Life finds a way

Tom got this email:

Dr. Barnett,

As a young Armor officer training at Ft. Knox, our schedule this week consists of attending the many briefings of this year's Armor symposium. This has been a great opportunity for me not only to learn about the modernization of my branch, but also current line of thinking on the future of the Army as a whole. After hearing briefings from both the Sergeant Major of the Army and the TRADOC Commander I was able to gather a better understanding of how the Army sees its role in this "era of persistent conflict". One thing in particular, I wanted to share with you:

In the absence of a System Administrator, our military over the foreseeable future appears to be evolving system administrator-like capabilities out of necessity. The coming editions of field manuals and training programs take a noticeable shift from Counterinsurgency to priorities like communication and connectivity. There was talk of a future emphasis on language training and sending officers into internships with civilian companies and foreign embassies. It reminds me of Jeff Goldblum's quote from Jurassic Park - "Life finds a way".

Regards,

Comments

[Seth]

I’m also training at Ft Knox and went to the AWC. I found interesting that a couple of the speakers, including GEN Wallace mentioned globalization as a “source of friction”. Also the idea that we will be seeing even more civilians possibility integrated in our units and that it isn’t the military holding this back but the civilians (namely the State department) but there wasn’t much talk about integrating efforts with non-government civilians. If State, the Congress and the administration ever gets their act together on the Civilian Reserve corps then we might see some kind of next step toward a SysAdmin force. It makes sense that Cavalry officers would get this idea since it was the Cavalry that became a sysadmin type force against the Indians in the west and insurgents in the Philippines.