Brady Moore

Brady Moore is a longtime friend of WITI and a previous contributor. He’s a former Green Beret (US Army Special Forces) officer turned business consultant who writes the excellent Quartermaster newsletter on planning, strategy and military history. While we don’t chase news cycles too closely here by design, we thought some depth and nuance on the Solemeini killing was necessary. We found Brady’s piece insightful in a sea of hot #natsec takes and speculation. It is the type of writing and clarity we aspire to with the newsletter. Also, don’t miss the Dexter Filkins piece he cites for further reading. - Colin (CJN)Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen next in the US’s confrontation with Iran in Iraq. That uncertainty will continue, but in the meantime, you can dig a little deeper into the history of Quds Force and the US’s involvement with a complex, far-reaching and deadly organization. You might come out the other end realizing that this conflict has been going on a long time, and simply got escalated significantly on January 3rd.Brady here.Given the events of the past few days, it's a good idea to review the context of the US's situation with Iran and all the other associated groups involved in Iraq today. There's a lot swirling around out there that's hype designed to get clicks (crazy, I know) and if we at The Quartermaster are being responsible, we'll use a few minutes today to provide you with some context you didn't already have. In a real small nutshell, the US forces still operating in Iraq—reported to be as few as 5,000 in number—have been under attack by Kata'ib Hezbollah (a Shia militia under the control of Iran) under the direction of Iran’s Quds Force for the past few months. There’d been a reported 11 different attacks by Kata'ib Hezbollah on US forces since October, and on 27 December, Kata'ib Hezbollah launched a rocket attack on the US base in Kirkuk, killing one contractor and wounding 4 American servicemembers and 2 Iraqis. It was later revealed that Soleimani personally ordered the attacks, which were then executed by Kata'ib Hezbollah’s commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The US responded by striking Kata'ib Hezbollah locations in Iraq and Syria two days later, reportedly killing 25 and wounding 55. Shortly thereafter on 31 December, Kata'ib Hezbollah and other PMF forces attempted to breach the gates of the US Embassy in Baghdad during a mob attack, and made it through the initial security checkpoints and within 200 meters of the main embassy building and set fire to buildings along the outer wall of the embassy complex. On 3 January, Qassem Solemeini arrived via jet at Baghdad International Airport, meeting with al-Muhandis. Both were killed by a US drone strike as they were departing the airfield. First, who was Qassem Solemeini? Lieutenant General Solemeini was an Iranian military commander considered by many to be the second most powerful man in Iran. He undisputedly controlled all Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria, and many considered him also in charge of all diplomacy relating to both areas. For details, Dexter Filkins’s profile of him in The New Yorker six years ago is about as good as you're going to get right now.Why is this interesting?Examining the organization Solemeini led is where things get muddled. Quds Force is unique: It exists today without many peers in the world as it relates to mission or capability. Created during the Iran–Iraq War as a special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), it includes a rare form of unconventional special operations forces (SOF)—what Green Berets often call "teaching SOF"—who, like Green Berets, have the mission to train, advise and assist foreign militaries. In Quds Force's case, this means it trains, advises and leads forces that are allied with Iran, and have included Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Ansar Allah (Yemeni Houthis), and three Iraqi Shia militias that comprise the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) (these include Kata'ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada). For this reason, Quds Force has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, Egypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. At this point in history, many believe that Quds Force doesn't just advise Hezbollah—it is Hezbollah—meaning that it controls Hezbollah’s actions almost indefinitely. So the US didn’t just kill a senior leader of the Iranian state—it killed the leader of one of the most far-reaching and capable terrorist organizations in the world. So what - what does this mean to us? If you've been a member of the US military in the past 20 years you may have already had at least one friend injured or killed by Quds Force efforts. Starting in 2004, Quds Force provided Iraqi insurgents with explosively formed penetrator explosives and training on how to use them against Americans—something they'd tested and proven against Israeli forces in Lebanon as early as 1997. Quds Force efforts at attacking Americans got so bad by 2007 that, according to another article in The New Yorker, US forces began to consider steps like attacking Iran directly to deal with the threat. What happens next? Truthfully, there’s still a lot we don’t know about what’s been going on out of public view. At a minimum, I’d expect at least some new maritime confrontations in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially disrupting the international oil market. US forces will continue to get rocketed in Iraq—but that’s nothing new. If Quds Force is operating at the full extent of its powers, I would expect terror attacks from proxies like Hezbollah, which could occur anywhere in the world. Since its formation in the early 1980s, Hezbollah’s executed terror attacks all over the world from the Middle East to London and South America. In 1994, Hezbollah members bombed a Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and wounding hundreds. Most recently, Quds Force is suspected to be behind the drone attacks on Saudi oil fields, using Yemen’s Houthi rebels as proxies. Using Quds Force abilities, Iran’s reach is far, and it’s very capable. One thing I still find interesting days later is the fact that Solemeini flew to a spot just 20 minutes drive from where his forces were leading a series of attacks on a US Embassy—that's not something you ever see from a senior leader of a large nation. It serves as a reminder to me that there’s a lot of information we—meaning consumers of western news media—don't have about everything that's going on. The best thing to do, I think, is to take a measured view of all the news that comes out and remember that you don’t have all the info and likely won’t for a long time. The better to get informed on historical context in order to make sense of your world. (BJM)Map of the Day:On the spread of stuffed and boiled dumplings from the Mongol Empire. Taken from Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History by Rachel Laudan which I now want to read. Found via @ykomska and WITI Slack. (NRB)Quick Links:For a great, timely read on Iran’s strategy in dominating Iraq and Syria, check out the Foundation for Defense of Democracies report Burning Bridge: The Iranian Land Corridor to the Mediterranean with a foreword by Lieutenant General (Retired) H.R. McMaster. It’s strong and revelatory analysis like this that’ll allow you to connect the scattered dots in the news. (BJM)From the comic issue of the New Yorker: Coyote v. Acme. “Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability.” (NRB)An aside in this 2018 story about tasmanian devils dying of contagious cancer made me Google HeLa cells, the most commonly used cell line in scientific research. The search led me to Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I finished over the Christmas break. It’s an amazing dive into both the controversial history of an important tool in medicine and Lacks’ family, who are still dealing with the consequences of the spread of Henrietta’s cells around the world without her permission. (NRB)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BJM)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Iran Edition

Chris P. (CP) and Brady M. (BJM) are WITI contributors and former Special Forces soldiers: Brady was an Officer (18A MOS) and Chris was a Weapons Sergeant (18B MOS). The notoriously tough Green Beret training pipeline and real-life deployments put them in some unfriendly places, and we asked them to write about what average people should be thinking about when it comes to disaster preparation. It’s important to move from the “crazy prepper” stigma into widespread awareness of what to do when things go bad, quickly. Here’s a list of very pragmatic things to do and think about, from two guys that know. - Colin (CJN) Brady and Chris here. In Season 3 of The Simpsons, Moe Szyslak, the neighborhood bartender, steals a secret cocktail recipe from Homer that includes cough syrup. It makes his bar amazingly popular, but he's required to both keep the recipe secret and bring in enough cough syrup to serve his growing customer base. When some regulars spy him wheeling cases of medicine into the back of the bar, he deflects attention telling them "Heh...I got hooked on the stuff in the service!"This is how I explain some of the admittedly odd things I still do after leaving the Army almost ten years ago—I got hooked on them in the service. One of the biggest habits I still have is a tendency towards over-preparing for emergencies. This manifests itself as carrying around a survival kit and a small med bag most of the time. Like your grandparents who keep calls short because of long-distance phone fees, I got this habit from painful survival school lessons and working overseas in rough neighborhoods. The truth today is that, as a people, we have become remarkably dependent on technology. Try getting around without your smartphone and debit or credit cards for 12 hours and see what I mean. What this has created is a massive vulnerability—it means that if something like our power grid were interrupted and large urban areas went dark for days, it could become really difficult for everyone around you to get by. The worry is that if this happens a dense urban population could begin to panic, making things much worse. The best option often could be simply leaving as soon as possible for a spot not so tightly packed until things get better. Doing this would require an individual to be prepared in advance for that departure. "Never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat coming around the corner" is a good piece of advice if you want to avoid a bad situation. Why is this interesting?Thirty seconds flat means you need to pack what's needed and keep it where you can easily reach it and hit the road. Having the right stuff in the bag is key—a "go-bag" makes it easy because you've planned ahead of time and don't have to think. Here's what we recommend: A simple backpack. Keep it low key, camo or military webbing on the outside signals that you’ve got a backpack full of survival kit, and we don’t want that. Nobody at work is going to wonder about the dingy Jansport you keep stuffed under your desk.At least one durable, full water bottle. This can also make an airtight container for some of your water-sensitive kit as well as good for drinking water. Chris uses Nalgene. Brady uses Kleen Kanteen. Purification tablets or a purification straw are a must as well.Gorilla Tape. Don’t buy any other brand. To save on space and weight, we just wrap a few feet around the water bottle. Good for a hundred uses, repairs, bandages, cordage, etc.A Multitool. There are plenty of bladeless options out there that are safe for work. The pliers, scissors, and screwdrivers have a million uses. I got issued the Gerber MP600 back in 2003 and it's all I’ve used ever since—it's a great balance of simplicity, durability and the ability to open one-handed. (BJM)A Knife. “A Knifeless Man Is a Lifeless Man,” as the Faroese Proverb goes. This is much less as a weapon, and much more as the ultimate utility. A knife is a tool that can make other tools. Choose one that holds an edge and is still easy to sharpen. I'll make your search for the best blade simpler by recommending a Mora knife—they're incomparably inexpensive, come scary sharp and the Scandinavian grind means they're much simpler to sharpen than others. Level II preparedness: Get a sharpening stone and learn how to sharpen. Could save your life one day. Flashlight. We strongly encourage you to have a headlamp with a red light option. The red light is good for lighting your way without shouting to the world your location—and it doesn't ruin your limited natural ability to see in the dark as bad as white light does. Don’t keep batteries inside this lamp as they can corrode. A couple sets of spare batteries is key. Lithiums are great, alkalines are fine.Map with a couple routes home drawn on them. This can get complicated and a lot of people now use GPS, but relying only on your smartphone alone to navigate is a bad idea—even in low-level emergencies, the communications network can be co-opted by emergency services. We prefer 1:24,000 or 1:50,000 Scale USGS maps (good scales for moving on foot), available on paper for under $20 apiece. A small but reliable compass is also good for getting your bearings in unfamiliar territory.Phone necessities. Spare battery, charging cable, and even solar charging panels. Don’t neglect your smartphone—if it works, it could be a lifesaver. Even if phone lines are jammed, text messages can queue and oftentimes a GPS will work even without a fully functional cell network. Level II preparedness: in “emergency” or battery conserving mode I power my phone off except for 5min on the hour, every hour. This “comms window” can be used to check in with family or set a plan for other comms windows. (CPP)Spare shoes & socks. Nothing will end your trip home sooner than work shoe blisters and wet feet. This is actually the most important item in my packing list: a comfortable pair of walking shoes and two pairs of wool hiking socks. (CPP) You can't do any better than Smartwool for comfort, durability, and water-resilience.(BJM) Cash money. A wad of $20s can get you food, water, transportation, and favors.A First Aid Kit. You can go with what we've recommended, or buy a pre-made one online. Either way, don't forget a SOF-T or RATS Tourniquet and consider carrying two. Level II preparedness: Learn how to stop the bleeding in bad situations. This is where you’ll use SMARCH. (BJM)Fire-starting items. Staying warm when you can't access modern heating will save your life, and it's a hell of a lot more comfortable than freezing. I try to have at least 2 modes of fire-starting with me whenever possible—so that includes having a simple cheap Bic lighter as well as a fire steel. (BJM)Food. This isn’t just about staying alive - it’s about keeping a clear head in order to make good decisions. Choose food you can eat quickly on the move, and that of course won’t go bad right away. High calorie energy bars and Ensure aren’t a bad idea. Consider how many calories you normally consume in a day and have yourself covered for a couple days. A hat. Seems irrelevant, but it’s not. In cold weather, it'll keep you from losing body heat, and in the summer it'll prevent problems from overexposure. A baseball cap is fine.A layer. A lightweight layer can do wonders if it’s moisture-wicking and worn against the skin - meaning no cotton. A Polartec ECWCS Level I silkweight shirt is all I’ve used for nearly 20 years. Solid gold. (BJM)A raincoat. Being wet is bad, and being cold is bad. But being wet and cold is almost unbearable. It doesn’t need to be Goretex - it just needs to keep out the rain and wind. Once you’ve got all this together, consider actually trying out at least your top 2 routes out of town as a rehearsal. As you’re rehearsing, try to visualize the likely conditions in an emergency - and that getting out on foot might be necessary. Make changes to your go-bag and plan based on what you come up with. It’s important to keep in mind that your exit, and preparing for it, are all focused on survival. Make sure what you’re doing at every stage helps achieve that goal. (CP/BJM)Medical Kit of the Day:We wrote about the contents of a good individual first aid kit this past summer. (BJM)Quick Links:John Authers on coronavirus and the markets. (NRB)F1 is almost here. Watch Daniel Ricciardo Talk Days Of Thunder, Talladega Nights And More Racing Movies (NRB)WITI contributor Edith Zimmerman on the Smart Park commercial made me laugh. (NRB)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BJM) & Chris (CP)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Go Bag Edition

Brady Moore (BM) is a longtime friend of WITI and a former Green Beret Officer. Today he’s Director of Mission Support at Cesium in Philadelphia. He’s written extensively about how to translate the planning process that he’s used in harsh/unforgiving environments into the business/startup realms. Here, he reviews a management classic that does a good job in bridging the divide. - Colin (CJN) Brady here. I think it’s common knowledge that most people in business say that their strategies don’t fail in the planning process, but in execution. And nowhere does business look for ideas on improved execution than the US military. The problem is that the US military does planning much differently from the business world - and the result is the military’s improved performance in execution. More than a couple veterans have had the idea of applying military planning processes to business, but few have actually gone and worked out which processes would be most beneficial and why. The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results by Stephen Bungay provides a wide ranging but very readable explanation that military processes around planning and communication can help make sure the things that business leaders plan to accomplish actually get carried out. The author makes a well-crafted connection from early 19th century military theory to contemporary business, showing the reader how accepting some truths and limitations about human capabilities leads to better results. At 228 pages it's consumable across a few days.Stephen Bungay is a former CEO and 17-year Boston Consulting Group consultant. Currently he’s the Director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London and as an acclaimed military historian has published various books, including The Most Dangerous Enemy: An Illustrated History of the Battle of Britain and Alamein. His added background as a historian is probably the reason he’s able to somehow connect Carl von Clausewitz to British Airways’ and Komatsu’s management philosophies - which he does admirably. Why is this interesting?The Art of Action does a few things really well: it focuses on the importance of commander's intent, on the criticality of back briefing, and it helps to prove that it's not the plan, but the process of continuous planning and execution, that's key. Bungay explains early on that the cause of failure and difficulty in the military realm is the same in business: friction. Nothing ever happens the way you expect it to, and a million little things pop up along the way to make the work painful. By changing organizational culture to push decisions down to the lowest level, armies and businesses have minimized risk and made execution faster and much more effective. What this requires is trust and good, continuous communication. This allows teams to close gaps in knowledge, alignment and effects to produce results that fit the intent. And Bungay doesn't just claim it's all a good idea- he shows you how to do it.Having worked for organizations that routinely push decisions to the lowest level, I can tell you that it’s not easy to do. Top-level leaders need to be confident that people in their company are trained and capable of making good decisions, and they have to be ready to underwrite honest mistakes. But if you can shift the company’s culture in the right direction - where employees know that their abilities and judgment are valued - you can expect more effective, faster decisions. If you’re in a market that’s changing quickly and has the same type of uncertainty that you find on a battlefield, you’ll find that this approach makes you much more competitive.  The Art of Action is probably the business book I've recommended the most to people and certainly the one I've re-read more than any other. You'll come away with usable methods to immediately improve your planning and execution, as well as big ideas for improving big-picture. No other book that I've found better applies a number of martial models to business, and I recommend it to any reader of this newsletter before any other book. (BJM)Newspaper of the Day:Below is how the New York Times covered General Orders, Number 3 on June 19, 1865, the day that would eventually come to be called Juneteenth. The news didn’t make the paper until weeks later on July 7th. Despite the emancipation proclamation being signed two years earlier, many slaves were still being held in Texas. Per Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, slave owners in Mississippi, Louisiana and other points east had been migrating to Texas to escape the Union Army’s reach. In a hurried re-enactment of the original Middle Passage, more than 150,000 slaves had made the trek west, according to historian Leon Litwack in his book Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. As one former slave he quotes recalled, ‘It looked like everybody in the world was going to Texas.’” (NRB)Quick Links:Per this week’s Market Design Edition, this story of a 20-year-old’s suicide after dealing with confusing interface design in Robinhood is very sad. (NRB)This is fun: Teacher Tells Off Neil Armstrong for Faking the Moon Landing [via SB] (NRB)Good thread from COVID Tracking Project on the current state of outbreaks across the US (NRB)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Art of Action Edition

Brady Moore (BM) is a longtime friend of WITI and a former Green Beret officer. Today he’s Director of Mission Support at Cesium in Philadelphia. He’s written extensively about how to translate the planning process that he’s used in harsh/unforgiving environments into the business/startup realms. Today, he takes on the mirrorworld. It is a longer piece, but knowing our audience, you’re going to enjoy. -Colin (CJN) Brady here. In 2018, futurist Kevin Kelly wrote an article in Wired magazine that described how advances in augmented reality would create a virtual world that looked and behaved exactly like our own. Using the term mirrorworld, first popularized in 1993 by Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, Kelly said it will “reflect not just what something looks like but its context, meaning, and function. We will interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it like we do the real world.” Using the “digital twin” concept first attempted by NASA in the 1960s, where engineers kept a duplicate of every component they sent into space so they could troubleshoot it back on earth, Kelly said everything would have a digital twin. For this to happen, Kelly explained that we’d need to build a 3D model of physical reality in which to place those twins—which would necessarily take into account the additional dimension of time. You’d be able to see what something looked like 2 years ago, and what it’s expected to look like 2 years from now. “These scroll-forward scenarios will have the heft of reality because they will be derived from a full-scale present world. In this way, the mirrorworld may be best referred to as a 4D world.”Kelly imagined it would take at least a decade for mirrorworld to develop enough to be used by many and reflect our entire planet. Why is this interesting?One of the things that hold people back from creating and using "digital twins" of their processes, products, or environments is the fact that the data come in so many different formats—and the files can be really big and hard to get to where anyone can see and use them. Think of all the interconnected and overlaid systems that exist in a city—roads, electricity, sewage, and so on—and you can get an idea of how many different levels of complexity there can be. Now imagine that each of those systems has its own totally unique way of describing how it works. Getting the full picture of how a city functions would require being able to ingest and translate each unique format.Since early 2020, I’ve been working as Mission Support Director at Cesium, a startup in Philadelphia that builds and delivers a growing, open platform for 3D geospatial visualization. 3D geospatial is a tough problem today because while LIDAR and drone cameras can piece together 3D models of things or places, it can be a long manual process to get those models placed on the map accurately and streamed where they need to go. The platform automates the process of combining models and delivering them. In essence, we are trying to help everyone operating in meatspace describe how their systems function using the same language. The platform solves that by converting the formats to an open spec and streaming them (dealing with the problem of file size). It simplifies complexity so that data can be easily accessed and used where it needs to be accessed and used.The technology began as an open-source project in 2011 that created CesiumJS, an engine for visualizing the world—and the objects within it—with extreme precision in time-aware 3D. If you work in mapping, geospatial intelligence, drone flight management, modeling & simulation, space domain awareness, large scale construction, or commercial real estate, there’s a good chance you’re using something based in CesiumJS right now, or have in the past, to visualize and analyze your work. Though its original purpose was to track satellites in orbit over time, once sensors on cars and drones started gathering data in 3D at a rapid rate, by 2015 the Cesium team created an open standard called 3D Tiles that provides a unique way of streaming geospatial data so that it can be quickly and easily rendered on any device. To serve the growing user base, the team launched Cesium ion as a commercial subscription platform to take data in dozens of formats and host, optimize, and stream it as a service to any device—just like YouTube optimizes raw video for streaming. And since it seems everyone’s got some data but maybe not terrain elevation or the world’s buildings, we curate a global terrain dataset and all the world’s crowdsourced buildings from OpenStreetMap and make them available as well. So how close are we to mirrorworld? There’s still a long way to go in order for it to be a real “world”—to mirror reality it has to reflect absolutely everything in our real world. But the most recent step toward it came earlier this month. Cesium released an open-source plugin, made through a MegaGrant from Epic Games, that allows developers in Unreal Engine to build games and simulations that span a highly accurate representation of the entire planet earth, complete with physics and the ability to zoom in and out with true gaming performance. And because of it, soon enough you’ll be seeing games and training simulations that feature an environment mapped from the real world.What it’s really going to change in the short term is who’s empowered to make the simulations of the future. In the national security sector, simulations are a $12B market that’s dominated by a small handful of massive global companies with proprietary software that takes years to develop. Through open-source innovations like this one, soon enough nearly anyone will have the opportunity to build simulations that rival the multi-million dollar, hard-to-get legacy systems people use today, and they’ll be able to do so faster and in greater numbers. It will mean that the entire industry will develop more realistic and more useful environments, for more people and for more purposes. Early examples are likely to focus on reducing risks, such as virtual training environments for heavy equipment operators and people in dangerous jobs, and simplifying layers of complexity, as we see with the living digital twins of cities that allow planners and developers to monitor and analyze interconnected systems together. The bet is that through this evolution of the market, once-niche simulations will become a more common part of our lives, and over time you’ll start to see more and more digital representations of the things you use and see every day. With this baseline, it feels like the foundation is already under our feet.This is a simulation. Mount Fuji at sunrise in Cesium for Unreal. Digital twin of the Greek Catholic Church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Stare Oleszyce, Poland. Created from 1325 images (NIKON DSLR plus DJI Phantom 4 PRO) in Reality Capture. Visualized in Cesium for Unreal.Quick Links:In the spirit of Cesium’s open-source heritage, we’ve made the plugin open source and available on Unreal Marketplace. Anyone can get the plugin for free and use it to build games and simulations like digital twins. (BJM)Over 350 million 3D buildings globally - crowdsourced through OpenStreetMaps. Check them - and their metadata - out here (BJM) Try out the open platform 3D geospatial for yourself with a free Cesium ion community account (BJM) Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BJM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Mirrorworld Edition

Brady Moore (BM) is a longtime friend of WITI and a former Green Beret officer. Today he’s Director of Mission Support at Cesium in Philadelphia. He’s written extensively about how to translate the planning process that he’s used in harsh/unforgiving environments into the business/startup realms. Here, we’re surfacing some of his hard-learned lessons from Ranger school, originally published in the Quartermaster. - Colin (CJN) Brady here. Late one rainy November night in the mountains of North Georgia I woke up lying face down in the woods. I was completely disoriented. Next to me was my rain-soaked rucksack filled with Ranger School equipment - but I had the feeling something very, very important was missing. I was supposed to be holding something. The Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) that was my responsibility to carry was gone - I'd tied it to my chest but the cord had been cut. I asked the Ranger students next to me what'd happened and they didn't have a clue. So I did what anyone else would and retraced my steps. The last thing I remember was guarding the perimeter of our nighttime patrol base, facing out in the prone position. I must have fallen asleep.In the fall of 2002, I was attending the US Army Infantry Center’s Ranger School in advance of my arrival at 10th Mountain Division as a 22-year-old platoon leader. From October to December I patrolled all over a few key spots in Georgia and Florida and emerged successful, just before Christmas, having traded in about 30 pounds of weight for a Ranger Tab. I was pleased because at the time most light infantry battalions required Ranger School completion of a platoon leader - I had to have the credential in order to lead soldiers and noncommissioned officers in our upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. The entire event was pretty miserable, but I learned a few things about human nature I won't soon forget- the greatest of which is about the nature of discipline. Ranger School’s setting for learning is through patrolling - the course teaches leadership by having groups of 4, 9, or 40 students constantly patrol on foot through the woods both day and night. In the hills of west-central Georgia, the mountains of North Georgia, and the swamps of the Florida panhandle, Ranger students learn the right way to patrol as a group and are then tested on their ability to lead patrols in adverse circumstances. For 60 days, these Ranger students consistently only get about half the calories they need and even less sleep (maybe 3-4 hours a night on average) - in order to ratchet up the difficulty. It doesn't take long for a significant struggle to take place in the minds and hearts of every student: do what your body wants to do, or do what you must to get the job done. The job, in most cases, is to move your patrol to a site where your group ambushes the enemy or raids one of his sites. You must get there and set up on time without being detected. One rule of movement and for setting up a patrol base is to “Avoid natural lines of drift” - meaning “don't go where someone could easily find you”. This means Ranger students have to take pains to avoid not only roads and trails, but clearings, low ground, and pretty much anywhere people would choose to go without thinking. And it’s not always an easy thing to do- if you take your mind off the task you'll end up drifting to that path in the woods where walking is easiest. Avoiding natural lines of drift takes deliberate effort to stay where it’s uncomfortable or uneasy - and in 2002 I found it not just a commandment for movement, but an apt analogy for self-discipline.“Avoid natural lines of drift” wasn't just one of many rules to follow while moving a patrol - it seemed to cover everything we did at Ranger School. It took great effort to stay awake at 3 AM and watch the perimeter of your patrol base - the natural line of drift was to find a spot that was out of the rain and wind and get a few more hours of sleep because you'd only had two the night before. When stopped, it took incomparable will to clean and maintain your rifle or machine gun instead of finding a piece of food in your rucksack because you were starving. In fact, the whole course was one long string of willpower battles won and lost. Many students were punished for falling asleep on patrol or otherwise failing to carry out their duties because they were too hungry or tired. They allowed themselves to follow natural lines of drift - or they did so without thinking.Why is this interesting? So what's the lesson here? Back on that rainswept North Georgia mountain, I found out that an instructor had come across me asleep on my SAW - it seemed that while guarding the perimeter I succumbed to exhaustion. I was so knocked out that when he took the machine gun and cut the cord I didn't wake up. I found the instructor when I awoke and after some remedial training by way of calisthenics I was cited for the violation, which went on my student record and got my SAW back. I didn't fall back asleep that night.Discipline is a struggle against the self. I didn't mean to fall asleep on guard, but I fell onto that natural line of drift, and my body took over. I found that I had to create circumstances that prevented me from drifting - handrails I could hold onto that kept me following the right path. Instead of getting right into the prone position to guard the perimeter I might just take a knee or stand if possible. I'd ask a fellow Ranger student to check on me or I'd engage him in conversation to keep us alert. In bad circumstances, willpower can be in short supply, so discipline can hinge on your ability to know you might drift, and to take steps to prevent it. As individuals we naturally seek the path of least resistance - we seek to expend the least amount of energy, especially when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. It takes discipline not just to resist the urge to take the easy path or the shortcut (or natural line of drift), but to realize that we have these tendencies and to prepare to avoid them. Real discipline takes a level of self-knowledge and a willingness to overcome human weaknesses through foresight and diligence. (BJM)Quick links:An excellent long-read on Ranger school in Outside magazine (CJN)The most insane play in high school football history (CJN)Austin’s traffic is insane. (CJN)--WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Look out below. What goes up should come down—but it's a little more complicated when you're talking about space debris. By one estimate, there's around 27,000 pieces of junk in orbit, from mission-related debris to parts from rocket bodies. A new article looks closer at what to do when it's time to take out the extraterrestrial trash.--Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

The Ranger School Edition

Brady Moore (BM) is a longtime friend of WITI and a former Green Beret officer. Today he’s Director of Mission Support at Cesium in Philadelphia. He’s written extensively about how to translate the planning process that he’s used in harsh/unforgiving environments into the business/startup realms. Here, he talks about how to translate a well-worn model into business and life applications.  -Colin (CJN) Brady here. If you measure the value of a model by how often it’s used, the 5-Paragraph Operation Order or OPORD is top dog. More a communication model than a strictly mental one, the format ensures the leader communicates everything that's important- no more and no less. Intended to be read or briefed, it’s used across every branch of the US Army and Marine Corps at every level. Once issued it can be updated with a Fragmentary Order or FRAGO which covers only the parts that need to change. I'll go over each paragraph and its critical parts and explain why they're important.SITUATION. This paragraph ensures the receivers have all the right information on a few different areas: the enemy, friendly units, and terrain. It’ll also provide the team with a setting by which they can visualize the operation itself.Enemy Forces. This includes the enemy’s composition, disposition, strength, recent activities, and known/suspected locations and capabilities. Leaders end this part with a statement on the enemy's most likely and most dangerous course of action, described on a map. Often leaders also use this part to describe important terrain factors.Friendly Forces. Here leaders state the mission and intent of the higher unit, 2 levels up - essentially “here’s my boss’s mission and purpose, and here's his boss’s mission and purpose.” Leaders also mention friendly units to the left, right, front, and rear with their tasks and purposes and how they’ll influence the mission.Leaders also describe anyone that's going to be attached or detached from the unit. MISSION. State the mission using the 5 Ws: Who, What (also known as the task), When, Where and Why (the purpose). It should be a clear and concise statement. When presented it's often read twice out loud and the exact location of the objective and the unit’s present location is pointed out on the map. This part is key because it tells everyone very succinctly what’s going to happen and when - it’s the whole thing in a nutshell and a great reference tool throughout the operation.EXECUTION. Here is where the leader states the commander’s intent including any key tasks which absolutely must be accomplished, as well as what the enemy, friendly units, and terrain should look like following the operation (also known as the endstate). Concept of Operation. Here the leader describes how the unit will accomplish its mission from start to finish - and this statement should also be concise and clear. At a minimum, it should describe the form of maneuver or defensive technique and the critical events taking place (including what the decisive point of the operation is and why). Leaders generally talk through the concept of the operation like a story with a simple sketch to help them convey the information. They give each subunit a role to play with one having the main effort and the rest acting as supporting efforts.Maneuver. This part details the mechanics of the operation and can get pretty detailed. The main effort’s mission must be supported by the subordinate unit’s missions.Additional information: Here the leader covers fires, casualty evacuation, risk reduction control measures and Rules of Engagement (ROE) as well as any specific tasks to maneuver and support units. Any other coordinating instructions are listed including time schedules. Commander's Critical Information Requirements (CCIR) are also listed here including the intelligence that the commander must have for planning and decision making.Commander’s Intent is often seen at the most important part of the entire order because it can guide everyone through the rest of the operation even if everything changes and if communication is cut off. Concept of the Operation is critical that it be both very clear and as visual as possible so that everyone can begin to play the intended actions through their mind and understand the role they play in the larger effort.SERVICE SUPPORT. These include matters of supplies (including food, water and ammunition), Medical Evacuation and hospitalization of both friendly and enemy personnel and the handling of enemy prisoners of war. Often overlooked if not included deliberately, these matters are key for sustaining operations beyond a day or two and can require a significant amount of coordination to do right. Medical evacuation is something that’s absolutely time-critical, so coordinating in advance is a must.COMMAND AND SIGNAL. This paragraph covers where key leaders are located during each phase of the operation. Succession of command is also described as well as methods of communication, signals, and codewords by priority (usually following a PACE model). Knowing who’s in charge if leaders are incapacitated or out of communication is key for military operations and can make sure things roll on smoothly if this occurs. Communications are notorious for failing in operations, so everyone knowing which method to jump to when the radio dies is critical.All of this is usually followed up by brief-backs to ensure everyone receiving the information understands what they need to understand.Why is this interesting? So why give all this information to your subordinates - isn't this a waste of time? First - this method ensures nothing important is left out - in time-constrained situations, it’s a human tendency to leave out things that we don’t think are important in the moment, but which end up being rather important later. But more importantly, the way that US ground forces operate - often called mission command - should create a level of subsidiarity that pushes all decisions to the lowest possible level. It ensures that the person making the decision has the most up-to-date picture of the situation - often because they’re in the middle of it when they make the call. It reduces risk considerably and speeds up operations when done right. What mission command requires, though, is a thorough understanding of the intent behind the larger operation so that when the plan changes - and as we all know it does change rather quickly - that lower-level leaders can pivot and remain on the right path by knowing what the end goal is. It often doesn’t matter how they get there - what matters is that they arrive at that correct end state on time. Being able to visualize the operation - from the enemy to the terrain and through all phases of the proposed mission - lets each member know what to expect and with the commander’s intent what to aim for when everything else changes. I use this OPORD model at work when I need to convey information about an upcoming event where background, the plan on the ground, and the overall intent for the action needs to be put across directly. Often people are brought into events who are new to the situation and need that review - or people who are familiar with events need to be updated or have the information confirmed. This model makes sure that I cover the important stuff - and it forces me to think about both the intent for the whole thing, and what might happen that doesn’t fit with my plan or wishes for the outcome. (BJM)--WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Tech trends for 2022. What technology trends are top of mind for business? We asked leaders in industry, academia, and at McKinsey to share their perspectives on what’s likely to headline business agendas this year, trends that could—but shouldn’t—slip through the cracks, and what executives should think about when considering new technologies. Here’s what they told us.--Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BM) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Operations Order Edition

Brady Moore (BM) is a longtime friend of WITI and a former Green Beret Officer. Today he’s Director of Mission Support at Cesium in Philadelphia. He’s written extensively about how to translate the planning process that he’s used in harsh/unforgiving environments into the business/startup realms. Here, he reviews a management classic that does a good job in bridging the divide. - Colin (CJN) Brady here. I think it’s common knowledge that most people in business say that their strategies don’t fail in the planning process, but in execution. And nowhere does business look for ideas on improved execution than the US military. The problem is that the US military does planning much differently from the business world - and the result is the military’s improved performance in execution. More than a couple veterans have had the idea of applying military planning processes to business, but few have actually gone and worked out which processes would be most beneficial and why. The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results by Stephen Bungay provides a wide ranging but very readable explanation that military processes around planning and communication can help make sure the things that business leaders plan to accomplish actually get carried out. The author makes a well-crafted connection from early 19th century military theory to contemporary business, showing the reader how accepting some truths and limitations about human capabilities leads to better results. At 228 pages it's consumable across a few days.Stephen Bungay is a former CEO and 17-year Boston Consulting Group consultant. Currently he’s the Director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London and as an acclaimed military historian has published various books, including The Most Dangerous Enemy: An Illustrated History of the Battle of Britain and Alamein. His added background as a historian is probably the reason he’s able to somehow connect Carl von Clausewitz to British Airways’ and Komatsu’s management philosophies - which he does admirably. Why is this interesting?The Art of Action does a few things really well: it focuses on the importance of commander's intent, on the criticality of back briefing, and it helps to prove that it's not the plan, but the process of continuous planning and execution, that's key. Bungay explains early on that the cause of failure and difficulty in the military realm is the same in business: friction. Nothing ever happens the way you expect it to, and a million little things pop up along the way to make the work painful. By changing organizational culture to push decisions down to the lowest level, armies and businesses have minimized risk and made execution faster and much more effective. What this requires is trust and good, continuous communication. This allows teams to close gaps in knowledge, alignment and effects to produce results that fit the intent. And Bungay doesn't just claim it's all a good idea- he shows you how to do it.Having worked for organizations that routinely push decisions to the lowest level, I can tell you that it’s not easy to do. Top-level leaders need to be confident that people in their company are trained and capable of making good decisions, and they have to be ready to underwrite honest mistakes. But if you can shift the company’s culture in the right direction - where employees know that their abilities and judgment are valued - you can expect more effective, faster decisions. If you’re in a market that’s changing quickly and has the same type of uncertainty that you find on a battlefield, you’ll find that this approach makes you much more competitive.  The Art of Action is probably the business book I've recommended the most to people and certainly the one I've re-read more than any other. You'll come away with usable methods to immediately improve your planning and execution, as well as big ideas for improving big-picture. No other book that I've found better applies a number of martial models to business, and I recommend it to any reader of this newsletter before any other book. (BJM)Newspaper of the Day:Below is how the New York Times covered General Orders, Number 3 on June 19, 1865, the day that would eventually come to be called Juneteenth. The news didn’t make the paper until weeks later on July 7th. Despite the emancipation proclamation being signed two years earlier, many slaves were still being held in Texas. Per Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, slave owners in Mississippi, Louisiana and other points east had been migrating to Texas to escape the Union Army’s reach. In a hurried re-enactment of the original Middle Passage, more than 150,000 slaves had made the trek west, according to historian Leon Litwack in his book Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. As one former slave he quotes recalled, ‘It looked like everybody in the world was going to Texas.’” (NRB)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Life in the 2030s. The pandemic showed us that we are capable of adapting to rapid change, and at this rate, there could be more innovation in the next ten years than in any other decade in modern history. From outer space to shopping, wellness, and even video entertainment—change is coming, so be prepared. —Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Brady (BM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).