Codifying Irregular Warfare—Inside the Pentagon’s new DoD Instruction 3000.07

Of course, we've got to be most efficient in conventional operations and large scale combat operations to deter war, but the paradox is the more proficient we are in conventional operations, the more likely our adversaries are to operate in the irregular warfare environment. And therefore, we've got to have the ability to not only out-fight them, but out-sink them. And that's really the essence of your regular warfare. Certainly, with the shift to strategic competition and near-period competition with adversaries, the ability to understand the irregular warfare in that construct is an incredible step for the department. And I think the biggest thing, and we'll talk about this as we move forward, is flagging that this is not just the special operations requirement. The entirety of the joint force is necessary for a regular warfare to be effective. I mean, you know, for what's worth my own personal view, is that the major differentiator between irregular conventional warfare is the theory of victory, taught to you down. Inflores in the case of the regular warfare versus attrition in the case of regional warfare. Welcome back to the regular warfare podcast. I'm your host Ben Jeb. Today's episode takes a deep dive into the Pentagon's new irregular warfare policy, instruction 3,000.07. And what the document actually means for how the U.S. understands, organizes for, and competes in a regular warfare. Today's episode explores why the definition of IW remains so contested and how the Pentagon arrived at its newest formulation and what it will take for the joint force to truly compete, especially against state adversaries who rely on poxies, political warfare, cyber-enabled operations, and influence campaigns. We are joined today by three subject matter experts to include Dr. Jonathan Shroden, who is the chief research officer at CNA and the former research director for the Afghanistan War Commission. We are also joined by Colonel retired David Maxwell. Dave Maxwell is a career special forces officer with more than three decades of experience in Asia and now serves as the vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. And finally, we are delighted to host Mick Trinkovich, the founder and CEO of Strategy and Consumer Consulting. Mick is the former director for a regular warfare in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. His team at Solic drafted DOD instruction 3,000.07, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. You are listening to the A Regular Warfare podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Imperial Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of a regular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Mick, Dave and John. Well, John, it's not often that we get three IW subject matter experts on the show all at once. So thanks for joining us on the regular warfare podcast today. Thanks so much, man. I'm really glad to be here and looking forward to the discussion with two legendary folks from the community. Thank you, Ben. This is an important topic. So I'm really grateful that you're doing this. I'm looking forward to learning from the discussion. Likewise, you know, this first question on the direct ad Mick, but it's open to everyone. So we have a new A Regular Warfare Strategy document. DOD instruction 3,000.07, right? A truly vibrant and inspiring name. But I'm sure there are all sorts of implications tied to the new US government publication. Before we actually get into the meat of the new policy, I'd first just like to ask, why is it important for the US to have a guiding a regular warfare strategic document at all? Well, Ben, I think it's a great question. I think it's really the question of the day. I would clibble just a bit on the front end. It is a policy document. There is nothing really strategic about it, right? It is not providing end states. It's not providing specific goals. It's providing a policy statement about what the department thinks is important. I think that is why this policy statement is so incredibly important at this time. The last one I think came out in 2014 and then taking a look at when it was originally communicated around the Warfare is really framed by the entirety of the G-Ottara focused on counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense. Certainly with the shift to strategic competition and near-pair competition with adversaries, the ability to understand a regular warfare in that construct is an incredible step for the department. I think the biggest thing, and we'll talk about this as we move forward, is flagging that this is not just a special operations requirement. The entirety of the joint force is necessary for a regular warfare to be effective. Primarily because for such a long time, the DOD community as an enterprise really looked at the Special Forces community, and I mean the Special Forces community only, not soft, large as the executors of a regular warfare. I think that's a place that left us at a pretty good disadvantage. I think right now we are very far behind, but this statement at this time is something that I had hoped is really the primary team responsible for this in the Pentagon to launch us into having these discussions and helping to determine what this actually means for the department. Yes, so I'd look to riff off the Trotsky and say why this is important. America may not be interested in a regular warfare, but a regular warfare is interested in America. So we've got to understand this form of conflict, this formal warfare, and I would say to really add to what Mick is saying back when we did the first 3000.7 in 2007, back then we looked at a lot of doctrine, one being foreign internal defense, and we looked at that as Special Forces only. But if you read the doctrine, you would see that it applies to the entire joint force. But because it was primarily executed, perceived to be executed by Special Forces, people ignored the doctrine, and that's how we grew security forces assistance and these other things. And we had just a proliferation of doctrinal growth. One of the things that this is doing, like the 2007 identifying the primary activities, I'll come into warfare for internal defense, counterterrorism, stability operations, and military information support operations, you know, it, this really starts to clarify the policy, which is very necessary to do. But of course, there's some real challenges with it that people talk about. I think it's important to have it because most people don't really understand what irregular warfare is. And that's well, true, both popularly, and I would say that's also true across the Dupur. And so having a document that says, this is what it means, what it looks like, and here's how we intend to do it, is really important, especially given the, as my colleagues have said, the changing trends in the definitions of irregular warfare and the terminology in our understanding of how it evolved considering over the last several decades. So I think it's important enough with guard as well. Yeah, but if I could, I'll just add one thing on to that. And I think that this podcast is very emblematic of what we had hoped to achieve when we wrote the documents. And for transparency, I left the department in May of this year, but my team was responsible for the drafting of this policy document. Since this document dropped very quickly, I'll add at the end of September, right before the shutdown. But I would say there's been articles in very well-read journals. There's been other communications taking a level of analysis, some of which I quibble with and I'll talk about that. But again, I think the purpose was to drive discussion because I think there's a tremendous need to educate not only those internal to the department, but also our interagency colleagues because they have a role to play, but it's not in a regular warfare. It's under a much broader political banner, the political warfare banner that Dave likes to talk about so much, but it is a whole of government approach. And I would argue that irregular warfare is the Department of Defense's contribution to that political warfare approach as it relates to the whole of government. And I would just add, I think, mixing, you know, the quiddling about the definition is really key, but I would say that as long as we're quiddling about it, it's helping us to understand. You know, this is inherently complex. It's typical to communicate, but the quiddling is actually really what advances are thinking. And so I will say something here that is probably controversial. I don't really care about the definition, you know, I just accept whatever definition we're using. I want to get into really understanding the phenomena and then developing the strategy, the national strategy, military strategy, to deal with the threats to America that emanate from irregular warfare, you know, countries to not just in your regular warfare or non-state actors practicing it around the world. I don't know if you three coordinated to provide the perfect segue because my next question was actually about the definition provided by the policy document. And I'd just like to spend a moment on that. So the instruction says, IW is a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable or asymmetric activities. So I'll direct this question at John first, but do you find that definition helpful or sufficiently comprehensive? I think my answer is going to be, I think it's helpful in some regards and not helpful in other words. And really, I think that's probably the answer that anybody in the IW really give, which sort of speaks to the richness of the discussion that they think of that. I think relative to earlier definitions, the most recent definition that make reference included a restriction, which is basically like it had to be violent. Use of violence was inherent to the definition, which ostensibly precluded things like information operations and other things that we would do to build capacity or generate influence. And that always seemed like a significant limitation and sort of omission in the prior definition. So getting rid of the restriction to the use of violence, I think is very helpful in the new definition. That said, the new definition in my view is sort of unnecessarily complicated. I understand why it says states and non-states, for instance. But semantically, that is a useless addition to the definition. If it states and non-states, that's every time. So everybody conducts and I don't know why does that need to be there. And I just think the overall definition, I think, could have been more intuitively worded from both sort of a theoretical perspective and a utility. I mean, you know, for what's worth my own personal view is that the major differentiator between irregular and dimensional warfare is the theory of victory taught to you down. Influence in the case of irregular and more parabrissive attrition in the case of conventional warfare. And I think if we had started with a simpler formulation of what is the primary distinguisher that the department sees between irregular and dimensional warfare, what is the one thing? What is the one single discriminator that is primary? I think the rest of it would have flowed more naturally and easily and intuitively from that. But again, that's me speaking as an analyst and sort of, you know, someone not working inside the bureaucratic structure and pedagon. Yeah. So, John, I don't disagree with anything you said at all. And I can't even begin to tell you the level of frustration that I had, that my boss had, my team had as they were going through the writing of this. So I actually just counted its 27 words, not counting the hyphenated words, right? 27 words. And that took us as an enterprise 19 months to agree upon. And to get at like the Assure Coerce, agree with you 100% on States non-state. That was a legal thing that the General Counsel's office required based on law of armed conflict and other things, right? This is like the inside of the Pentagon, pain that happens as you drive towards consensus and consensus means essentially that it's a watered down version of what it was intended to be, which makes it harder to understand at a practitioner level, which is not good. One of the challenges, and I'll go back to the original definition, which I think came out and Dave, you might be able to correct me, the original definition, which was about the violent struggle. Well, in policy, that was 2006 when that definition came out. The problem with violent struggle is that's not defined anywhere in the DOD dictionary, in doctrine, in policy or anything. So for a military planet to be able to take what is ostensibly a policy document owned by the undersecretary defense for policy, how do you plan for violent struggle? What are my mission essential tasks that I must complete, right? What is the end state to do or enact violent struggle? So that was part of the problem and how we ended up with this 27 word definition that to some people mean some things and to others it does. The reason a sugar and coerce are in there is because they are in the DOD dictionary. They mean something in doctrine. I think it's also important to know what's not in there. Destroy is not in there, right? To your point of the Trish, IW, I would argue cannot destroy. It can delay, it can't disrupt, but it's not a destroy. It's certainly I don't think you can't even compel with IW. Again, a very specific fine term for the joint staff when they're doing their planning or for the combatant commands or other things. Only the Department of Defense by the definition conducts irregular warfare activities, it only has to be one of those three things. So it can be direct, can be attributable, it just then has to be asymmetric. So whether that's a mass thing or a single drone crossing over or operating spider web that the Ukrainians conducted, right? That was an asymmetric activity that I would argue is inherently irregular in nature, but 19 months to get to a definition. That was incredibly frustrating. And then go another 13 months beyond that, get this policy document issued. It just starts to get watered down and watered down as John pointed out the equities and the pet rocks and the sensitivities that through that consensus process gets you down to a document that I argue less than ideal is still waiting further ahead of where we've been in the past. Well, let me add on to that a couple of things. I think it's really important. I was on the working group that did the conventional warfare definition in 2009. And same thing arguing over every word, the meaning, the grammar, but a couple of things that, make it said, I think are really important to understand. One is treating irregular warfare into existing military doctrine. And I think that identifying that it doesn't fit is really critical. That's what's important here. We have to understand that even though the army's been conducting more irregular warfare operations for its history than conventional war, irregular warfare doesn't fit into our conventional constructs. But to me, you know, I have three simple criteria to determine what is a good definition. And for me, it's how it helped me do strategy. That's number one. How will it help me contribute to campaigning? That's number two. And then how will it help me communicate with decision makers and Congress and, you know, everyone else? And so those are the three things who I judge the definition. But I will tell you what is not a requirement for a good definition is consensus. And in fact, I would say that consensus is the root of all bad and worthless definition. And so I don't really care about the definition per se. I think you can interpret it in many ways and in good and bad ways. But I would offer this in 2017 Congress wrote this description of irregular warfare in the 2017 NDA. And it said irregular warfare, described, not defined, but described irregular warfare as being conducted in support of predetermined United States policy and military objectives conducted by within through regular forces, irregular force groups and individuals participating in competition between state and non-state actors short of traditional or conflict. Now, I read that and I talked. I remember when Jerry Lyons was at Joint Staff J7 and I said, I think this is a pretty good description. And he said, it would never pass a doctrinal test. And he's right. And you've articulated that. Why it would. But I actually think that communicates pretty well, you know, kind of the concept of operation. But this comes down to a fundamental question, I think. And that is, do we conduct irregular warfare or do we conduct activities in an environment that consists of irregular warfare? And I think this is how our terminology gets tossed around. What is it to actually conduct irregular warfare? I think it's to conduct certain activities, but it's really in terms of the conditions and environment and what the adversary is doing. And that's when I think we have to focus on. So for me, as long as it helps me de-strategy, it contributes to campaigning and it helps me communicate that it's a good enough definition. And I think that's really perfect as the enemy of good enough. And I think, you know, we need to move beyond the semantic arguments and employ this and get down to work. And that's what I think we need to go is let's get to work on strategy and campaign. Something I'd like to return to you is the idea of which actors are responsible or who are the executors, right? Because the document plainly states that IW is a joint force activity conducted by both conventional forces and soft with cyber and space also integrated. So from your perspectives, does this instruction meaningfully change IW from a soft adjacent mission set to a truly enterprise-wide responsibility and what maybe organizational hurdles do you anticipate? That was kind of a mouthful, but I will direct that ad-mick first. Okay. So clearly, I'm biased because that was our intent when the document was written was to make sure that the big services, right? Big army, big Navy, big Air Force, little Marine Corps, all saw them and Space Force. I can't forget saying Space Force now. But making sure that each of those services see themselves in the definition and make sure they realize they understand they have a role to play. The problem with big services historically, buying into responsibilities, filler warfare, there's not any, I would argue there's warfare platform that they can go and palm for to get money. It's not a tank. It's not a ship. It's not a helicopter. It's not a fighter. So it's not going to increase their budget. And to Dave's point, the activities that are conducted can use any single platform to have in the arsenal. It's really about how you use those platforms and what is it you are trying to achieve? A couple of internal baseball pieces. We actually set up a general officer flag officer senior executive service, kind of small committee with the deputy assistant secretary of defense that oversees the irregular warfare encounter terrorism office underneath the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict. And for the first time ever, the SCS or one star or two star counterparts in each of the services would come to the Dazs these office and have discussions about what does irregular warfare mean? What's happening in your regular warfare space and how are those services seeing themselves in it? And what they're doing, the big services are starting to realize they do have a role to play and that the Congress and others are paying attention into how they are going to employ their platforms, whatever those platforms are in a manner that delays or disrupts or deters our adversaries. You know, when you talk about the other services and you talk about resourcing and budgeting, you know, I recall times when the services were turning to rationalize every platform as an irregular warfare platform. I mean, SSB ends they can put out seals and things like that. And you know, I think this is a service culture for all the services. You know, whenever it seems to be a priority, you want to hit your wagon to that. And so everybody's involved not being the pure missions, and it's true believer sense like we are, but in the way, how can we exploit irregular warfare to get more resources for our organization? And I think that's got to be understood on how some people tend to go on to this because they see a benefit, but are they really focused on conducting activities to support a regular warfare? Yeah, I'll talk about it. So I mean, Dave, you're exactly right. Like that is exactly what happens. And you know, if the new national defense strategy or possibly national war strategy, when it comes out, prioritizes homeland defense over, you know, the threat of China, for example, as it is rumored to do, I won't be surprised to you. If I got light, I'd be willing to place a bet on the over under a number of days before we see an article or op-ed arguing that a war in the South Pacific to save Taiwan is actually a homeland defense activity because they have all the chips. And we need the chips. So it was actually a homeland defense to protect Taiwan from China. These ornaments are not hard to make, especially when definitions are relatively broad. So let me come back to where you started bet on this question, which is, do I think it broadens the definition across the entirety of the force? I think certainly that was the attack as Mike described. I do wonder though if the emphasis on the three qualifiers that make describe, right, asymmetric, non-attributable, do in fact end up having the opposite effect because when I look at those three and you think it to yourself, which force primarily has the ability to do things in those ways or thinks about problems in those ways or has traditionally focused on problems in those ways, it is the special operations to me. And if I go to the definition of what special operations are, the joint hub, right, they are playing destined, low visibility, conducted by with or through indigenous forces, right, the definition of special operations, the D or D definition of special operation effectively aligns to those three contributors that are now in the definition of IW. So there has always been this conflation of special operations at the right of warfare. You know, I'll be going to, I'll be speaking out of conference, they'll be there in another month. And the title is S O M Slash I W, right? They just slashing together as though they're the same thing. And that's what happening for years. And I do worry that the new definition and its emphasis on those three attributes, which are various soft, you know, shouldn't worry yet to at least traditionally, may actually have the opposite effect of what making the authors in tennis. But we have to ask the question though, probably it was an old and conventional warfare operation to ensure that the linkage would suffer. And you know, and there is that alignment, but really this gets to the question of, okay, everybody's going to conduct irregular warfare or conduct activities in the irregular war. But really, this, who and where are the irregular warfare, proficient campaign headquarters? Now does this mean that every headquarters can conduct irregular warfare? Or do we need headquarters that are proficient in irregular warfare and that can campaign in this irregular warfare environment? And I think, you know, that's a question I have for the policy. How do we develop, you know, who are those headquarters and then how do we develop and sustain irregular warfare, proficient campaign headquarters? How do we man train and equip them, which of course, you know, is the focus of policy and doctrine is to man train and equip. I get the feeling that the policy is and the emphasis that everybody can do in the regular work there. And they have to look, so every headquarters will be able to do that. Now, not every headquarters can conduct conventional operations, but is there and should there be a division of labor? Because I get that we've got to be able to use all of our elements of power, all of our military elements of power across the services and employ them in an irregular warfare environment. But does that really mean that any headquarters is capable of campaigning and developing campaigns to operate in the irregular warfare environment? I would, I would just point out like we already tried to do that. You know, we already have special operations components to each of the combatant commands. And if you asked people to your point, where is the irregular warfare, proficient headquarters and who should be responsible for designing the irregular warfare campaigns that the combatant commands execute, I think almost everyone in the department would point to the special operations component and say, that's it. That is the headquarters. And I have led special operations for structure studies where that was part of the one of the question we sort of looked at and so upon itself and various components of so-called make the same argument. That is the job of the special operations component command. Now, like criticism matters, okay, but the point that both of you made, who at the special operations component is a school trained player who went to saw or say, who here is an actual like no kidding, you know, in the day of race did it stand, but the answer I got back is nobody, very few, if any people at the special operations component headquarters or DOD trained and certified Platinum, so could actually sit down and be like, I know that it'll be tea to build a campaign. Let's get after. They don't have that. So I think there is an assumption that exists within the department that we do actually have two separate core structures to do this and that the one focused on IW is capable and has the right skill sets and all about to do it. We should possibly think about the model that we had free special operations component commands, which is you had a special operations director within the J3 of each component command. It was a J3 sawd. And what are the J3 sawd do? There was a bunch of people that do a lot about array of warfare who advised the combatant command on the conduct of special operations and the regular warfare approaches. And so if they wanted it at rate, because back into the campaign plans that the combatant commands run, then having it as a separate organization as it did not owned by so calm, not by the combat is perhaps not the right structure. It may be better to think about integrating special operations and or irregular warfare planning capabilities back into the combat command. Actually, that's never worked. I have to say in the 80s and 90s, I was there and the problem is that without a focus on it gets buried. And of course, this is the age old model, my military culture, writing focuses on kinetic operation. So you get the age old, you know, it's easier to get permission to put a hellfire missile on the forehead of a terrorist than it is to put an idea between his ears. And that is really the case. We don't know how to lead with influence. Across the department. And that's really what you've got to do in a regular warfare is be able to lead with influence. And so we don't have that mindset. Now, I think the real issue to get to though Jonathan is with the fear of special operations command, I think they do have more experience and expertise in irregular warfare activities than throughout the services. However, what is always lacking is when have you ever put a T-son in command of an exercise or of an operation where other forces are seconded to it. Now we've done it in some cases when the Philippines, we had some big shit, navel assets, things like that. We say everybody's got to do area of warfare. What we don't designate the headquarters and then we don't allocate the resources. There is a culture in our millions, part of the culture, you don't subordinate conventional forces to special operations. That is I think harder than the problem that we have. You know, David, it's a great point. I'll just add one little thing on top of that that I think is a side, a positive sign that the department is trending in the right direction. There are some irregular warfare campaign plans that were not drafted by special operations entities. And it's primarily because senior leaders in those organizations were paying attention to the growing drumbeat about the need for a regular warfare of the last four or five years. The Congress and the professional staff members are certainly paying attention. I got asked a lot of questions directly from both the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. What does this definition and the new policy document, this is before it was released? What does that portend for actual campaigning? Who's going to write these things? For people paying attention and I will only say that there are more than there used to be. And that is a good sign and people are paying attention. I think the biggest thing that we need to look for now is what comes out in the national defense strategy. If the national defense strategy comes out and it doesn't heavily feature irregular warfare, hybrid thread, hybrid warfare, whatever we want to call it, but the ideas that we're talking about today. The national defense strategy comes out and it is not there. The last five years have not achieved much and we will be starting from scratch and we will be less effective than we need to be in this environment. So I hope that the NDS is very strong flavoring of IW all throughout. It can't just be a one section thing. It has to be throughout the entirety of the document. We all agree on that. Yeah, Mick, your anecdote though is key. It is about leadership. Now those senior leaders from Sua, you know, what is happening who developed campaign plans? Those are leaders. They recognize the problem. They understand the problem. They developed an approach and that is really key. Now, go back to Go Water Nichols and then Colum. No, we established Socom, which was Congress's vision, but what was never realized was low intensity conflict and the champion for low intensity conflict. I mean, their intent was that we would have an organization that would be responsible for low intensity conflict, but ASD solar or ASW solar was never a resource to be able to take that on for the department. You know, it became like the place for misfit toys, which is of course what retired Bob Jones calls Irriginal Warfare, the place of misfit toys. And you know, we just throw everything into that. But we've never really embraced the idea that we need to have a responsible agency with an analytic verb for low intensity conflict or what today we really described as Irriginal Warfare. But it takes leadership. Leadership is the key. I know I keep coming in, but I think just because of the contemporary nature of having seen this as recently as six months ago in the building, I think it's important. I think the best example of that is that the political entity who is responsible and charged with the job for overseeing the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for a regular warfare and counterterrorism is absolutely 90% of the time focused on counter terrorism because it's what's on the media strikes or SSE. And SC calls about who did we hit? What terrorists did we get? Host addressed you operate or we conducting. And he or she spends a maximum not because they don't want to, but because they can't. A maximum of 10% of their time on Irriginal Warfare. If we truly are going to campaign that dasdyship needs to be split into and there should be a dasdys that is entirely focused on counterterrorism and there is a dasdys that is entirely focused on today's point low intensity conflict. So I'm going to jump in here because the document we're talking about frames IW not just around counterterrorism and coin, right? It really highlights state adversaries using irregular methods, you know disinformation, proxy forces, political warfare, cyber enabled covert action, etc. So based on this document, what does competing irregularly against major powers realistically look like for the US? Like what is feasible and what remains aspirational? And I'll direct that at Dave first. Okay, well three words leading with influence that that's really what it's got to be, you know, is we think of war as politics by other means when our adversaries think politics is war by other means and Mao said war is politics with bloodshed and politics is war without bloodshed. This is war, you know, in this entire debate about Irriginal Warfare, we will hear people say state department won't accept it because it's warfare. I know more state department, more foreign service officers who understand warfare better than many of us in the military and accept the nature that war is part of our nature. But our adversaries are conducting warfare, political warfare, unrestricted warfare, new generation warfare. And of course, Congress just recognized this in the draft legislation they had to the NDA that disrupt that. What is about countering the dark one of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea trying to disrupt them. And so how do we do that? We've got to do it from influence. We've got to do it from finance, economic. We've got to do it from presence, building alliances, the silk web of friends, partners and alliances. We've got to do it by interrupting their ability to exert their influence either through melting road or the military corporations, PMCs that Russia uses. We've got to be able to, and the way to do it is recognize their strategy, understand their strategy, expose their strategy and attack their strategy with political warfare. Just like George Kenan said, the use of all elements in national power to achieve objective short of war. And that includes alliances, that includes economic warfare, it includes psychological operations. It includes support to resistance. All of those things, and of course covert action, title 50, all of those things really have to be melded together from a campaign perspective to be able to achieve effects. What effects are those? Well, they're going to be different for every other one, every country that we're facing or non-state actor, but they all have to be in support of ensuring US national security and national prosperity. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Dave. It's got to start with influence, but I would pile on that and say like, you have to acknowledge the importance of influence. You have to be willing to use the influence that go along with influence, and you have to resource the influence of influence. And you know, to show that I work at a non-partisan organization, so I'll be critical of both the current and the prior administration here in that light. And if I go back to the Biden administration's national security strategy, there were clearly remarked sections on the use of diplomacy, use of military power, use of economic power. Right. And if I think about the DIME framework, which I assume anywhere listeners are familiar with, where is the informational component? There was none. There was literally no section, there's no acknowledgement in the national security strategy. That information was a tool of national power that would be used alongside the other DIME sections that were clearly marked as such in the nation's foremost strategy document. There was nothing about use of information. So there's no acknowledgement of its importance. If I come to the current administration, one of the first things they did was they dismantled the voice of America and the tools of influence that we have were immediately dismantled and re-resourced. So I come back to it. If you want to do this, well, you have to acknowledge its importance, which I think the DOD instruction to make in his cruise credit does that and hopefully will make that happen for the department. But then you have to also be willing and able to use the tools of influence and you have to resource those. And I think that's the principle in the article that I wrote. Do you think this instruction will actually have its intended effects? And my answer is I think the proof will be in the pudding, but if you want to look for indicators of whether it's successful or not, look for whether or not we actually start doing more of these things and whether or not the resources will allow it to enable more of the doing of the things. Well, I think that's a key point here. We argue and we criticize the document. And we were talking about it, the pros and cons and everything. To me, I say the document is good enough, no disrespect, but it's not perfect. No document ever is, but out there it's good enough, but the real key is everybody taking hold of it now and interpreting it the way that they believe it should be and then using it to improve their capabilities, improve resourcing and move the ball forward on irregular warfare. We can spend from now until the next draft comes out in the next iteration arguing about it or we can try to. That's what we really need to focus on is how to use this document to do strategy, to campaign, to communicate and to do better. I mean, that's really what it comes down to do better in irregular warfare. The document's out there. It's got a, you know, 32 pages, a lot of stuff in there. So it's open a lot of interpretation. It's open to interpretation. It's broad and so we can use it. And this is why it comes down to leadership leaders can take this and move forward. They see the environment. They have the policy and now they can move forward and develop campaigns and strategy to ensure national security. Sorry, but I just want to quickly add in there that we haven't mentioned and is a fairly niche walkie-point. But I am with somebody who's worked in this space for a long time. Sorry, I'm going to make it. There is a requirement and kudos to making a speech for getting us in there for the joint staff to conduct an annual assessment of how well the implementation of all of those tasks that David just described was actually going. And that's a key feature of the document because that actually has right what you assess as a leader tells people what you care about more than anything that you say out loud or anything you write down, right? Your assessment will drive people's behavior. It's the indicator for me going forward as to whether this is going to have any effects that make it all a lot of the tab is to what extent does the joint staff take that assessment task seriously to what extent does it get leader visibility and to what extent the leaders actually act on what the assessment says. I think that will be an absolutely critical indicator for this whole effort going forward. But Jonathan, to your earlier point about information warfare, the first reading we expose our cadets to West Point and at least in the main international security course is a piece by EH CAR who discusses the three main sources of power, right? Economic and propaganda power, which is basically information power, right? And I'm always struck by how every year those first two military and economic power make perfect sense to our undergraduate cadets, but the idea of propaganda powers completely foreign to them. We are almost at time, but I do want to ask each of you based on today's conversation what should scholars, practitioners and policymakers keep in mind as IW becomes increasingly central to US national security and I'll direct that one at Jonathan first. I think the key thing for me is that people who are currently active in the Irrigid War First Base and frankly, even people who aren't, but who are in positions of leadership or working that are making should absolutely 100% put it on themselves to study and learn the lessons of the past 20 years, right? We employ Irrigid Warfare activities very heavily over the last 20 years. Arguably more heavily than we have at any time since our war. And there's much to learn from that experience and I am very concerned when I look at things like what we're doing with respect to Venezuela, that we have not at all learned those lessons. I was reading an article yesterday in which a current government official said, you know, it is time to take the gloves off with respect to Venezuela. If I learn anything from working in this space for the last 20 years, it is when I hear a government official say it's time to take the gloves off. Whatever problem it is they're trying to address is about to get a lot worse. So my point of advice is there is a lot to learn from the last 20 years because we made a lot of mistakes over the last 20 years and one should learn from their mistakes. And so I just hope that the people who are in the leadership positions who are making these decisions, take the time to learn the lessons of the last 20 years as we seek to more fulsomly employ narrative and warfare going forward. Make I'd love to get your thoughts next. Yeah, I'll try to even more succinct than John, but he did a great job with that and I agree 100%. I think the biggest thing is as Dave said, the document is out and we've already seen a tremendous surge in writing around either in response to the document or assessing the document or identifying shortalls or they wish other things would have been included. The biggest thing that this community needs to do is do more thinking and more writing to Dave's point to have the ideas and generate discussion to inform and influence the senior leaders to stake a claim and direct the department to do these things. I really think we need to infuse irregular warfare thinking into the government and really political warfare thinking. But what is irregular warfare thinking? It's really thinking about the human element in the full spectrum of competition and conflict. You know, includes all aspects of lawlessness, subversion, uncertainty, terrorism, political resistance, nonviolent resistance, political violence, urban operations, stability operations, those conflict operations, cyber operations, all of that is in the irregular warfare environment. Of course, working through with and by indigenous forces and populations and this kind of thinking has to be in the forefront of how we're shaping strategy and campaigns. And of course, we've got to be most Christian and conventional operations at large scale combat operations to deter war. But the paradox is the more proficient we are in conventional operations, the more likely our adversaries are to operate in the irregular warfare environment. And therefore, we've got to have the ability to not only outfipe them but outthink them. And that's really the essence of irregular warfare. This is, you know, it is an election. We've got to outthink our enemies and it takes irregular warfare thinking to do that. Well, John Dave, I know you two said that you'll be presenting at a conference together or still trying to get this episode edited in out before you guys can be at whatever conference that is. To all three of you, thank you for making time for this conversation today. I learned a ton. It was a walkie conversation, but that's great. That's what we go for on the IW podcast. So thanks again for joining us today. Dave, good to see you again. Thank you, Ben. And John, great words. I really appreciate your expertise and your leadership. Sherry. Yeah, I like what it's nice. Thanks again for joining us for the irregular warfare podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the regular warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. If you enjoyed today's show, please leave a comment and positive rating on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to the regular warfare podcasts. It really helps expose the show to new listeners. And one last note, while you're hearing this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those at Princeton, West Point, or for any agency in the US government. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.