 Welcome to lecture number three in our online version of the Issues in National Security Lecture Series. I'm Professor John Jackson, the series' coordinator and I'll serve as master of ceremonies for today's event. We are pleased to once again have the Naval War College President, Admiral Chatfield with us online and I'd like to give her the opportunity to extend her greetings. Admiral. Hello there, welcome back to the Issues in National Security Lecture Series. Thank you for dialing in today. We really appreciate you being here, participating in this lecture series. It's a fantastic lecture today. I'm joined by my husband, David Scoble. You all know him and he works to say as well. Great, good to see so many faces. I haven't had a chance to see just how many are on but we've had very strong sessions the last two weeks since we've resumed online through the Zoom platform which is very encouraging. And this afternoon, we have a special guest. Our benefits partner for this lecture will be Eugenie Genereaux and she's pictured probably right there on the top of your screen and she's from Havana and she will handle some, answer some of your questions at the end. So we don't like to welcome you, Eugenie and please bring your best. So we're eager to hear from you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's great to have our team from Quarters AA back aboard. So as we've done over the past several weeks while we hear from our guest speaker, you're invited to send questions and using the Zoom chat function and we'll gather these up and relay them to the speaker during the question and answer period. Following the end of the question and answer session we'll pause for about 60 seconds and we'll then commence our family discussion group with the commands on Budsman and special guest as introduced. So let me turn now to the introduction of our very timely topic, humanitarian assistance and disaster response. Dr. Hank Breitman is a full professor in the Civil Military Humanitarian Response Program within the College of Maritime Operational War. He also holds the EMC Informationist Chair at the Naval War College. From 2008 to 2016 he served as an Associate Professor and Director of Applied Research and Analysis in the Wargaming Department. Prior to coming to the college, Professor Breitman served as a Tenured Associate Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at St. Peter's University and he's also a commander in the Naval Reserve. Dr. Breitman, I zoom it over to you, sir. Okay, well, hi everyone. It's great to be with you today. And what I'd like to do, first of all, just welcome you into my home. Obviously this is a little bit different environment for all of us. Probably most of us are used to working out of our offices. So you get a little bit of a sneak peek into my house, cobwebs and all and hopefully the large collection of various and sundry materials that are useful in doing the kind of work we do in humanitarian response, which include everything from psychology texts to texts about wounded healers to texts that deal with military planning. And humanitarian response really is very much a smorgasbord of different perspectives and insights and ideas. And all of that comes together for the purpose of healing and serving others. And that's what we're really here to do today. To do that, I'm gonna share a PowerPoint presentation with you. And I know that for most of us, we don't absolutely love PowerPoint. In fact, I will never forget that we actually had a former Secretary of Defense who truly, truly had an aversion for PowerPoint. In fact, he had such an aversion for it that he said at one point, I absolutely vehemently do not wanna see PowerPoint anymore. I'm done with PowerPoint. I don't wanna see PowerPoint. And the way that that was communicated to all of us on the staff was in a PowerPoint. So kind of interesting. And I'm just waiting for our slide deck to actually load right now. I'm not sure why it hasn't done that yet. Hank, I think you're at the end of your slideshow. Okay, let's give it a shot and see if it comes back to the front. Operator error, right? So we'll give it another shot. There we go. Beautiful. I'm glad I have Commander Ross on the call too. So it's great to be with you. It's great to have an opportunity to talk to you a little bit about humanitarian response. We're gonna talk about humanitarian response through two lenses. The first lens that we'll talk about is the international response effort. And the international response effort is quite, quite different than the kind of response that we do in the United States. In fact, completely different set of authorities, completely different set of processes that we follow. But obviously in the age of COVID-19, it's important that we talk about what's going on in the United States as well. So I'll actually share a little bit of both with you. I will say however that everything that I will share are my own thoughts, perspectives, insights, beliefs and values, not necessarily those of the War College Department of Defense or any other governmental agency. So having said that, I'm gonna share a little bit with you about the humanitarian landscape and how we deal with issues of response on the international stage. And I know that when Professor Jackson started the series with you, he was pretty clear there'd be no papers, there would be no tests, there'd be nothing like that. Well, unfortunately, I didn't get that memo early on. So I have a quiz for you right up front. And here it is. It's only one question, I promise. So here's your question. When we look from 1970 to 2000, and we look specifically at how many times military units were diverted from regular operations to performing humanitarian assistance or disaster relief operations, would anyone like to hazard a guess? How many times we've actually been diverted during that period from doing our regular operations? I'll say 83 times. 83 times Admiral, excellent guess. You're in the ballpark. I'm delighted by your hot dog for that. Ifa. Here, another one, 65. Well, actually the answer is 366. So a huge percentage of our time has actually spent supporting various activities that occur outside the United States that divert us from our regular operations. That said, it's an important part of what we do because every time we do respond, every time we deal with a natural disaster or in some cases a complex emergency, that makes us better at what we do. When we're flying an aircraft, our aircraft doesn't know the difference between flying in combat operations and flying to support humanitarian operations hours or hours towards that Gladwell-esque 10,000. So everything we do makes us better, but it is important to understand just how large a percentage of our time we spend performing humanitarian operations. In fact, when you look at armed conflict, you can see that armed conflict kind of follows this curve and it's somewhat of a normal curve, yet armed conflict isn't just something that affects military members. Armed conflict really affects everybody. It affects civilian populations as much, if not more so than military forces. Often what we're dealing with when we get diverted to various types of humanitarian operations, not necessarily natural disasters, but complex emergencies, situations where we actually are trying to help resolve issues for a civilian population. And often those civilian populations are displaced. We use the term internally displaced persons, persons that are forced to leave their homes, forced to cross an international border as opposed to a refugee, someone who's been persecuted or forced to leave their country because of some kind of war or violence. So there are differences technically between these two terms, but what's important to understand about both refugees and internally displaced persons, these are people who have lost their livelihood, these are people who have lost their opportunity to exist within the space that they're comfortable with, that their cultural context provides. So the challenge is how do we help those people? And there are a lot of different ways that we do that and I'll share some of those with you. Conflict is a great challenge for us. Indeed, there are so many conflicts around the world that the US has a challenge in trying to figure out which conflicts we actually can engage in to be of supportive value. We can't be everywhere all the time. And indeed, as you've seen from the most recent national defense strategy, some of our goal is actually to pull back a little bit from being around the world, trying to support those elements that are dealing with issues of conflict. So as we look at resource scarcity of our own forces, as we look at meeting our own mission, going back to that 366 number that I shared with you earlier, it's important that we really think about where we can best support and aid populations. And I did mention natural disasters. Natural disasters, of course, being something that most of us are familiar with when we talk about humanitarian response, whether it's floods, storms, other kinds of scarcity issues where we may not have access to crops or crop yields or fish stocks or other areas where we have natural resources that are depleted. So these kinds of weather related or geophysical challenges are a huge, huge problem and challenge as we deal with the issues of humanitarian response. Compounding that is a desire we see towards urbanization. Now, it's really interesting because one of the things that you may be hearing on the news is that many people now, at least within the United States in the age of COVID, are talking about moving away from the urban centers. That's something we're beginning to hear about now that mega cities and large cities may not have the kinds of populations that they had in the past. Well, my response to that is I guess we'll see because the trend right now through 2030 is a trend towards urbanization where people are moving more and more towards urban centers and those urban centers in greater degree are located on the coast. Some located on the coast because of a desire to be closer to access to water and ports and some also because of rising sea change and climate change. So the reality is that we're seeing more people in urban centers than we have in the past and most of those urban centers residing along the coast and that's something that's really important. And when we talk about the urban outbreak game a little bit later on, which was a project that we did to look at a mega city and the challenges that a pandemic or in this case an outbreak might cause within that particular mega city. Well, you'll see a little bit about how those urbanization trends are a challenge for humanitarian response. There are specific frameworks that we engage in when we're doing international engagement. And as I said, when I started, the way that we engage is differently within the United States operates differently in the United States than it does overseas. There are specific frameworks we follow internationally that contrast with those we follow in the United States. And I'd like to share a little bit with you about what those frameworks look like so that you have a better sense of the way we fit into humanitarian response on the international stage. To do that, it's important to understand that the military plays a very specific role. And that role is often that early onset role when there has been a capacity issue that's already been depleted or exhausted by a host nation. So in other words, in times of catastrophe or crisis whether it's a complex emergency or a natural disaster, often militaries get involved early. And the reason that that happens is because what we are masters at is logistics. There's a saying that we often talk about within the humanitarian world of the C-130s are the great power force for us. Having the ability to get supplies, materials, equipment into supportive population in need, that's a huge element of what we do in the military. And we are masters at logistics. So when we talk about power projection, it's important to remember that power projection also includes logistics, whether we're talking about aircraft carriers, we're talking about large cargo aircraft using those for that immediate onset of support to provide aid to a population. Often that's where we live in the military. And of course, our goal is to provide that support, provide that aid to that host nation. And we'll talk more about how we do that in just a few minutes. And then quite frankly, to get out because what we never wanna do is put ourselves in a situation where the host nation becomes dependent on us to provide continuous sustained aid or that may actually jeopardize their system of government. So we're very, very careful about working through the host nation and I'll talk more about that and how that process works to provide that immediate need for assistance in crisis. Along with the military and along with the great capacity for logistics and support that we provide, what you often hear the most about are our non-governmental organizations or NGOs. And I've oversimplified this slide a little bit. There are international government organizations and there are non-governmental organizations and there are other kinds of federated organizations as well. But for the purposes of what we're talking about today, NGOs are things that most of us are familiar with in terms of humanitarian response. Those organizations that are on the ground often before we even get to that particular host nation because they've had pre-existing relationships with them and they're providing specific types of aid and support. Whether it's medical support, many of you may be familiar with MSF or Medicine Saint-François, what we often refer to as doctors without borders or you may be familiar with World Vision or Mercy Corps or Save the Children or any of the other major NGOs that we often see around the world. Our challenge is to make sure that whatever we're doing to support the humanitarian space isn't operating at odds with those NGOs. And I'll talk more about that in a little bit. Because those NGOs, those non-governmental organizations, many of them abide by humanitarian principles. Now, the reason that I say many of them is there are non-governmental organizations that are not humanitarian organizations. But for the purposes of what we're talking about today, and we're talking specifically about response to complex emergencies and disasters, we are talking about these core humanitarian principles that NGOs live by. And I've put them up here for you just so you can give them a quick read whether we're talking about humanity, neutrality, impartiality or independence. What's important for you to understand about these and one of the things that's challenging often for military members to understand is that NGOs don't take sides. If they're involved in humanitarian response and they're following these principles, they're not taking sides in a conflict. They're providing aid to those most in need. And that is very, very different than the lens that we tend to look at the world through often as military members. So often the question we'll ask our students in the elective track that we offer is can military organizations, can military units, can military members be humanitarian? Well, the answer to that is we can exude certain core tenets of humanity, but we're not per se abiding by humanitarian principles because we can't have those kinds of elements like neutrality or impartiality based on our mission, based on the operational environment in which we work. We work through a different lens. And because of that, NGOs will take a very, very standoffish and rightly so perspective when it comes to working near or around military organizations. In fact, it's important to understand that for some of those military organizations that are operating in an area where an NGO is located, they may perceive that NGO as aloof or otherwise not wanting to have anything to do with them because they don't like them. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the very livelihood and sustainability of that NGO and their ability to provide aid to a population in need depends on abiding by these humanitarian principles. Often that even means things like they don't want their pictures taken with military members in the foreground or background or certainly not side by side because these NGOs that operate internationally, they have to think beyond just that particular conflict or disaster and how would a picture of them even a seemingly benign picture maybe shaking hands with a US service member who is delivering aid, how might that impact them around the world or in future operations? What's really interesting about the International Response Framework is that everything comes back to that affected state or affected nation. It's important to understand that we cannot do anything to support or foster or heal in that nation without their approval. We have to receive approval from that host nation to come in and provide support. And there are some elements that help us do that. We have United Nations country teams that will often help with some of those relationships. Obviously the Department of State who I'll talk more about in a little bit but at the end of the day, the affected nation has to invite us in to support. And when you look at this framework more broadly, it can be a little complex as I build this slide out, you'll see how all these relationships and intra-relationships come together and where we fit into that process often is referred to as a fog of relief where you have a military organization coming in to support a host nation. All of these different organizations, often with different values, different beliefs, different missions from our own and us all trying to work together in this same context and same environment. Again, with different missions. So to help make that process work a little bit better, we actually have UN OCHA, which is our civil military coordination element. It's the United Nations facet that helps organize and synchronize a lot of those functions. But what's important to understand is for most of us who come from a military operational environment, we're used to a more traditional command and control structure. The UN OCHA model is very different because what we're doing is we're basically working through a consensus model to try and build capacity in those areas where there's most need. So what that means is you don't see necessarily a particular organization or a particular agency other than that host nation in the lead role. And I'll show you a little bit more about what that looks like in a little bit. As I mentioned, the US does have a role and that role is through USAID, our US Agency for International Development. We have OFTA, which is our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Anything that we do to support humanitarian operations in disaster response is done through USAID OFTA. So that's who we work through. Even though we're military, we still work through USAID OFTA. That's the entity that works with us. And they actually have disaster response teams, disaster assessment response teams that they'll deploy to help facilitate that process and to help synchronize military efforts along whatever line is necessary towards supporting that particular relief. What's important to understand about this is USAID OFTA is not only important because they coordinate that, but because they come to response with a checkbook. So very, very quickly, if a host nation desires it, they can write a check. Maybe not a huge check, but enough of a check to provide logistical support to tap into stores of materials that may be sitting in warehouses that are available to alleviate immediate suffering. They may be able to contract for trucks or other vessels that they already have existing contracts with to help hasten and facilitate relief. Interestingly, all of this comes together through a system that, and I kind of say this tongue in cheek, is referred to a buster system. And for many of us in the military, we may have a different perspective on what a cluster means. The cluster model or cluster system that the UN uses is based on a sector-based system. So we actually have, as you can see here, different facets of that system that come together synergistically through that humanitarian relief coordinator. Now again, no traditional command and control model, not that C2 model that many of us are familiar with, much more of a consensus-based model. And participation in this cluster model is voluntary. So there can be NGOs, there can be other organizations that don't participate in this cluster model. For us, often we work through a civilian military coordinator, that's a UN function that we'll support. And again, we're working through coordination with OFTA, that Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. So multiple levels, multiple layers, all working together in somewhat of a cyclical consensus model. And as you can imagine, that can be very challenging. But the really cool part about this is, believe it or not, these organizations synchronize pretty quickly. Many of these cluster sectors have experience working together around the world. So you see the same NGOs and same organizations working together. And we have the ability to come together cohesively, relatively quickly. I mentioned the effective state. At the end of the day, the effective state that hosts nation, it's their country. And anything we do requires their say-so, their approval, their blessing. They're often the first line of response. However, that line of response may become overwhelmed very, very quickly. The challenge for us is making sure that we always support that host nation. That we never are seen in a way that we are now invading or otherwise usurping capability that could harm that government and its ability to provide services either during conflict or during response or post conflict or post response. Because our goal as I said at the beginning is to get in, provide that aid or support as requested by the affected state and then to depart so we can go back to our operational battle rhythm, our missions that we actually need to engage in to support our great nation and our great Navy. So that means that we're working under a consent agreement with that nation or host state. And to do that, one of the things that we seek to do is we seek to always use indirect aid versus direct aid. Now, interestingly, if we were actually in the auditorium right now, we'd probably do a little bit of a show and tell with you or unfortunately I can't be Oprah Winfrey and give you all vehicles, but I would probably use a cookie model where instead of giving you a car, I'd give you a cookie and I'd offer each of you a cookie, a nice end to men's cookie is often what we use to show you what direct aid looks like. So direct aid is when an organization or an entity, in this case, the US military, is providing direct support to a population. And when you think about that, that's a really bad model. The last thing that we wanna do is go into a country and directly provide support to the people of that country, usurping the government or bypassing the government, usurping their emergency management organizations, usurping the NGOs that are used to working with them and that have relationships with them. Instead of what we wanna do is we wanna work through that host nation and provide that aid to the host nation will use its own trucks, thinking now indirect aid, right? Use its own trucks, its own equipment to deliver that aid to those populations that need it most. So we work hard not to deliver the cookie, if you will, directly to those affected people, but rather to work through the host nation or whatever elements they've designated for us to work with. The third element is that bridge facet that I have here. Think of bridge as we used to say in the planning world as later phasing. Those are those kinds of infrastructure projects where rather than handing someone a cookie or even handing that host nation supplies that they will then deliver, perhaps we're building the bridge so that they can get their truck over it that's stocked with the cookies that we originally provided to them. The challenge with that bridge is that's later phasing. Again, if our goal is to get in and get out some of those larger infrastructure repair or infrastructure support projects may not be the best means for us in terms of supporting that population. Again, what we never wanna do is make a country radically different because of our presence than it was before we got there. The NGOs similarly have a do no harm philosophy. They'll work hard to ensure that if they're providing support or care to a population, let's say they were providing medical care, they'll provide medical care at a level that's commensurate with the average medical care of that population. So that after they leave, after let's say MSF, Medicine, Central TA left, there aren't people who are looking for a level of medical support or medical service that exceeds what that country is now capable of providing. So we're all about indirect, that truck approach to providing aid. Just to show you a little bit about what that might look like at a broader level, you can see here the affected state, you can see here the clusters and you can see how we would be involved in an operation through a multinational military coordination center along with those international organizations and non-governmental organizations. So just wanted to give you a little bit of a visual so you could see how all that comes together. That is the international framework for humanitarian response. And as I said, it's an interesting framework because we've practiced it, we've tried it in different ways, the cluster system works very well as a process or mechanism to help synchronize that aid in a way that isn't a traditional command and control structure, but ensures that those needs are met and met in a way that supports the host nation. What's interesting about that is we had a chance to test that a little bit and to see how that might look in the event of a pandemic or in this case an outbreak. I hasten to use the word pandemic and I'll explain why in a minute. So in September of this last year of 2019, the Naval War College partnered with the Uniform Services Health University and with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab to run an event. And the reason we wanted to run this event was I mentioned those mega cities and those mega cities particularly on the coast and those mega cities particularly on the coast that are often located in developing nations. So we wanted to run a game that looked at what would an outbreak of some type of a pathogen, a communicable pathogen look like in one of those environments in one of those multimillion popular cities located on the coast. So we created a notional country and a notional city to look at that using a pathogen that is kind of flu-like in some ways somewhat similar to what we're seeing with COVID in terms of its virulent nature, but something that we are actually had a cure for, if you will, we had the ability to treat it relatively understandably, which is a little bit different than the situation we're in. And I say outbreak as opposed to pandemic because we were only looking at the propagation of this particular pathogen within this region and this area, not internationally or globally like the pandemic we're seeing now, but very interesting, very timely that we actually did this last September. And what I'd like to do is share a little bit of that with you so that you have an understanding of that urban outbreak game and some of the lessons we learned from that that may be valuable for what we're dealing with now in COVID 2019. The challenge we have with COVID-19 is that it's not the same as what we saw in this game. This was a notional pathogen based on existing pathogens. Again, this was confined to one area. This wasn't the kind of a global pandemic that we're seeing now. Also, for my colleagues in wargaming, they know that gaming is not predictive. Assuredly, nothing that I'll share with you now is predictive, but it is informative to decision makers and that's what I'd like to work through with you now. So we had about 50 people show up for this event from a variety of different sectors, public health, medicine, supply and logistics, healthcare from government, including foreign governments. It was an unclassified event. We had military members, including international militaries, but it wasn't an event that was done for the Department of Defense. It wasn't an event done for the joint staff. This was a much broader inquiry looking at issues of health and response across a broad perspective. What made this game truly unique was our ability to bring in non-governmental organizations and international organizations, many of whom are often reluctant to work with the military for the reasons that I shared earlier about those humanitarian principles. We had five game cells and those five game cells, players had the ability to flow and move between those different player cells. They were initially assigned to a cell in the first move, but then they had the opportunity to move the other cells based on their priorities and interests and the kinds of response activities that they'd engage in and also how they best sought coordination with the other entities in the game. So five player cells, three moves over two full days of gameplay. As I said, it was purely fictional, certainly not predictive, involving a mega city in a notional developing nation, complex urban environment, issues of class, socioeconomic status, education, disparate healthcare, all of the things you might expect to see in that kind of a developing nation schema. As I said, there was a pathogen. It's one that was known but notionalized as well. Rapidly spreading but treatable, which again is one of the differences we tend to see with COVID-19, is the way that that particular pathogen has responded to treatment thus far is different than what we had in the game. Three moves, and you can see here on the right, I shared a little bit about how those moves were structured in terms of the types of things that we were looking at. And again, thinking perhaps direct, indirect, and bridge, so cookie truck bridge, right, in terms of those three moves and what things might look like over the course of three moves in an unfolding event such as this. Well, what did we find? Well, we did a lot of analysis because that's very valuable for us. And we captured a lot of data in this game. And these findings are actually in a couple of different reports. They're in a report that was done immediately after the game, kind of a quick look, and also a longer post-analytic product, both of which are available on the War College website. I'll share that with you later if you're interested. But what we found were some of these kinds of analytic findings, including behaviors. Now, why does this matter? Why does social behaviors matter as a finding? Well, I think we're seeing that in COVID-19, right? We're seeing a situation where because people have been told they need to behave a certain way, they're pushing back against that or they're resistant to that. Even if it may be in their best interest to conform to certain societal standards that have been set and tested, social behavior matters. And understanding social behavior and deviance from social behavior is something that we looked at in this game. What we call cascading failures where every failure in a system impacts every other system. This is certainly true in a developing nation where we may quickly overwhelm infrastructure or support capability. And to some degree, it's true even in what we're seeing today in terms of the response within the United States, where within a given state, just within one state, you may have various levels of healthcare infrastructure, medical infrastructure, depending on whether we're talking about urban or rural settings and population and the kinds of equipment we have to respond. So understanding a little bit about that cascading failure is very valuable for us as well. The private sector. One of the areas that tends to get short shrift is the value of the private sector in response. In the United States, and certainly in the current COVID-19 response, it does appear that the private sector is playing a large role. However, in developing nation response, such as the urban outbreak game, that was where we found this particular analytic data set, what we found is private sectors really, really matter there because they don't have the kind of infrastructure we have in the United States. And the private sector needs to be involved throughout a response, not just in the early phase, not just as the response is unfolding, but even in the later phasing, particularly if militaries and other organizations are leaving theater, that's where the private sector can be very, very valuable in that longer sustainability of a particular crisis or emergency. Assuming risk, one of the things we found particularly fascinating that came out of the urban outbreak game was the way that NGOs, non-governmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations or international organizations look at risk is different than the way military entities look at risk. Now, I want to start out by saying, when I say military entities, I'm not talking about doctors and nurses and medical personnel. I'm talking about traditional military forces who might be doing things like logistics, resupply, sustainment, and security, those forces, their focus tends to be on protection of the force. So ensuring that their own personnel are safe or healthy or able to perform mission, that tends to be from an operational risk curve where they tend to live. Whereas NGOs and other IOs, they tend to focus specifically on the population and they're willing to lean into risk in a way that traditional military forces are not, often because that's very much aligned with their mission, right? If you're a medical doctor on the front lines, providing that support to a community, you may be more willing to lean into risk in a way that's different than an operational commander. Stove piping and cultural resistance. Well, this may not be that surprising, but certainly it's something that we need to consider when we're dealing with a response to a crisis or complex emergency. Specifically, how do our own biases, how do our own beliefs of our organization and our own resistance to change impact our ability to respond dynamically and creatively, our ability to problem solve in real time as necessary. We become so mired often in our own beliefs and values that it can be challenging to lean outside of that. One of the ways that we try and do that in the military is we talk about doctrine, and we say that doctrine is not designed to lock us in a box. Doctrine is a place for us to deviate or depart from, just to give us a common setting to move forward. That's the same kind of challenge we see in response. How do we move from our shared understanding to a broader understanding that's more creative? Throughout this response, what we found that was most interesting is everything in the urban outbreak game came down to two words, and we coded it and we analyzed it, and these words came up over and over again. Those were coordination and communication. So every issue we had, every challenge we had, every opportunity or success we had was one that focused on communication and coordination. And understanding how to more effectively coordinate and communicate is the key to an effective response. And these were some things that we learned out of the urban outbreak game that have value for us today as we talk about COVID-19. What I do want to share with you is a little bit of the work we're doing within the Humanitarian Response Program focused on COVID-19. And I'll start out by saying that the work that we're doing right now is focused on the state of Rhode Island. I mentioned earlier on when we started, if you looked at the initial slide that we had, that I'm the Acting Director of the Humanitarian Response Program, that's because my boss, Dave Pilatti, Professor Dave Pilatti, who is also Captain Dave Pilatti, is on active duty right now. He's a Navy Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer, or NEPLO, assigned to the state of Rhode Island. So he's heavily involved right now in the response effort supporting the great state of Rhode Island. Rhode Island, for its part, realized that it would be better off partnering and working synergistically with a couple of other states, specifically Connecticut and Massachusetts, and more of a compact-esque approach. So what you see is kind of this multi-micro response as opposed to a national framework that is being used to respond to COVID, where resources are being shared or at least synchronized between those various states in a way that has value for all three. Now, I mention this to you because going back to the urban outbreak game, urban outbreak was very much focused on a coordinated response. And that response may have involved private partners, it may have involved the host nation organizing that response or supporting that response, but it involved somewhat of a unified response. That's very different than what we're seeing, in my opinion, in COVID-19, where the response that we're seeing is more of a 50-state, or in the case of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, maybe not quite 50-state, maybe a little bit less than that, more cohesive, but certainly not a unified response like we saw in urban outbreak. And that's important to understand. And this is an interesting perspective because often when we talk about response to complex emergencies, or in the case of the U.S., natural disasters, we're talking about responding, using all of the instruments of national power or a whole of government approach. This is a case where that has not been what we've seen thus far. We've seen a lot of response being led and facilitated and coordinated by those state governors, as opposed to through a national command authority at the presidential level. And I want to point that out, because a lot of people will say, well, why is that Hank? And again, my perspective on that is the current president of the United States, his perspective is a state's rights perspective. And coming into office, he was very, very clear about that. And my response in contrast to that is often, well, President Reagan was also very much a champion of state's rights, but when the air traffic controllers went on strike, Pat Co, he didn't leave it to the states to do their own air traffic control. He brought in military forces to do that until they could get new air controllers to replace the Pat Co controllers that he subsequently fired. So it's a little enigmatic for me that we haven't seen more of a national response framework in terms of COVID-19 response, but at the state level or at a small compact level, what I can say is we're doing a really great job from my perspective in terms of the response. And I wanted to share a few of those slides with you now. We've had the opportunity at the War College to look at some issues for the state of Rhode Island involving what we call cascading exposure. Now, what we're talking about here is if we have industrial hygienists or environmental hygienists in the field doing sampling or doing assessment, how are we considering protecting their families and the other members of their units? So we had an opportunity to look at some of these issues for the state to provide our thoughts and insights on how we could best protect them. And we did that by developing a notional link node construct. For our friends who come from an intelligence background who are on the call today, who are listening after the call today, you're probably familiar with this link nodal construct where we're actually trying to connect various entities to other entities to see how those flow and how we can best protect the population. And you can see that we did that here using this link nodal approach. And we can actually use visualization tools. There's a variety of different software programs that allow us to explore those link nodal relationships. We also can visualize this through a dashboard approach. And as you may know, Rhode Island has developed some great dashboards. They've developed dashboards for pathogen response or hospital capability. This is a notional dashboard that we developed internally. Again, looking at that link nodal relationship between the people doing environmental sampling and the units that they work with and the families that they are supporting. Beyond the work that we've done in things like link nodal analysis, we've also had an opportunity to provide our thoughts on how we could best support the state or as I said, the compact of states, that micro level compact by facilitating conversation and discussion. So we built a multi-state framework to actually assist the states should they desire to get together to talk through any of these key coordination challenges. We haven't used this framework yet, but we're ready anytime that Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts would like to engage in a facilitated discussion around issues of health, economy, logistics and basic services. So we're excited about the opportunity to support these partners and help them consider those second and third order effects of response and any of the gaps that may be located therein. That in a nutshell are the main elements that we deal with in terms of support for COVID-19. See if I can return this back to me now. I may need Gary's help with that. I'm not sure if you're seeing me on the screen now or you're still seeing slides. One more shot. No, there you go. Okay, perfect. Yeah, you can take the cryptologist out of this gift, but it doesn't mean you can teach him how to use Zoom. So the bottom line is that we have been given an opportunity to support the state and we're very excited about that. Internally, some of our HRP team members have been doing some great things as well. For example, we are developing curriculum to look at international militaries and how they're responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Andress Howard, Commander Howard, who's our Chilean naval fellow assigned to HRP has been leading that effort. And we've had an opportunity to start to build some case study data that will be useful for our simulations and our teaching that we do in the area of humanitarian response. So we're really excited about his efforts there. And again, for us, these are teachable moment opportunities. So we're always looking for ways to take what's happening both through COVID-19 and the response internally and externally to get better at responding and to help our students develop the wisdom and insights that they need moving forward. That in a nutshell is kind of the presentation portion of our time together. And what I'm, of course, really interested in are your thoughts, questions and insights that you may have for me. Thank you for a very informative presentation. We do have a few questions and we'll roll them out for you. First is, what would you consider to be the most challenging situation we faced in the near term, considering where we are in the United States in our current environment? Wow, that's a great question. So I can tell you that the greatest concern I have right now is the concern of logistics and secondary logistics chain. Right now, we have been very successful by using secondary logistics chains. For example, if you can't get what you need to at the market, you can probably get it on Amazon or another type of secondary market to get what you need to. And I'm actually looking at a reaction I just saw with my admiral and her husband about that, smiling in the background. So yeah, it's interesting to see how that secondary supply chain has come into effect. My fear is if this illness continues to propagate and develop or we have a second tier of impact, what happens to that secondary supply chain? If there's no longer drivers for Amazon or UPS or FedEx, if people who work in the different facilities where they process, not just packages, but even foodstuffs no longer have the capability to do that, what does that do to our secondary supply chain? In theory, you could potentially put national guard personnel into vehicles and have them delivering as secondary supply chain. In theory, under national emergency, you could put military forces to work and meet processing plants, having them perform U.S. agriculture kinds of inspections. But I think that, again, the way this particular response has been structured thus far, it's unlikely that would happen in the more state-focused model we have, which makes me very worried about what a secondary supply chain challenge would look like in this country. Thank you. Another question. You've talked quite a bit about the international environment and whatnot. What are the differences in working in the United States? And what is FEMA's role? Does that make things better or more complicated in a situation within the continental United States? Yeah, it's a great question. FEMA plays a lead role in the United States. And our neplos, our Navy emergency preparedness liaison officers such as Captain Pilati, are working hand-in-hand through the state with FEMA. So FEMA has that lead federal agency role in terms of coordination. But the challenge becomes, this is a different kind of issue than let's say a short-term event like a hurricane flood or natural disaster. This is a longer curve event where you may be able to apply a regional construct to FEMA to deal with a state or maybe two states if it's, if it were two states that were impacted. What we're dealing with here right now, for all intended purpose, excluding Alaska and a few other states that have very small numbers, is probably about a 44 state challenge where from my perspective, FEMA is still looking at this on a state-by-state level as opposed to a national support level. There are things we can do to augment that. US Northern Command has looked at how we can be involved in supporting some of this effort. But there are specific authorities that we have to conform to and defense support for civil authority and the dual status commander perspective only gets us so far in terms of response, even if we followed it. And as I said when I started right now, what you're really seeing is more micro-level responses where FEMA is involved kind of at a state LNO to state LNO perspective, but not at that broader national perspective. Thank you. Now that's a very interesting question. Could you comment about the impact that disasters have on mental health and what effort should be made from a holistic rehabilitation perspective for the affected population? Well, as I mentioned when I started, I have a bunch of books behind me and a number of my Jungian books. And the reason for that, and we didn't rehearse this question in advance, I promise you it was not a softball, is that I actually have a degree in holistic therapy and holistic counseling. And I'm very much interested in holistic practices. In my own private practice in Rhode Island, which is a trauma and wellness practice, we look specifically at issues of mental health and wellness. So this is a question that's really near and dear to my heart. Bottom line, everything will come down to use the words of the Navy to resilience and grit. And how do we help our population bounce back post-event having been through this significant emotional event in a way that really underscores and celebrates their resilience and creates an energy for them of being able to return to what will be the new normal. From my perspective on that, the way we do that is as much as we've been socially distanced thus far, we need to create the energy around what my colleagues in Wargaming will laugh when I say is a shared phenomenological event. We've all had our own individual experience when it comes to COVID-19, but we've had that individual experience collectively. So we need to celebrate that. We need to connect people and their experiences that they've individually had to each other and come together, whether it's in group settings or chat settings, but ultimately whatever mechanism that is, whether it's in person or virtually, so we can share our experiences with each other. The reason we were successful in World War II was because everybody sacrificed, whether it was rationing and coupon books or fighting the war or collecting scrap or saving fats. Whatever it was, everyone collectively came together in that shared phenomenological event, and they could talk about it and share it to achieve victory to what we call unity of effort. And the challenge that we have, all of us have, is we need to start coming together rather than each of us talking about our own individual experiences. And in my case, I lost a very dear uncle early on to COVID-19 when he was undergoing some medical care. We all have similar experiences people loved or lost or have sacrificed. This is the time for us to connect to each other, share that with each other, and come together towards that unity of effort. Nicely said. How does the Naval War College HADR program routinely deal with the NGOs? You talked about your war game. Is that something that's been going on for a number of years? We have been incredibly fortunate through early relationships with our academic partners, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the humanitarian program at Brown, Yale Medical School and Public Health, among many others. We've had an opportunity through them to connect to non-governmental organizations. And that's important because often you don't see that mild to NGO relationship directly. You see it through a partner. So because we are a graduate-level institution and an important educational institution, we've been able to apply that lens of our mission in a way that connects us to other educational organizations that then connects us to those NGOs. What that's meant for us is we've been able to bring those NGOs to speak to our students, which is very important for them to get that NGO perspective following those humanitarian principles, which again is something that's somewhat enigmatic for us in the military construct more often than not. We participate in an event that Harvard does every year they do a major simulation. In fact, I don't know if you can see it on my mug, but the Harvard humanitarian simulation is something that we engage in where we actually will be a military element of that involved in coordination. We also role play and do assessment, rapid assessment as part of that process. So we've had an opportunity to engage with NGOs in a lot of different ways through teaching and education. We also have had an opportunity to go out directly and teach students, whether it's at Brown or Harvard or MIT or Yale or some of our other partner institutions. We've developed a number of games and simulations where we can then introduce those students, many of whom are interested in intergovernmental or international work to military capability. And the more we can build that commonality in that relationship now, the more valuable we'll be when we work together in the future. Well, Hank, it's interesting when people talk about the Naval War College, they don't realize that we're about a lot more than war. And I think HADR is a wonderful example. One last question I've got is, do we ever see opportunities when the host nation declines NGO and other support? And what do you do in a situation like that? Do you simply step back? The answer to that is yes. Ultimately, at the end of the day, host nations are host nations. And if they choose to invite us in to support and serve them, we're happy to do that to the best of our ability. If they feel they either have capability, capacity, or resources to deal with that challenge themselves or for a number of other reasons, they prefer not to have any level of involvement, whether it's from militaries, governmental organizations, or even non-governmental organizations. As independent states, that's something that all of us enjoy and all of us celebrate, even when sometimes we may have a different perspective. And one viewer asked if we could make their slides available for them to look at after the event. Would that be okay with you? Absolutely. I'm more than happy to do that. I also recently gave a presentation on the Urban Outbreak Game and some of the things that we're doing at the Naval War College to support the COVID-19 response process in Rhode Island. So if you're interested in those as well, there's a YouTube video. I'm happy to share that link as well. Absolutely. That's great. Well, we greatly appreciate what you did for us this afternoon. And that concludes our formal lecture period. We have three more lectures in the series. Next Tuesday, Dr. Terry Roehrig will be speaking about another very timely subject, and that's the North Korean problem. So we'll take about a 60-second break and then we'll shift into the family discussion group meeting. So thank you very much.