Sea Control - Sea Control 336 - 10 Years of CIMSEC with Scott Cheney-Peters & Matt Hipple

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Happy CIMSEC-versary!!! CIMSEC Founder Scott Cheney-Peters and original Sea Control host Matt Hipple join us to celebrate CIMSEC's 10-year anniversary and discuss the site's origins and evolution. This episode was edited and produced by Joshua Groover.

Happy SimSeciversary. Today we are celebrating SimSec's 10th anniversary with two gentlemen who were there at the founding, Scott Chaney-Peters and Matt Hippel. So thank you to Joshua Gruber for editing and producing this one. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pot of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcast. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security Aloha shipmates and welcome back aboard Sea Control This is the first in a short series of episodes that we're going to be doing to celebrate SimSec's 10th anniversary with some of its former presidents My guests today are Scott Cheney-Peters and Matt Hippel So Scott, Matt, thank you for coming on And Scott, could you start by introducing yourself to our listeners? Yeah, thank you, Jared.

So my name is Scott Schoene-Peters. I work at the National Maritime Intelligence Integration Office, but I'm here because I had the great privilege of getting things started with SimSec back in 2012. And it was a really kind of a fun experience and I'm hoping to share a little bit about that. But here in the D.C. area, and I'm enjoying that COVID restrictions have been lifting, people are kind of coming out of their caves and starting to experience things. And so really looking forward to also in the D.C. area, get our D.C. chapter back and up and running and have some more live events here in the future. Well, thank you for coming on, Scott. Matt, how about you?

Hey, everybody. This is Matt Hipple. If you are an OG Sea Control listener, you may recognize my voice or the voice of my wife that shows up periodically in the beginning of the first 150 or so episodes. I was one of the folks that jumped in with Scott at the beginning of SimSec as the content director of what we used to call the Next War blog. And then the Sea Control host and for about a year, a president. It was a really just really exciting opportunity as a J.O. to get involved in a forum like this where people could really mix it up with new ideas and new concepts without a lot of negative judgment or institutional involvement. But this is a kind of free space to play with professional concepts and interact with with like minds, with unlike ideas. So it's nice to rehash the old days with you, Jared. Well, thank you both for joining us. As a reminder, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated.

So, yeah, you two are kind of two of the godfathers. Godfathers, if there were a SimSec physical space, there would be mahogany frames, oil paintings of the two of you on whatever boardroom would be sort of the centerpiece of that space. But Scott, I don't know if you've ever actually committed the story of the founding to paper or audio anywhere else, but can you tell us that story now? And how did SimSec go from an idea to a reality? yeah yeah happy to and and not to put in a commercial plug but i'm enjoying uh apple tv plus's uh severance uh so highly recommend that if you get a chance to check it out but uh they have a perpetuity win for the founders of this uh multinational corporation i won't spoil any

things but i'd like to imagine that i've got my own you know written uh guidance and uh uh sort of an homage and shrine in that sort of thing but yeah no so happy to talk about the the beginnings I like to say that we kind of started out because I was bored at work one day. But in all honesty, I was at the Pentagon working as a young lieutenant, finishing up my time as editor of Surface Warfare magazine. I was also finishing up my master's through the Naval War College and was looking for a way to keep engaged on these professional issues and keep engaged in having these conversations about these different ideas, as Matt said. But in a way that was maybe a little bit more responsive and conversational. And when I was looking around at ways in which I could do that, I saw that there wasn't really a space that sort of took advantage of these blogs and social media formats and thought there might be an opportunity to provide such a platform, one that was a little bit more focused on the ideas and a little less concerned with how polished or formal the presentation was. And I found that as we started getting something like that set up, we were also lowering the barrier to entry for a lot of voices that might not otherwise take the time to go through the process of getting into some of the more traditional public. So, and we looked at setting up a website at first, which became our blog. And as Matt said, that was the next war blog. But I decided instead of just having a blog, what we would try to do is have sort of an organizational structure around that as well.

So we wanted to have some of the social aspects that we really saw looking through history as being so helpful in providing the sort of meeting of the minds and fomenting of new ideas. And so tried to figure out ways that we could kind of capture on that aspect as well. So we looked at setting up an organization, SimSec, that also would have these chapters where people could get together for live events, live conversations, but again, not necessarily that formal. We'd meet at places like a pizza parlor or at a bar and have sort of tabletop conversations, but also have the opportunity for folks to talk about what they were doing, what they were working on in ways that were less threatening, less sort of formal and structured. So people got sort of used to doing public speaking, public writing, and could maybe take those ideas that they were starting to develop, hone them, and look to put them forward in a maybe more polished or professional publication down the line. And so we looked at figuring out how we could go about structuring ourselves in a way that also would be something that could be sustained. So that's where we started looking at figuring out if we could have an actual sort of after a year or two, go through the process of becoming a nonprofit, you know, formally recognized organization and entity. So that's where we went through the incorporation process.

And overall, we were really just fortunate in how many people kind of came out and supported this effort and thought it was something worth at least helping out a little bit, because this entire thing has always been just a labor of love. And we got folks helping out not only from those more formal, you know, traditional publications like the U.S. Naval Institute at the time, you know, Commander Salamander and Brian McGrath were very supportive as well of this effort, but also folks that were willing to help us out pro bono, go through the process of becoming a 501c3 nonprofit. And then, of course, all of the folks that were willing to, as we sort of reached out and I started calling people and emailing people and figuring out if they wanted to be involved in this effort, were willing to put forward a lot of time and sweat equity in getting this off the ground. Matt Hipple, of course, was one of the names that kept coming up when I was asking folks, who else might be interested in doing something like this? And I had the good fortune of having known Matt back at our time. We both were an undergrad at Georgetown together. I was a few years older than him, but we both did ROTC for the Navy through the George Washington University program through the consortium in D.C. But then, of course, also Dimitri Filipov has been such an instrumental member in keeping the organization running, along with Armando Heredia, helping out with some of the IT stuff. Really sort of the lifeblood of the organization that we're really fortunate to kind of hit upon some of these key volunteers who, you know, through no remuneration have really put in a lot of time and effort in making this such a success. So that's kind of really how we sort of started getting things going initially. As Matt said, you know, we tried to provide a platform, really an umbrella where folks could experiment with both the ideas that they were looking to try to talk about, but also the way in which they talked about them, the sort of the forum, whether it was a blog or a podcast or other sorts of social media, or just really try to find a space in which people felt comfortable in doing that.

Did you get any sort of pushback initially from any of the other established outlets or within the Navy? Yeah, so a little bit on the Navy side, but really not too much, you know, especially the first couple of weeks we're getting things going. And, you know, maybe some of the ideas that we're putting out were really not necessarily that serious, but we're trying to take it in sort of a lighthearted way. you know folks would ask hey is this you know just kind of like a joke or is this just something that you're you know fooling around with and to a degree there was an element of you know we're not trying to take ourselves too seriously but we do seriously want to you know talk about some of these these issues and see if even through some of the more light-hearted conversations that we'd have we could you know maybe spark an idea spark a thought spark a conversation that would lead to

some more profound insight down the line. So there really wasn't that much pushback. And as I was saying before, we really did get a lot of positive support from some of the more established and traditional organizations, even within the Navy at the time, at least my perspective, what I saw was a lot of support, especially at that time and trying to provide some space for especially junior officers to do some experimentation with these new ideas, especially around sort of new technologies. There was the CNO's rapid innovation cell that was getting stood up at the time. And this is an example that I've used in the past of how sort of the process of taking an idea and a conversation that, you know, we started kicking around on SimSec could evolve

into, you know, influencing the broader conversation. And that's the example of additive manufacturing or 3D printing. And so Matt and I both did a sort of a conversation about the application of 3D printing for the Navy and what some of the operational implications could be as well. And this wasn't necessarily a new idea. There had been a long history of trying to figure out how to use 3D printing in the Navy, and there had actually been, at that point already good work being done by some of the, you know, the research laboratories and some of the engineering centers. But what I think we helped do is through a, you know, a week-long focus on that is start the conversation and bring it, start to bring it more into the mainstream because we took

that idea, we started to polish it, got it published as a fuller article in the Naval Institute's proceedings. We were approached from that to help out with the CNO Rapid Innovation Cell in one of the projects that they were doing specifically on just kind of getting some of these printers out to the fleet for more sort of immediate operational, figure out what you could do with it if you put it out in the fleets. And then I also, you know, I came back as a, you know, then a reservist at the time on some long-term orders, helping with some of the strategy writing for how do you use, you know, additive manufacturing for the fleet. So you can kind of see like the sort of progression from one of these, you know, maybe less serious, but more

teasing out some of the ideas into a more, you know, actual impact for impacting the sort of fleet readiness and experience and operations down the line. So it was a really receptive time, I think, but that was my perspective. I would defer to Matt as well to see if, you know, what his experience was with you know pushback or support so now at what point did you decide to get involved uh slash become involved and then yeah what were your your experiences so right at the end of my pc tour scott reached out to me i think on additive manufacturing i can't remember what i had written but he had written something as well and that had turned into us having this sort of professional relationship in regards to simsec in addition

to you know knowing each other from nrotc and really once i can't remember how boy i can't remember how that that crate at some point in time while i was over in bahrain in the yards we had organized a phone call between like multiple maintenance centers and centers of excellence and somehow we had figured out who all the people were that had 3d printers and got them all into a conference call to try to see where there were there were redundancies how people could work together but how we could find some kind of critical mass to move this movement forward because it seemed very uh ad hoc kind of jerry-rigged across the fleet folks figuring out what they could do without any sort of coordinated effort to to impose a general movement to embrace

this technology i which i am now that we're having this conversation i'm remembering this didn't happen at the end of my pc tour it happened at the beginning uh of our deployment so god knows how i do not remember um through this the mists of time what exactly prompted this engagement but But it's been a long time coming. And once I got off of my sea tour and onto the shore, I had more time to do editorial work and range content and start organizing those topic weeks. And then later, I think just before or during my presidency, we started doing the topic weeks with PDF printouts, which was kind of a nice way to acknowledge some of the authors. And, you know, we weren't we weren't a print publication, but we weren't just a blog. So we were trying to organize things into packets people could use for class and and highlight really high level discussions. Like one of my favorites was the Forgotten Strategists Week.

That was a really satisfying group of articles to edit and very educational for me. But I didn't really receive any pushback, which it feels like from about, you know, I was on the PC on deployment, but from about 2013 to 2015, it seemed like we were in this golden age of JO engagement. The CNO Rapid Innovation Cell, like Scott mentioned, CIMSEC, a lot of general efforts to involve JOs, the Naval Institute, even OPNAV got involved with CIMSEC, not as like a sponsor or attempting to use the organization, but just like, hey, here's a professional forum. It's full of JOs. We think this is a useful place to put out what we think is an important message. So we want to engage with them. And not in a way that was, hey, we don't like some of these skeptical articles coming out. It was, no, this is an idea space, and it's on us if we want the ideas we think are important to win to engage here.

So we got to interview Admiral Roden. And one of the first one of the first sea control interviews was Admiral Harvey, who had who had just retired. So during that time period, there were a lot of folks that didn't necessarily agree with all the material being put out by all of our assorted writers. But they saw value in that conversation, value in putting their ideas in the forum and value in listening to other people. And for a lieutenant getting off of his second division officer tour, it was a really wild opportunity to be able to engage in this sudden explosion of professional debate. So I think it was work really well done. I think that we really improved things for the better. And, I mean, Jared, you're carrying on the legacy of the podcast. I think that was one of the important components of our ease of access, which you can't go out and say, hey, you know, surf, surf for, can you write an article for like, that's ridiculous, man's, man's busy.

He's already got a speechwriter. When is he going to have time to write an article for you? And that's going to end up being a staffed piece. That's the nature of the job. Whereas if you reach out to someone and say, hey, can I have 30 minutes of your time? This is non-confrontational. We can send you questions ahead of time. We just want to create some professional development. It was really easy to get people onto the podcast, especially when you built up that level of trust. They understand what your purpose was. It wasn't a it's a it wasn't a gotcha forum. We would send edits out to people afterwards and just say, hey, want to make sure our purpose here is not to start controversy and nail you to wall here. Is this is anything in here something that you don't think is is up to your standard that you may have said? So, you know, maybe maybe that's that's definitely not the highest quality of journalism, but that wasn't the point. Right. It was it was to have a non-confrontational professional discussion that was easily accessible and got people exposure to multiple perspectives. And I think we we did that successfully. Just a wild range of topics.

We interviewed Eric Prince at one point. We had a yearly podcast interviewing the folks from Obongame Express. Admiral Fogo did a SATCOM call to us during Ball Tops, which was really cool. And then towards the end, my favorite part, both for my personal life and for the breadth of topics, was being able to bring Alex and Natalie in. So we would have that cycle of the European perspective, the Pacific perspective, and the U.S. perspective. And Alex gone on. I mean, he did incredible work with the podcast, especially with his Falklands history piece. But generally, he's gone on to to write his book and do really good work with with Naval and Maritime History. And Natalie, of course, is running running the lines with all the Asian think tanks with security. So two two really great people that we were able to get early on to produce quality products for us and for the audience. So really a rewarding project that I got to say to you, Jared, I'm glad you picked back up after Marigi and I departed that this is a really valuable product.

And I think it makes the maritime world far more accessible to just a body of people that never see it, even in the Navy. You know, there's plenty about the Navy that nobody learns because it's just a huge organization that does a million things. And C-Control makes a lot of those accessible in a way that it wasn't before. So just all in all, I think we've done good, Scott. We've done real good. Thanks, Matt. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I don't think that I realized that you were on that call, actually, we were referring to back in the beginning about you being out in Bahrain about the trying to track down all the 3D printers, because I remember that clearly, because that was when I was at Otnav N4, you know, at the tail end of that, that journey that I mentioned, because that was what we were trying to do was trying to identify who had the printers throughout the entire, you know, naval enterprise and what capabilities they had. And finding a way that folks could identify where the printers were so that they could, you know, tap into those printers as a resource and make use of them and, you know, help to share the sort of lessons learned and capabilities. So that's just kind of another funny example of, you know, the follow-on effects, as you're starting to allude to as well, of all of this professional engagement that sort of re-engendered so many relationships that developed out of all of this engagement. And I like to think, I hope that it's true that, you know, so much professional growth that came out of it from folks, not only ourselves, because I certainly learned so much more from reading all of the submissions, doing all that editorial work alongside Dimitri and all of that research for the writing, but then also those engagements and those relationships that have moved forward throughout the following decade. As you said, all those people that are now, you know, farther along in their careers and doing other great things. So great examples. Yeah.

And so I'm not going to ask either of you to provide any sort of negative critique of those who followed you, because that would be a ridiculous thing to do in a retrospective. But what are some of the favorite things that you've seen from the site over the years since you've departed? And Matt, we'll start with you. I really admire that Dimitri especially has been able to get this wargaming piece together. I'm happy to throw shade on my own administration when I kind of pursued this weird path of trying to find maritime museums and engage with like high schools and college projects and things like that. And that that was interesting, but kind of novel in a way that maybe didn't line up with our mission. And there were some really obvious wins out there. And I think Dimitri's hit on one of them. I'm especially happy that this wargaming renaissance is happening in connection with Claude Barabay and the Naval Academy and their incredible work building a mini classic war college.

But especially that Georgetown is involved with that. So SimSec getting involved with the Georgetown Wargaming Club. and uh sebastian and their entire their entire project is really just an incredible opportunity because it is an area of professional development that we have let let kind of languish and you'd think a generation of people that play nothing but real-time strategy games would have thought of that i mean at one point we published an interview with eugen systems that put out war games red dragon so like two steps away hey why don't we integrate these these war games and competitions and game development uh just never made it never made those two final steps and to see the organization really tap into a rich vein like that where you know there's a certain

And I remember a graduate level course that I took in my senior year with some of my buddies from college, where a bunch of the professional types, maybe not as much nerdy maritime knowledge, really kind of overestimated a lot of their capabilities and were kind of glib with how they approach the war game. And the undergrads are like, you're nuts. We can't do anything like this, like hide like a turtle and wait for the rest of the fleet to arrive. And I think a lot of that is you've got a lot of people out there in the war gaming and security space that lack some of the sort of nuanced knowledge about systems and different components of the military that gaming systems can inform them of. And it kind of helps you set your mind right. Try to apply processes to breaking down a problem. And meanwhile, you know, our wild hair ideas and all the sorts of different tactics and everything we threw out there, get some discipline, apply to them in a way that gaming that gaming really provides. I mean, it's an entire new vista of development that, you know, the pizza and beer nights and all those things, those are all positive developments. But they're kind of like one-off events. It seems like the – and I don't mean that in a negative way, but it's like, oh, hey, it's our monthly meeting.

Let's go hang out. Where the wargaming space seems to be a steady state area of professional development and engagement where people are starting businesses, getting involved with different think tanks and parts of the military. And now Sebastian, for example, has been able to sell his game to different units that want to use it as a training aid. I wouldn't have even thought of that. that would be a direction our organization would be able to facilitate back in my day so i really think that do they have pizza that's the no no they they well i think they bring pizza to the war games when they happen in person thanks to the fact that covid has kind of freaking chilled out for a little bit but you know we we set a great standard uh we we put a starting point

and i mean i i tell people i talk to like like jimmy regularly i'm like i have no idea how you guys got to do all this i feel like an idiot like when i was president i'm i'm holding the organization back you know and and here we go but you know that's that's how it works right people stand on the shoulders of others you know i think you know before me was scott and then after scott was sally after you it was you sally and then me or you me and then sally i don't remember but you know each one of us in our time has been able to stand on somebody else's shoulders and the work that they've done you know especially how scott started the organization but you know i'm sure he would admit that the group of people that he was able to rely upon and then the next group of

folks were able to sort of stand on that foundation and move on. And now we're all kind of moved on and the organization is healthier than ever. It's expanded far beyond the borders that we thought it would have when we were in charge. So really it's a generational success. I think we all get to take some level of credit for starting our piece of this great organization. And I'm happy to see you know the sea control podcast is different the blog is different the war gaming wasn't around when i'm there i'm i'm happy that the organization looks so different and is so vibrant because that just means we we planted a a positive seed that's been able to turn into something uh even greater than what we put in the ground well matt first let me uh defend you for a

moment because i think you know you lament lament uh your inability to move the needle on naval wargaming or not pushing that for whatever reason i mean that was all kind of generated i'll say by the external entity if you think back to deputy secretary of defense works article vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff selva's article about wargaming and then we saw the the evolution from there or the reintroduction of wargaming to large parts of the force and then the other piece there i think there's a technology piece too where that stuff is so much more accessible virtually now than it used to be. When you talk about platforms like Vassal and Steam and Tabletop Simulator, where I could take the game that I was using for professional military education over in Germany

with my students, one of the students built it in Tabletop Simulator for us so that we could continue to congregate and play the gameplay scenarios and then do our debriefs afterwards. So you may not have got there yourself and lamented, but it's not like you weren't doing anything that whole time along the way. And then the other thing that I found interesting that you mentioned, you know, people come and move on and it sort of tracks their naval careers because you talk about, and I can't speak to the aviation and submarine communities, but there's a definite ebb and flow in the surface community of when you have time for intellectual pursuits. And that time is not during your department head tour. It's going to be on those sort of shoulder tours on

either side of it where you're on shore and you just have a little bit more flexibility and space to breathe uh and you're slowed down and you can kind of see that with simsec is like the the folks who are going on to uh on to shore duty sort of flow into the organization and they're with the organization for two to three years and then one day you get a note it's like hey man i'm starting department head school next week so you know probably not going to be super accessible for the next couple of years and they flow out but uh they they've tapped you know the person who was an ensign when they were a junior lieutenant and that ensign is now coming to be a lieutenant and wants to get involved with the organization so that's one of the things that i've noticed about

the organization is the sort of we'll call it pattern of life that you get to observe about who comes and contributes who has to move on i was gonna say it's you say pattern of license you make it sound like a tide which seems very uh very i'm thinking of all those boats we used to go visit in the uh in the gulf actually when i say pattern of life all the uh all the fishermen that we've spent you know entire weeks of our lives uh visiting in the arabian gulf on the pcs but uh scott what are you most proud of regarding uh the way simsec has evolved since you uh kind of departed the day-to-day operations yeah no no great question and i'll actually start with a critique i think the only critique i have is that i need to get invited to these these war

games i feel like i'm missing out not not participating i remember actually we did do uh, some like very rudimentary, like hand drawn, very, very labor intensive, uh, war games back during, uh, my reign, but it was, uh, it was very fun. And I think illuminating for more of kind of the, the Opneven three, five folks that we were actually providing some of those insights to, but it was, it was very, yeah, I'm sure the capabilities that exist now would be far more entertaining and easier to manipulate. But yeah, I mean, to Matt's points, you know, there's always additional ways in which I see that SimSec could grow, but it's, you know, acknowledging the fact that it's constrained by its being a volunteer-based organization where nobody is on any

sort of payroll. You know, we all have day jobs that we're always going to be just able to do what we can. And so, you know, I see tons of ways in which I could do, you know, I wish I had more time to be able to support it. But as you were saying, you know, we flow into these other positions where many other things take up our time and we're all, I think all of us have growing families as well. So those are other things we need to balance too. So I do hope that I'll be able to flow back into more engagement in the future with SimSec. And I'm hoping that we'll get that sort of, you know, return of folks as well who have kind of flown out. But I am extremely proud of the fact that these great volunteers have been able to keep things running. And it's

really a testament to the folks that have followed us because it can be so easy to let things atrophy, especially during the pandemic. You know, you can really easily could have just written off engagements and these folks took their responsibilities seriously, even though they were just volunteer responsibilities and it's not only survived but really thrived through these new experiments that people have been doing you know this just to uh to note one of my my immediate uh successor and matt uh i don't know mad if i ever told you but i when you first proposed doing the podcast i was like a podcast what do we need a podcast for like that's just a distraction from our core mission but no i guess i said you know we'll we'll just support whatever people

want to, you know, they want to put the time and effort in, you know, we're happy to, you know, slap the, uh, the logo on and they can, you know, go forward and do good things. So we'll, we'll give, give them the space to, to go and do it. And, you know, that's, that's one of the things that I, I think I made the right judgment call. I'm not trying to, uh, to shut you down there. Of course, the credit goes to you to act who actually, you know, executed and, and devised the concept and put it forward and did all the work for it. But that's just, uh, you know, one of those examples of, you know, because we were, you know, took the philosophy of saying yes and letting people go out and experiment, you know, not all the experiments worked out well,

you know, we've had some failures. I'm not going to hit on and, you know, spend a lot of time on those. But, you know, it's one of those approaches that we took was we'll let people experiment and some of the things stuck and some of the things didn't. And some of the things, you know, people had more passion about. And so those are the things that they were willing to kind of carry forward. So just very happy to see it continue that spirit through some of this wargaming and other experiments that people have taken towards the organization. Well, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Matt Hipple and Scott Cheney-Peters. Matt, where can we find you online and what are you working on next?

Boy, you can find me at at Navy underscore Hipple, where I scream constantly into the void uh to no avail on the hell site known as twitter and i think other than that randomly my writings will pop up in places sometimes that's pretty much it i've i've sort of recessed into into the bush like homer simpson a little bit but uh you know that's that's two kids post department head going to school and and belgium will do to you but we'll see i'll be I'll be back fully operational soon enough. Scott, where can we find you and what's your next project? Yeah, so I'm also on Twitter.

Although, of course, of late, most of my Twitter feed is just the depressing aggression against Ukraine. You know, like I said, looking forward to reengaging more with SimSec. My own publishing has somewhat atrophied in part because of my day job. It's a little bit trickier to get things published in the open. But, yeah, no, I'm always happy to take any engagement that folks want to reach out. You know, hit me up on Twitter. I'm happy to respond. And then, yeah, I just want to also just thank you for continuing this podcast.

Thank everybody that's continued to listen and stay engaged, and especially the volunteers. I think one of the proudest things that I have about the fact that SimSec is still going is that I can't tell you how many times I get folks sending me SimSec articles or blasting distros that I'm on that were published in SimSec, and these folks have no idea that I have any sort of connection with SimSec. So it's not like, hey, did you see your thing's still going? It's, hey, I read this great piece that somebody wrote. It's really insightful.

That warms my heart to know that we've helped to make those insights possible. Well, thank you both again for joining us. To the listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time. ¶¶