By Dr. David Bray and Ryan McLean

Imagine a squad of soldiers moving through a dense urban environment where the sky is suddenly filled with the hum of a hundred low-cost drones. Or imagine a city’s emergency dispatch center going dark in the middle of a coordinated cyber-physical attack on the power grid. In these moments, the most dangerous threat is not the hardware of the adversary; it is the paralysis of the response. When our systems are built to wait for a central authority to grant permission or provide data, we have already lost the initiative. The speed of modern conflict and the volatility of 21st-century crises have rendered top-down, “big bang” integration obsolete.

For decades, interoperability efforts focused on building complex, centralized “single panes of glass.” Despite billions in spending, these proprietary systems often failed to communicate, proved too fragile for contested environments, and were obsolete upon arrival. This failure stems from a fundamental flaw in philosophy, not a lack of resources.

This philosophical flaw is compounded by a shift in risk itself. For most of the last century, the ability to cause mass disruption required the resources of a nation-state: massive industrial bases, centralized command, and budgets measured in billions. That era is over. The long arc of technological progress has bent toward a new reality where power, and the risks that come with it, have been radically dispersed. Today, a determined individual with a few hundred dollars and access to commercial technology can achieve effects that once required the backing of a superpower. A small, coordinated group can target critical infrastructure with precision that rivals military operations. Traditional security frameworks, built for a world of state-on-state conflict, were never designed to address this.

True resilience emerges not from controlling actors, but rather from putting “sugar” in the right places. This means creating an environment where local units, whether the squad on the ridge or the fire crew on the street, can form their own ad-hoc networks, share local data, and coordinate their actions even when the “center” is silent. This is not just a technical requirement; it is a strategic necessity. By empowering the edge to work independently, we create a system that fails gracefully rather than catastrophically.

However, empowering the edge is only half the battle. Helping edge elements collaborate, coordinate, and respond together is essential. This article addresses these necessary complements: how do we ensure that people at the tactical edge, who need to respond and act, can communicate and coordinate effectively including in low-reliability environments through decentralized interoperable collaborations.

The Fragility of the Center

In a contested environment, a “single pane of glass” is a single point of failure. If an adversary can decapitate the central node or jam the primary link, the entire formation will be blinded. A near-peer adversary, or even a sophisticated non-state actor, can exploit these vulnerabilities within minutes of engagement. If your entire communications architecture depends on a single satellite link or a central server, you have given your adversary a “kill switch” for your operational effectiveness.

The same is true in public safety. When a city’s 911 dispatch center is compromised by a cyber-attack, or when a natural disaster takes down the cellular network, first responders are left deaf and blind. They cannot coordinate. They cannot share information. They cannot act with the speed that the crisis demands.

The remedy is a decentralized approach to unified communications. This is not a theoretical concept. It is a proven model. In both high-end military conflicts and large-scale public safety crises, the “fog of war” is a constant. A decentralized approach ensures that even if the “center” is lost, the “edge” remains functional. This “graceful failure” is a deterrent in itself; it signals to any opponent that there is no single point of failure to exploit.

Empowering Change Agents at the Tactical Edge

The Department of Defense does not need more innovation offices, digital transformation strategies, or chief AI officers. It needs to empower effective change agents at the tactical edge who can drive cultural transformation from the bottom up. The same is true for the public safety community. The firefighter in a burning building and the police officer responding to a drone incursion know their needs better than any program manager in a distant headquarters.

Transformation does not come from grand strategies; it emerges when organizations empower change agents at the tactical edge who focus relentlessly on user needs. This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about accountability. We achieve accountability not through centralized oversight, but through what we call “Operational Accountability Integration.” This means technical updates are driven by tactical necessity. Software teams must report directly to the units, whether soldiers or firefighters, employing the tools. We evaluate these systems based on their ability to maintain connectivity and agency in contested or degraded environments, not on their compliance with a requirements document written five years ago.

As we noted in our previous article, the goal is to give people the tools to protect themselves and the information to make their own choices. This is the essence of human agency. It applies not just to the individual citizen with a personal acoustic detection device in their home, but to the first responder with a radio in their hand.

Recommendations for Decentralized Interoperability

To move from a top-heavy control approach to a resilient, edge-centric ecosystem, we must change how we authorize, fund, and deploy technology. The following recommendations focus on empowering folks to get stuff done without requiring permission from a centralized hierarchy.

Focus Area	Recommendation	Rationale
Defense (Warfighter Endeavors)	1. Distributed Sensor Fusion: Deploy networks of small, low-cost sensors that fuse data from multiple sources to eliminate blind spots in complex terrain. Processing occurs at the edge, reducing reliance on vulnerable backhaul links.	Prevents tactical surprise and complicates adversary concealment. Accuracy is verified by multi-source cross-referencing at the squad level; operators report directly on sensor utility. Creates a distributed picture that no single strike can eliminate.
	2. Edge-Native AI Processing: Equip tactical units with AI-enabled devices that analyze sensor data and provide decision support directly on the device, without needing to reach back to a central server.	Reduces reliance on vulnerable backhaul links by keeping critical data local. Complicates adversary jamming and maintains decision speed. Validated by real-time combat performance metrics and latency measurements in denied environments.
	3. Tactical Cloud Continuity: Provide local data access and mission apps that function fully even when disconnected from higher headquarters. Units maintain maps, plans, and coordination tools offline.	Ensures operational persistence; prevents mission failure due to network outage. Uptime measured during simulated network outages; user feedback on mission continuity drives iterative improvement.
Public Safety (Keeping People Safe)	4. Distributed Incident Sensing with Privacy-Preserving Design: Deploy networks of small, low-cost sensors across urban environments that fuse data from multiple sources (acoustic, optical, environmental) to eliminate blind spots. These sensors are designed to detect “signatures of harm” (e.g., drone acoustics, gunfire) while remaining “blind” to individual identity. Community oversight boards review sensor deployment and data handling policies.	Provides first responders with a unified picture of an incident without relying on a single, vulnerable platform. Builds public trust by focusing on the threat, not the person, ensuring that safety does not come at the cost of liberty. Accuracy verified by multi-source cross-referencing; community oversight ensures accountability.
	5. Edge-Native Incident Processing with Data Minimization: Equip first responders with AI-enabled devices that analyze sensor data, triage information, and provide decision support directly on the device, without sending data to a central server. Data minimization principles ensure that only actionable alerts, not raw personal data, are retained or shared.	Ensures situational awareness is maintained even when cellular networks are down. Protects citizen privacy by keeping data local and minimizing what is collected. Performance validated by responder feedback and incident outcome metrics.
	6. Local Mission Continuity with Community Resilience Integration: Provide police, fire, and EMS units with local data caches and mission-critical apps that function fully offline. Integrate these systems with community resilience hubs, empowering neighborhood leaders with the same tools and information to coordinate local safety efforts during the first 72 hours of a crisis.	Ensures that incident commanders and community leaders can access maps, building plans, hazmat data, and coordination tools even during total infrastructure collapse. Empowers citizens as partners in their own safety. Success measured by local response speed, community self-sufficiency metrics, and feedback from both professional responders and community leaders.

Conclusion: From Control to Cultivation

The era of centralized control is ending, not because we want it to, but because the nature of modern threats demands it. Top-down command and control cannot out-maneuver an adaptive drone swarm, and we cannot out-manage a decentralized cyber-attack. Our only path forward is to build a society that is as agile and distributed as the threats it faces.

This requires a change in mindset for leadership. Instead of asking, “How do I control this system?” leaders must ask, “How do I cultivate an environment where the actors at the edge can solve this problem?” Organizations rarely change when things are going well. It is only when things get truly upside down and “situation pineapple” that an organization might finally embrace the urgent need to do something completely different. We do not have to wait for that moment. We can act now.

By embracing decentralized interoperability with privacy-preserving design and community oversight, we do more than just fix a technical gap; we reinforce the human agency that is the bedrock of a free society. We move from a fragile architecture of control to a robust ecosystem of cultivation. The tools to protect our communities and our warfighters are already within reach. We simply need the courage to stop trying to build a “perfect” top-down system and instead start cultivating a robust, bottom-up ecosystem that can adapt, pivot, and prevail. The time to empower the edge is now.

About the Authors:

Dr. David A. Bray is a Distinguished Fellow and Chair of the Accelerator with the Alfred Lee Loomis Innovation Council at the non-partisan Henry L. Stimson Center. He is also a CEO and transformation leader for different “under the radar” tech and data ventures seeking to get started in novel situations. He is Principal at LeadDoAdapt Ventures, Inc. and has served in a variety of leadership roles in turbulent environments.  He previously served as a non-partisan Senior National Intelligence Service Executive, as Chief Information Officer of the Federal Communications Commission, and IT Chief for the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program. Business Insider named him one of the top “24 Americans Changing the World” and he has received both the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award and the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal. David accepted a leadership role in December 2019 to direct the successful bipartisan Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data that included Senator Mark Warner, Senator Rob Portman, Rep. Suzan DelBene, and Rep. Michael McCaul. From 2017 to the start of 2020, David also served as Executive Director for the People-Centered Internet coalition Chaired by Internet co-originator Vint Cerf. Business Insider named him one of the top “24 Americans Who Are Changing the World” and he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. For twelve different startups, he has served as President, CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, and Strategic Advisor roles. The U.S. Congress invited him to serve as an expert witness on AI in September 2025.

Ryan McLean led the TAK Product Center (https://tak.gov) from 2021 to 2024. He served as a Highly Qualified Expert at the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, departing federal civil service in March 2025. As the TAK Product Center Director, he led a “pipe-hitting team of passionate technologists” that empowers more than 4,000 developers to deliver a family of open-source, networked geospatial platforms to over 350,000 military, federal, civilian, and international users. He is currently a principal at LMI Solutions and also serves as a Major in the Air Force Reserve where he supports MOSA capability engineering and testing for fighter and mobility aircraft. He lives in Indiana with his family.