Sea Control - Sea Control: 593 Information and Warfighting with General Robert Neller

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Links1. "For 250 years, it’s been ‘change or lose’ for our military. Here’s what needs changing now," by Robert Neller and Peter Singer, Defense One, June 22, 2025.2. "Change or Lose: Past and Future War Lessons on 250th Birthday of the US Army and US Marine Corps," by Robert Neller and Peter Singer, Youtube, November 10, 2025.3. "Thinking First, Adapting Fast: Debating the Marine Corps’ Need for the Information Group," by Brian Kerg, War on the Rocks, November 7, 2025.4. "Kill It or Fix It: Why Marine Corps Information Warfare Has Failed After a Decade of MIGs," by Dan Burns, Information Professionals Association, August 20, 2025.5. "Killing the MIG is the Last Thing We Should Do," by Colonel Ray Gerber, USMC (Ret.), Information Professionals Association, September 7, 2025.6. "Blinding First, Striking Fast: Why the Marine Corps Needs Information Groups," by Ben Jensen and Ian Fletcher, War on the Rocks, October 13, 2025.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Ahoy, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. I'm your host, Brian Kerg, and our guest today is General Robert Neller, the 37th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. Today, we'll be discussing the role of information in warfighting. And as a reminder, all views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the department of defense or any other organization with which you are affiliated general welcome aboard sea control can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional background well just like you and i were talking before you went live i drove the marine corps in 1975 right after the withdrawal from vietnam by

american forces went to the basic school there was no ioc was a given the infantry mos and spent my first year in 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, and 3rd Marine Division at Camp Hanson. It was the beginning of the all-volunteer force, and I'll be very frank. We were not very good. Our gear was old. We didn't have a lot of funding. People were kind of tired of the military. Vietnam had been very, very, very divisive in our nation. Everybody was just kind of tired. But I needed a job, and the Marine Corps offered me a commission, and I took it. And I got married and spent my first year in 3-4. Met a lot of great Marines.

Met a lot of not very great Marines. And if you remember the story, I have to give everybody a Marine Corps history class. In 1976 at MCRD San Diego, we killed a recruit named McClure. Kind of similar to what we did in Parris Island in, I want to say, 2015, 2016, when a recruit named Siddiqui ended up running out of his barracks and killed himself. So General Wilson had just become the commandant, and he was committed to improving the quality of the Marine Corps. So he said that we're going to have two officers at every series, and we're going to improve the supervision, and this isn't going to happen again. and we're going to have 75 high school grads which everybody thought was absolutely unattainable and i remember the quote remember general wilson's a medal of honor recipient from uh

world war ii as a company commander on guam he said i don't care if the only two marines left are me and the sergeant major there's going to be a standard and we're going to be held to it And he fixed it. I mean, he held the standard and it took time. And he was followed by General Barrow, a Navy Cross recipient from the Chosin Reservoir, who actually went to China and was with Mao's army as a lieutenant observer. and he kept it going and ronald reagan became president and we got a lot more money we bought all new gear a lot of the stuff you know not that not those versions but you know we got f-18s we got humvees we got big change in the marine corps because we were convinced the soviet union was the threat and we were going to have to be able to fight against a heavy armor force so all that went on and I ended up sticking around. And, you know, to prove the Marine Corps has a sense of

humor, they continued to promote me. And my last job, I ended up as the 37th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Not my plan, but, you know, when the Secretary of Defense says, General Neller, can you think of any reason why you can't serve as the commandant and in the back of your mind you're like yeah i can think of like 5 000 reasons why you shouldn't pick me but they're all whiny and wimpy and you look at the secretary and you go no mr secretary i cannot think of any real good reason why I could not serve as the commandant. So sometimes you get picked. Well, sir, thank you so very much for setting the stage there. And I really appreciate the insight into how you found yourself in that position. That's an incredible legacy that

you're leaning on as you have this conversation with us today and what led you to the commandancy and many of the reforms that you supervised. And one of those is very germane to a topic that's getting a lot of press right now which is about information and war fighting so information it formally became the seventh war fighting function in an update to joint doctrine issued by the chairman of the joint staffs joint chiefs of staff excuse me in 2017 which was during your tenure as commandant however that change it was the culmination of years of integrating information into war fighting it just happened out of nowhere this was um an apex of other things that were happening so could you please discuss your thoughts on the role of information and war

fighting writ large well the reason we're having this conversation is i saw you and some commentary you made on linkedin and i guess i was i didn't really understand why we're having a conversation about whether or not we should do this i mean information has been part of operational war you know from the time men were beating each other over the head with sticks I mean, Sun Tzu talks about information and spies and deception and all the different things that are all part of warfare. here we are we find ourselves with these venues social media different ways and now augmented by ai to at the blink of an eye transmit an idea or a thought the active duty military has to do has to be has to be attributable and has to be true at least at the end of the day other agencies

don't have to make it attributable or don't have to make it true. And information is just part of our life. And so I think that the means that we had to disseminate information, not just to the force and to the family and to our political leadership, has just become a way of life. We deal with information every day, not just in the operational sense. you know it's interesting i was reading the the stuff you sent me and you know one of my one of you know i think it's still on the common ask for dean lives it was ender's game and ender's game is

partly about ender and the training and the meritocracy and picking the right person but the rest of the book about half the book is about his brother and sister running an information operation that never made it in the movie because it was kind of hard to replicate and wasn't anywhere near as interesting as as ender you know defeating the enemy fleet and saving civilization so i'm not sure what the discussion is about you know you mentioned authorities and all that we can have a discussion about authorities but information i think as a as a an area of operations a lot of along with fires, maneuver, intel, command and control, force protection, and logistics.

You know, absolutely. You know, when you're sitting there and you've got your map or whatever your digital display is, and you've got your matrix with the seven operational warfighting functions on the left side and your timeline across the top, and you're figuring out what you're doing in there is information.

How am I going to message my adversary? How am I going to message our force? What am I going to tell the leadership? Is there a timeline on that? So it was a logical progression. It wasn't just me. I think General Amos actually started the Marine Corps, the information activity out of Quantico. It was a nascent thing, but I think he saw the need for that.

So we ended up, as part of a force structure review, one of the things we looked at was the MEF headquarters. and the discussion was okay how do we who do we use where where are these capabilities resident within the meth and should it be you know back in the day when general gray was coming out we had a thing called the shrig the surveillance reconnaissance information group or intelligence group and then that went away i think it was probably way ahead of its time i don't think I think the idea was a good idea, but the capabilities and the tools that we have today far exceed those. But I think General Gray, being the visionary that he was, I think he anticipated that this is where we were going to go. so you could say somebody's like well the the the mig is you know just a cop just an

aggregation of different capabilities and they get parsed out to the math and they were the the the mig have enough information group commander is really not a war fighter i i summarily disagree and that was the intent of the whole thing and we you know the math headquarters group with all to respect depend upon the commander but it's it's it's requirements is much more than just setting up the mef headquarters and taking it down and displacing it and so we were trying to operationalize that along with all the different skill sets that we saw were emerging whether it be cyber whether it be intel collection intel fusion kill chains uh electronic warfare through rat radio battalion different things it just it made sense and when it was briefed by

math headquarters group commanders you know they were the ones behind it and so we invested a lot of money in it money in the way of not just gear but people but people so i you tell me why why are people questioning the the validity or the effectiveness of this organization not trying to put words in your mouth but but what what's what are the concerns that's a great question and so what i'll do is i'll provide some context for the listeners so i would say the the debate became public uh when officers who had formerly served in the mig uh one on staff and one commander a former commander now retired i believe had a conversation via published articles on a forum called the information professionals association or the ipa the first article was

very i would say a broad assault on the necessity of the mig uh and it was very critical uh and their criticisms were based upon or were claiming that the mig lacked authorities to do many of the information related or employ many of the information related capabilities it has and that many of the functions of the mig were duplicative of staff functions that reside at the meth headquarters that article was responded to by a former mig commander who asserted basically i don't say just the opposite but complementary to that in the sense of it is effective it's still developing here's where the efficacy occurs and it is in fact greater than the sum of its parts not too long after that there was a war on the rocks article by a current make

and a faculty member of the school of advanced war fighting also asserting the value of information writ large the value of information doctrine and making a note of the discussion about potentially standing up on information combat element and then finally my own article not to make myself part of the story here but happily to considering this solicited the conversation what i did is i didn't want to debate the efficacy of the mig i didn't want to come out there and make another claim just one more vote yes or no but rather how should we think about it if we're going to have this conversation about the mig uh specifically and so i think that really brings us to the heart the conversation i would argue sir nobody within the marine corps is questioning the value or the

efficacy of information to war fighting or its value and that we need to operationalize i think the the debates are centering around how to do it best and is the mig the the right way to do that so i think that's what the conversation seems to center around and that's fair i mean i you know i don't i'm not going to be able to give you the right answer that because my you know i I've been retired now six years, and I have an operation. So the MIG just stood up in 2017, 2018. We created a deputy commandant for information and put underneath that office the intel, the communications, and the information part of headquarters Marine Corps to try to capture, you know, both the vehicle for providing the capability

and then how to manage the whole thing. Because it's, you know, information is an internal thing and an external thing. Now, on the authorities, there's always going to be issues with authorities because authorities for PSYOPs, for example, or creation of PSYOPs products. in our democracy we hold those at a very high level our adversaries probably i don't know i would speculate that they hold them at a lower level cyber you remember that cybercom didn't exist until you know as a separate separate co-com it was in the nsa it was actually subordinate to stratcom until 2012 or 2013 and it was broken out separately

and I can tell you having been in the room as the Joint Staff J3 there were people that were not happy about that and because they didn't want to provide people to support the effort

which now seems almost kind of absurd but you know well what's this cyber stuff going to do for me and how's this going to work and I don't want to provide it's just going to take people away

from more traditional things so the message I guess is And things evolve, they change as people become more educated about the capacity and the capability of certain capabilities. And they get more experience. And I think a lot of the stuff comes from the bottom up. And now we've got people, you know, we didn't have a Space Force until a few years ago. we always had there was always a space force i mean we had a space team in iraq in 2006 who helped us make sure that you know our position location navigation and timing and all our stuff worked and we our comm was good and if we fought shot a high mars or dropped a uh you know a j dam or something like that that it was going to hit where it was supposed to hit a couple times it didn't and we had to go to the space team and go like hey this thing didn't land like anywhere

near where it was supposed to land because you get cute you get used to i want you to shoot that high mars and the second floor left window from the the door you know and it hits there and you it's like well that's just that's the norm that's the way it works then sometimes not so authorities are held probably at a higher level um you know there were people say why don't we push these capabilities down into the battalions? I think there's some information people down at battalion level, but they're just there to tell the commander how to get access to the capabilities. I've got to kind of think of it like division, what the army would call division or core artillery. And there's always an ongoing discussion in the Marine Corps. Why don't we

attach all these things down to the lowest level so we have them all the time and we get to work together and rehearse we've done that before and i will tell you i know i sound like an old guy it doesn't work it doesn't work we tried it with recon after desert shield desert storm we we broke apart recon battalion we gave every regiment a recon company and then in a matter of two years when all the the experience of the recon battalion and all the old people up there that used to manage the standards and the training were gone, the recon companies just kind of lost their way. And I'll be the first one to admit, you know, I believe you organize a force, and in our case, the Marine Corps, you organize a force to train and maintain,

you task organize the force to fight. I've never thought it effective to take things and push them down, down, down to the lowest level on a daily basis. Yeah, when we're out doing an operation, that's when all the attachments show up. Obviously, you want them to show up before you deploy. You don't want to show up on the battlefield where you have to go through all that stuff, but you want to train and rehearse with them before. But having this stuff aggregated at a higher level, I think is the way to go. So authorities are always going to be a problem. We're never going to be satisfied, which is fine that they're pushed down the lowest level. And it's not just the authorities, it's the speed in which they're granted, which can put us behind. I think that might be a democratic nation shortfall. We don't want people out there, you know, rolling their own stuff on social media without there being some oversight over it.

I mean, you can see it today. I mean, look at the nut roll that the Coast Guard just went through on their policy on symbols. Well, a symbol is this. No, it's not. That's not what I said. You know, somebody, you know, got out. I don't know. It appears that they didn't do a good coordinated effort of a release. or maybe they were speculating or talking about it and then somebody somehow got leaked in the press, which can happen. But you can see the power of that. Eric Coast Guard says that this and this is no longer considered offensive or whatever it was. And then everybody kind of goes nuts.

And so I don't believe, and I'm not saying you do, I know anybody's questioning the power of information and the necessity for information and the ability of an operational force to have a good idea of what's going on in the information space. Is the MiG the right way to do it? I don't know. It might change. Was the SRIG the right way to do it back then?

I think it was okay, but, you know, people make decisions and then they go back. The Marine Corps in its force structure is always changing. I can tell you, I could go back from my time, 75 to 19, you know, we used to have five tanks in a platoon, and we used to have five howitzers and a battery. We went to eight, and then we went to six, and we could go to four. We used to have four companies in an infantry battalion. We used to have a tow battalion, okay? And then we went to regimental tows, and then we went to battalion tows. We used to have 32 dragon teams in an infantry battalion, and then we went to heavy guns.

I mean, you know, it goes on and we got this, we did this, we changed this. We had this many aircraft in a squadron. We have 12, we had 16, we went 10. And a lot of it has to do with how much money we have to pay for Marines. And I think that is probably going to come up again. Because the force is becoming, this is not why we're here to talk about, but we are, you guys, and i'm i mean i'm i'm i'm complicit in this we've gotten really expensive people have people have gotten really expensive and i've told this up to other people you know the commandant has

a checkbook and he can write a check for so many marines and lance corporals are cheaper than majors and there's nothing wrong with lance corporal there's nothing wrong with majors but a lot of the stuff that we're doing these days it takes longer to train and cultivate the skill level and get the understanding and get the education so i think the marine corps is becoming a more senior force and those people cost more money which means you're if you don't have an increase to your top line you can't buy as many so hope i'm wrong but i think it's coming as big as the defense department budget is i kind of got off track and i apologize but to answer your question i don't know i don't know if the mig is i think it's a good discussion i i hope it doesn't stay

exactly the same i think a lot of it has to do with how does the mef commander view the mig commander how capable operationally is the mig commander in conveying the capabilities of those in the MiG, particularly information and electronic warfare and how you manage all that. I know TUMF, Colonel Jordan Walzer, I think he's retired as a recon Marine. I thought he was a very effective MiG commander. He was really all into the ability to use information to create operational advantage, which is what it's all about, right? We should do nothing that doesn't create operational advantage definitely appreciate those insights sir um and you you read my mind you went exactly thinking that conversation along the themes i was hoping to explore the themes of authorities

themes of the right mix match of the mig the role of the mig commander i think you laid out the logic uh quite clearly so i think i could just raise the echelon of the discussion a little bit when we're talking about a magtaf construct one of the other things that you see bubbling up in the conversation is the possibility of an information combat element for listeners who are not marine corps savvy within the magtaf of the marine air ground task force you'd have command element a ground combat element an aviation combat element and logistics combat element all of which are led by that command element and that could be a mef commander a meb commander a mu commander depending on schlon and the rank of that commander so the discussion here centered

around it should there be and what would be the value of on information combat elements so general i don't know if you have thoughts on that subject you know the most basic magtaf is the expeditionary unit and i believe that in the mu headquarters they have a cyber support team they have information people they've got intel people they've got electronic warfare people and they're all focused in support of operations probably the the opso of the mu who's trying to create an operational design which is going to get to the the male image of what the mu co wants or what whatever they're trying to do in support of a larger scheme as part of the naval campaign which is what the marine corps job is you know

Seize and secure advanced naval bases, conduct sustained operations ashore as required in support of the naval campaign or whatever the 1947 Security Act said. Worst to that effect. You know, I don't know. I don't, you know, you create another command and, but those command, that command, you know, obviously supporting the scheme of maneuver, whether the main effort be air, ground, or logistics. I mean, if there was a humanitarian assistance operation, the CSS element would probably be the main effort.

And there clearly would be a huge information operation in support of any sort of a humanitarian disaster relief. You know, we have to convey to the people that are affected, we're coming, we're here, we're going to bring. We've got to connect with the commercial entities. We've got to connect with private non-complemental organizations. And we're really good at that. Is it a separate information operations element within the MAGTAF? Yes, sir. You know, in my mind, the MEF has a division, a wing, and an MLG.

I would say they already have an information operations element. It's the MEG. Now, do we need to replicate that below for a MEB and a MEU or a special purpose MAGTAF? I don't know. now we're talking another headquarters another staff more people i think the mig probably has enough officers where they could create a detachment and information operations detachment to go with the meb i would speculate that the mu might have the same thing that they get from the mig as they get all the people that as they form the mu and they establish themselves and do their

their pre-deployment training and their workup and all that i don't know i'd have to check i and i'm i'm out of date i apologize for not knowing that maybe somebody who's on a mu because could come in and say how they do that but i don't know i think if you look in if you if you believe in information obviously somebody said we need an information operations element as a as a different component of the MAGTAV. Obviously, they believe information is that important that we need to break it out and give it some status. I don't know. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just trying to figure out how it would work. Now, the real point is, is if the commander of any of these MAGTAV is savvy, as I believe most of our commanders are, they can create within their

staff construct an element to do exactly the same thing to make sure that every operational design you know along with fires maneuver logistics like we talk about has got that information piece and can go out and shape and build that and i'm assuming most of them already do that do they need a separate command with a staff and all that to do that i don't know i don't know my only concern as i mentioned previously would be the cost of creating another staff and another commander and, you know, that we're already the end strength of the Marine Corps. I don't know what it is today, probably somewhere between 170 and 175. I don't think it's going to get a whole lot bigger because of the cost

and because I think that there's going to be ways to achieve economies of scale. So using AI and other things, not for information, although I think AI is a huge tool to help you develop information design. but i i hope the conversation continues and people keep writing about it and talking about it and because leaders listen people pay attention and uh you know i one thing i i think the marine corps should be proud of is the fact that we we never you know the guy told me he says so you know marines and policemen are a lot alike they hate the way things are but they don't want to change and i went yeah but the marine corps does change because we do we argue horribly with

each other about how to make things better which to me is very healthy because it just shows people actually care and if people didn't ever want to change and some change is hard and that's what leaders are responsible leaders are responsible for it from implementing for generating implementing and following through on change and and it always evolves it never turns out exactly the way that you thought it was going to be definitely appreciate those insights sir with respect to the willingness of the service to discourse and marines to argue and fight with one another i've looked at some of my peers across the joint force and this is not a bag on on our brothers and sisters and other services by any stretch of the imagination but i i would offer to listeners

that the Marine Corps has perhaps one of the healthiest cultures of intellectual discourse, such that you could publish something in the Marine Corps Gazette that absolutely goes against a new service initiative, and no one's going to throw you up against the wall and shoot you. They may come at you intellectually, they may disagree violently, but you're allowed to offer those ideas. And I think to your point, people argue because they care. And I think that's very, very powerful. But the other side of it is, is that when the leadership would say at the level the commandant you know says okay i've heard everybody out i snapped the chalk everybody says aye aye sir or ma'am let's go get it done that is an incredible story and i think it's a

very powerful point uh when it comes to the discourse and the influence that folks can have on it whether they realize it or not so sir we'll wrap it up there is there any place that listeners should find you online. The only social media place you can find me is on LinkedIn. I don't do Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat. General Robert Neller, sir, thanks so much for joining us and sharing your insights today, and we wish you fair winds and following seas. Bravo Zulu for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. Thank you. So help me, Bob, I'm bullying the alley.

Why are they bullying the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm bullying the alley. Bullying the alley, shit, Bob, now.