About ten years ago, as a Navy reservist, I reported to the planning directorate at Pacific Command. Captain Brent Sadler put me to work with his team on complex adaptive systems, the Cynefin framework and John Boyd’s real OODA loop. Brent has since retired from the Navy and is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mark “Moose” McGrath and I caught up with him on maritime strategy and China.
Brent describes how his team at PACOM, from 2012 to 2015, moved from linear, phase-based planning to non-linear, adaptive approaches. One result was a spectrum of rivalry, a way to see China’s hybrid pressure across the whole range of competition.
A long rivalry
Brent argues that the rivalry with China began after Tiananmen Square in 1989. It runs through economic, diplomatic, informational and social lines as well as military ones. He walks through China’s maritime insurgency in the South China Sea, the West Capella incident as an example of naval statecraft, and the influence of Unrestricted Warfare and the century of humiliation.
Ships and capacity
Brent is blunt about American shipbuilding. He makes the case for a new Naval Act, more unmanned systems and real industrial capacity. We also cover Force Design 2030, the 2027 Taiwan timeline, the Fat Leonard scandal, Panama Canal security and Tomahawks for Ukraine. He is the author of U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century.
Brent grew up in Asia, and his cultural understanding runs through the conversation. Orientation sits at the center of John Boyd’s real OODA loop, and non-linear planning starts with how a staff orients.
What would change if your organization planned for rivalry on every line at once?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.