Dr Dina Esfandiary is Senior Advisor in the Middle East and North Africa department of the International Crisis Group (ICG). Previously, she was a Fellow in the Middle East department of The Century Foundation (TCF), an International Security Program Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an Adjunct Fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Program.

The literature on Grand Strategy has been overwhelmingly populated by work that operates from a rationalist ontology and epistemology. Yet, curiously, it has not employed the methods of systematic comparison often associated with positivist notions of theory building and testing. Scholars employing ideational approaches on issues such as strategic culture and critical theorists have employed comparative approaches in other, sometimes orthogonally related subfields of International Relations. But constructivists, with few exceptions, have remained marginal in the field of grand strategy.

The Integrated Review, Multi-Domain Integration, The Integrated Operating Concept, Multi-Domain Battle,, the list goes on. These concepts define US and UK ideas of how to fight and win in the future, and they all have a common underpinning premise: integrate better.  But what is ‘better’ integration? Counter-intuitively to many, better integration is not as simple as more integration. ‘Better’ integration doesn’t just enable efficient communications, it enables systemic learning and memory, collective intelligence, speed of response, and effective adaption.

Ben Barry will present on his book, “Blood, metal and Dust”. Written by the author of the official British military analysis of the Iraq campaigns, Blood, Metal and Dust is the first authoritative military history of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to tell the detailed story of what happened on the ground. Blood, Metal and Dust is the first military history to offer a comprehensive overview of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing in-depth accounts of the operations undertaken by both US and UK forces.

Dr Rob Johnson is the Director of the Changing Character of War (CCW) research centre at Oxford. Rob acts as a specialist advisor to governments and international armed forces on strategy, cyber, ‘new tech’, and the conduct of armed conflict. He has run ‘Insight and Understanding’ courses for a number of agencies on areas of security interest.

The use of cyber operations to disrupt, degrade or destroy target systems is an area that attracts increasing attention and speculation in a way that sometimes adds more heat than light to the debate.  Discussion of doctrine and tactics does not always reflect the legal, ethical and practical questions involved in the use of offensive cyber capabilities by democratic nations.  And the language used around cyber operations can sometimes also present difficulties. What are the practical issues involved in the application of offensive cyber by democracies?

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