Sea Control - Sea Control 338 - 10 Years of CIMSEC with Chris Stockdale and Jimmy Drennan

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

CIMSEC Presidents past and present Jimmy Drennan and Chris Stockdale, respectively, join the program to celebrate the organization's past and look to the future. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling.

Hey folks, it's Jared. This is the second in a series of episodes celebrating the 10-year anniversary of SimSec. Today I'm joined by Jimmy Drennan, who just relinquished the presidency, and his successor, Chris Stockdale. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. We are still looking for additional audio editors to join our team. We are happy to provide you some very basic training materials and instruction in a low-stress environment. So if you're interested in finding a way to contribute to SimSec and add to your resume and personal skill set, please send us an email with your resume to sea control at simsec.org finally i want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the simsec podcast network the village pumps you can find

alex jamie drack and a pot of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcast and on that note i'll turn it over to kimber's men you're listening to sea control hosted by the center for international and maritime security. Aloha, Shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. We are continuing our 10 years of SimSec series with the two most recent SimSec presidents, Jimmy Drennan and our current president, Chris Stockdale. So, Jimmy, Chris, thank you both for coming on today.

Jimmy, would you start by introducing yourself to our listeners? Yeah, thanks, Jared. So I'm a U.S. Naval officer, surface warfare officer by community. I've been in the Navy for going on 18 years. I've served on two cruisers, USS Anzio and USS Gettysburg. Both of those, I did two tours on each. And so that was my time at sea, mostly spent over in Europe and the Middle East. and I spent my time ashore at the

Naval Grad School in Monterey, some time up in Newport and most recently at the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa. So that's kind of a snapshot of my career so far and then of course I've been the president of CIMSEC for the past few years and handing over the reins to Chris now. Yeah, thanks. We'll get into hear your syntax stuff in some detail in a minute here but Chris would you mind telling the listeners a bit about your background I'd be delighted well unlike Jimmy I'm not a naval officer I'm a

civilian more of an academic went to university in Plymouth here in the UK I did my undergraduate here and followed that with a master's in applied strategy international security which I did in part with the Dartmouth Navy College over here did my MA in peace building in sort of Afghanistan looking at the operations over there just got more and more involved in how things could be done from a naval perspective and getting into the naval history as well in a town in a city like plymouth you can't really escape it um and while i was doing my research and looking to do my phd work i came across simsec became very impressed and uh joined in 2013 and i've been involved ever since yeah and you were uh the head of uh i want to say the uk chapter for uh quite

some time, which is probably our most vibrant chapter as far as who gets together most and produces a lot of our work. But as a reminder for the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. But Jimmy, I'll come back to you to start. How did you originally get involved with SimSec? I remember being aware of SimSec pretty early on from its founding. Matt Hipple, scott cheney peters both very active in writing for the naval institute proceedings and so i just kind of became aware of them and then um you know with social media kind of growing rapidly at the time i was able to find out about this thing called simsec and

the website was just uh really interesting because the the articles were um just different not your traditional, you know, proceedings, articles. And I ended up actually writing for CIMSEC. I think the first time, I think I sent them an article that I had written for the War College review. And it was kind of just a simple mathematical analysis of small combatants. and that kind of set me on my path of uh naval writing i guess and uh kind of i was hooked from there and so i wanted to do more of it um so i wrote a few articles for simsec along the way and then i was uh i remember being asked to participate on an editorial team i believe

it was dimitri that asked me um but uh you know it was about that time that i uh met dimitri and you know worked with him helping him edit some articles i think the the topic week was on distributed lethality and that was really interesting to see that process and just to see the different ideas that come through simsec and i and i just liked the way that they did business and um then a fast forward a couple of years i think it was 2017 ish the i think i think it was dimitri that asked me if i wanted to run for vice president and i said yes that sounded uh really interesting and then i had the time for it and um that's how i guess i became involved with simsec on the administration side yeah i guess i should you

know i should mention that i i was a member as far back as 2013 but uh as i'm sure most of our listeners know membership is you know there's not much uh there's no obligation there's not much to it other than you have access to our kind of network of professionals and um anyway so after i was vice president for a couple of years um 2019 i think it was i uh our current president needed to step down for professional obligations reasons just didn't have the time to devote to SIMSEC, which is very common and completely understandable. So I was ready to step in and just fill the rest of that term as the acting president and then decided that I wanted to run. And so I did that until now. And just now was the right time to hand it over. So I hope the

organization certainly has grown both numerically and in maturity. And I hope it continues to do that. So I know it's in good hands with Chris. Yeah, I think no concerns on the on the growth front. We are recording this on April 16th. So we're just days removed from probably one of the largest site traffic days in history. We published an article related to anti-access for the Ukrainians on the same day that the Moscow sank. And the article written by Jason Lancaster, who's also a Navy surface worker officer, was quoted extensively by CNN. Site traffic just kind of exploded from there. So I don't think that's going to do anything to hurt the website's notoriety, seems like the wrong term, because it might have a

negative connotation. Sort of the website's visibility, I guess, is a good way to put it. So you also mentioned a couple of things that I wanted to highlight. So Dimitri that you referred to, Dimitri Filipov, he's our director of online content. I'm actually going to interview him for this series, hopefully next weekend for the next part of that. As Dimitri has been sort of a key cog and one of the real through lines for the organization, if you sort of go back to its founding. And then there was one other thing you mentioned, the people having to step down for their professional obligations for an organization that's largely staffed by naval officers. And I'm like, Chris, I know the UK chapter, and we can talk about that a little bit. You're set up a little differently. I think you have a few more academics sort of in the quote unquote top tier of the UK chapter. but on the on the U.S. side is a lot of naval officers and there's a very sort of logical ebb and flow as folks float in and out of shore duty and sea duty rotations the the second they

hit that sea duty folks have to step away from simsec and the next round of people who are coming on shore duty have to step in but Chris you mentioned you started with simsec back in 2013 so how did you hear about the organization and what sort of inspired you to to get involved well it was more or less through chance really while i was uh researching i i just came i was on linkedin one evening and i just came across uh simsec and sort of um matt hippel and all that sort of thing and still became very very impressed with with what was being done and just reached out and said look i'd really like to get involved and i had a fantastic email from scott and he's you know we loved having you on board fantastic and then we sort of talking started talking about chapters

and things and I said well you know I understand we haven't got a chapter here but I'd very much like to to set one up and that's kind of how it sort of it went from there and kind of I also did a bit of associate editing with with Matt which was very interesting um and it was just it was just as I say it sort of it just went from there I met some very good friends of mine I mean I remember one of the early conversations i had with matt was like you must know alexander clark one of our bilge pump publishers and he was like yes of course the uk i know the uk is small but we don't all know each other but um but that was that was great and alec and i alex and i are now great friends uh really good friends and we've done we've done various things together and there

are um podcasts in in the archive but i would probably leave those where they are i think for the time but yeah it was it was very good and it's just been good to get that UK what I wanted to do is get that UK perspective into the group bring in a bit of more of what we what we do over here because as you say you know a lot of it's US Navy officers which is great absolutely fantastic but I think bringing in an UK perspective and getting some more academics involved can only be for the good and I just want to throughout my sort of presidency I want to continue that and sort of build on what we've done already in that field well let's talk about the uk chapter then is that uk chapter of simsec as i mentioned before is really vibrant i i don't

think i'm overstaying it to say it's our our most active chapter uh what do you attribute that um i think we've got a lot of really good people within the organization within the chapter we've some fantastic academics and we've got a lot of serving and retired navy personnel who can get get very involved to reach out to me on a fairly regular basis but i think one of the the key drivers i probably attribute to the bilge pumps because i know what they've done recently um has really um attracted members to the chapter and and to the organization alcohol they've produced some excellent podcasts and discussions and things like that and i think that's been been really good We've also had a few sort of meetings over here. We set up a few sort of get togethers occasionally, which has been which has been good.

But as I say, yeah, it's just I also think one thing that maybe is occasionally overlooked is that the UK chapter is nationwide. Some of the other chapters are like the Washington chapter in Florida are kind of more sort of city focused. Whereas ours is spread from me here in Plymouth up to Scotland and beyond. So we are quite a wide-ranging and diverse bunch. Well, Jimmy, I'll come back to you for the next question. What made you decide to run for the SimSec president's position? I guess I just really enjoyed the volunteering experience I had as the vice president. And the opportunity kind of fell on my lap, as I said earlier.

Daniel Stephanis was the outgoing president. And when he stepped down, I just filled it to sort of he asked me to and I said yes. And so that was a natural transition. And I enjoyed leading an organization of volunteers that all kind of had a similar interest in what we were trying to do in the quote unquote fostering the conversation on securing the seas. And we were able to do some interesting things, and we started the Project Trident, and we did that over the course of a year plus to partner with leading maritime organizations around the world. And, you know, we defined the topics that we would address ourselves, tried to cover a broad range of maritime security topics from a global perspective and not just the naval perspective. And, you know, we really I think we just enjoyed working on that project. And I think it was it was a good it was it put us in a good direction as an organization. You know, one of the things that I really focused on was, as Chris mentioned, you know, trying to get a more international perspective, because after all, we are the Center for International Maritime Security.

And we started and, you know, you mentioned this, Jared, you know, we started as very U.S. Navy centric perspective because of the people that were starting up the website and the group. And but we've we've we've grown over the years. And I really wanted to emphasize that that was one of the key things I tried to focus on was getting a a both an international perspective and a non naval perspective, because there's so much more to maritime security than the Navy and and certainly more than the U.S. Navy. So we not just Project Trident, but all of the things that we chose to publish and the kinds of things that we focused on and where we encourage chapters to grow. All of these things were aimed toward that focus of bringing a diverse point of view. To us, that starts with getting out to countries all around the world and hearing what they had to say about it. One of my fundamental premises was that we don't have the best idea. we we have to we have to go find it we have to ask for it and uh so and and i saw that time and time again with the uh the kind of um uh papers and articles that we would get and you know just

it was that that part to me was very fun to to see those perspectives and things that i would have never thought of so i in that respect i just really enjoyed it and um i'm glad to be a part of it and uh yeah it's uh you know i can say i definitely have learned a lot well you mentioned the leadership piece sort of earlier in your answer there i want to ask you for your perspective on that because one of the most interesting aspects of volunteering for sunset for me has been exactly what you said leading a team of volunteers and you and i in our day-to-day life at work work and exist in an organization that's sort of rigidly hierarchical backed by literally these centuries of tradition and regulation it's a very different thing to come over to a group of

volunteers who are basically you know at will whether whether they're going to participate or not and how did you find the the leadership experience of working with that group yeah I it was very uh educational for me I learned a ton about myself and about leadership and in working for SimSec. You know, I joke sometimes, I'm sure you've heard me say this, but my job at SimSec comes down to two things. Say yes to everything and get people to answer their email. And that is sort of tongue in cheek, but it's very, it rings true. And the thing is, you can apply that to almost anything. Because this is a group of volunteers, not just volunteers, this is a side gig for everybody so they have busy lives family uh social lives of course their their job

or their schooling their education their um you know in academia so all of these things take up most of their time and then on the margins i ask for them to continue working and and doing some you know things that are enjoyable but still work and and take up time in editing or proofreading or even writing um or just administrating the website uh the back end things like that um so be asking that is asking a lot and and so i i just learned a lot about how to uh use a kind of i guess i i've called it like a soft leadership um and and knowing that i cannot hold anybody really accountable so to speak in in in the way that you and i are used hearing it um uh yeah i just uh i have to get i have to work with people to accomplish what what

we know we need to accomplish but at the end of the day it's all about whether they're willing to to do that and so it's uh that's the part that that willingness that energy is what i looked for and renew volunteers and what i tried to foster and the volunteers that we had and for myself as well, because, uh, especially towards the latter end of my presidency, the time that I could devote to SimSec started to, uh, get smaller and smaller. And so, um, I just, uh, you know, we all, we all struggle with that. And SimSec was very enlightening for me and something that I, now I realize that I can apply that to, to almost any aspect of leadership. So a final question for you, and then I'm going to transition over to asking Chris a couple of questions. Um, you, you kind

to mention some of the projects that we addressed over the course of your presidency, but what were you most proud of when you look back on your time? Well, you know, it's funny you ask because you're going to think I'm pandering, bringing you on board. I think that was the best decision I ever made. And it was, you know, you kind of fell in my lap. I won't take credit for it. other than to say I had the common sense not to say no. That was entirely accidental. Yeah. So it goes back to say yes to everything.

Yeah. I think that now the sea control has become, you know, if not the most, one of the most vibrant parts of SimSec. And, you know, Dimitri continues to, he is the engine behind SimSec, and he'll continue, I hope, knock on wood, We'll continue to turn out the articles on the website and that continues to be great. And then bringing you on board and then you have you bringing your team on board. It just sort of grew organically. And that was fun to watch, you know, things like Project Trident.

You know, I guess that was something that I focused on and wanted to make sure that we saw it through. So we did, for the most part, we didn't quite get to where we originally sought out to get to. But I think it's okay. It's another thing that I got used to in voluntary organizations like SimSec is that things don't always turn out quite the way you wanted to. And you just kind of, you have to let them evolve a little naturally. So I think it was broadly a success. But, you know, in terms of where SimSec is going in the future, we could see more of that for sure, I hope. But sea control to me is the thing that I think will help SimSec sort of grow and chart its own path in the future.

Whatever SimSec is going to go the way of sea control, I think. And that's just how I see the future of it. But I don't know. We'll see. Well, let me ask you a follow up on Project Trident, because one of the reasons we're doing these podcasts, And then I just want to thank Claude Bearby for the idea is not just to quote unquote celebrate what it is the site has done over the course of the last 10 years, but also to create an archive a little bit of what the organization has accomplished that not only that online archive, but sort of telling some sex story, if you will. Can you tell us a little bit more about the genesis of Project Trident and what you were trying to accomplish? Because that, to me, was sort of the hallmark of your presence here is like creating this, this set of topic weeks and this massive catalog of writing about different topics that concern, frankly, all aspects of the maritime domain, whether it's the commercial side, the military side, everything in between. yeah so it originally started with we had early on my presidency we had discussions on how we could grow and we wanted to engage um partners in industry and i spoke to some of those partners

that we we talked about maybe reaching out to and they asked for something tangible they said well we get what simsec is but can you can you give me something that i can show to my bosses or my peers and i can help to explain the story of simsec and we thought well we've got the website we've got some things that we've done in the past but we really don't have something we can just hand you so we thought well what if we had something that really represented what simsec is doing today and that that kind of was the the seed for um the idea of project trident was to have a compendium where we could just either digitally or physically hand a copy of this and say you know here's what it looks like here's what we're trying to there's here's the discussion

that we're trying to foster and so then from from that we said okay well what is this compendium going to look like because we all have different ideas of what maritime security is especially today and it's evolving fairly rapidly in my opinion if you look at what's not even just current events but even just the past five years um and even in the course of the time that we were doing project trident so i thought how can we capture that and then we wanted to key in on um some of the things that we think define simsec and i've mentioned a couple of those so The international aspect, the non-naval aspect, so the industry, environmental, governance, different aspects of maritime security that have less to do with navies around the world. So that's another.

And then the third one that we at SimSec have always, I think, prided ourselves on is showcasing new authors. We love to have somebody publish with us for the first time. Of course, we also have very established authors published with us, but we wanted to include authors that were up and coming and new voices. And we think that contributed to the diversity of the conversation. So all those helped us as a staff define what topics we would include. And they ultimately became the, I think, seven is where we ended up. It fluctuated over the course of the project. We added, we took out, kind of just felt out where our partners wanted to go with it because the key aspect was each topic was brought to, was sort of not sponsored. There was no money involved, but presented by a partner organization.

So each partner got to define the topic a little bit and that helped to evolve the project. I think all of our partners were very happy with the project and where it stands now is it's the articles have all been published. And so it's all available on our website. We would love to get to a point where we could have a nice polished screen product, but we'll see maybe project Trident 2.0, you know, when we, because we can always do it again. And I would love to see that happen, or it could be something that, you know,

even if it's totally different, maybe 2.0 looks completely different. And maybe that's something that continues in the future and then it'll grow from there. So we'll see. We hit two topics that are perfect transition over to you, Chris. You mentioned a growing international focus and you are our first non-U.S. president, Chris, as well as sort of plans for the future. So, Chris, I'm going to ask you first, you know, what what sort of inspired you to run for the presidency of SimSec? And then we'll transition to talking about some of your plans. But, yeah, first, what what sort of inspired you to to put yourself forward as a candidate for the presidency?

I think one of the main things was just working with Jimmy. I worked with Jimmy for the last couple of years since he joined. And his passion for the organisation is really palpable. And I just want you know, when I heard that he was sort of stepping down, I thought this is a great opportunity to take. for me take things from the next step to being the uk president to the organization president and just wanting to build on on what he's done i was also a board member for a number of years as well and i just i thought again you know take for me it was almost like a natural progression it definitely fed into a lot of the academic stuff that i've been doing um i appreciate that i'm i'm

i'm not i'm not navy but i do have a very keen um interest in maritime security maritime history um and yeah just wanted to sort of use the the platform that we've got and try and expand it and push it out and um just yeah just carry on with the great initiatives that have already been been started and and do a lot more going forward can i ask what the uh what the focus of your phd is i know you're getting very close to finishing i look forward to being able to uh to call you doctor and you know give you the virtual high five uh because i know it's a hell of a process to get all the way through that but yeah what's the focus of your research and then how has simsec helped broaden your sort of professional network uh if that has helped in any way with your research

simsec has been integral to what i've been doing for the good last last number of years when i when i met alexander clark i hadn't considered i'll be honest applying for king's college london alexander said you know you definitely should and i did and i was i was successful following engagement with simsec my research developed um i started off looking at sort of british naval operations but that developed into a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief focus looking at u.s operations and how the u.s navy is involved in that the process the history and the interaction with civilian aid agencies and and that's where it is today that's my that's my primary focus but whilst i was doing that i was very fortunate to um come across documents

during the hadr week that we did um and i reached out to um to david palatti a professor and captain in the press at the u.s navy war college and a captain in the u.s reserve uh dave has been fantastic he's got me into projects with brown university um i'm involved doing climate change with that um and dave and i talk talk fairly regularly but i you know without the simset platform without coming across those articles the chances of that happening would probably be you know fairly rare i would think but no dave was like oh you're in simset that's great come on you know when we just again it's just sort of gone from there so it's been for me it's been a really important part of the journey and yeah i'm very grateful for all then a final question for you

and then we'll we'll have to say our goodbyes but what are what are your plans for your presidency for the next two years it's a really good question um and i've been giving a lot of thought recently and i mean for the time being i want to i want to build on and trying my best to live up to to jimmy's legacy to get more more authors uh on on the site make it a platform for new voices to to continue the great discussion that we've got um to do more topic weeks to also think about the non-war fighting elements as it feeds into my stuff the humanitarian side of things but also keeping the the the kinetic side going as well which is obviously very very important um expanding the chapters is also another another key area that i'm very keen to do as i said you

know one of the things i sort of ran on was my putting the putting the eye into simsec and i think again jimmy's done a great job of that but expanding that and one of the things i've sort of been toying with and i had a discussion with jimmy a while ago is i think if the organization is to continue doing the great work that it's doing i think maybe looking at some some possibly some revenue stream ideas going forward so we can actually just get beyond what we've got and go further because i think simsec is a fantastic platform and i think it really i really want to expand it and to build on the absolutely great work that's been done since its inception we've already seen two kind of developments um since you came in i i think these were probably underway

and straddled the two presidencies a little bit one was uh the flotilla so simsex sort of warfighting organization focused on tactics and the second was starting a a war gaming discord i mean how are you one of the key enablers for both of those is the development of new technology and we're having this conversation via Zoom, I think there's a lot of things that are possible now that were probably not possible five years ago for the organization, just because of technology that's available. How excited are you about the continued development of initiatives, whether it's those initiatives specifically, or anything else that's rattling around in the back of your head as we see more technological improvements that can sort of knit some of

these disparate entities together. Absolutely. I think, as you say, what's been happening over the last couple of years has been fantastic. I think things are really moving forward. And I think it's going to be very interesting to see that going forward in the next few years, the next few decades, to see what developments are having.

And I'm sure some of the Simset writers and some of their ideas will help influence that. I have no doubt. So, yeah, I'm very excited. Well, gentlemen, that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Chris Stockdale and Jimmy Drennan, Chris, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? The main thing I'm working on at the moment is a white paper on climate change with the Watson Institute at Brown University.

That's my main thing. And I am on Twitter. But if anyone needs to contact me, please do so through LinkedIn or through the president's email. Thanks, Chris. And Jimmy, I assume you're living the sort of classic life of the former SimSec president, doing a number of lucrative speaking engagements, you know, working two days a week, but what do you have going on and what's your next project? Where can we find you? If you know anything about the lucrative speaking engagements, please let me know. No, I am stepping from the public arena and focusing on my day job. I'm nearing retirement from active duty. So that's going to be my main focus you can find me on twitter but i don't post often and i am taking an article that i wrote

recently for simsec on how america's maritime interests have grown beyond the capabilities of the u.s navy and i'm trying to i'm in discussions to to have that as part of a a book a a research journal. So hopefully we'll see that in print eventually and I'll be sure to send SimSec the link to it. But yeah, thanks again for everything. This has been a great conversation and I appreciate you put together, Jared. Absolutely. And you can expect me, no need to send the link. I'm sure I will be reaching out to you as soon as you see that. I assume that's related to the article that you wrote about the need for a national maritime department. And I'm very intrigued to see what that project turns into because I think there's those who do this and with as much time as I've

spent talking to different people in the maritime domain yes there's a crying need for something like that but thank you both for joining us to listeners thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time Help me, Bob-I, put it in the alley. Way, hey, put it in the alley. Help me, Bob-I, put it in the alley. Put it on the shimbo now. A porter of a porter gin, oh.

Way, hey, put it in the alley. A porter of wine, both white and red, oh. Put it on the shimbo now. So help me, Bob-I, put it in the alley. © transcript Emily Beynon