EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Resilience is a word we hear a lot, but what does it mean and why should we care? And how do we become more resilient on a personal, professional and national security level?
First, let’s start with the definition of resilience – the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back; toughness. Or, more simply put by the great philosopher Mike Tyson, “everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the face.” Resilience is critical in today’s world to deal with the unexpected and thrive. It is something we look for in leaders, entrepreneurs, industrial supply chains, and ourselves.
Our competition, adversaries, and enemies have become more resourceful and resilient. Russia’s intelligence services have been cultivating and co-opting cybercriminals within the Russian speaking ecosystem so as to better evade sanctions, build-in deniability and redundancy to their nefarious capabilities.
China has built a holistic, whole of nation approach to intellectual property theft from Western society’s innovators – principally from the telecommunications, semiconductor and defense industries.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s primary strategy was simply to outlast America’s will to fight alongside a corrupt government who frequently had divergent priorities from the principles of democracy, accountability and countering extremism.
Countering resilient adversaries requires accelerating our own abilities to innovate at speed, integrate breakthrough technologies and operationalize/commercialize them, and build strong alliances based on democratic values.
Why are democratic values listed here? At the heart of resilience is the “why” – understanding and unhesitatingly knowing why you’re in the fight. Liberty, equality, and justice are powerful motivators and empower people at all levels of society to take action, lead from where they are, and energize those around them. Repressive and authoritarian regimes lack this depth of leadership that can enable raw talent which democracies can tap into. Democracies are thereby inherently more resilient in the long term to sustain overall productivity and quality of life.
How do we build a resilient America that has a strong economic and national security architecture that adapts to world events such as war, climate change, pandemics, and supply chain challenges?
The Cipher Brief hosts expert-level briefings on national security issues for Subscriber+Members that help provide context around today’s national security issues and what they mean for business. Upgrade your status to Subscriber+ today.
It begins with each of us, individually; subsequently to us as leaders of teams and companies; then us as agencies, states and the federal government. We must always keep in mind that our adversaries and enemies are also resilient – therefore we need to be prepared to go longer and harder than our competition.
The Winning Mindset
It’s all about your “why.” Why are you doing this? Your “why” has to be more enduring and appealing to more people than your enemy’s.
Siggi Wilzig, a holocaust survivor who arrived in New York penniless, went on to become one of Wall Street’s wealthiest tycoons. His story is inspirational in his determination to live through the Nazi death camps and he kept his winning mindset focused on getting ahead for the duration of his life.
Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter, while deployed in Helmand Province, used his own body to shield a fellow Marine from a grenade blast. He endured nearly 40 surgeries and spent almost three years in the hospital recovering, having to relearn the basics of walking. Corporal Carpenter never quit and demonstrated integrity and mission focus to the extreme.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg continued to work as a Supreme Court judge to the age of 87 while battling metastatic pancreatic cancer. The Notorious RBG became almost synonymous with strength and stamina.
These three individuals exemplify the winning mindset which is at the very core of resilience.
Teamwork
You don’t win alone, but you can certainly fail alone. Seek out and build alliances with others at the team level, company level, and international coalition level. We are up against China for world leadership – and they have a population roughly four times the size of America’s. We critically need to build a coalition of nations that share our values and is willing to trade critical natural resources with us, such as oil, gas, food, rare earth elements to build batteries and minor metals to build solar panels. We also need to share in such arrangements as the Quad (US, Australia, India, Japan) to build a technological coalition to out-innovate China.
Resources, process and policies.
Lastly, we need the natural resources, listed above, that international teamwork enables. We also need to modernize our policies to unlock the energy already here in America – we can now drill for oil more responsibly (and confidently) in areas we couldn’t operate in 30 years ago. We should expand all our energy capabilities: gas, wind, nuclear, solar, oil, and hydropower. We need it all; smartly, safely and securely. We need to educate our citizens more effectively to increase our STEM graduates. We also need more dual-use technology companies founded by these STEM graduates.
To capitalize on these essential improvements, we must streamline the government contracting process so much more.
On this last point, there are already so many government variants of Lockheed’s original Skunkworks gold standard that we don’t need another “innovation hub.” The good news is that the infrastructure and the policies are already in place – we just need to trust the mid-level officials in them to make the decision to sign the contract. Five (or ten!) additional approval panels are massive overkill and completely unnecessary.
When I was a CIA Officer and there was an operational imperative to get the mission accomplished, approval authorities were delegated to those closest to the mission – whether it was in the field or in the engineering lab. I had the good fortune to see numerous instances of extraordinarily complex [and expensive] machines, systems, and missions approved within minutes (when high performance teams were putting forward their best plan) – whether it was a development contract or an operational approval. I know it can be done. I was entrusted to do it myself many times, operationally and engineering developments, when I was a mid-grade CIA Officer.
Let’s unshackle ourselves from our own self-imposed limitations. Process doesn’t replace integrity, intelligence and passion for performance. And let’s not be afraid to make a judgment on those with subpar integrity or performance who should be moved out of the way of progress – there are excellent leaders champing at the bit to demonstrate their value and run the show. Resilient leaders rise to the top and build superior teams that win.
In closing, we need to fully understand that we have an immediate need for action. We are in a struggle for world leadership, principally, with China but Russia, Iran, North Korea, violent extremists, and others are incessantly trying to give us vertigo and lose focus on our primary objective. As a nation we need to build our resilience, hold fast to our principles, and be accountable for mission success. In other words, it’s time to get to work. Look in the mirror – the person staring back at you needs to harden up right now. Hold them to it. Now.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
Today’s constant barrage of information makes it easy for countries to wage disinformation campaigns and your emotions are the weapon of choice. Learn how disinformation works and how we can fight it in this short video. This is one link you can feel good about sharing.
