 So we've made a full 48 hours with only one slide presentation, so I'll take the second one behind Peter Singer. So very informed audience here. I won't drum on about the history of the Joint Special Operations Command or the community, sort of the evolution starting in the 80s, but the theme of transition that we went through is a subset of everything that's been talked about here over the last two days. So if you consider the way the model was created inside of JSOC over its 20 year history pre-911, we basically entered the battlefield and Yanni and I served in similar units during those windows structured like this. You could argue that it was doing something different, and we certainly thought that as we entered the fight because we were able to move so much faster than traditional systems could in the 80s and 90s, but what we found was in reality when we faced a distributed network in Al Qaeda, the chinks in the armor became very clear quite quickly. And part of that is our thesis around what happens as organizations evolve. As long as you're structured like this, you're prone to create stovepikes between different verticals. That's what allows you to control a large organization. So our problem was as you pit these two models against each other, a traditional bureaucratic system and a distributed network, if it's symmetric warfare and you're facing a similar model, you're both essentially playing the same game, albeit your end states are radically different. So in retrospect, now look at what was happening inside of our bureaucracy was and the reason they're so appealing for large organizations is they're highly reliable, which is ultimately the goal of a big system. They're process driven, processes can be refined more and more over time. They're very measurable, so it's a linear sort of assembly line mindset. All those processes inside it can be optimized, and the ultimate goal of this sort of model is to create as efficient of a system as you can. And you can tell narratives in any of our previous conflicts around this model, how efficiently can I get A to B, create the max amount of X with a minimum amount of Y, however you want to look at it. Meanwhile, the sole focus of a network system is adaptability. And ultimately what we found was adaptability will trump efficiency every time. And the distributed networks of al-Qaeda and what we're now seeing in ISIS, that's in their very nature. They don't do it because they're strategic thinkers necessary along these lines. It's just the nature of a network system. And so our finding was the harder a traditional bureaucratic system pushes on that network, the faster it will adapt through the seams that are inherent in the bureaucracy. And so ultimately what we had to become was some sort of hybrid system where the strengths of the bureaucratic system could sit in the background. This is how you train soldiers, deploy forces, fix helicopters, etc., etc. Same thing in industry and government. There's a lot of strength to the power of a grown and healthy bureaucracy. But over top of that we had to overlay a network system that allowed individuals or nodes to cross traditional boundaries with information, decision rights, moving into other folks' battle space, etc. Which required a decentralization of trust much deeper down into the organization than we'd ever seen before. And the end state was this constantly morphing picture of subnetworks that night over night for years over years were allowed to actually drive what was happening inside the organization. Meanwhile, the overarching strategic stability came from the bureaucratic model that sat in the background. So I'll pause there. So, Yanni, so Chris has described, so J-Solk had to become a network to defeat a network as the kind of, I mean, can you reflect on that? And also I guess the U.S. military is by definition a very hierarchical organization and if you're talking about pushing decision making further down the kind of, further down in the ranks and somebody makes a mistake in this kind of model, are they treated in the same way that they would be treated in a traditional sort of military bureaucracy? Because you're going to have mistakes at a lower level with this kind of model, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think Chris and I have talked about this a bunch of times that, you know, the network to defeat a network is not enough in itself. I mean, a lot of the other speakers have talked about, you know, dealing with Salafis versus Sufis. We talked about dealing with the hearts and minds of the engagement with the local population and all those things. But in order to get that space to do that, you needed an enterprise that was focused, narrowly focused, on kill capture of the most radical elements of that network. So there are other inputs that need to be put in place in order to defeat a network. But the way that we approached, you know, the problem set was to create an organization to defeat another specific organization at a time and place, you know, at that time. If you look at this, and Al Qaeda in Iraq or the Taliban or whatever, you need to take another step back and say, okay, that was then. This is now. How do we tackle ISIS? How do we tackle different elements of ISIS? The ISIS, as Doug pointed out earlier, that's closest to Baghdad or Mosul is not the same ISIS that's at Raqqa. You know, the enterprise that goes after this network needs to be created specific for this. Yeah, and I'd offer, to your point, there is risk in this model, but there's risk in moving too slow in a traditional model. Sure. The part and parcel of running an organization like this comes with pushing down enough information so that if you consider these smallest sort of, albeit just an abstract model, these yellow dots that are out there on the fringe outside of the normal boundaries of the organization, the ultimate goal and where we were able to get to was that the model sort of flips on its head. So the traditional bureaucratic system, even the military of, you know, receiving guidance, indexing that against the intelligence as you see it on the ground, going up and asking for permission and given that permission and executing, we had refined that down to as fast and efficiently of a model as you could create, but it still was several hours behind the decision curve of the Al Qaeda network. And so the only way you could get ahead of it was allowing those dots to move before they have permission. And so to do that, you have to push constant strategic understanding into their realm, which means you have access to things that traditionally you wouldn't at that lower level and you can reach across boundaries into other agencies, into other forces and say, I need to know exactly what you're seeing right now because I need to move in the next 20 to 30 minutes. I can't seek approvals. The opportunity will be lost by then. So you have to assume some, but you counter it by ensuring the right strategic information is down at that level. And you also brought other people than the military into the network. I mean, who did you bring in as the fight against AQI developed? I mean, first of all, there was more to just AQI. There are other elements that you're combating out there. I mean, it's not just specific to Iraq. It's more of a global enterprise. So you're actually involving the experts in certain counter-network activities within the U.S. government, outside of the U.S. government, within the U.S. and kind of in the international partners. I think that that's something that SOCOM has done bigger than just... But specifically like Treasury, FBI. Absolutely. I mean, you've got to go after the money. You've got to go after the rat lines of people coming in there. You need to go after the individual leadership. After Zarkawi is gone, AQI is a different organization. And similarly, bringing it... Because this isn't necessarily about yesterday. This isn't the network against networks of yesterday. It's about today. And to go after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, there is no caliphate if there is no caliph. So you're going to have to target the individuals, the kill-capture mission, and you're going to have to target different aspects of the organization to include the money, the rat lines, and everything else. And in order to do that, the military is not necessarily the element that's going to do it. And all of it is based on intelligence, so you obviously need a very heavy, you know, reliance on that. And some of it is, you know, U.S. born. Some of it is local. Since this is a policy question, I won't address it to Chris because he's still in the reserves. I'll address it to you, Yanni, which is... So this model that we see up here, this sort of networked, distributed model, how does that fit with what we're actually doing right now against ISIS? Well, I mean, the natural answer is it doesn't. And the fact is that, you know, we heard earlier General Odierno mentioning, you know, that we are training brigades to take over Mosul. Is that a good idea? No. I mean, we have to train brigades. You have to train the Iraqi army to react in certain ways. But that's not, you know, the strength of what we're talking about here. The strength that we're talking about is small units. You know, I mean, you know, if I was king for a day, I would tell you, you know, to jump a couple of questions, if I was king for a day, I would tell you that, you know, the first thing that you do is you deploy a special operations task force to counter this network. You don't deploy a division headquarters. You don't deploy, you know, the airborne strikes as an Air Force officer, you know. I could tell you, or former Air Force officer, I could tell you that, you know, I've grown up as a strategist thinking that air campaigns are part of a greater air campaign. They're not something of themselves. So the idea of the way that we've approached it is quite frankly just poor. I mean, I could go sadder than that, but, you know, I don't want to be a real downer here before we get to the question-and-answer session. If I could circle back, avoiding the policy debate, the... But you bring up a good point, Peter, about who else is involved, and here's what didn't happen in the evolution of this model. There was no 400-page playbook. There wasn't a ran study that said, here's what it's going to look like in four years, start building it. There was a mentality that said, this bureaucratic system is too slow, it's not working. So let's start to push the envelope and see what unfolds. So the whiteboard was sort of wiped clean, and we were allowed to start from scratch. And then what that allowed you to do, and this is why it took time, was every time you encountered a situation where we moved too slow on that, we didn't have the right axis on that, we didn't have the right information, you could then go back into the bureaucratic model and say, okay, what's the blocker there? Why can't I talk to that battle-space owner? Why can't I reach back into DC and ask this question? And then somewhere in that structure, there's an answer. Well, there's this regulation around this relationship. Here's the memo that says, I can't tell you until this happens. And then you can piece those things apart, either solve for them or pull them into the network and say, okay, I'm comfortable with you going point-to-point with this group and solving for that in real time. There's a big difference between accepting your critiques. I mean, when you did what you did with Jay Salk in Iraq, A, we were losing, and losing is a very powerful kind of corrective to previous kinds of forms of whatever you were doing before wasn't working. Two, you had an exceptional leader, Stan McChrystal, an exceptional, you know, Admiral McRaven as well. Three, we had 150,000 American soldiers in the country, and we really understood what was going on, partly because every night there were 12 raids that you guys were doing. And so, I mean, it's very different right now, right? So, looking to the future, we're obviously not going to sort of replicate anything that we were doing in 2005, 2006, but if you were king for a day, you would advise what? Well, I mean, look, you can't replicate exact things, but I think, you know, a lot smarter folks earlier in the day have talked about maybe perhaps repeating themes, not necessarily specifics. So, the idea of creating a theme of what we're talking about, I would recommend that the president, you know, introduces a counterterrorism task force that's focused on targeting ISIL, both obviously in Iraq and Syria. It may be different in the way that we tackle it even within Iraq, not just Iraq and Syria, but I would absolutely form that. And I would also form a counterpart to that of soft elements, you know, that focus on the training and advising of the Iraqi security forces and or other forces that go the other way. The notion of deploying, again, division headquarters, brigades, or even the talk about a large footprint force of U.S. forces going in there is to me intellectually numbing. Okay, so I mean, this is something that needs to be absolutely, you know, countering violent extremism is one thing. That's one conference that was had. You know, another conference that needs to be had is how do we tackle this this way? And it doesn't, it won't take long to really come up with the starting blocks. You know, the decision needs to be taken. You know, history may not repeat itself, but it sometimes it rhymes. Yeah, exactly. So what is rhyming right now, Chris, for you when you look at AQI and which is the parent organization of ISIS? How are they similar and how are they different? Well, I think the obvious one that jumps out and showed everyone the room is similar individuals. I mean, there are key folks inside ISIS that were born and bred and grew up inside of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And in some ways, you know, you can look at it as a disease where, you know, that the part of the disease that survives the antibiotic regimen is going to come back stronger. It's learned. It knows some of this. It knows, you know, better operate, it knows how to engage with the population better than AQI did. It's demonstrating that. So there's a lot of lessons there at the individual level, which is now going to make it that much more impressive. And I think it's also learned how to communicate with the world much more effectively, which equals its rapid growth compared to AQI. So you seem to imply that if we killed Baghdadi, that would be the end of it? No, it's not just the end of it, but it's a good start. I mean, you know, the fact of the matter is you have to remove, I think, the caliphate, but you also have to remove the caliphate. But when we killed Zakhawi, the violence in Iraq actually started going up? I mean, we can even use the statistics of earlier speakers. I mean, sir, you mentioned, you know, violence is going down, you know, in history. So the fact of the matter is that we, it was not enough, and that's my point, it just kills our caliphate. You have to actually dismantle the network. And the same way that, you know, ISIS has economic aspects to it. They have social aspects to it. They have, you know, they're providing services. You know, the fact that they're recruiting mentally handicapped children to go and be suicide bombers is not what necessarily is attracting recruits to come in from Europe or Morocco or anywhere else. There are other aspects of the movement, you know, that are attractive enough to bring them in there. Both of you spent many years away from your families fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. You basically, they looked like they were totally defeated in 2010, right? So were you surprised? What's your reaction to their comeback? Was it even a comeback? They're bigger and better? No, I wasn't really surprised. It's disappointing, of course. But, you know, given, it's an ideology, as we all know, and there are remnants of it. You can't completely destroy it. Enough pressure was removed that they were able to, again, find the cracks in the traditional system. In this place, it was a land area that they could start to control and grow inside of. I mean, it makes total sense. You know, as we were talking about earlier, in some ways, I love the analogy. It's like an endless Rubik's Cube that you're never really going to find a solution in there, but you don't want to put it down. You have to keep playing with it, looking for the end state. Otherwise, it's going to get away from you really, really fast. I'll tell you, first of all, I mean, this is, you know, the $64,000 question, because the truth of the matter is that, you know, we may want to leave on arbitrary timelines, but the enterprise is not necessarily over because of the timeline that we're putting in there. Same can be said in Afghanistan. You know, 2016, we're going to be out by whatever. You know, that doesn't mean that that is going to be over. And similarly, you know, earlier Emma mentioned, you know, one of the real reasons why there's such a mess in Iraq is because we went there in the first place. You know, so the concept, I mean, one of my favorite quotes to kind of get into HR McMasters, use the fear, honor, and interest from the Peloponnesian War, I mean, you know, your empire may be dangerous to take, but you know, it's even more dangerous to let it go. And I think the fact that we're stepping away from some of these things is perhaps the more, the bigger tragedy that we've gone in there in the first place. That raises a bigger sort of philosophical question, which is, you know, we, the United States, have gone sort of in a, you know, a revolt against an empire. We don't think of ourselves as an empire, but these projects, by their nature, are not one or two year deals, right? Right. I mean, philosophical questions go to him. No, you're right. I mean, that's exactly the point. The point is that this is, you know, when you're talking about generational fights, it doesn't mean that, you know, well, you know, let's declare victory over this particular thing. The sun of ISIS is perhaps more dangerous than ISIS. The sun of AQI is perhaps more dangerous, you know, than AQI itself. The fact that on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, we list ISIL, parentheses, remnants of AQI is, you know, it's a bit telling in itself. You know, we don't know how to treat ISIL. It's graduated far beyond AQI, but it still has certain AQI characteristics. So, yeah, I mean, this is a long-term event. The force, you can't close down a base, like Baghdad or Balad or whatever, lock up the stuff and say, okay, we don't need to, you know, use that anymore. Shift a pivot to Asia immediately after we get out of Iraq. I mean, we're, you know, I'll take wrong decision for a thousand, Alex. I mean, so... Well, on that, audience members, if we wait for Mike, we'll take Heather Halbert right there in the back and then Harlem, all the Hs. Thanks. I'm Heather Halbert from New America and I've got two questions for you both about the network over bureaucratic overlay. You can imagine, as Peter, your question alluded to, this would be a fabulous model potentially for cyber command. You can even imagine it as a fabulous model for humanitarian response on the civilian side of the house. Given how challenging it was for you even within JSOC, can you even imagine doing this in other parts of government and what are the things that would make it possible or impossible? Second question, one of the big reasons JSOC was able to do this is the tremendous amount of trust and legitimacy that it has on the Hill and with the American people. Given that our oversight structures, I think it might be generous to call them an efficient bureaucracy, what kind of oversight do you create for a network overlay like this so that it continues to enjoy the level of trust and legitimacy that you benefited from? Sure. I'll take the first question. Yes, absolutely. I think it can happen in any system. It's not easy, but I've seen it branch out into other parts of government and other parts of the military and have done work in other spaces. We're seeing large organizations to try to pick up some of these characteristics and it's very doable. There's a process to how you do this. This isn't Facebook. This isn't just Twittering back and forth. It's a legitimate process on how do you structure an overarching strategic intent. You have to have the right type of leadership that's bought into delivering that and being rather than at the top of the org chart as Ann Marie said earlier, pulling themselves down into the middle and creating the network around them and they become the communication flow, the hub, rather than the approval point for decisions. It's a different model, but it's very doable if you have that clear understanding and you're willing to put the systems in place to execute those communications. I mean, that's a great answer. Tom Ricks. Hi, Tom Ricks. Just as a follow-up on that for Chris, what did you do with people who simply were unable to adjust to the new system and what percent of overall JSOC personnel would you say that was? And JSOC leaders especially. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I would say the vast majority were able to adopt this way of thinking but it's a certain selected type of folk. But I've seen it adapted to other systems that don't have triple quadruple selection processes to get there so I think it's very, folks can assume this model. Well Chris, specifically where have you seen it successfully adapted? I don't want to give you my pitch. We do this in industries. Yeah, but like give us an example because it's interesting. So we've done it with companies in technology, in banking, consumer goods. I mean, everyone's wrestling with some version of this model, this problem set which is things move exceptionally more fast on the outside than the model that I built in the 80s and 90s was designed to pass information and make decisions against. So how do I handle this? So, but to your questions, the majority of folks adopted it in any system that the hardest part is going to be at that mid-level because we've all come up through bureaucracies at some level probably in our lives. Here you're executing against the known. You're the action person. Here you're setting the strategy. Here your incentive, your existence is all about managing the control levers that allow information to flow up and down. So when you start to offer a center out leadership model, the people that are incentivized to control that information flow, they're the hardest ones to convince. Hey, this works for everyone, but I need you to, most importantly, that you break your mentality around being the gate of information flow. So that's usually the hardest part. If I can add that, you know, I know we're putting the label of a particular command on this, but the fact of the matter is that, you know, neither one of us speak for their place and, you know, we're just speaking of our experiences. And I would tell you that from my experiences, Tom, that that enterprise was very much bottom up in terms of actually listening to people and actually listening to innovation coming from the ranks. But at the same time, it was very much a well-led organization that embraced this sort of culture. So in a way, resistance is futile as the end, you know, the conclusion. But it wasn't because it was forced. It was because it was well-led so people bought into it. But at the same time, it was the type of people that you're dealing with that were actually not just embracing that they were accelerating it. You know, if I can put it that way. Harlan Ullman, over here. We should have a special Harlan Ullman mic. I'm Harlan Ullman. I'd like to ask you, can you really elevate a tactical solution to a strategic one in this context? Yes. Let me finish the question. I thought I'd get away with it quickly. And you have to help me here. I don't understand how the United States and the coalition are organized to take on the Islamic State. Who in the White House has been assigned various authorities and responsibilities? Among the coalition of 62 and 20, aside from working groups, how is that being organized with authorities and responsibilities? On the U.S. side, you've got at least four combatant commands engaged. Fifth, if you include the CIA. You've got General Terry who's in charge of the ground game and John Allen who's got some kind of role in here. So when you see this whole structure, how would you apply your construct to dealing with the Islamic State in a really rational way that's going to work? If I... I mean, it actually is an exactly the same answer to Tom Rick's point. You know, the only way that this can work is if you have a well-led enterprise that is adaptive that is supported by groups of individuals that are actually embracing this sort of tactic, you know, approach, and then you have to move forward with it. If you don't have that, you know, any one of those variables, then, you know, this is a theoretical discussion. But I have to tell you, you know, this isn't nice. This is kill, capture, brutal attack of a network in its totality. Okay? This is actually telling them that you're not going to meet the 72 virgins. You're going to meet the 72 Virginians. You know, this is not going after them in a way that, you know, the tweets that are going to come out after this are not going to be nice tweets. They're going to be, you know, maybe over time, maybe you don't want to take your family to Raga because they have kind of a nice system. You know? That thing. But I'll tell you the alternative of what's going on now is not that nice either. You know, we say that the coalition has driven ISIS out of Kobani. You know, click, vice news, you know, or CNN or anything like that, and you see Kobani and it looks like Dresden. You know, is this a solution? You know, it's maybe, you know, some kind of antiseptic to just watch it from a video game of pling, pling, pling, pling, pling, boom, boom. But what is left on the ground, I mean, how are we going to rebuild that? Is that the birthing place of the next ISIS kind of fight? I mean, this is a really, you know, vast, you know, sort of thing to grasp in the context and the grand nature of this, but this is very specific. I mean, you have to have a leader and you have to have, you know, the will to do this. Any questions? I would offer. There was a distinct clarity around mission in Iraq where there's a broad strategic intent to create a stable state. The subset of that that gets pushed down to the joint special operations command is defeat al Qaeda. Because if you don't do that, I know I can't do all these other things. So then around that, we can build all these subsets. If we hadn't had that clarity of intent, we certainly could have created as much chaos in the battlefield that we were solving for. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy up in Boston. And I think what you talk about, the U.S. government did a lot of successful things specifically with the task force and reaching back in the government and bringing those capabilities forward of CIA, FBI, and others. How do you connect foreign elements to the network? How do you bring the network back down to the ground level? And how would you propose doing it with the Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria? Because I think if you build this network with ISF, you're not going to really have the results you need. Thank you. Well, I mean, I'll give you the at the center of the strategy was actually, you know, the rule of law and actually doing things with almost an evidentiary kind of level where you can actually take things. And eventually the idea is to have some sort of prosecutions after, you know, out of these, the people that you're picking up. This isn't, when you're capturing them, it's to lead to more captures. So there's an intelligence value to it. But there is also an element of they are, they have done something very poorly, you know, or illegal. So you're putting them in jail. So there is an element of that, that the FBI was an absolute critical element of it. So the, I mean, look, at the end of the day, you are dealing with our rule of law versus their rule of law. Okay, so we have to have the rule of law as a critical entity in the countering this, this, this scourge. So it has to be a critical part of it. Any other questions over here? Good afternoon gentlemen. Ben Hernandez, Naval History and Heritage Command. ISIS has evolved from AQI. Now they hold territory, they control millions of people and they have to provide services for those people. They have to do things like be concerned about holding main supply routes from Syria into their capital city. How can we exploit that? That smells like they're becoming more bureaucracy. No, it certainly could become their new reality. I mean, in many ways that's a good thing. If they have a population that's now dependent on them and they expect potholes to be filled and schools to be open, then they will get mired down in the same problem that everyone else faces. They've made some moves toward that, but my two cents is that's just to ingratiate the population at this point. I don't think they've taken it on as a serious part of their overarching strategy or see it as a real requirement yet. But they may at some point. That said, that could be a, that's a timeline on their terms. So it's not necessarily the most aggressive way to focus the problem. But I think they have also a capacity issue. I mean, it's one thing to, like, you know, Mosul is, whether it's 1.5 or 2 million or whatever the number is, I mean, you know, that is a big city that's three times the size of Washington, D.C., which itself has its own problems, even though it's not run by ISIS. So the point is there's a lot to, you know, so there's a lot to deliver if that's the goal. Well, I mean, look, you know, I mean, we can mix it up rather a lot if we start talking about Mosul and Raqqa, because I mean, even those are sort of different entities. But I would take it out for a second and just say, okay, Hezbollah, Hamas. You know, they, I'm not against, you know, anybody necessarily becoming a political party or, you know, Shen Fein representing the IRA or anything like that. I really care, almost cursed, I really care about the fact that their behavior is such that is absolutely unacceptable. Their tactics are unacceptable. If they embrace different tactics, then they fit in different categories. It's kind of like picture tombstone, you know, the movie. Okay? At one point, if they let go of that sash, I don't care where they go. Okay? But as long as they have that, you know, and they're behaving in a particular way, they're gonna die. There's no two ways about it, at least in this model. You know? So that's my take. Sorry. Thank you. Both Chris and Yanio are two of the most exceptional officers of that generation, and it's been really a pleasure to have them on the stage. It's an honor. Thank you.