Axon - Red-Teaming in Military Education - Ep10 Published May 25, 2023 Air University Teaching and Learning Center The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency. Dr. Megan Hennessey Welcome to the Axon podcast. This is the official podcast of the Air University Teaching and Learning Center, and I'm so happy today to be with Brian McDermott. This is Doctor Megan Hennessey. I'm your host today. Brian McDermott retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after serving 20 years as a Marine Corps aviator. I first met Brian, when we taught together at the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School, and he was also the Marine Corps University Red Team Director. Brian and I worked together again at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency College, and he has since also served as a tactical Red Team Analyst at the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Organization and at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. He currently works as an Instructional Systems Design Lead for OD and I and as a part-time Adjunct Professor at the MCU College of Distance Education and Training Continuing Education program for an asynchronous online Red Team course he designed. Hey Brian, welcome. Brian McDermott Good morning, Megan. Thank you so very much for having me. Dr. Megan Hennessey Yeah, absolutely. It's nice to hear your voice again. It's been a while. It's always good to have Marine Corps buds join us and today we're really gonna take advantage of all of your expertise on Red Teaming. So, first spell it out to us, why is Red Teaming important in military education? Brian McDermott Thanks for the question, Megan. So first I want to do, because there's some publications out there, Joint Pub 5, Joint Pub 2, and others that define it. So basically, I'm using the Red Team handbook just to give context for the definition. Basically, it's a flexible cognitive approach to thinking that specifically tailored to each organization in each situation. When doing this, it helps the learners that I've seen, in the education world, help ask better questions, challenge assumptions, especially those implicit assumptions, expose information you might not have thought of in the first time that you were looking at a topic or issue, and also develop alternatives that might be there. What's the, you know, what’s this information, what are the other explanations or other ways that this could be viewed, and it helps the learner rapidly shift between multiple perspectives to develop a fuller appreciation of whatever the topic is that they're doing. And you know, so for Red Teaming, I base it off of the four pillars of the old Army Red Team school known as the University of Foreign Military Cultural Studies. They shut their doors in October 2021, but they basically talk about how these techniques can help with self-awareness and reflection, which actually ties into critical thinking. The other pillars are applied critical thinking to help get to the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy that these techniques can help the learner get to also with applied critical thinking, and also helps foster cultural empathy. If you don't like the word empathy, others can say cultural awareness. And it's not just looking obviously at, I'll say another culture like, you know, the US culture or the Chinese culture, but also in internal organizational culture. What's a culture of the Marines? What's a culture of Air Force personnel, etc.? And also, all these wrap into what you can do is groupthink mitigation. So if you see a bunch of people agreeing on a topic and there hasn't been a lot of debate, this is where, as an educator, you can actually use some of the techniques in order to throw another question out there, or a technique to help expose and take an opposite viewpoint to help the learners get to that, to help take a holistic approach to the topic or issue that's being presented in the classroom. Dr. Megan Hennessey Can you give us like an example? Can we run through how you might teach this if you continue your Red Teaming course, how would you teach it as an instructional tool like you just said? Brian McDermott No, absolutely. So, what I do is, it's mainly more on the facilitation side. There's certain facilitation techniques. There's also some structured analytic techniques that are used in, in this approach toward Red Teaming. So, in the educational space, I can use the course that I designed. So, for 18 weeks, most of the course that the learners are in, which I'm currently teaching with Marine Corps University, they have to think from either the Chinese or the Russian perspective. I based the curriculum around the current National Defense Strategy and I'm able to use facilitation techniques in the, as what I would say the asynchronous environment is a little bit tougher than the synchronous environment, whether you're in person or live online because you have to make sure all the instructions are put out there. So, I use certain techniques like think-right-share, which combines with maybe another facilitation technique like 124 whole group in order to make sure that the learners are diving into the material and challenging each other. So you know, one of the things as a facilitator I do is if I've seen everyone say, hey, I agree to your point, I agree with your point and they don't say why they’re agreeing with it, Well, then I'll ask a deeper level question, maybe use another question technique, modified 5 Why's or if I ever use a four ways of seeing technique to say hey, how would the Russian perspective see this topic or how would the Russians see Americans related to this kind of topic? So, there's different ways to try and to engage self-awareness and reflection on the learner's answers. So then they dive into critical thinking, more even creative thinking, and really get into the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, maybe they analyze or hopefully to evaluate or create sections so where they can create new thought and be able to defend, I'll call it an argument, defend an argument or defend an assessment with the material that they use in order to design it and also see a different way on how that material could be interpreted so they can anticipate those kind of questions that might be asked of them and maintain an open mind and a growth mindset in the classroom setting. Dr. Megan Hennessey Yeah, that all makes good sense to me as an educator and as an educational researcher what you just spoke to is actually one of the weaknesses that my co-researcher, Dr. Tino Perez, retired Army Colonel and I discovered together with our collaborator, Dr. Brandy Jenner, when we looked at how senior service college students solve problems and how they present strategies and strategic level products. So, one of our findings was that there was a real weakness or just complete gap in counter argumentation and very little perspective taking or cognizance around local dynamics of war. So, what you're saying definitely resonates with what I've seen in my experience. I did want to ask you what are the 5 why's? Brian McDermott So, the 5 Why’s is a questioning type technique where it helps dive in, you do a deeper dive into finding I'll say, a root cause of an issue or If you're looking at like a case study of hey, for example, why did the Malaysians start an insurgency? You know in the late 50s and 60s that the British had to deal with so, in that case of a case study, you asked those questions and dive deeper into what were those root grievances, at least in the case in the example I just gave, or more like the root cause of what makes you think the way you do. And you know, obviously it's based on what we experience as well as our educational background in the past, how we're raised, but also there are cognitive biases out there, I'm sure everyone's familiar with, basically, it's just the way the brain is hardwired. You know, we're in what, 2021, and our brain is still hardwired like it was when we were, you know, slinging clubs and arrows and spears at animals and we weren't the top of the food chain at that time as well, so our brain are still nested in that hardwired that way, so these techniques can help, like 5 Why’s can help dig. What I've also noticed is once you understand the techniques, you can modify them how you need to. So, what I've seen sometimes with the 5 Why’s, if someone tries circling back to their original viewpoint instead of asking another, why question? I'll ask a how question to change their lens and how they're trying to support their answer or support the argument or assessment that they come up with Dr. Megan Hennessey Yeah, so I mean. How do the instructors who are learning these techniques from you feel about this? Is it uncomfortable? Is it new information to them? What's you know, some of their insights that you've garnered? Brian McDermott Well, I think some people act as if it's new to them, I mean, obviously everyone is human nature, little uncomfortable with new things. The key is doing the practice stuff and I'll say this I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do, but I've learned from my mistakes and as well as my successes, so I would just say if you keep a growth mindset and are open-minded to how to utilize these things, I'll say some of the positive things I've heard is that using these kind of techniques, it helps enhance the learning environment. It gets more buy-in from the learners because by using these kind of techniques I think right share and circle of voices and some other techniques, you're putting the burden of answering on the on the learners, especially in a seminar type environment, so instead of me being the instructor being the sage on the stage, I'm more of a guide on the side with some background knowledge in case I'm asked questions myself and this is where I'd rather have the learners engage with themselves, so it enhances the learning environment, it helps provide different type of perspectives, especially, I'll use my example and with Expeditionary Warfare School, you know we had, I think it was 22 or 23 international students. So, helping them feel more comfortable in sharing their experiences, especially when it's just one of them and you know, in a room of anywhere from 18 to 20 American military officers. The other thing that helps with that increased participation. If you're using some of these facilitation techniques, this will get the learners to dive deeper and, in my opinion, with some research and trying to reach metacognition, we'll get them in those higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy to really reach or exceed the educational objectives of any program that you're in. And the reason why I would say this is important is if you look at the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructional literature out there, there's one order for Officer PME, the other one that is for enlisted PME, and if you look through a lot of the literature in those two orders, a lot of them dive back into how the how the leader can think critically through these things. And this is where some red team facilitation techniques or even in the seminar level, I think would help achieve or help meet or exceed those learning objectives set out in a curriculum. Dr. Megan Hennessey Hey, is there any experience that you've had where it was just, I'm gonna force you to use your growth mindset here, is there any experience that you had that Red Teaming has just completely made you fall on your face and you think later, oh, that was not the best use of that tool or think about it in terms of what you might have done differently? Brian McDermott Oh, absolutely. So, one of the things that I did not do well in an educational mind-set was, I was with a seminar with some other international officers, and I was really pushing, this is where I had a closed mind-set based on a topic. It was about a something in Europe about an operation that was going on, and I wanted the international students to better see the American perspective and I kept harping on the American perspective, and I and I, I did use think right share and I didn't use circle of voices correctly, I cut them off. You know, due to time, you know, usually circle of voices, everyone gets to share their opinion and then you build off of each other's opinion, not your own, and that's the basics of that technique. There's also circular response where everyone builds on somebody else's answer as and it might be completely different than how the answer originally started. So I was working so hard, I did not appreciate the International officers perspective and they called me out on it, thankfully respectfully, at the end of the seminar, and that's when I realized when I did some more self-reflection on how I did that, that's where I realized that, you know, I need to learn to better appreciate other people's perspectives to achieve the learning objectives and so, at least in this case, the American officers can better understand a completely different perspective, because the international officers mind-set and education is was a lot different than the American officers at that time. Dr. Megan Hennessey Right, thanks and yeah, I'll just make a plug because we had Professor Stacy Wells on the podcast this week that went live. It'll be a couple weeks out by the time this one goes live on our streaming platforms, but she specifically talks about the role that international military officers have to play in PME. So, it sounds like you're doubling down on that, and I really appreciate that. Brian McDermott Yeah. I'd like to give a quick example about that. So, when I was at Expeditionary Warfare School at all American, I was there from 2010 to 11, I think or 12. And so this is when a lot of the American officers had experience in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we had a Philippine Marine officer, we called him Charlie. He spoke better English than any of us. But you know, obviously, you know, the Philippine military has been handling an insurgency for now, almost 7 decades. At that time, 6 decades, and I asked my fellow learners in the seminars, hey, anyone want to ask Charlie their opinion about counterinsurgency? And they're like, well, why would we do that? I'm like, well, his country's been fighting a counterinsurgency for over 6 decades. Why don't you talk to him about it, and he's been doing it in Archipelagos, not a land thing. It's a very small island. All sorts of, you know, very dynamic environment and tough environment that you have to deal with, and they started asking him a lot of questions because he was, he was pretty reserved but his experience I think greatly enhanced the lessons learned from what the Americans did in in Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe, might utilize some of those lessons learned in future operations. Dr. Megan Hennessey Thanks so much for that perspective. I think that's so important for us all to keep in mind, as we're working in military learning environments. So, I asked you about your failure, what's the greatest success that you've seen with Red Teaming? Brian McDermott So, I think the greatest success is a little bit different than in the educational world. So, when I was a strategic Red Team Analyst Lead at DTRA, I cannot remember the acronym, what it stands for, but it's basically OIOA Director who was a US general officer in the Army. They wanted to use Red Teaming to help design a new mission and vision statement, and their original thing was they just wanted us to, and I'll give him that, that officer a lot of credit, he also wanted to include contractors in on this process because at that time about 85% of the workforce was contractors. So he had military personnel, I'll say government, blue badge personnel and contractors, and I had very little time to set this up, but I used some basic facilitation techniques like think right share based on the publication that the general officer wanted everyone to use as a reference and we had to get all our questions validated by, I'll just say legal, because of what the general is asking and what this allowed was different parts of the organization. To talk about change or talk about current mission, what they thought it would, was, what they thought it could be, what the values of the organization are and other types of questions like that, and then we took all the quantity and I used think right share and I used circle of voices when I personally facilitated my seminars and I gave some educational quick tips of some of these techniques to some of my fellow colleagues that they didn't have a stint of background and facilitation as I did. Overall, I thought were really successful. You know, we took all the quantitative and turned it into qualitative data. I wrote the methodology for the point paper, the other, one other Red Team person we had certified on a team, he presented a paper. I moved on to another job by the time this was over, and I had heard after they got the report and the debrief from what the Red Team did, they actually wanted both of us. But since I moved on, they kept the other Red Team person to stay on and help the key leadership that GS-14s-15s and the general officer and whoever in his staff, to help craft that new mission statement help craft that new vision statement. I'd say that was a good success story. Part of it is I had a former, it was a former senior leader in the Army, and he was a contractor, and I would use the exact language he did when he was part of this, he told me it was a bunch of, you know bupkis and other words, I won't use. But after he went through the experience with me because I made sure I facilitated the group he was in, he really appreciated how he was able to hear different perspectives on some information he did not think about or did not consider as the organization was looking at that reshuffle and what I would take from that is you know, this allowed buy-in from the participants. This allowed critical thinking to be used at all various levels from all various different backgrounds and the information that we gathered, which was much greater than any traditional survey that would have been given, gave a lot more depth and breadth to the information, to the qualitative data and then you know, we use some analysis to do to quantitative data and I think that helped that organization. So, this is where I say Red Teaming can be used in various different methods. And in that case, I would say the education for the workforce was there is a way to, to appreciate everyone's perspective, appreciate everyone's input and even though it might not have been used in its original form, the synthesis that happened and maybe got to the higher Bloom’s Taxonomy where you know the key leaders had to evaluate the information they got and analyze it and then create new information, I think that's a good success story of what Red Teaming can do. I know that was more of an organizational type environment, but I have used these techniques and others that I know have used Red Teaming techniques. The facilitation side of stuff has achieved or exceeded our learning objectives and it ties back into those Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff instructions, which I know all the other services had to use as a guideline in order to develop their programs for their military education, opportunities for officers and enlisted. Dr. Megan Hennessey Well, sign me up. How do I learn how to use Red Teaming techniques? You've made a very strong case. If I'm a PME faculty member or someone working at one of the other schoolhouses, more along a training vent, how do I learn how to use these techniques? Brian McDermott Well, so, uh, I know the school is closed. The Army Red Team School is closed, so there are some certified Red Team facilitators that are out there. I know some, as well as myself. I know one way that this could be done is for faculty development. I gave my services as my LLC. Offered to Marine Corp University Distance Education College of distance education and training that I can do this for them and maybe help enhance how the questions that are formed in the in the discussion threads and also using these techniques in order to even for an online environment or even in person to maximize the thinking and the interaction of ideas and the exchange of ideas amongst the learners in the timeline that they have. I know myself and others like me that learn from the actual Red Team school, we can do this also on a separate case basis. You know I can be reached out on LinkedIn or give me a call, or an e-mail and I know others that if you don't want me, which is fine, I'm happy to give you very credible people that can help enhance this type of facilitation techniques in a classroom type environment, whether live or asynchronous. Dr. Megan Hennessey Thanks, Brian. That's awesome. Is there anything else you want to leave us with today about Red Teaming? Brian McDermott I'd just like to offer that it's not, Red Teaming is not groundbreaking stuff. It's used a lot of certified research from various authors. I won't get into all of them, but if you do want to reference some references, I'm happy to provide those, whether they're Army pubs or whether they're Joint Pubs or also maybe some research that was done by for example, Doctor Randy Foster, who was on a cricket development team and he's done Red Teaming for a long time. Dr. Megan Hennessey Thank you. That's great and then for any more listeners who want to get in touch with Brian, if you can't find him on LinkedIn, just send us a note in the Teaching and Learning Center and we will make sure that we connect you. So, Brian McDermott, thank you so much and Semper Fi. Brian McDermott Thank you so very much Megan for this opportunity, I hope you have a good day and Semper Fidelis to you also.