To help members optimize opportunities and reduce risk, OODA hosts a monthly video call to discuss items of common interest to our membership. These highly collaborative sessions are always a great way for our members to meet and interact with each other while talking about topics like global risks, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, and current or future events impacting their organizations. We also use these sessions to help better focus our research and better understand member needs.

In June of 2020 and again in October 2021, Matt Devost spoke to former Air Force pilot John Robb. John has worked successfully in a variety of domains, including the special operations community, as an industry analyst, successful start-up founder, and national security expert. This conversation cover topics such as the early history of the commercial internet, frameworks for organizing information in fast-moving environments, network tribalism, decision-making during the pandemic, and the emerging threat environment.

In November 2021, the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission published its annual report to Congress. The Commission addressed several key areas in the report including the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambitions in the wake of its centennial. One of these included China’s burgeoning use of its cyber capabilities as a state tool supporting its political, military, and economic well-being.

This report is the outcome of our first OODA wargame, which we have branded as a Stratigame (Strategic Game), focusing on the global computer chip supply chain issues.  Over 25 members of the OODA Network of Experts participated in this Stratigame where the OODA research team developed four scenarios and then led a structured discussion in which experts provided unique insights into potential impacts of these scenarios, adjacent risks and opportunities, and recommended actions that would allow us to avoid the negative impacts of a particular scenario or nudge us into a more favorable scenario.

Space has many strategic vectors: economic, military, cyber, and information warfare. It will play a vital role in the future of U.S. collaboration with its allies. Space is also on the list of domains that are part of The Chinese Dream for supremacy in areas like quantum computing and artificial intelligence. As China sees it, the U.S. could stand in the way of achieving its strategic aims in space. Classic deterrence theory (i.e., nuclear proliferation and deterrence) should be applied to these space-based challenges.