Sea Control - Sea Control 184 - Chokepoints and Littorals with Dr. Heather Venable and Director Valerie Jackson

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Link: Chokepoints and Littorals Week

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we're discussing the pieces and lessons learned from the initial stage of Project Trident. For those who haven't been following along, SimSec partnered with Marine Corps University's Brute Kulak Center for Innovation and Creativity to explore the topic of choke points and littorals. I'm joined today by one of the authors, Dr. Heather Venable, and Valerie Jackson, Director at the Krulak Center. Heather, welcome. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners first? Thanks for having me. I'm currently an Associate Professor of Air Power at the Air Command and Staff College.

I've also taught Naval and Marine Corps History at the Naval Academy. I came out with a book last year about Marine Corps' institutional culture called How the Few Became the Proud. And I'm currently working on my second book about intersections between theory, strategy, and the employment of air power. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you're now officially a non-resident fellow at the Krulak Center. Is that correct? I am, which I'm very excited about because of their emphasis on creativity. I think that the DoD is really into innovation, and sometimes the intellectual aspect or the creative aspect sometimes gets lost in that. So that's one of the reasons I was excited about joining. Thank you. And Valerie Jackson, welcome. On behalf of CIMSAC, I wanted to thank you and the Krulik Center for agreeing to partner with us on what I think we can agree was a wildly successful topic week. So successful it actually turned into two weeks. There's so many quality submissions. Before we get into them, could you give the listeners a quick rundown on your background?

Yeah, sure. And first of all, thanks for having me. And it's a pleasure to be on with Heather, one of our new non-resident fellows, as you mentioned. Yes, sure. So I'm the director of the Krulak Center at Marine Corps University. I've been there for just about two years now. I'm also a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves. So I'm interested in this topic from a couple of different angles here. And we were really excited to partner with CINSEC on this contest and quite pleased with the turnout, especially given the strange time frame in which we launched it.

So really happy to be here, and I appreciate the partnership. Well, thank you both again for joining us. I'll start with a disclaimer that all opinions are our own and not representative of any institution with which we may be otherwise associated. I'm going to add an apology as well to our authors. We won't be covering every submission here. That would turn into a four-hour podcast, and while we might all be starved for new content, I don't think anyone wants to listen to that.

So as we dive in, Heather, I'd like to start with your piece because it, along with the submission from Ellie Joachim and Blake Herzinger, and Ellie, if I butchered your name, hit me on Twitter, it's fine, was my favorite. So when we think about choke points, it's normally as a spatial phenomenon, but your piece made an argument that it's temporal as well. As your lens, you chose the Battle of Atlantic in World War II. It was titled Chiseled in Space, Temporary Non-Geographic Choke Points in the Battle of the Atlantic. Why did you decide to contribute here? Well, when I first saw the contest submission, I thought, wow, that's really, really interesting, but I have nothing to write about to contribute. And I think, again, going

back to my interest in creativity, sometimes when you put things back in your mind to simmer and just kind of let your brain do the work, then ideas come to the forefront. And I've been researching the Battle of the Atlantic for the previous month for the book that I'm working on. And then it just hit me that something that I had read in John Slusser's autobiography, The Central Blue, that talked about, we just focus on the Bay of Biscay, then this will be an efficient way to kill the U-boats, which I at first accepted at face value. The more that I read, the more that I began to challenge that idea, and then put that together with the theme of the contest to come up with argument that I did. So what was your conclusion and how did you arrive at your conclusion?

Well, when I came at it, I was first coming at it from an air power angle. Then the more that I read about the big picture arguments about how the Battle of the Atlantic was more about the ultimate measure of effectiveness was shipping arriving in England more so than actually killing U-boats, which I think has links to some of the other pieces that were in this contest. Then it became, well, how then do you best support that? And so even though a lot of pilots did not like doing escort duty, and it was boring and endless, and you rarely spotted a U-boat, that it actually killed two birds with one stone while keeping the U-boats away.

Or when they did come up, then you were able to kill them, which contributed the most, not to killing U-boats, but to getting merchant shipping safely to England. Now, you have a really broad background with the armed forces. You've taught at the Naval Academy. You've written a book about the Marine Corps. You also teach at Air University. Were you forced to confront any pre-existing notions as you started doing your research for this? I think that because it was the Battle of the Atlantic, I didn't have that many preconceptions. And again, I kind of took the air power story at face value first, although I do think that air power was a huge force multiplier to sea power in the Battle of the Atlantic and probably doesn't get the attention that it deserved.

So I'm kind of in a strange position where I think some people think I need to drink more blue Kool-Aid and others think I need to drink more green Kool-Aid. Val, did you have any questions for Heather specific to her piece? Yeah, actually, Heather, I was wondering, even though this was a historic piece, did it prompt you to think about any modern temporal choke points, you know, so caused by technology or a new capability? Did it connect any dots for you? I don't, it didn't for me, but my hope was that at the end of the day, it would help other people connect. and then I think that it's hard when you're you have naval warfare in such a huge visual way in your mind for World War II in the Pacific and you don't really necessarily have that same kind of naval warfare later and so you're worried about not fighting the last war then you may get trapped

in that so in some ways I think the Atlantic is a nice comparison to get outside of the Pacific framework, and then use it as inspiration to get back to the Pacific. Right. I agree. And history is always a useful framework in looking at current challenges, as we see for some common themes and similarities. So I really appreciated reading your essay for the points you highlighted. So one of the things that your piece reminded me of, Heather, was reading Samuel Elliott Morrison's History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II. And I can't remember off the top of my head if it's volume one or volume two, but one of those two is the Battle of the Atlantic. And the U.S. Navy enters that fight with the exact same mentality here that

you're describing the British having, in that they want to function as an offensive force. They want to seek out these U-boats, hunt them down across the vastness of the Atlantic, and kill them until they realize that searching for U-boats in the vastness of the Atlantic is a ridiculous expenditure of resources. They don't need to hunt for them everywhere because they know where the U-boats are going to go, and that's to the convoys. So they focus, instead of focusing on fires and maneuver to search across the entire Atlantic, they're going to spend all their resources on protection. So that's what the, your piece reminded me of, this mindset shift, and I really appreciate it for that reason. I want to transition now though to some of the other pieces that we

received. So Heather, as you went through these, and I know you started doing this because you tweeted about it, and then you and I started corresponding about it via email. How did you begin to bin the different submissions? Well, I really think that the two most important pieces for thinking about this big picture, not saying that they're my favorite or necessarily the best, But the most useful for going to the 180 degree spectrum is first the map that came out by the Marine Corps. And just the top top box of that map has the really interesting point that accessing and controlling the strategic maritime choke points are crucial to China's economic sustainability and the PLA strategy. The PLA Navy must secure the straits. So you can just see in the map itself and in the quote that I just said, it's very much a focus on the physical geography and how important it continues to be.

On the other hand, we have going the complete different direction, Captain McGrath's piece on there are no strategic choke points. And he argues that because of technology, because of ISR, including space-based capabilities and long-range weapons, that there's kind of, and again, he takes the U.S. perspective in this, that there's really nothing that we can do, which is, I think, a problematic assumption, perhaps, but also that physical choke points have really lost their relevance. And so that's the starting point for asking the big question, how relevant do fiscal chokepoints continue to be, especially in the framework of technology? And as we've talked about this week, there may be the consideration that we've been taking Russian hype about IAD's capability at face value, and maybe the situation isn't as bad as we think. Val, same question to you. Did you find yourself sorting these as you went through? uh to a certain degree so you know because i'm positioned uh at the university and because we're sponsoring this and focusing it towards students you know i wanted the traditional things that you would want out of an essay contest so you know hey did they answer the question was it was it

well structured was the grammar correct was it you know factually correct but then i i you know as the director of the crew lexner i'm always intrigued by entries that are unique um and very creative and that's where you know the the entry from mcia um rink or intelligence activity with the map you know really got my attention you know as as did the you know tomorrow never dies one as well where where people you know are taking a different look at this problem and coming up with you know different methodologies of you know displaying how they think the information is important. So I sort of have that, you know, side bin there where I look at, okay, how creative were they? And, you know, as they tried to examine this problem. So that's sort of how I approach

this. I'm really glad that you brought the MCIA submission because I loved it. Not least because it's a non-standard submission to a call like this. So no lack of creativity on the author's part secondly it took me a while to get display correctly on my computer but once i did i was blown away by both the breadth of the problem that they had managed to display as well as the depth when i say breadth they're able to show the problem both from an american and a chinese perspective as well as the depth being going into the tactical level detail of for example which straits will permit a submarine to transit while submerged so love the map wanted to visit a local copy shop and get a blown up version made, hang it on my wall for study once I was done with it.

Let's transition though to one of the key questions as we discuss lessons learned. First for you, Heather, where did you settle out on the question of choke points are still relevant and why or why not? I think that they are still relevant, but although I do not agree or I'm not sold yet on this Tomorrow Ever Truly Dies premise that information is actually in many ways more important than physical control. I think that the next step for this really important map is that information gets imposed upon it to flesh it out and make it more multidimensional, that culture, politics, this map just really becomes richer and more 3D so that we can understand a shift, perhaps, towards information. Thanks. And then, Belle, same question to you.

Where did you wind up? Are choke points still relevant? Yeah, I did. And I agree. They are definitely still relevant. I think what the larger picture, though, is what Heather just touched on is that they're much broader than they used to be, because we are thinking in cross and multi-domain ways, looking at these choke points and also, you know, with the other elements of national power, too. So, you know, when we look at a, you know, strategic point on the map, it's no longer solely a military problem. So we have to make sure, you know, as we talk about these things, that we aren't having these conversations and trying to solve these problems and, you know, our silos of excellence, and that it truly is, you know, a multi-layered,

multi-agency, holistic look at, you know, what capabilities that we can bring to bear to solve these problems in the U.S. national interest. One of the reasons I was so happy to see so many Marine submissions was that choke points are popularly viewed as a Navy problem. The Navy is going to transit the choke point. The Navy is going to use that choke point to box in the enemy. But what that viewpoint seems to ignore, though, is that if you want to control a choke point or exploit and use a choke point, you have to control the land. The Navy is not going to be able to do that for you. You're going to need the Marines or you're going to need the Army to do that for you. Val, let me ask you, were there any other specific lessons learned as you read these pieces?

Yeah, I was actually surprised. I knew a little bit about the state of mine warfare or the lack of the state of mine warfare of the just the sort of where we sit with all that I that was educational for me to read that, you know, sort of where we sit as a department with that. And I hadn't previously thought about the intersection of or, you know, information related capabilities or operations in the information environment as choke points themselves, too. So those two central themes are really new for me and really got the creative juices flowing in terms of, you know, these are much more than, you know, passages of between two pieces of land that we have to really pay attention to. As I said previously, you know, it's sort of a multi-domain look. Thank you. And you had brought up the MCIA piece earlier, but did you appreciate the way that that piece was so China-centric? And by China-centric, I mean it displayed the Chinese point of view? Yeah, I think that is absolutely critical. And what I didn't mention in my intro is that, you know, one of the many MLSs I hold is civil affairs. And so, you know, one of the things that that we're really taught, you know, as we're analyzing a country and doing, say, a country study and preparations for, you know, any kind of operation there is really thoroughly understanding the mindset and the culture. And if we are solely looking at the globe from a U.S. perspective, how we look at the world, then we're going to have some really dramatic failures in some instances.

And, you know, things aren't just going to go as well as we would like. And I think in this area in particular with China, you know, if we were to flip it on its head and we had Chinese ships doing FONOPs, you know, off of Miami and, you know, in Long Island Sound and in Los Angeles Harbor or between, you know, Catalina Island, whatever, you know, how would we feel about that? and then put it back on them and really try to understand why they act the way they do, how they see the world, and so that we can really get a true appreciation of, you know, what, you know, their next moves might be or how they're interacting with the other actors in the area, you know, that we hope to win over to our side or to keep on our side in many cases. So it's tremendously valuable. And I'm really glad that they did that work. And if you're looking to look at the actual map, we're going to hold it in the Krulak Center and find a nice spot on the wall. So when things get back to normal, you can come on down and see us at MCU and you can look at the map then. But yeah, I thought that was tremendously valuable. I will absolutely take you up on that offer just as soon as I'm able to get over to the East Coast, which I hope happens sooner rather than later for many reasons.

Heather, what other lessons did you learn as you read through all these pieces in rapid succession? Well, I think to build off of Val's great comment about taking the perspective of China, which I would like to see more fleshed out in these pieces. And I think some of the big gap is to what end are these forces being employed? So, for example, one piece said, OK, providing entry for U.S. standoff forces and talked about submarines and stealth bombers will be conducting high priority forward operations. Well, what are those high priority forward operations and what is the ultimate theory of victory that this is all really based on? And I've been reviewing Wiley's general theory of military strategy today or military control. And I think that one of the points that he makes is that in peacetime, it's just hugely important to be looking across the range of any and all possibilities. And so to go back a little bit to the mine question, one of the reasons I really liked the two pieces about mines is that, you know, working for the Air Force, where sometimes the shiny, really expensive technology is really important, maybe a bit too much.

Mines kind of offers an old-fashioned solution, and after years of the U.S. being the one who is outspending to kill trucks and other low-cost technology, I liked the idea of using something like Mines. I also like the theme of the sort of cultural ways in which sub portions of institutions might see their primary mission change and evolve and come into something that they weren't necessarily envisioning. But I would also like to see some of these mine lane scenarios maybe bring in more discussion of interaction with the enemy, because in some ways it seems like, although they do bring up some interesting new technology and how these minefields can be employed, that in reality, a lot of things usually turn out to be a lot harder than anticipated. and one of the points that was brought up at the Krulak Center's discussion this week with Major Ian Brown and his discussion of John Boyd I think it was retired General Van Riper that brought up the point of well what do we do with an enemy that doesn't necessarily play by the rules when we try to play by the rules and mine warfare is very much organized and based on international law. So those are some general thoughts about the very interesting and provocative mine pieces.

Let me ask this. For both of you, was this really the first time that you considered mine warfare from the maritime perspective? And Heather, if you don't mind answering first, and then we'll come back to Val. Okay. Yeah. I don't have much knowledge of mines, But I do know that with the air war in the Pacific, there is some resistance from the Army Air Forces during World War II to mine laying. They were a little slow to engage in it. But once they did, they embraced it. And there are some arguments that some airmen may have even found that the minefields were more important than the destruction of Japanese cities and contributing to the end of the war. And Val, same question to you then. Was this your first introduction to the ongoing discussion about mine warfare and pursuing mine warfare capabilities?

I would say yes, this first in-depth. And just the whole concept of deterrence by denial with mine warfare really deserves a significant look as part of our overall planning effort. You know, it's something that, you know, Heather brought up General Van Riper's comments. You know, there are so many actors out now. And especially if you talk about, you know, low cost technology, they can be extraordinarily devastating. I mean, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan with the IED threat, you know, just put that in the water. And this could be extraordinarily difficult for us to navigate as well. No pun intended or maybe pun intended. So, it's something that we have to, as we look at using it offensively, our defensive capability, I think, needs to ramp up equally as fast or if not more so to make sure that, you know, the good folks, if you will, are in control of how this is utilized.

And I also worry, too, from a from sort of a domestic standpoint that, you know, any place that we'd be interested in mining, you know, talk about littorals and access to the sea. You know, there are millions of people that rely on the sea for their livelihood. And so, you know, to block that or to potentially, you know, start laying mines where, you know, you're interrupting people's livelihood or the economics of a small fishing village or even a nation that's supposed to be our ally, that deserves, you know, quite a bit of discussion as how we might go about that. So this is something that we have to look at very holistically and not just from a military. So the mine warfare discussion has been ongoing for pretty much the entirety of my career in the Navy, and we're over 17 years in now and counting. And it's interesting because the people who pick up on it are often non-Navy personnel. So in this instance, we have Brian Kirk, a Marine, who wrote an article for us about it. We also had a contribution from Mark Kirk, who's a Navy officer, a retired Navy officer.

to your point that mine warfare has an outsized impact whether it's psychological or economic i'll tell you that i did an exchange tour on a german frigate and we would transit to the baltic both to visit our namesake city lubeck as well as to do training in neustadt which is on the baltic coast the route that we would travel was the old post-world war ii mine clearance route still marked with buoys still annotated as such on our chart. And the German Navy still pulls up every single month, multiple times per month, mines from both world wars. It's not just the Navy finding those mines either. It's local fishermen, sport divers, recreational boaters. The Navy and the EOD has to go destroy these as a matter of routine. So we'd be wise not to underestimate the scope or

persistence of mining. The other interesting mix in mine warfare pieces is the argument for offensive and defensive mine warfare. So offensive mine warfare, it's always intriguing because of this outsized impact for minimal cost. And it's exactly what we always claim we're looking for, combat efficiency, right? On the other hand, I can say without question, our defensive mine capability has atrophied for my entire time in service so we've decommissioned ships allowed ships and aircraft we have to age without identifying replacements or at the very least we have attempted to generate those replacements but we haven't been successful yet so mine warfare also isn't a capability that we can just surge to create either i don't mean to downplay the

severity or complexity of the ied issue but when you take something like the ied issue and then set it in the marine environment, it introduces a whole new host of complexities, whether you're talking about localization or neutralization. So Val, let me ask, did you find threads in here that you could take back and add to the Commandant's recent guidance, whether that was force planning guidance, expeditionary advanced base operations, or littoral operations in a contested environment? Yeah, I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but my reserve job is that I work for the deputy commandant for information. And so looking at, again, this overlay of littorals as they intersect with the operations in the information environment and how that is

such a major part of the commandant's planning guidance already and, you know, force design plans that are sort of in formulation right now and ensuring that we have, you know, a holistic look at the potential, actually the current operating environment, and then the future, you know, where it's geared towards 2030. But, you know, how are we shaping the force to make sure that we have, you know, a proper perspective, all warfighting functions addressed to include information. And so you might look at something like littorals and choke points and think, okay, well, you know, there's not a whole lot that we can, you know, tease out in terms of the information environment. But if you talk about information choke points and littorals,

well, then I think that's actually where you win in the competition phase and hopefully don't have to get to the conflict phase. And so if we can do that, if we can shape the force to compete and win and the information choke points and littorals, then, you know, we're going to have a massive strategic advantage against any adversary. So that's certainly themes that I think we're going to continue to flush out as time goes on. Well, I think that's a really nice segue into a question that I believe Heather has prepared for us based on the submission, does tomorrow ever really truly die? So Heather, I'll turn it over to you if you'd like to pose that question to the group yes i'm just gonna quote one of um the author's main points that

he makes and then ask a question about it he says referring to the main character carver that he should have known that control and influence no longer require a physical presence while physical presence is an excellent way to monitor a nation state's interests it is hardly cost effective in all cases and represents only part of the battle then the majority of the action must happen miles away in the information environment you are relative balance of information access and physical access how much do we put into each one does the marine corps currently have that the right balance and how do we redraw the map to reflect that because in some ways this is if we're talking about the Pacific, then it's not our backyard, it's theirs. And so that makes

information control and superiority incredibly challenging. Val, do you want to take a shot at answering that first? Sure. Yes. Sure. I think I agree with the author. I mean, you can't be physically present in the vast Pacific Ocean all the time. But I think we need to be physically present enough to reassure our allies in that area, to let them know that we're going to uphold our end of the treaties that we've signed with them and that we're there, you know, to support them. And, you know, General Kulak likes to say that you can pretend to care, but you can't pretend to be there. And so I think we physically have to be there enough to reassure our partners and allies. But also in the theme of what former Secretary Mattis talked about, you know, with

the dynamic force employment being strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable. Again, physical presence where the adversary might not expect us to be, but reassuring our partners and allies. But on the information side, I think there's a tremendous amount that we can do to be present in a variety of mediums out there to show our interest, to show that, you know, we're not afraid of, you know, things that are happening in that area that we can't always physically control and to show, you know, that we really are there for those countries' best interests as well. It's not something we're going to ignore because it's far away or they've made it technologically difficult for us. So I think, again, if you get back to the information side, there's quite a bit that we can do. You know, is the Marine Corps

there yet in terms of capability and force and all that. No, but I do believe that's where we're growing and headed toward. So I'm encouraged by that. So as I read that piece and then considered your question, Heather, I would agree with some of the points that Val made that you can't be physically present everywhere, but you have to be physically present somewhere. And then what does, what should that presence look like? So the Navy has a very particular appearance. When a Navy ship shows up, it looks aggressive if you are on the receiving end of the messaging, regardless of how we would like it to appear. So there have been a number of articles published in the last four to five years calling for increased Coast Guard presence in some of these areas, but

particularly in the South China Sea. And that Coast Guard presence looks different and it looks much less aggressive than the Navy does. The Coast Guard is also trained to do different things than the Navy. They don't require any sort of special training to assist our allies in executing law enforcement functions. That's their job. They do it every single day. Same for fisheries protection, anti-trafficking measures. They do those things every single day. And those types of missions just make it a lot harder for our adversaries to manipulate the appearance of what a Coast Guard vessel is doing versus trying to spin the narrative around a warship. It's a lot easier to take a picture of a warship and spin it into a headline that's negative for our interests.

Heather, I know it's your question, but you must have a viewpoint on it as well. Do you mind sharing that with us? Well, just listening, just I would respond to what you just said. That kind of reminds me of some of the things you hear about OIF, that when you had National Guardsmen going in in the early days after the initial run into Baghdad, They were better trained and more equipped to deal with establishing relationships and winning the information battle than some of the regular army soldiers were. So I just thought something that popped into mind. I think that the other point that I would bring from the article, Does Tomorrow Ever Truly Die?, is that initially I set up the dichotomy between the McGrath piece, which says that choke points are kind of, let's just throw them out the window at this point because we can't really work with them to our advantage.

And then again, the map. And I think the next point is to come up with a map that really shows information. I know I've already made this point, but I want to reiterate it because the author is talking about how control of information represents control of the single greatest resource available, and information is both a weapon and the battlefield upon which current and future conflicts will play out. And so if we do accept that his main argument that information is more important than the physical battlefield, then the map upon which we're working is looking, the terrain looks incredibly different from the map that was provided by the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity Unit. What do you think that map should look like then? I think that you start trying to show networks of ideas, of a religion, of ethnicity, of all the things that matter to people's identity, to economic concerns. I don't know. That's definitely a creative challenge for the Krulak Center. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sorry, I think I interrupted Val there. Please go ahead. No, I was going to say that's one we could take on. I don't necessarily agree that it's totally different than what MCIA provided. I think it's just that it's not complete, if you want to include everything about the information environment, because you have sort of the science side of information with cyber and signature management and whatnot.

And then you have the deception and influence and things like that. You get in with Comstrat and psyops and civil affairs. So it's just not as detailed as it should be. But I think it's a great start to look at it from an information perspective. So it's the overlay of the two. That's where the real power is, I think. uh one of the themes that we haven't talked about that i thought was interesting in the sink them all envisioning ring for maritime interdiction was to a lot of the discussions

have been still in the context of lethality and what the target is and so again like several pieces they are viewed that and again this reinforces one of my favorite books peter Haynes toward a maritime strategy, that we have got to look beyond the military and to maritime more broadly. And that's the theme that everyone, I think, today, our discussion has talked about. But McGrath, again, in his piece argues that commerce destruction, commerce warfare has kind of had its day. And the maritime interdiction piece challenges that and says that maybe the target set for the Marine Corps won't be enemies' military assets. And I think that, again, for the long-running, big-picture piece, it's easy to say that technology has made something irrelevant or

something else has come in and, again, changed the dynamics in a way that we weren't expecting, and so we can sort of throw out the past. But one of the big things that I'm always trying to look at with air power which is seen as sort of a sweeping revolutionary capability that there's so much more continuity oftentimes than change and we get lost in the the change and forget the huge ongoing themes and so um i'd like to say i like to say borrowing one of madison's themes that there's really nothing new under the sun and that i closed my article with a recent study about submarine warfare and choke points and arguing that technology has made it such that choke points really might lose their value, again, going along with Captain McGrath's argument.

But when we're thinking about mines as maybe a huge part of the solution, we also have to think about the countermeasures that are going to be developed and always remember the interactive nature of these concepts. Val, did you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I just think as long as people live by the sea and there are major population centers by the sea that show points and the corals will always have a value. I'm not sure how we get away from that. And so it is something that I think, again, for the Department of Defense is probably something that requires a lot broader look than we've traditionally carried out in the past. But it's certainly something that we can't ignore or say that it's losing its significance. Just because just from an economic standpoint, if nothing else, we still rely on the sea for the vast majority of commerce transactions.

And so until that goes away and even, you know, Internet, that sort of thing. And, you know, so until all that goes away and we've firmly established ourselves in space somewhere, then I think they're going to be important for a long time to come. No, I think we've covered some good ground here. Then I'd like to thank my guests, Dr. Heather Venable and Director Valerie Jackson. Heather, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Well, I have a few things up my sleeve, but I'm really just trying to focus on my next book and just getting ready for the next academic year. And Val, again, thank you for agreeing to partner with CIMSEC on this project. Where can we find you online and what are you working on? Yes. So the Curlack Center is really active on Twitter. And that's that's chiefly where we get out what we're working on.

For myself personally, I published a few months ago, co-authored a piece in the Marine Corps Gazette. And I'm currently working on a book review of Humility is the New Smart for MCU's new PME portal. So hopefully that's going to be done. Ian Brown is supposed to keep me on track. So next week or so, that should be done. And if I read correctly, you all are bringing out some more BruteCasts. Is that right? Yes, we are.

We're going to continue them through the summer, hopefully weekly on Thursdays. So stay tuned. And thank you again to both of you for participating. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Thank you. So help me, Bob, I'm pulling me out of this. Why are they pulling me out of this?

Help me, Bob, I'm pulling me out of this. Pulling out of this shit, Bob.