#120 Bill Bray on Navy IW Road to Serfdom

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.

During this episode, Bill Bray discusses his recent article: The Navy Information Warfare Community’s Road to Serfdom. Bill offers a constructive critique of the United States Navy’s information warfare community manpower management policies. He asserts that information warfare officers are crowded out of senior leadership positions which, in turn, is having adverse effects on morale within the community.

Research Question: Bill suggests students and the information professionals community in general figure out a way to measure the effectiveness of influence campaigns. 

Resources:

• Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned
  • #24 John Davis on Modern Warfare, Teamwork, and Commercial Cognitive Security
• The Navy Information Warfare Community’s Road to Serfdom
• Friedrich Hayek
• The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do by Erik J. Larson

Link to full show notes and resources

https://information-professionals.org/episode/cognitive-crucible-episode-120

Guest Bio: 

From Natick, Massachusetts, Captain Bray graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1988. He served as a surface warfare officer in San Diego, California, until 1992 before transitioning to naval intelligence. In naval intelligence, he served in a variety of operational and joint intelligence billets in both the Pacific and Europe and completed two Middle East deployments and one East Africa deployment. From 2010 to 2012 he commanded the Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, Maryland, and from 2012 to 2014 he served as the Naval Forces Europe/Naval Forces Africa/Sixth Fleet Director for Intelligence in Naples, Italy. In 2014–2015 he was a CNO Strategic Studies Fellow in Newport, Rhode Island.

Following retirement in 2016, Captain Bray was a managing director at Ankura Consulting before being hired in August 2018 as deputy editor-in-chief of Proceedings magazine at the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland. 

About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.

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