For those who like evidence of the SysAdmin's rise ...

Sent to me by reader Ricardo Maquez, asking for comment. The story appears in today's Inside Defense, but you need subscriber access to get the whole shebang.

Here's the opening para:

New 'Civilian Response Corps' Would Relieve Military of Non-Combat
Stability Missions

Aug. 24, 2005 -- A Defense Department-chartered study is set to

recommend options for establishing a civilian corps of nation-building

experts that would relieve the military of non-combat stability and

reconstruction activities in future operations similar to Afghanistan

and Iraq. These civilian-led teams designed for overseas missions

could also have a homeland defense role, such as assisting American

cities to get back on their feet after massive terrorist attacks,

according to sources familiar with the study's recommendations.

Is this evidence of PNM's reach? As always, it's not a matter of influence but of accuracy. PNM reflects the world accurately, so it's a good guide to what the Pentagon will do in the future. But they don't do it because any one author says so, so I don't claim it, nor anything like it, as "actual evidence" that my ideas are being adopted.

I actually write about this phenomenon (the role of the visionary strategist) in Blueprint for Action in yet another shameless attempt to self-promote both myself and the vision while actually pretending to do otherwise. I will save the meta-explanation for that particular dynamic for Vol III.

Still, this is yet another example of more institutional movement toward the SysAdmin force. As I explain in BFA, I see the SysAdmin as roughly 1/2 military and 1/2 civilian, with the latter broken into a quarter each of police and development experts. So when I see something like this, or I see the Reserves and Guards retraining 100k infantry into military police, I'm pretty certain the pieces are coming together.

And yes, they will come together no matter how well or how badly the public perceives Iraq to be going. They come together because the Pentagon sees a future it cannot escape, and so it adjusts to this unfolding reality.

Finally, I will confess I post stuff like this to also stop emails demanding (sometimes, quite imperiously) that I submit a long list of data points "proving" that my ideas are being taken seriously by the Bush administration/Pentagon/Defense Department. I mean, what do people think I do all day? Comb my 2000+ blog entries for giant compilations just to seal the deal with them individually?

I mean, what kind of strategic visionarhy works like that?

Anyway, such lists would be pathetically meglomaniacal in tone: "Look, everything is coming together according to my master plan!" he typed furiously while laying in his bed in his pajamas in Indiana, sure as he was of his mastery over the military-industrial complex.

So I limit my crowing--nay, cheerleading--to posts like this. If you read along, you get a sense of the momentum, which NOBODY controls. And if you send me an email demanding I submit the list, you might just bump into my snotty, insolent alter ego in the reply.

And yes, HIS name is Critt, so send him your hurt, angry emails.

Last cool point about this story: the reference to dual-usage on homeland security may strike some as proof of DoD getting more in bed with DHS on this issue, but it's really the other way around. Over the long term, it'll be the Department of Homeland Security that logically gets more into the bed that is overseas interventions. As Sen. John Kerry proposed to me when I briefed him last spring, rather than propose the possibility of a new Department of Everything Else (not my serious title, but I do use it in BFA) to house the SysAdmin function (but not the DoD-shared troops), it's more logical to assume that DHS could aspire to that role as the country grows more confident in its societal resiliency (both public and private sector--hence my new association withi Enterra Solutions) and begins to realize that it's not about "us" but about "them," thus DHS gets progressively redirected overseas for the same reasons that the Defense Department is: better to take the fight/resiliency over there than simply try to hoard it here and pretend that that approach really increases our overall security.

Then again, such sophisticated long-term strategizing only proves why Kerry was too smart (alas!) to be president.