From open source to everything as a source: How militaries can use and protect themselves from information everywhere
Militaries today must use greater volumes of information to improve effectiveness while avoiding the pitfalls of a digitized world.
Keith Catanzano
Kyle Nappi
Kim Vrielink
Akash Keyal
Joe Mariani
The effectiveness of a military in building, buying, and delivering combat capabilities and resources can define its success in deterring or, when necessary, fighting a war—as identified in the companion warfighting articles. Determining effective new technology to solve a military problem, the means to procure it, or the logistics necessary to forward-deploy combat capabilities depend upon information. There is more information today than ever before. Consequently, the proliferation of data emanating from the increasingly saturated digital world has given rise to both opportunities and vulnerabilities for modern militaries. Their call to action is interdependent: use greater volumes of information to improve military effectiveness while avoiding the pitfalls that can come from a digitized world.
Today, militaries are awash with information because everything has become digital. An increasingly digital world presents an opportunity to leverage information to make more informed decisions. However, living in a digital world can also come with challenges. If everything is increasingly digital and digital things inevitably produce information, then militaries can progressively become a source of data. A potential risk is that this information may be accessible to anyone with internet access. Thus, there is a task before modern militaries today: Be capable of leveraging information to make more informed decisions while mitigating the risks of the information they produce. And all of this must happen at the speed of 1s and 0s.
While modern militaries are besieged by an internal struggle to fulfill ceaseless calls to use more data, existing processes and organizational silos are of a bygone era—one less digitally defined—and, therefore, often inhibit militaries’ ability to do so. According to the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the US military is currently processing a mere 2% of the data it acquires.1 A digital world calls for militaries to organize differently and adopt new tools and culture to account for the ways in which nearly everything may be a source of useful information. Such a transformation can help militaries benefit from the wealth of insights available while avoiding new risks arising from being a source of information.
To better reorganize with today’s digital world in mind, modern militaries should consider several actions, including:
- Achieving better integration across services, with global allies, and in conjunction with commercial partners to leverage more sources of information without rendering duplicative information-gathering processes
- Developing requisite tools that servicemembers synchronize and that help make sense of more sources of information than ever before
- Adjusting cultural norms for servicemembers to appreciate the importance of everything as a source of information
To begin this journey toward transformation, modern militaries should first grasp the underlying trend drivers at play in an information environment fraught with increasing complexity and speed.
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