Randall Fort is a seasoned security, intelligence, and technology leader known for his grasp of enterprise mission needs – and his ability to track the rapidly advancing capabilities of technology to meet those needs. His background includes time as the Director of Global Security for Goldman Sachs. He also led one of the most highly regarded teams of analysts in the world, the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Randy later worked at Raytheon and is now the COO of QWERX. He has also been a long-standing member of the AFCEA Intelligence Committee.
Over a series of conversations, we garnered “quick takes” from Fort on a variety of topics, including exponential technologies, misinformation, the metaverse (specifically in a national security context), and much more.
…all of the exponential technologies are a vexing challenge for the government to figure out…
Daniel Pereira: Great to see you. One moment as I futz with the Zoom interface. I am not a big Zoom fan.
Randall Fort: Well, it is the least bad alternative, right?
Pereira: Well, I haven’t seen one article about how those of us “in the know” realized quickly what a complete fluke it was that Zoom was ready for prime time when the pandemic hit – in light of all the fits and starts in the telework/telecommute technology market over the last ten to twenty years. There were so many business models that just flatlined and then Zoom just happened to be viable right when the pandemic hit. It is kind of uncanny. What if this robust capability did not exist during the pandemic?
Fort: Napoleon was once asked: “Do you want your marshals to be brilliant or lucky?” He said, “I want them to be lucky.”
Pereira: We got incredibly lucky. So I want to return briefly to our previous offline conversation about Professor Anthony (Tony) G. Oettinger. I did not know we had Prof. Oettinger in common until he passed in July of last year [2022] and you responded to the remembrance by Dr. J. Scott Cameron, the President of National Intelligence University (where a school is named after him, the Anthony G. Oettinger School of Science and Technology Intelligence ). I was introduced to scenario planning as an undergraduate by Oettinger as his student in the early ‘90’s at the Program on Information Resources Policy. Peter Schwartz’s Art of the Long View was in its 1st hardcover edition at the time – really fresh off the presses – and it was the textbook for Prof. Oettinger’s class. I was hooked and studying with Prof. Oettijnger was one of the seminal events of my intellectual and professional life.
Would you share more of the context under which you met Prof. Oettinger? I think that would give the readership some context on your background at that time – where you were professionally and personally – and we can do our own remembrance of him as well.
Fort: Well, I believe when we first met it was in the mid-1980s. I was on the staff of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at President Reagan’s White House. And Tony was brought in, I believe it was by Dr. William Baker, to serve as a consultant on one of the projects we were working on at the time. And so Tony became a board consultant and was spending time there. I got to know him and he was you know, always very personable and so smart and willing to spend time with a young grad student. I was fairly unschooled at that point, at least in the higher arts and the higher math of the intelligence community. I was only in my mid-twenties, but he was very kind and very generous with his time.
So we worked together on a couple of projects. He was a consultant and I was the lead staff member. So we got to know each other, and that relationship continued throughout my time in government. I went from the White House to the Treasury where I was the Head of Intelligence under Bush 41. And when Mr. Baker went to the State Department, I went over there as one of the Deputy Secretaries in the Intelligence Bureau. And I would keep in touch with Tony, especially via some of his written works. When I left government, he reached out to me to become a member of something called the Technology Capabilities Panel which was a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) advisory panel.
So when I was in the private sector, he got me on board as a member. And so I served on that advisory panel with him for several years. Those meetings were, I can’t remember – if they weren’t monthly, they were bimonthly -something like that. But I would see him routinely and participate in some of the activities of that group. And then at some point, all those DCI panels during an organizational transition, it was decided to erase everything and start over again. But they never did, I think stupidly, create a follow-up technology panel and now all of the exponential technologies are a vexing challenge for the government to figure out.
…tech cycles are usually 10X faster than government policy…
Pereira: What is the core challenge for the USG when it comes to exponentials?
Fort: Well, first: do they exist? I mean, you’ve got this new smart AI GPT-3, ChatGPT thing that is circulating around now. I’m guessing there are maybe ten, maybe a dozen people in the entire US government that have heard of it and are actually using it or aware of it. But there probably aren’t even three people that are thinking about its long-term impacts on national security, misinformation, disinformation, governance, et cetera, et cetera. So the challenges posed by technology are the core issue, especially since tech cycles are usually 10X faster than government policy. The speed of government cycles is very arithmetic, linear, and analog – they really do need the type of advice Tony used to provide and any assistance possible in understanding the impact of these technologies.
But in any event, it is not there. So shame on the government for not continuing to call on Tony’s brilliance and his network and the connections that Tony had since he was so highly regarded. He was able to, as they say in baseball, “hit with power to both fields.” And his contacts were just legion. So, you know, what a loss when he passed.
And, you know, it is something Daniel, I just thought about, that may be worth mentioning here – I was trying to think of the venue to get this out when I commented on LinkedIn when I learned the news of his death: the IC needs to create an Anthony Ottinger Award for Technology for people that do noteworthy things in the tech area of the IC because that is usually the area that tends to be the least understood and the most undercover. And, it is so hard for the people that are working on a lot of those things to get any attention or acclaim. So why not name an award for Tony Oettinger? I don’t know the right way to get that propagated. I’ll have to think about that. But I think that would be quite a monument to him and to his significant contributions over so many decades to national security.
Pereira: Yes. So, great. We will capture this remembrance in the initial post of these conversations, including the idea of an IC Tech Award in his name – and maybe something will come out of it from the OODA Network and the OODA Loop Community. And God bless Anthony G. Oettinger.
Exponential Technologies and Societal Risk
“…when Obama was inaugurated, there were about 5,000 tweets a day. When Trump was inaugurated, there were five hundred million tweets a day.”
Pereira: So we have a range of topics we plan to discuss over a series of OODA Loop posts – misinformation, the metaverse (specifically in a national security context), but let’s stick with exponentials for now.
Fort: Sure, my interest in the metaverse precedes my current work with my cybersecurity startup, although they are very much complimentary. And I first became interested in exponential technologies, even going back to when I was at the Reagan White House because, at the time in the 1980s, the government actually was reasonably competent at integrating cutting-edge technologies. Being in the intelligence business, I was able to visit the national laboratories and be aware of the National Reconnaissance Program and all the black programs in space and so forth for intelligence collection. I was aware of the cutting edge at that time, especially after trips to the national labs. So that just sort of piqued a lifelong interest in the exponential growth curves anticipated for these technologies.
And then watching as the web was created in ‘89 and started to unfold and watching it – year over year in the early nineties – mushroom at astonishing growth rates. I mean 1000% or 1500% growth rates year over year in the early years of the web. And then just watching in the mid-nineties in the corporate environment working for a defense contractor and the obliviousness to a lot of those impacts. Then I spent a long time with Goldman Sachs and it was a company that was very, very effective in identifying new technologies and the things that would have significance for investment potential and operations.
So I got a dose of that perspective and then I went back into government in 2006, and I think a critical time because of social networking – and we forget that Myspace was actually the lead social networking site in the mid-2000s. And Facebook was barely a blip. You know, Twitter was in 2008. I’ve seen the numbers: when Obama was inaugurated, there were about 5,000 tweets a day. When Trump was inaugurated, there were five hundred million tweets a day. So there is your growth curve from 2009 to 2017. 5,000 to 500 million. So that is a bit of a curve. So I tracked those metrics and then just did my own research and watched the transition to digital information.
“We are in the eye of this virtual Category 6 hurricane that has astonishing power. And we haven’t quite figured out how to understand it and assimilate it.”
Everything was becoming digitized. And just looking around and it’s like no one is sort of, we’re, we’re, no one is paying attention to these astonishing exponential changes that are happening. And of course, you know, the smartphone rolls out and, and, and we’re so, we’re always in the eye of a virtual hurricane, you know, at any given point. And we look around, well, it’s calm. Oh look, there’s blue sky up there, there’s nothing going on, but you’re in the eye of a Category 6 virtual hurricane where as soon as you put your hand into the wall and the winds are moving at 300 miles and can rip your arm off. But it’s all virtual. And nobody ever really pays attention.
We are living in an ongoing science fiction story. And I love it. If you are in the eye of a virtual Cat 6 hurricane and you look up, well, it’s calm: look, the blue sky. Oh, everything’s fine, right? And you’re surrounded by this hurricane. We are always in the eye, day by day. We are in the eye of this virtual Category 6 hurricane that has astonishing power. And we haven’t quite figured out how to understand it and assimilate it.
“Let’s count to 32 exponentially. Know what? When we are at 32 – when everybody is sort of glazing over – we are at 1.1 billion, right?”
Pereira: We had an OODA Network Monthly call back in June 2022 and we were talking about the innovation economy, venture capital, the business development funnel, the lean startup methodology, and other mental models and frameworks. I stopped just short of mentioning exponential technologies and organizations on that call, I did not want to get too off-topic, but you positioned exponential growth as it relates to Kurtzweil’s Law of Accelerating returns during that discussion. And then, of course, the theme of OODAcon 2022 in October 2022 was Exponential Disruption – which gave us all our first chance since the pandemic to spend time collectively, in person, really kicking the tires on the theme. And there was a slew of sophisticated takeaways from the event which we have been integrating into our research. The OODA Network is like an expert hive mind on the topic, and we need to continue to think of ways to leverage that collective intelligence and community effort to frame the risks, threats, and opportunities.
At the same time, what is your sense of our core audience at OODA Loop? Are we still playing an educational role with those innovation models – of which exponentials are one – or have people or the marketplace already internalized them? I think having a really strong sense of our readership will inform our curation efforts and what signals we are tracking in 2023. Do you think the readership is already there, or is it 50/50? 80/20? I think some people may still have a learning curve, are looking for credible sources, and are responding to our content on this topic. What is your sense?
Fort: So the problem has always been that exponential thinking is really hard and counterintuitive. Let alone a discussion of Kurtzweil and the Law of Accelerating Returns. Let’s count to 32 exponentially. Know what? When we are at 32 – when everybody is sort of glazing over – we are at 1.1 billion, right? You have to keep that front of mind. We are always like the lobster in the pot of water that goes up one degree. You know, it’s like, well, that’s a little warmer, but it’s not that much warmer – and it’s a little warmer. It’s not that much warmer -and it’s a little warmer, not that much warmer, and it’s a little warmer and it’s a little warmer – and eventually, the water is boiling and it’s very, very warm. And the lobster is dead and cooked.
“For 10,000 years, technology was centrifugal. One of my main points is that all exponential technologies are centripetal. And that is a fundamental change in human history.”
But it is difficult when everybody now has this device – the smartphone – that’s not even 20 years old. We just completely take for granted that we are all walking around with a supercomputer in our hand – a global megaphone depending on how many apps you download and 10,000 different things you can do with this.
I mean, you can fill up a warehouse with the objects that this device has replaced, literally: the Library of Congress, every song ever written, every, blah, blah, blah – all that stuff is right here for basically free. I mean the hardware costs me 400 bucks. And then, you know whatever it costs for the apps and the various things and then my monthly connectivity fee, but basically free, I mean, that expense is in the noise This is a Star Trek communicator, this is data, this is everything that I carry around in my pocket. I don’t even think about it. And the implications of it all -0 most people don’t think about any of it.
And we don’t see all the impacts of social media of a billion plus people having global megaphones. You know you don’t need to own a newspaper, a TV station, or a radio station these days to reach the world. You just need one of these phones, download the Twitter app, and off you go. And the crazier you are, the more people pay attention.
One of my main points is that all exponential technologies are centripetal. And that is a fundamental change in human history. For 10,000 years, technology was centrifugal. To have the technology, you needed to have mass and you needed to have a central governing authority. You needed a massive amount of people, you needed massive capital, you needed massive manufacturing – and all of that had to be centralized and brought together and coordinated.
“…this device has reached saturation in less than 20 years…we used to have decades or centuries to assimilate and adjust to…technologies as a society…now, these things are coming at us so quickly.”
And now with this – whoop! – it all goes out to the furthest edge. And everybody is super-empowered. We’re all walking around a billion plus people, a couple of billion people, and however many people have smartphones. Now the numbers change, but, a billion plus, 2 billion people have smartphones. And what is that doing to…everything? I mean, infants now are playing with these things. So what is that doing to the wiring in their brain? And how will that manifest in 20, 30, 40, and 50 years? And so, when these exponential technologies interact – when you take AI that mixes with 3D printing that mixes with virtual reality – what are the outcomes of those interactions? There is just not enough careful thinking and analysis of those capabilities and the impacts of those things and how that is going to shape everything we do.
I think the OODA Daily Pulse email is a great resource – and that is one of my must-reads every day. I absolutely look at that e-mail because I know that if there is an interesting technology development going on that day or week, OODA captures those trends in the newsletter.
Right now, my own little personal jihad is the metaverse and virtual reality. I think where we are at with virtual reality now is where we were with the web in the early nineties, in 1993. Less than 30 years ago, there were 500 websites in the entire world. 500. Right now, there are tens of billions of web pages. And we create more information in like a week than was created in all human history up until just a few years ago.
And, all those things kind of go unremarked and I just think they’re terribly profound, as are the implications and consequences of exponential technologies. Look at the other significant technology shifts that occurred – the steam engine, the telegraph, the telephone, television, and the combustion engine. All those things took decades, even centuries to instantiate to a point where there was saturation.
And this device has reached saturation in less than 20 years. So where we used to have decades or centuries to assimilate and adjust to those technologies as a society or societies. Now, these things are coming at us so quickly. Take 3D printing. I look at all this gun control stuff and it’s like, guys, in 10 years, I’m gonna be able to download and print any gun I want – and tell ATF says “You need to put a serial number on that.” Yeah, yeah. I’ll get around to that. Right. I mean, that is just one single thing at one intersection of innovation. So too, virtual reality is going to be astonishing in its impacts.
A Discussion of Exponential Growth and the Metaverse with QWERX COO and OODA Network Member Randall Fort
Randall Fort on The Future of the Metaverse And Its Cybersecurity and Intelligence Implications
The October 2022 OODA Network Member Meeting: OODAcon 2022, Exponential Disruption and the Future of Innovation at Speed and Scale
OODAcon 2022 and Periods of Economic Downturn as a Climate for Innovation Discussed by the June 2022 OODA Network Member Meeting
OODA Loop: On Exponential Disruption
About the OODA Loop Exponential Innovation Series
Designing, Quantifying, and Measuring Exponential Innovation
