Sea Control - Sea Control 486 - Force Writers Room with Captain Ric Arthur and Dava Casoni

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Link: Force Writers Room

Hey folks, it's Jared. In a rare instance of correctly synchronizing our website content with a podcast, we're wrapping up SimSec's Fiction Week offerings with this interview with Captain Rick Arthur and David Cassoni, two members of the Force Writers' Room. What is that? Well, listen and find out. It's one of the cooler initiatives out there. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication.

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 pile of our brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, Hashimates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guests today are Navy Captain Rick Arthur and David Cassoni, two members of the Force Riders Room. So, Captain Arthur, would you mind starting off by telling us a little bit more about

yourself, please? Jared, well, first of all, thanks so much for having us here. I'm an L.A. native, went to the Naval Academy, was a surface warfare officer, spent a lot of time out in Western Pacific, stationed in Japan on a couple of amphibs. I was a Navy recruiter in the Bay Area, which I think we shared that experience. And then I was a UN peacekeeper in Africa before I left active duty and went to the reserves. Reserves have been a really good part of my life. I was able to support PAC Fleet in five. I've also commanded the reserve component for amphibious construction battalion one in san diego and then i was a military director for

knock wd before um starting the writer's room i went to the naval academy probably because i wanted to be joseph conrad and uh you know one way or another uh it's been a really interesting journey from writing for several tv shows like ncis the last ship um to producing movies and now finally bringing it all together with the Force Riders room, which unites both of my worlds. Well, thank you for joining us. David, could you share a little bit more about your background? Absolutely. Thanks, Jared. So, well, similarly to Captain Arthur, I have a mixed background. I'm a lawyer by training. I spent, gosh, over a decade with some of the best firms in the globe really bingham dana millbank pillsbury um fresh out of law school i clerked on the court

of federal claims they handle cases against the u.s government and military related cases um but i went to undergrad actually on an army rotc scholarship so i am an army reserve i was commissioned as an army officer in the transportation corps uh but i knew i wanted to go into law school so i went into the reserves and while i was at law school at cornell i actually taught military law to complete some of my reserve duty. And then I went on, I was in Boston and DC working in law firms. But I've always had a passion around the entertainment industry, producing, acting. So while I was practicing, I started to work pro bono for various groups and also taught entertainment law at American University. But you know, it may or may not

come as a surprise, but transportation and logistics and actually the legal world have a lot of crossover with the skills that you need for producing. So when I came out to LA, it was kind of a natural fit for me to land at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. They needed a lawyer, and the reason why they were established is to be a bridge between the DOD and Hollywood. So my background as a lawyer with the Army and also a Screen Actors Guild member was really just the perfect trifecta for them and also was the perfect fit for me to be the force writers room executive producer and and i would say that like one thing about how we know each other is like all good hollywood uh friendships they started on a boat um uh we had a good friend who

um would would take his uh sailboat his catamaran out uh every sunday out of marina del rey and he He was a TV writer and a former politico from Washington, D.C., and so he would always bring a real eclectic group out there. And Dave and I met back in probably 2005 or 2006, and it's just been a great friendship that we continue to this day. Thank you both for joining us today. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions expressed today are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated.

So I don't know who wants to start answering these questions, but what is the Force Writers Room and what problem was it created to address? Well, I'll go ahead and kick it off. So the Force Writers Room is a collective of TV writers, producers, directors, warfighters, designers, theme park designers, academics, analysts. And what we try to do is to use techniques of TV writers' rooms in order to help distill the experiences and the relationships of emerging technologies and geopolitical situations and how everything will sort of fit together in the future so that we can develop the empathy for the future warfighter. David, did I capture it correctly? I mean, that's definitely what it is. And I think what's really so critical to it is the team that we bring together, which is this really interesting, eclectic, very talented and very accomplished group, each in their own right, but each from a diverse perspective. So they're able to look at a problem through a different, very creative and very experienced lens. As a result, they have different takeaways. They bring different insights to the table. So it's a very interesting process, an interesting group. But it actually began as the Fleet Writers Room. And Rick, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that, where it actually, how you came up with that phrase and how it started, I think out at NOCWD. Sure. Yeah. Yep. So I was a military director for NOCWD up in China Lake and Point Magoo.

I'm sorry, Rick. Can you just explain that acronym real quick? Sure. NOCWD is Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division. And it's, you know, I'm a surface warfare officer by trade. But luckily, I was able to help contribute to the naval aviation groups at Magoo and China Lake. So that was, that was, I guess, back in 2018. I joined them for a few years, I came back onto active duty. And I was working with some AI teams, and working closely with the technical director. And at one point, the question came up of, you know, when you're when you're investing in R and D and S and T and the systems that aren't going to be come to fruition for 20 years or so, you know,

in some cases for the, for the engineers that are building that and designing that and even for the war fighters, it's hard to really think through how that technology is going to, is going to work and like what, how the warfighter is actually going to be using that, and how it's all going to fit together. And so that was sort of the question that the technology folks at KnockWD were thinking about. And they asked me if I had any thoughts on it. And I've always been a real fan of how a TV

writer's room, how they create worlds, and how they solve problems. And I've always actually thought because i spent some time up in silicon valley that that uh it was always amazing to me that you could take tv writers and that they would ever be unemployed because the skills that they have and the perspective that they can bring and in their native intelligence i felt like they're underutilized and so i mentioned to uh to richard chires at knock wd that you know if it were up to me uh trying to understand uh how these are these systems were going to play out i would put together a writer's room and i would export that uh information that we gained i would memorialize intellectual work through a graphic novel a comic book and uh and we started that i think in 2020

And that, you know, that evolved, you know, through the graphic novel into a movie, Sea Strike 2043, that we made with NOCWD and Navy Information Warfare Center Pacific. Deva, am I missing anything there? Yeah, I think the only thing I would add to that is that in addition to looking at technologies of future and really being able to future-proof their R&D investments, what was very important is driving this empathy um and that's something that i know rick has so much experience with with his background in writing so rick if you want to speak a little bit about that i was kind of given a little carte blanche to start up uh this this group and um so i pulled together you know this

ad hoc group of writers you know producers basically my friends and colleagues from my um from my time working on tv shows or or producing movies and then um also the best warfighters i could possibly find you know we had um uh the former co the zoom wall the uh you know folks from top gun um we had you know analysts from uh ran corporation and we just ended up with this really fabulous amazing group and it was almost like a miracle and uh you know it's it's been it's been that way uh all the way all the way through just our the ability to get talented people out of the uh los angeles ecosystem is uh is is really um the reason why why we've been successful or one of the one of the key reasons and i think it was that combination that really

enabled us to get to that point of building that empathy for the warfighter because it's so critical if you're as you're designing future technologies to think about the hands they're going to be used in and obviously we as former current military people know that the most likely future military people are going to be our families and to know that our kids are going to be in those roles someday it's so important that when we're designing the tools they're going to use that we think about them standing there and how they're going to use it yeah so so that pulling that team together really helped us to get really think through all the details at that level right and just to go back to the thing that deva said is that you know it

was almost like um for all of us as we were thinking through this future um it was it's really personal because you know in the sense of duty that we feel towards um the end users of The ideas that we come up with, and by we, I mean a community of people thinking about the future and designing systems and building them, not just the writer's room, but it's really a sacred, kind of a sacred duty that we have to make sure that we're being as thorough and as specific and as smart and thoughtful as we can. I mean, so that was, that's really at the core of what we do, I think, is feel that duty and try to be good, try to be true to it. Rick, I'll start with you on this next question is, how does the writer's room process work in general? And then you can take it down to like more specifically, how it works within your group. Every writer's room that is out there, they all run a little bit differently. But what they have in common is they bring a group of, you know, a really hand curated group of smart folks together into a room.

And then they usually spend the first week or so leveling up on just what's the knowledge of this world. So on a show like The Last Ship, you spend a week, the first week just thinking about and getting smart and getting civilians smart on what the Navy is about and what a ship is about and how a ship works. And, and then like, and then in the case of The Last Ship, of course, you spend a lot of time thinking about what, what the world is when you're, you know, in a pandemic and, and, you know, and like, what, how does that change? What's the impact of that world on the individual? So, you know, for us, as we're using these processes in the force riders room, you know, we really think a lot about what's the context for how these systems, these technological systems are that are emerging? Like, what does the workforce look like? What's the sailor of the future look like? And how are they raised? and you know like we spend a lot of our time in the 2040 to 2050 time frame so we think about

um the people who are going to be leading that effort uh and between 2040 and 2050 they're probably just graduating from college right now and so um and so that that gives us like you know we jump off from there and then we also think we start as a basis for how we gather our team together and who we pick by what are the issues that we're trying to explore? You know, in the first case for the movie, Sea Strike, 2043, we were really interested in the human-machine interface between AI and the operator. What does that look like in the future? How do hypersonics play in this?

Advanced electronic warfare, you know, resilient communications, you know, man-to-man teaming um you know all these things are the building blocks and um one of my early mentors in hollywood was this was alan weiss alan weiss wrote all the elvis movies and um he used to tell me that the way he would make those movies is he would start with elvis or the record company giving him eight songs and then his mandate was to really think about those songs and and and to build a story that put each of those songs on a pedestal and on display so what we try to do in the writer's room is think about a technology say it's uh hypersonic uh missiles and we think through what is the dominant design of that uh of that system the dominant design is a history

of technology term so uh you know dominant design of a car would have been four wheels steel chassis internal combustion engine and so we try to think we try to look at a hypersonic missile system the same way like where's the trigger what information network doesn't need to reside in um you know what is the effect offensively and defensively of that and then out of that we build use cases and then we set those use cases into a story with characters that are human and can carry sort of carry the story in the same way you know that um you know in hollywood you think about you know if you want to tell a story about um you know uh sacrifice and world war ii like who's your who's the best protagonist you know who does tom hanks play he plays i think he was a school teacher in civilian

life. And, you know, that's kind of how we build the stories. And then, you know, as we work through the stories and the technology, we always have a great concept artist with us. We look at it from a perspective of story, you know, not just the way we do movies and TV shows, but also the way theme park designers think about rides and think about building attractions um and then we also think about it from the perspective of uh the range of possibility in geo strategic kind of political question um we interrogate it in all these ways uh and then uh i mean it's a long process but we we get it to you know a treatment we when we start building storyboards and then it depends what it depends what the end product is but uh you know then we engage the best

crews in the world to to make an amazing product so you'd you'd mentioned the uh the theme park designers before and i had made a note david if you don't mind if you could tell me like a little bit of what about the theme park designers what they're contributing to this process yeah absolutely um so in the case of the force writers room we work with a wonderful team of former imagineers um one group in particular we work with is over at inside aoa um paul bailey is one of their leads over there and something that paul likes to speak about is the importance of the backstory that those imagineers and the theme park designers build into every attraction they create because what we see as an audience we might see the outside um paul was involved in

bringing to fruition rise of the resistance and of course we have this incredible magical experience being there but what we don't understand is that every little detail that's involved in that was incredibly thought through the backstory of it that it would tie in properly there are stories we will never hear or know but it's because of those stories and the time that we spent thinking of that level of detail, that it's congruent and compelling for us. We're brought into that story because of all the thought that went in the background. I think it's something that can't be underestimated. A lot of people want to quickly get to a product, especially in today's age, everything happens at the speed of light. And there's so this process, although we can do it

relatively quickly, it is critical that we spend the time and not cut the corners. We've got a few secret weapons, I would say, Rick, in our team who are so incredibly good at thinking of the details. Yeah, Jared, I just wanted to say something about the secret weapons that we had on Force Riders Room, and they were the people. And guys like Captain Brian Evans, who's IW coordinator for a strike group, just amazing resource. Lance Pink Floyd from Top Gun Guy

Andy Corzine Richard Chires from Knock WD, Chris Rainey Jeff Clarkson, Lee Zimmerman Jeff Fuller from Nywick Pack Rand Corporation helped ICT helped, we had amazing concept artist John Annette

some amazing writers from entertainment industry, from TV Carlton Eastlake, Andy Kierkegaard you know director david rosenbaum the the folks at soapbox who helped us produce the movie we we shot um 2043 on the abraham lincoln um you know norman elias and spock from skunk works had amazing ideas um jason reed and then of course you know jace hansen who just came off of top gun

to. And Iron Man, he helped us finish up our designs on things. So just amazing group of people from top to bottom. The reason the movie Seastrike 2043 has become sort of a touchstone that it is right now with the CNO's office and with the SECNAV is the incredible attention to detail that is in that movie. And I hope that you get a chance to see it one of these days, Jared. No, I look forward to it. If we can find it anywhere, we'll definitely link to it so other folks can find it. I did want to ask, because you had brought up the last ship earlier, and I had forgotten kind of like the Central Conceited Act because I get lost in like, you know, you and I emailed about sort of that first episode the first time because I remember all my friends talking to me was like, it's like a TAO's dream. which is like the taos like the tactical action officer who's actually like fighting the destroyer as as the things happen like this is going on on a daily basis in the red sea right

now but uh there's very good scenes like you've got sea whiz going off here you have the five inch gun and like a very close-up shot just like cranking out rounds that's great i had forgotten the whole pandemic backstory too and it's like having just you know been in the navy living through a pandemic and you also being in the Navy, living through a pandemic in the Navy, Rick, like how close do you think you got it on some of the atmospheric stuff that was in the last ship when you reflect on it? I think that, you know, I've been, I'm not sure. I would actually push that question back at you. How do you think we did? You were, you've been, you were on a ship during that period i believe i was not on a ship during that period but i was a training command and like

we saw sort of what things were like on the ships and you would go on board and like everyone is masked up and you're still like in these extremely tight quarters with one another there's no real like escape from humanity in a space that size particularly if you're executing a training event and you have both not like not only the crew but then you have a second set of crew who are serving as sort of like the evaluators of the people performing the actions and then a set of trainers right behind them evaluating like the people who are doing the shipboard training uh so you there is kind of like no escape and there's just this like low-lying tension because of uh like all the things that we did not know about the disease at that point so you know who i would like to ask

that question to is brett kersher captain of the of the tr because he that was struck me as like really at the epicenter of all these questions you know and nobody really knew what was going on at that point and uh it was you know extra extra scary at that um at that juncture uh but but you know i think that one of the things that uh i i thought that in the first season we did oh there was lots of great Navy action. If I was in charge of that show, I think I would have kept it more focused on the ship and have the ship visiting different ports around the world to see how each of these communities rebuilt their civilization after the pandemic came through. So almost like a Star Trek went to different planets and universes. I think there was an opportunity

to do something like that with with the show i i kind of wish we had gone that way yeah star truck is exactly where my mind went when you brought that up as court sorry the uh the boarding party beams down onto the planet to see what's going on it's very much uh very much that approach to it um david i'm going to come back to you here how how does the forest writers room get its assignments you know uh a lot of it lately has been word of mouth um i think because we have because of the type of the nature of the work that we do it can't get the same mainstream distribution that a hollywood movie would get um but in in the in the navy worlds where it is incredibly impactful it is having a lot of eyes a lot of attention so rick mentioned and recommended

that you see the movie to see the full movie that two places where you can see it are at nywick pack in in san diego or up at knock wd in china lake and probably eventually in point magoo um but there's been so much word of mouth and i'll let rick tell a little bit more about some of the other places that's been shown and used incredibly um in a way that's very powerful for the navy but because of that others hear about the work we're doing um the two of us have deep relationships both in hollywood and in the dod and so although it started out with doing as rick mentioned graphic novels, it then expanded into, as people saw some of the concept art and the level of detail that we were putting into the process to think about these graphic novels, we then started

working with OpNav N7 on concept art for forced design 2045, and SecDev's office was learning about the type of work we were doing and capable of doing, and so it was a natural fit for them to add in some graphic novel-type approach to some of their looking at the future. and where both the threat may go, our response to the threat may go, the impact on the homeland may go. So it's been a lot of word of mouth, a lot of us talking to people about the capability. People obviously understand what Hollywood does, and they have a sense of what the DOD does. And I think it's hard for people to understand how they marry together in a way that is not sci-fi, right? You can go pure sci-fi. And certainly, future technology is informed by sci-fi. We've all seen cases where that happens. It comes straight out of sci-fi. But for us, as Rick mentioned, it is really critical that we stay grounded in reality, that we stay in the known and then expand from that into the future.

um so there are so many applications for the type of work that we're doing that we really it's it's as people hear about what we're doing and they see the quality of what we're delivering and then see how it resonates with people um we've been getting quite a lot of inquiries to be honest um we've been talking with groups like uh nps um battleship iowa stratcom navy medicine and Army Futures, of course, you know, Army and Navy, the Army's heard now how much the Navy's done with us. And USCICT is actually an Army-sponsored UARC. I don't know if you're familiar with the term UARC, but UARC is a university-affiliated research center. There's only 15 of them across the country, and each one is only allowed, we have to have unique core

competencies. And so we're selected for areas in which we excel and which feed essential capabilities of the DOD. So once you're sponsored by a branch, then any of the DOD can work with the UARC. But ICT was stood up because of a National Academy study that showed that the DOD could benefit from Hollywood and from building that collaboration. Rick talked a lot about the incredible team we worked with on mostly on the military side, but we have equally incredible contribution at a high level from the Hollywood side. And the movie and graphic novel could not have happened without people like Jason Reed, for example, David Rosenbaum, Rick, there's so many others, I'm sure, that were just critical to this process. Soapbox Films. So between all those

different communities and their word of mouth and us getting out there and talking to people like you, that's really how the assignments come in. That's how they get to us. Now, then, of course, we go through all the contracting process. But USCICT is a sole source contracting vehicle for the DOD. So that makes it really easy for any DOD entities to work with us and to have this amazing access to literally the best of the best in Hollywood. So now as world events unfold, you know, I brought up the Red Sea earlier and what's going on over there. What freedom do you have to sort of pitch uh people on ideas like potential partners on ideas do you mean by that like pitching in los angeles like entertainment people or do you mean pitching back no i mean pitching

back to like dod entities be like hey have you guys we have been discussing internally amongst ourselves here what is going on in this region of the world we think we have an interesting idea that we would like to, you know, talk to you about DOD org who may sponsor you. So, so it is really interesting that you mentioned that, um, I I've spoken to like the head of war games for DOD or I'm sorry, the head of war plans for DOD and, and others. And, uh, we talked about how useful, um, the process is to clarifying, um, a situation. And, um, and we've talked about how it could be used by folks who are developing the O-plans and by folks at the, you know, at the PACOM, Indo-PACOM kind of level where they can think about strategic relationships

and how that can go. So far, you know, it usually comes to us. But, you know, I just, I do think that there's still a lot of value that we haven't even explored yet um uh you know where we can help leaders and decision makers gain clarity on how a certain kind of event or a certain kind of relationship or strategy will play out and i'm hoping that we that we get into that um just as i'm hoping to you know keep building out this navy universe dod verse uh you know in the same way as as like you know marvel does i think that we're trying to build that out. We think it'll be useful to have a library of memorialized

intellectual work for a lot of these cases. And I think something I would add is that as we look at where the future of our overall DOD and force is going, there's obviously constant talk about joint approaches, joint forces, but still in preparation for that, there's a lot of siloed R&D, siloed training, siloed development. What that translates to is siloed budgets. And so although we're speaking to so many people and people are coming to us and are interested in it, where we see a challenge is in breaking down whose budget is going to control what, who has access to the budget that can cover that topic area. Those are things that we're starting to just work out. And that's figuring out how we get to bring all the right people to the table. But something that

we have pitched, if you will, where we see a natural fit. And I also, you know, we recently were speaking with the Undersecretary of the Army, and Rick spoke in with Secretary of the Navy. But there's a natural draw to solve the problem of recruiting. So we talked about how this started in the graphic novel space. Graphic novels are increasing exponentially in their readership, particularly in the target market that is right in the sweet spot of recruiting. and probably most of your listeners know that we're having a challenge with recruiting. We've been talking a lot to both Army and Navy about what we can do around recruiting, marketing, and, you know, drawing characters that resonate, that are truthful, and that

are grounded in where we see careers in the military future going based on the technology of the future. Then drawing those heroes to us by building these characters and stories that everyone wants they want to live in those stories they want to be those heroes well unfortunately that's all that we have time for today i'd like to thank my guests rick arthur and david cassoni uh david where can we find you online and what are you working on next uh sure so um a lot of our force writers rooms project are unfortunately you know by their nature limited in what we can share about them but um if you follow uscict on social media that's university of southern california institute

for creative technologies you can find the handles for that at ict.usc.edu so our updates are included by their social um of course i'm on linkedin and really the best way to reach either rick or i both of us at once is through our force writers room email address which is fwr at ict.usc.edu you and and i and i'm easy to find on linkedin or global richard arthur jared i really appreciate you having us uh having this uh with you it's been a pleasure talking to you absolutely thanks rick do you want to talk for a second about what you're uh working on with battleship iowa oh yeah so so we've been working a little bit with um uh retired admiral mike shatinsky who is chairman of the battleship iowa museum and uh very excited that uh it's going to become the

surface navy um the official surface navy museum i believe uh that's going to kick off at the uh third or fourth quarter of 2025 in which it will actually be be launched and there's just really amazing plans for that. I think LA is a great city because of the, you know, how big the ports are and how important freedom of the seas is to LA and the economy. And we're really excited to possibly be doing a movie with Battleship Iowa about the importance of the surface Navy. And one thing I would add to that, you mentioned the importance of LA and something else that we've been talking a lot about is um la as a strategic city and rick that's your baby so if you want to talk a bit about strategic city and how important la is oh yeah here jared uh this is

the interview that will never end apparently no no this is okay so like la is center of gravity it's like you don't have to sell me as a as a u.s secret so you know go yeah like look we have gone way over time here it's like i don't care this is awesome so like don't don't worry about it sure thing well so i'm a i'm a huge um advocate for la in that i think it's a it's this untapped it's a partially untapped resource an underappreciated resource everybody thinks about it just as like oh hollywood and entertainment um but you know really you in in la um i believe that's it's akin to like detroit was in world war ii where you think about it as like a center of gravity um just you know the the fact that la is the world's cultural center uh entertainment center

um the the talent that's here the fact that aerospace is here academia there's um there's just it's a very very diverse economy and uh you know huge port and um when you talk about soft power extending out into the world and telling a world narrative la is is really uh there's there's no place like it on earth and so and so so ashley dave why don't you talk about well we're actually going to expand on that by creating a program called uh strategic city los angeles and david you want to explain a little bit about that sure i mean just as rick said um la has this incredible center of soft power across many important industries. But much like the military, it's very siloed. We're both physically siloed. We all get in our own cars and we drive from our one

bubble to our other bubble and siloed in terms of our areas of expertise and interest. But what we think is really important is to bring those groups together in the same way we're doing for the DOD with Forest Writers Room. And we're planning to launch a series of events, activities, salons, panels, and eventually workshops where we are bringing together these different groups around topics that really cross all of them, but they might all be looking at them in a different way, but if we bring them together in the same way we do for Forrest Reiter's Room and allow a bigger conversation around those issues, we think we can help to consolidate that power in a way that will be incredibly important and strategic for national security

and for maintaining our country's edge as a technology leader. Really, you're trying to create the environment that you had on that sailboat where you two first met, where it's just this very eclectic group of people all coming together. That's how you bring it back, like bring it right back to the beginning. I appreciate both of you coming on today and spending some time with us. For the listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time. I walked up to the barroom counter. Way, way, bully in the alley.

There I met with three C.I.D. Bully got the shimbo now. So help me, boy, I'm bully in the alley. Way, way, bully in the alley. Help me, boy, I'm bully in the alley. Bully got the shimbo now. I bought a robe and I bought a gin Oh, where have they put it in the alley?

I bought a wine, both white and red Oh, put it on the shimbo now So help me, oh, I'm putting it in the alley Where have they put it in the alley? Help me, oh, I'm putting it in the alley Put it on the shimbo now Thank you.