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  • Sustainability of the Force

    During the past two decades, SOF have conducted innumerable counterterrorism and direct-action activities around the world in places like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The taxing operational tempo and unforgiving dwell time of operational units resulted in former USSOCOM Commander Admiral William

  • Coordination and Collaboration

    The genesis of the great power competition has created an operational environment that demands a greater collaboration/ synthesis between SOF and the interagency to enable future SRR. Should the current SOF Liaison Network include specific training for SRR activities? How can the SOF Liaison Network

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    While resistance and resilience tend to be discussed in terms of the people resisting, or the state or population within which resilience is being built, this topic calls for a shift in focus toward the forces offering support for resistance and/or resilience. Those forces might be U.S.

  • Understanding the Will to Resist

    Support to Resistance and Resilience (SRR) is focused on people— both for the populations who are building resilience and resistance skills, and on the SOF professionals who advise and assist those populations. Understanding, defining, and measuring the will to resist is a complex topic. What

  • The Future of Information and Influence

    There are many ways in which current technologies shape the ways that people receive information. The ability to create realistic, believable information, events, documents, pictures, and video based on a computer prompt makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.

  • Black Swan Capabilities

    Historically, technological innovations drive changes to the ways in which conflicts are fought. However, it is not always easy to see which technologies will drive such changes, or the ways that such technologies will be incorporated and deployed by militaries. New technologies in a variety of

  • Interrelationship Between Intelligence and Technology

    Intelligence has a role to play in the identification of emerging technologies and assessment of how they may be used by adversaries. Within the SOE, how can collaboration be encouraged between the intelligence practitioners and the technological specialists? How can SOF best couple bottom-up-driven

  • Legal, Moral and Ethical Considerations of New Technologies

    What are the core legal, moral, and ethical principles that transcend technology? How can the SOF best prepare for the legal, moral, and ethical challenges inherent in new technologies? How can SOF develop personnel who understand the legal, moral, and ethical implications of new technologies?

  • Technological Impacts on Ethical Autonomy

    The integration of wearable, edible, or injectable technology for SOF can potentially raise concerns about the loss of autonomy in making ethical decisions. Wearable devices, such as smartwatches or fitness trackers, can collect vast amounts of personal data about our behaviors, activities, and

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Based on trends in the geostrategic environment, advances in technologies that allow SOF greater maneuver and capabilities in extreme environments, and the evolving role of the DOD as part of national security, what might SOF’s new roles and missions be, as part of the Joint Force, in novel