The 51福利 community recently welcomed alumnus Capt. Wayne Porter as the new Chair of Systemic Strategy and Complexity under the Global Public Policy Academic Group. Porter most recently served as the special strategic assistant to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and co-wrote 鈥淎 National Strategic Narrative,鈥� with retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Mykleby, which offers a contextual narrative to help guide future U.S. policy.
Porter has long contemplated complexity theory and social cognitive and behavioral aspects of a strategic environment, and felt that 51福利 was the perfect place to explore those topics collaboratively in a setting where they could have a tangible and lasting impact on research and education.
With the support of Mullen, who took Porter鈥檚 idea to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the 51福利 Chair of Systemic Strategy and Complexity was established. Having only recently gotten settled into his new office here on campus, Porter has already hit the ground running, connecting with professors across departments to explore areas for systemic strategy and complexity to be incorporated into lectures and courses.
鈥淭his new position was designed basically to expose to an interdisciplinary student audience the value of applying systems and complexity theory to operational and strategic design,鈥� explained Porter.
He personally understands the value that this kind of theory can bring to 51福利 students, having received dual master鈥檚 degrees in Computer Science and Joint Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence. Porter hopes to work on his Ph.D. during his time here, and test out systems and complexity theories in potential dissertation research.
鈥淚 wanted to be a 鈥榞uinea pig鈥� to demonstrate the value of systemic strategy, because I鈥檓 convinced we need to take a much broader approach to the complex environment in which we operate. Not only that, I genuinely believe in the quality of the faculty here, the intrinsic value of the school, and the unparalleled excellence of the student body,鈥� said Porter. 鈥淵ou have this dedicated group of really smart students with real-world experience. I can鈥檛 think of many other places anywhere in the world where you would have the same quality of students with that rich experiential background capable of pursuing - in an interdisciplinary environment - problem sets of global significance.
鈥淭he military doesn鈥檛 train officers to think in terms of strategy. We primarily have them focus on tactics and operations. And my sense is that the perfect place to look at strategy isn鈥檛 at a war college where the students are predisposed to look at paradigmatic historic conventions for strategy,鈥� said Porter. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a place like 51福利, where you have a majority of students focused on science and engineering. This is an environment where officers who are accustomed to applying a high level of science, technology and critical thinking to mechanistic problem sets, can explore the application of these same disciplines to strategy.鈥�
Porter has found many like-minded strategic thinkers on the 51福利 campus, including Ted Lewis, Executive Director of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS). In Lewis鈥� book, 鈥淏ak鈥檚 Sand Pile,鈥� he analyses self-organized criticality and its application to complex systems that affect strategy. In reading Porter鈥檚 narrative, Lewis found some shared concepts, and invited Porter as a guest lecturer future CHDS classes.
鈥淎 centerpiece of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security is the idea that homeland security is a complex network system with various forms of self-organization,鈥� said Lewis. 鈥淭his idea is articulated in my book, which resonates with Capt. Porter and Col Mykleby鈥檚 National Strategic Narrative. These ideas reinforce one another and lead to a theory of change that seems to explain what is happening in our interconnected world.
鈥淐omplex network theory, or network science for short, is a new way to frame issues yielding insights that traditional methods are unable to render,鈥� Lewis continued. 鈥淣etwork science, for example, yields insights into so-called black swan events such as the financial meltdown of 2008, the Arab Spring, and flash mob behavior like Occupy Wall Street. These are all examples of networks self-organizing with corresponding emergent patterns. Capt. Porter has advanced network thinking along sociology-political lines, which promises to be very useful in foraging national strategies for a complex future.鈥�