“Technology makes a revolution possible, but the revolution itself takes place only when new concepts of operation develop and new military organizations emerge in order to take full advantage of the opportunities generated by the relevant technologies.”
Remarks of Andrew W. Marshall, Director of OSD Net Assessment, delivered at the National Security Industrial Association’s 13 September 1995 Seminar on “Submarines in the Littoral.”
“In this third essay of my series, “When Efficiency Harms the Mission,” I delve into the hidden costs of prioritizing efficiency above all else. While efficiency often provides tidy, short-term gains, it can undermine the resilience and adaptability needed to respond successfully in when our strengths are rendered less effective.
The essay challenges us to rethink our obsession with centralized control and quantifiable outcomes, proposing a shift toward a decentralized, competitive approach that embraces longstanding American strengths of diversity, tension, and creativity. Drawing from lessons in war, innovation, and policy, I argue that focusing on mission over function is key to true national security.
This series continues to discuss the idea that we are in a moment of transition and our current emerging problems resist our old solutions. It’s critical that we spend some time reflecting on what frameworks we need to foster resilience in an uncertain world rather that jumping straight to solutions.”
“The scientific community, including funders across sectors of government, philanthropy, and industry, seem to focus on two versions of success: novelty or scale. They bestow awards and grants on those who show either “revolutionary” new ideas or those who purport to solve a problem for millions that can make someone rich. Anything else falls into this category of incremental and it is dismissed. Somehow harvesting the science we have already invested in to solve individual, local, or regional problems that don’t necessarily lend themselves to market rewards is not incentivized. We owe it to American communities to address longstanding and emerging goals and concerns that may not have clear market drivers and may require diverse approaches, such as challenges of clean water and sanitation; drought, flooding, and wildfires; crumbling infrastructure; preventable chronic diseases; opioid addiction—the list is long. The details of these concerns differ across communities, so solutions need to be localized….”
“The policy innovations that emerged from Bush’s recommendations in 1945 have been very successful in many ways. His prescriptions were ideal for a post-WWII era America, and it is important that sustained funding for foundational science continues. Nevertheless, endlessly perpetuating solutions that were correct at the time does not follow Bush’s true legacy, which was to analyze the current national context, specifically focusing on the U.S. science and technology (S&T) system, create a new institutional landscape that filled gaps in that system, and ultimately provide a global model for others. If Bush were alive today, I believe he would expect the country to analyze this moment, not abide by his advice for the problems of his day. An entirely new contextual assessment is required to develop the framework needed for the social, technological, and security concerns of the 21st century. Following his legacy begins with honestly confronting the contemporary context, as difficult as that may be.”
2020
The Andrew W. Marshall Foundation
Andrew Marshall’s initial notion of a diagnostic net assessment came about while he worked at the RAND Corporation, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s.
It was during his time at RAND that Marshall, along with Joe Loftus, Jim Digby, Herb Goldhammer, Albert Wohlstetter, and others, began to understand that trying to describe the nature of the long-term competition between the United States and the Soviet Union required methods of analysis that were by definition broad and multi-disciplinary in nature.
For Marshall, to understand a competition between two nations meant studying the people, the organizations, and the decisionmaking structures of each country, including its comparative strengths and weaknesses. To the RAND analysts, understanding the nature of a competition was not a study of raw numbers; it was about conducting a structured systematic analysis that looked to the past for trends and then constructing alternative futures based in part on that trend analysis.
Because of the uncertainty about the future, the assessments would depend on the question; include factors such as ideology, demographics, political economics, financial institutions, cultures, religion, education, science, technology, research and development, manufacturing, budgetary constraints, organizational constructs, the possible emergence of disruptive technologies, and military organizations, tactics, doctrine, and force structure.
By nature, net assessment is subject to considerable uncertainty. The principal outcome of Marshall’s analysis was to identify two or three areas of emerging problems or opportunities about which a decisionmakers still had time to make strategic choices and decisions.
