Dear X,
Thank you for writing. I came home the other day to find a large envelope in my mailbox. I opened it and three letters tumbled out onto the table—all from you. The U.S. Naval Institute was kind enough to forward them to me. Yet I’m curious. Did you read something of mine that interested you? Did you hear me speak somewhere? Nevertheless, I’m at your service.
I haven’t worn the uniform in years. But yes, as you guessed, I’m still “plugged-in” to the naval intelligence community. If I wasn’t, well, then my advice to you would be worth little. It would be the ramblings of an old man with fond memories of the navy.
So here we are. I’ve read your letters. And I see that in each one you ask an important question. But honestly, these are difficult questions. One reason they’re so difficult is because they’re so broad. The other reason is that I don’t have all the answers. I have only opinions. So, after you’ve read my replies, certainly, I encourage you to talk to other intelligence officers before you form your own ideas about the state of the profession you’re entering. Still, I’ll reply to each of your questions. Three letters deserve three responses.
I. The Naval Intelligence Profession Today
In your first letter, I suspect that your question— What do I think about the profession today? —is borne out of curiosity more than concern. You’re young, hungry, and based on the tone in your letters, I assume that you’re excited to join the service.
Frankly, today the naval intelligence profession is troubled. Notice I didn’t say “in trouble” or “broken” or some other such thing. No, I said it is “troubled.” It is struggling to define its identity in the 21st century. This isn’t a surprise nor should it be. For almost twenty years the U.S. military has tracked, chased, and killed terrorists all over the world. Naval Intelligence has supported this. We’ve been at war for over fifteen years and dramatically reshaped the contours of the Middle East. Naval Intelligence has supported this as well. And the fusion of five different professions to create the Information Warfare Community has solved some problems yet revealed others.
So, if I asked three intelligence officers the question— “What is an intelligence officer today?”—trust me, I would get three different answers. Some intelligence officers have spent a considerable amount of time working with naval special warfare, others have had different jobs at sea, others as staff officers or flag-aides, and some with little or no experience in the largest fleet in the U.S. Navy. Entire careers look like a bag of Chex Mix. I get it. There are sound reasons why our profession has focused on so many diverse threats these past decades and spread our talent across so many areas. That was our strategy; we are global, threats are global; and we went where the trouble was.
Meanwhile, China has grown quickly—economically and militarily—and now we are in great power competition. Only one of us will determine how the world will be governed. Now, whether you agree or disagree with this idea of a Thucydides trap is beside the point. I’m no fatalist, and I happen to agree with a wise woman who once said that people have choices, so yes, we can choose to avoid war. But unfortunately my young friend, great power competition rarely ends well if two countries don’t share a common culture. This is precisely why we didn’t burn the world down at the turn of the 20th century when the British acceded to our role as the global hegemon.
Years ago, there were a few authors and analysts banging pots and pans, warning us about China’s rise. But 9/11, mounting casualties in Iraq in 2006-2007, and a devastating recession in 2008 challenged two administrations. It seemed we could focus on little else. Now we must answer the most important question that will consume naval intelligence for the next twenty or thirty years: How do we respond to great power competition?
Do you want the short answer? Here it is. Build a deep bench of folks that can think long and hard about China, our peer competitor.
Others have written important essays about the age old debate of specialists vs. generalists.[1] I won’t repeat them here. On the topic, I will only say this: I think we can have specialists and generalists. We need both. We need China experts. In fact, an article recently concluded generalists perform better in fields where change was slow while specialists performed better in jobs where change was fast. China and her military—particularly their navy—is a fast problem. Too many people are talking about China’s military advance in years and decades. We need to look at China and her navy in months, not years. Only then will we create the sense of urgency that is needed. I can’t overstate how quickly China’s navy is putting hulls in the water, developing new weapon systems, and expanding their territorial claims.
A few years ago someone handed me a book. I wish I could remember who it was and thank them, because I thought—and still do—that it’s a fine piece of writing. It’s called the Admirals’ Advantage. Grab a copy. It’s really the only book out there that describes how naval intelligence learned to excel at operational intelligence, beginning in World War II, to understanding Soviet naval activity in the 1970s and 1980s. Buried in later chapters, the authors cite the two pillars of naval intelligence. If you remember nothing else, remember these two things. First, develop a deep knowledge of the enemy. Second, develop a deep knowledge of the customer.[2] That’s it. If you can do those two things and do them well, you will be a fantastic intelligence officer.
Yet you need to ask yourself if the profession still values these two principles. I believe they do, at least in word, but watch closely. Keep your eye on the intelligence community’s flag officers—and to a larger extent, the CNO, his staff, and even the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Let’s see if the senior leadership in the navy decides to make some significant changes in how they manage and allocate talent.
The new National Defense Strategy has clearly stated the China and Russia are our top two priorities. So you’ll know we’re serious about the competition if one day in the next few years you pick up the phone and call the detailer and suddenly 20 or 30 more intelligence billets are open in the Pacific. From my experience, I’ve learned that it’s easier for the services to buy new technology than it is to cut billets from combatant commands and shift them to other parts of the world. Yet this is exactly what our senior leaders will need to do to meet our strategic priorities.
Ultimately, I believe that the naval intelligence leadership is just now starting to figure out how to realign the community to face a peer competitor. I remain optimistic that we will rise to the challenge and figure out a way to hone our craft and our talent to tackle this incredibly important question. Only time will tell.
II. Professional & Personal Development
In your second letter, you ask a question that is as broad as the first. Namely, you ask— “What should I focus on for the next few years?”
Well, that is a tough question. There are a few areas of naval intelligence that must be improved. Unfortunately, you won’t have the luxury to wait for the intelligence leadership to fix all of these problems. You can, as Admiral Bradley Fiske said, work from the “bottom-up” and not wait for “top-down” solutions.[3] While the latter is often preferable when trying to instill uniformity across a large organization, it’s not the most practical or timely. I offer you, then, a few recommendations to improve yourself.
My first bit of personal advice to you might sound silly, but it’s this, find solitude. I repeat—find solitude.
You live in a time where your attention is a commodity. Today the world imposes itself on you in ways that no one ever imagined. Noise pollution is actually a thing. And the demands of the profession—the endless emails, phone calls, video teleconferences, and tasks—will wear you down. So listen, you’re a knowledge worker. Your mind is what operators value. Protect it. Still, I realize that you may not always have the chance to find a quiet place to read and think about tough problems. But trust me, the more time that you can carve out for deep thinking, the better you’ll be and the better you can serve your boss.
My next bit of advice is this: learn to tell a story. We are social creatures. Before the written word we told stories. Oral histories were the glue that bound people together. The power of a strong narrative moves us to cry, clap, cheer, and most important—make consequential decisions. I have seen too many intelligence officers get up in front of a screen and spew facts and details at the audience without connecting them to a larger context. Think about it this way. In any story there is almost always a beginning, middle, and an end. There are characters. There are motivations. There are twists. Focus on those things when an adversary vessel is getting underway. Ask yourself those questions in that context. And thus, brief your boss through the lens of a storyteller.
The last bit of advice I have is something you can improve personally and it also applies to any intelligence organization: take the time to measure your effectiveness. What do I mean by that? For ages we have focused on lessons learned. These are often a summary of observations captured in writing following exercises or significant operations. Military professionals use them to analyze their performance and make recommendations for the future. Pilot debriefs are simply one example of many. But beyond a few specific events, intelligence professionals—and most intelligence organizations—rarely measure the success or failure rate of their analytical predictions.
Today, the most common measure of success for an intelligence professional is their commander’s trust. Absolutely, it’s critical, but don’t fool yourself. Your commander’s trust in you doesn’t necessarily mean you’re great at predictive analysis. That trust may have been built over time for other qualities that the commander found desirable—e.g., your timely, correct, and relevant replies to questions about an adversary’s capability.
So, I’ll close this letter with a few last points. You owe your commander answers to these three questions: 1) Where is the enemy 2) What are they doing or capable of doing and 3) What will they do? It’s the latter I want you to focus on. Ask yourself this: Have I gotten better at predictive analysis? Do we measure it? If not, how can anyone or any organization say they are a better intelligence professional one year to the next? Think about it.
III. What Should I Read?
Here we come to your final letter and my favorite topic—what to read? What should you read to become a better officer? Leader? Or Intelligence Professional? All of these are great questions. By simply asking them I can tell you that you are the curious sort. A superb quality in any officer. Combine that with a dash of skepticism and you are on your way.
First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room, shall we? The reading list. The U.S. Navy has been throwing out an official reading list for the past few years. It’s called the “CNO’s Professional Reading Program.” It began with Admiral Mullen and continues to this day. Today the reading list has more the 100 titles. Lists are great. But they should be a jumping off point, not your anchor. (Oh, and yes, you’re correct, there’s no official naval intelligence reading list. In fact, I’ve never seen an informal one from any of our naval intelligence flag officers in the past 20 years. Maybe it’s time for one?)
Sure, I can give you titles. That’s easy. But before we get to specific books, let’s focus on how to read before we talk about what to read. There is a great line from an essay on reading lists that I must quote. In it, the writer says, “Reading is just the movement to contact. The real battle begins when service members begin to engage with the ideas, problems, and experiences put forth in what they are reading.” This is so true.
Grab a pencil or a pen and mark your books up. Take notes and find a friend, or two, or three, and talk about your reading. Bounce ideas off people that are smarter than you. One of the highlights of my career was finding a small group of officers who I remain in touch with today, trading emails about books and essays.
Also, what you need to do is, and again this might sound silly, but you need to be a whimsical reader. What do I mean? The popular author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell says that we he goes to a library to find a book on a subject he is researching, he’ll find that book and then he’ll look at all the books on the shelf that surround it. This is a splendid way to find connections, to find new ideas. Do the same with your reading. If you enjoy an author, look at the bibliographic sources they cite. Hunt those books down and add them to your pile.
Actually, if you think about it, all-source intelligence analysis shares the same principle as the wandering bibliophile: It is the interlocking of different threads and streams of information to form an entire whole. In all seriousness, there is some whimsy to this process. You will unintentionally discover some of these linkages while you are sifting through the piles of data that sit on your computer screen.
Finally, I encourage you to read books that will help you hone the two core principles of naval intelligence that I mentioned earlier. Read books about the adversary and read books about the customer.
If you want to read some books about the competition, you can start with any of Peter Hessler’s fantastic books on China. Or if you want a detailed list of fantastic essays and articles on the Chinese military, then I urge you to explore the American Mandarin Society’s self-study syllabus on the People’s Liberation Army. There you’ll discover astute analysis by Peter Mattis, Dennis Blasko, Bernard Cole, David Finkelstein, and so many others. And if you are interested in Chinese history and culture you can’t go wrong with books by Jonathan Spencer or essays by Simon Leys. There is so much to choose from.
If you want to read something that might help you with your customers, grab any of Edward Tufte’s books on how to visualize information. Plenty of people complain about PowerPoint. Your generation will repeat, I suspect, my generation’s complaints about the medium. Instead, read Tufte’s work to learn how you can use data and pictures to tell a fascinating story. Finally, dig into some books about human psychology, the human mind, and how we make decisions.
Recently, an elder statesman recommended that I read more science fiction. He told me to read John Scalzi’s work and Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series—all of which are fantastic. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War remains one of my favorite science fiction novels and Brown’s books are a sobering reminder on the importance of game theory. I could go on and on. The point is to find some books that will help you understand the world, expand your imagination, and improve your writing.
Well, I think that does it. You won’t be able to do everything. Family, your health, reading, work, hobbies, worrying about your adversary—all of it is important. You will live a life of trade-offs. You’re constantly shifting and flexing, trying to work as hard as you can in as many areas as possible. This will be your world. Hang in there—and enjoy it.
If you need anything, don’t hesitate to drop me a line. Until then, I remain faithfully and sincerely,
Yours,
Kevin “Rooster” Williams
Captain, USN (Ret.)
Endnotes
[1] Captain Bill Bray, USN (Ret.), “Naval Intelligence: Build Regional Experts,” U.S Naval Institute Proceedings 12, vol. 143. (December 2017).
[2] Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg, The Admirals’ Advantage: U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014), 127.
[3]RADM Bradley Fiske, USN, The Navy as a Fighting Machine (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 212–13.
