James Mingus and Zak Daker
When our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, the US special operations community immediately began to plan for operations in Afghanistan. They quickly identified hundreds of information gaps, many of which were general and fundamental: Where exactly was Afghanistan? What languages do they speak? How tall are the mountains? How many rivers do they have? Information on the region was sparse and spread across multiple formats and sources, and teams spent days just gathering data, with no chance to even begin to address the more complex, nuanced understanding the mission required. We headed off to combat with only a rudimentary understanding of the operational environment. This experience highlights a critical challenge facing today’s military leaders—the tendency to become mired in raw data rather than ascending to higher levels of cognitive understanding. In an era of great power competition and rapidly evolving threats, this challenge has become existential. Residing in the data layer cedes initiative and decision space and could cost us the fight. Leaders must leverage new technology and artificial intelligence to automate foundational tasks to turn data into knowledge and quickly create shared understanding to achieve decision dominance.
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