating disinformation on the campaign trail. Ms. Kaplan has also briefed US, NATO, EU, and G-7 policy makers and officials on disinformation. Previously, she consulted with PwC for the U.S. State Department, and served as a U.S. Senate aide.

In this episode, we talk with Ms. Kaplan about weaponized information as a national security problem, algorithmic silos created by social media, and disinformation as the next iteration of warfare. Some of the highlights from our interview include the following:

• Disinformation is a national security problem manifesting itself in politics. Open source information can be leveraged to create effective digital strategies to counter this rapidly-proliferating threat.
• Social media algorithms create algorithmic silos: personal echo chambers that create individual realities for users. This method of platform retention is creating more polarized information spaces. Algorithms will continue to get stronger over time, increasing the impact of this problem.
• Disinformation will become the next iteration of warfare, as it is comparatively inexpensive and easy to use. Bad actors can leverage algorithmic silos to target their disinformation to vulnerable populations. As a result, the government should identify vulnerable populations and develop support plans.
• The proliferation of fringe and conspiracy media outlets will make it difficult to know which information to trust. We should begin examining the long term impacts for children growing up in this environment, particularly in relation to their feelings towards U.S. competitors.
• We are all targets of disinformation, so we can all combat it. Thinking before you share, reading critically, searching for the right sources/authors, and avoiding sensationalized media can reduce the impact of disinformation. Remember, you are likely a trusted source to those around you.
• Conversations about disinformation trends are an important part of combating this threat. The U.S. Government has unmatched capacity to address disinformation, but needs to work towards legislation that will allow it to act in this space.

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with LTC Arnel David, U.S. Army, and Maj Aaron Moore, British Army, as they discuss Fight Club, the current revolution in Professional Military Education, and the role of Artificial Intelligence in future military operations on 23 July 2020!

In this latest episode of “The Convergence,” we talk with Molly Cain, founder of GovCity, the Nation’s first disruption and culture accelerator focused on government, civic, and culture change. Molly works at the intersection of technology and cultural disruption with broad ranging expertise in industry, startups, and helping the Federal Government tap into innovation with greater ambition and more visibility.

In this episode, we talk with Ms. Cain about leadership, barriers to youth in government service, and rewarding disruption. Some of the highlights from our interview include the following:

• GovCity is a hackathon-style think tank that promotes collaboration, innovation, and disruptive thinking through 48-hour events. These events give people a safe space to share innovative ideas and have disruptive conversations.
• Government leaders should trust themselves in uncomfortable situations, and allow their teammates to make mistakes as they strive for innovation.
• There are lots of similarities between the government and private sectors. DoD can better harness this relationship by focusing more on learning about the local business ecosystem and collaboration with their partners. Private companies hoping to work with DoD should use sources like LinkedIn and Twitter to start conversations on departmental innovation.
• People who communicate and cross-index well are valuable in every workspace.
• Government employees should constantly send internship and job opportunities to young applicants, and eschew government jargon to make jobs more appealing to the next generation of innovators. Young people should seek to find the right boss, as well as the right job, so they can fully participate in their work.
• The government should innovate their promotion process by promoting more leaders who have made difficult or disruptive decisions rather than those who have “toed the line.”

Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for our next podcast with Lisa Kaplan, founder of the Alethea Group, addressing weaponized information as a national security problem, algorithmic silos created by social media, and disinformation as the next iteration of warfare on 9 July 2020!