Adaptation War

My new paper, published by the Special Competitive Studies Project, on confronting an adversary learning and adaptation bloc.

To overcome the challenge of the Adaptation War will take deeper learning collaboration within the Department of Defense, and between the military, intelligence and other national security agencies of other allies and partner nations. Most importantly, sustained and visible leadership from political and military leaders to build and sustain adaptation cultures will be crucial. Adaptation in technology, organisations and ideas is now moving at a speed that challenges legacy approaches and thinking on the conduct of conflict. This must change.

I recently had the opportunity to contribute to the Special Competitive Studies Project’s series of papers designed to inform the next U.S. National Defense Strategy. This short paper was the result. In the near future, a longer report will be published that explores the key subjects of this paper in much more detail.

When writing the next National Defense Strategy (NDS), the most important priority to emphasize will be the need to cultivate a culture of adaptation across the Department of Defense. Without such a transformation, none of the other urgent problems facing the Department – such as preparing for great power competition against China, reforming the acquisition process, harnessing emerging technologies, or modernizing the force, will be achievable.

A defence enterprise that remains risk-averse, rigid, and bureaucratic will struggle to implement even the most well-conceived strategies, while one that embraces adaptation and innovation will be capable of turning strategic intent into operational reality. In this sense, cultural change is noT simply another priority; it is the essential precondition for success across every other dimension of national defence.

American adversaries have already learned this lesson. During the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Russia has learned to learn more quickly and to disseminate lessons throughout their military and industrial systems with increasing speed. While Ukrainian forces often outpace Russian innovation, Russian forces have learned to be fast followers.

This learning and adaptation enterprise spawned by the war in Ukraine, as well as the different wars in the Middle East, has now metastasised into an international learning and adaptation competition. A new adversary learning and adaptation bloc has emerged. While not a formal alliance, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have developed a mesh of different agreements and strategic partnerships that have allowed them to construct a connected knowledge market on 21st century strategic competition and conflict. This forms the basis of a larger Adaptation War against America. Investigating, understanding and responding to this Adaptation War should be the highest priority for the Department of Defense.

Characterizing the Adaptation War

Understanding the character of the Adaptation War can provide insights into the strategic strengths and vulnerabilities of potential adversaries. These insights can inform the prioritisation of the kinds of learning and adaptation required by America and its allies. Like the character of war, the character of the modern adaptation war will evolve over time. However, the current character of the Adaptation War is described in the following paragraphs.

Concurrency. Learning and adaptation are occurring at many different levels, in many different organisations across multiple geographic regions concurrently. It is a multi-domain learning and adaptation environment, with efforts underway in the ground, air, space, maritime, cyber and information domains. This parallel learning and adaptation can complicate understanding the entirety of all dimensions of the adaptation war. But the enormous complexity of concurrent learning at multiple levels of organisations and nations, because of the human nature of learning and adaptation, will also unveil many gaps and vulnerabilities in adversaries and in our allies.

One Learns, All Can Learn. For the first time in human history, the adaptation war has spawned the potential for a real-time, global knowledge market among authoritarians and potentially, among America’s allies and security partners. In previous eras, learning took time to be absorbed into organisations, and even longer to share between organisations and nations. Now, there is the potential for all members of an adaptation community, regardless of their location, to access lessons almost as soon as one member can collect and analyse them. This means that among America’s competitors, when one learns a lesson about America’s weaknesses or vulnerabilities, all of them can benefit from the lesson.

Uneven Learning. Notwithstanding the potential for the global knowledge market in the Adaptation War, learning and adaptation is ultimately a human endeavour. Organisations might seek to automate collection, analysis and dissemination through AI, but this system still requires humans at the point of learning and collection and for humans to accept and implement lessons at different organisational levels and in different cultures and nations. This human dimension of the adaptation war can be a strength but also provides many vulnerabilities.

Military institutions, and the different agencies in a nation’s security apparatus, rarely compromise a monoculture. Individual services within each military organization possess their own cultures and even sub-cultures. Different cultures arise within individual organisations and this can provide targetable ‘seams’. As such, different learning cultures differ between adversary institutions and nations is a vulnerability. Understanding this uneven learning underpins vulnerability assessments.

Imperfect Insight. It is unlikely that full visibility is achievable about what the adversary learning and adaptation bloc is doing, as individual nations or collectively. Just as war is full of uncertainty, knowledge of adversary learning and adaptation endeavours will also be rife with uncertainty. The efforts of military attaches, intelligence agencies, open-source collection, business intelligence and luck will all provide insight into how adversaries learn and adapt, but there will always be gaps.

Not a Technological but an Intellectual Competition. Learning and adaptation is a human trait. While insights about technology play a role in learning and adaptation, human decision-making, energy, and creativity are critical elements. Even if AI becomes more central to learning and adaptation, the adaptation war will remain a largely human endeavour. Providing the right purpose and incentives for learning and adaptation, and undertaking the right training, educational and organization reform to improve friendly learning and adaptation is vital.

However, military institutions of all types experience bureaucratic inertia and other human factors that impedes change. This has been observed and documented in all western military institutions as well as in Russia and China. For example, obstacles to reform in the Russian military have been assessed by some as the result of imbalances in civil-military relations and dysfunctional civilian control. Others have pointed to a highly centralised bureaucracy, widespread corruption and an over-emphasis on theory over implementation.

China too has experienced challenges in military reform. The historical dominance of the ground forces and inter-service rivalry has impeded change. Other issues for the reform of the People’s Liberation Army have been identified as corruption and distrust between the Chinese president and his military forces. The imperative for political indoctrination and conformity in the People’s Liberation Army may also conflict with the ability of commanders to lead the development of a learning culture and military innovation. Therefore, while human agency plays a central role in learning and adaptation, it can also lead to obstacles in the innovation process. This, like uneven learning, provides targetable vulnerabilities

Speed. What makes this new global Adaptation War more challenging to respond to, is the speed at which authoritarian actors are learning, adapting and sharing lessons among themselves. As the British Future Operating Environment 2035 report notes, “the rate of technological change will accelerate out to 2035, serving to highlight inadequacies in less adaptable procurement processes within Defence. Civil companies will be able to raise revenue far more quickly, driving technology development in new directions and at faster rates.”

Since 2022, both Russia and Ukraine have demonstrated the ability to learn how to learn better, and to do this learning and adaptation at a faster pace over time.

You can read the full paper on the challenges of the new adversary adaptation and learning bloc at this link.