OODA Network members are invited to participate in a monthly video call to discuss items of common concern to our membership. These highly collaborative sessions are great ways for our members to meet and interact with each other while talking about items of common interest. We also use these sessions to help better focus our research and reporting on member needs.

To encourage openness of discussion, these sessions take place with Chatham House rules, where participants are free to use the information in the meeting but are asked not to directly quote or identify other participants.

For our members who could not make our last monthly session, here is an overview of the topics we reviewed:

Content Of Interest:

In September our analyst team published insights on a variety of topics (all available to members here) including:

Member Interview Series:

Chris Ward continues her interview series focused on introducing our members to each other. Recent subjects include Masha Sedova of Elevate, Joel Wallenstrom of Wickr and journalist Marc Ambinder. All in this series are available at: OODA Network Expert Series.

The OODAcast:

We continued to interview thought leaders with insights for our members and publish the results to both our audio and video channels (to subscribe see OODAcast). Recent subjects include:

Topics Of Potential Impact:

Each month we provide lists of topics and ask members to provide feedback by adding new topics or letting us know what is really not relevant. This helps inform decisions by our members by bringing focus to what is important but also helps drive our research agenda. Some discussion topics and comments included:

AI in national security: Much broader than DARPA AlphaDogFight and support to logistics etc. Point was made that if the US Air Force is in a dogfight something has already gone wrong, so perhaps the nation should be applying AI to other parts of national security.
AI in every part of our lives: Healthcare noted example, including AI for AI for cancer detection/diagnostics
CRISPR Developments: Including gene editing to produce “super-dad” livestock. Another interesting development is CRISPR created potential treatment for muscular dystrophy
Watch for continued CRISPR breakthroughs including from nation’s that do not share our ethical framework and from researchers that could be violating laws of their own countries. Potential for research by proxy using criminal organizations.
Brain-controlled devices. Biggest/latest news is Neuralink. More clearly coming
Watch For Continuous disruption via social media: including disruption of democracy, quality deep fakes and engineered disinformation/misinformation adding fuel to the fire. Disrupting all democracies.
Track space developments closely: including Artemis. But also Hayabusu2, which will return to earth with sample from asteroid (6 Dec)
Quantum Advancements: Including Quantum Key Distribution and Quantum Networking, Quantum Supremacy including modeling of atoms,
Communication revolution: 5G, Wifi 6, Spacebased communications.
Cyber Conflict: This is not just about hacking, but also about using cyberspace for unfair advantage. Example given of nation state funding of exploit development to sell for bug bounty and gain major contracts, which then leads to deeper insights for IP theft.
Embedded Computing: In this case we are talking about embedded in the body. Visceral reaction by many, but clearly this is a trend.
Infodemic: Concern by many members on this issue of trust and knowing who to trust.

The meeting and this input is already shaping our focus, insights on most of the above is available at our member resources page.

Approach To Our Next Meeting:

Next month we will continue our examination of topics of interest and will facilitate a dialog between members. In response to suggestions from members we will also be asking some our our members to provide 3 minute overviews on topics of interest designed to share knowledge on priority topics. The next meeting will include a 3 minute discussion from one of our members who is a AI practitioner who will discuss transparency in AI. We have also asked the CEO of a major threat intelligence company to provide his insights on AI since in a recent discussion we found his views to be very helpful in gauging what is possible and what is improbable in near term AI capabilities.

We Need Your Feedback:

If you are a member we need you feedback on the above to keep our reporting focused on your needs. Please reply to our weekly member newsletter with any feedback, guidance or questions you have for us.

If you are not a member yet, please take a moment to join and deepen your engagement with your peers on these and other topics. Do so at: Join OODAloop.