104. Achieving Victory & Ensuring Civilian Safety in Conflict Zones with Andrew Olson

[Editor’s Note: Today’s post welcomes Lieutenant General Jim P. Isenhower. and Mr. Jason Feser, for a podcast discussion on geospatial intelligence and its implications. In this episode of The Convergence podcast, they explore the critical role of geospatial intelligence, the challenge of battlefield transparency in Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO), and how emerging technologies are reshaping tactical maneuver. — Enjoy!] Lieutenant General Jim P. Isenhower was commissioned in 1992 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He served in the 1st Armored Division, 1st Cavalry Division, 25th Infantry Division, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), 2d Stryker Cavalry Regiment, U.S. Army Pacific, 1st US Army, and at the Pentagon on the Joint Staff and the Army Staff. Lieutenant General Isenhower has commanded echelons through the Division level. He also served as an assistant professor in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy, and as the executive officer to the Commanding General, US Army Pacific and to the Director of the Army Staff. He most recently served as the assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, G357 at Headquarters, Department of the Army. He currently serves as the Commanding General of the Combined Arms Command and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. LTG Isenhower has participated in operational deployments in Panama, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and throughout the IndoPacific. He served three combat tours in Iraq in Mosul, Baghdad, and the Diyala Province. LTG Isenhower’s military education includes the Infantry Officer Basic Course, the Armor Officer Advanced Course, the Command and General Staff College, and the National War College. He holds a BS from the U.S. Military Academy, an MS from the National War College and an MA and PhD from Duke University. CW4 Jason Feser (ret.) currently serves as the Branch Chief for the Data Generation and Production Branch, Warfighter Support Division within the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC). In this role, Mr. Feser oversees a staff of fifteen civilians and contractors that enable geospatial data collection, processing, and dissemination to the U.S. Army’s generating and operating force. Mr. Feser is responsible for three critical product lines, at various scales, to meet the Army’s requirements for digital mapping and geospatial analysis for customers at all echelons. Prior to coming to the Army Geospatial Center as a civilian, Mr. Feser spent 27 years in the Army as a Geospatial Engineer, and Geospatial Engineering Technician, before retiring in 2019. Mr. Feser’s career included deployments to Bosnia, Kosovo, Jordan and multiple deployments in Iraq. Throughout his career, Mr. Feser’s has been devoted to bringing advanced geospatial techniques, resources and tools to the lowest tactical level. He has been a part of several Army initiatives focused on transformation and innovation, to include Stryker Brigade Combat Team transformation, and fielding the first Buckeye High Resolution Mapping System in Mosul, Iraq. Mr. Feser is currently engaged in transforming AGC’s Engineer Route Study, Regional Terrain Planner, and Urban Tactical Planner Product lines. This transformation includes updating production pipelines, managing federated finishing amongst Army Geospatial Engineer Teams, and leveraging exquisite capabilities and tools found within the broader U.S. Army Corps of Engineer Research Development Centers. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

“The PLA expected Russia to run the same playbook it did with Crimea on a larger scale. And it didn’t work.” [Editor’s Note: Today’s post welcomes back proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. Howard Wang, who recently served as a subject matter expert on our Ukraine, the Middle East, and Proxy Wars around the Globe: Emergent Trends and Associated Implications for the Joint Force panel discussion during the T2COM G-2’s Mad Scientist / William and Mary Great Power Competition & Conflict in the Age of Authoritarian Collusion virtual event on 27 January 2026 — check out the top ten take-aways from this informative event here. In this episode of The Convergence podcast, Dr. Wang explores how China’s observations of Russia’s protracted war in Ukraine have transformed their approach to contemporary conflict, challenging their long-held precept of “winning without fighting” and forcing the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) re-calibration of its hybrid warfare concept — with cognitive warfare now being harnessed to complement kinetic operations to achieve battlefield success. Dr. Wang also describes how the U.S. can harden itself against the PLA's "systems destruction warfare" -- Enjoy!] Dr. Howard Wang is a political scientist at RAND. From 2024-2025, he was detailed to the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a China Policy Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. Prior to RAND, he was a policy analyst for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he researched U.S.-China military competition and deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Dr. Wang’s primary research interests include Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political decision-making and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strategy and doctrine. He completed his Doctorate in International Affairs (DIA) at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he was awarded distinction for his thesis research on the CCP’s sea power strategy. Dr. Wang completed his Master’s in Public Policy at Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy and his bachelor’s degree at Boston University. Dr. Wang co-authored China’s Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War: Perceived New Strategic Opportunities and an Emerging Model of Hybrid Warfare, RAND Report, 22 May 2025. In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, we sat down with Dr. Wang to discuss China’s approach to hybrid warfare, the implications of their “win without fighting” strategy, and what this means for the U.S. Army and Joint Force. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation with him:

[Editor’s Note: Regular readers of the Mad Scientist Laboratory blog site know that wargaming is a vital cognitive tool for understanding the complexities of the evolving Operational Environment (OE). Wargaming helps facilitate “cognitive warfighting proficiencies” among its practitioners. Unlike passive classroom lectures, wargames provide an immersive environment where Soldiers and Leaders can follow their ideas to their logical conclusions, test new concepts, and—crucially—experience failure in a safe, consequence-free setting. This “safe failure” is seen as essential for developing the creativity and agility required to avoid operational surprise on the actual battlefield. Today’s episode of The Convergence podcast features COL Mike Barnett and returning proclaimed Mad Scientist Joe Chretien, both from the Sustainment Exercise and Simulation Directorate, Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM), Fort Lee, Virginia. We discussed how they incorporated their Sinews of War: Theater Sustainment Operations wargame into Practical Exercises in the Sustainment Center of Excellence’s Programs of Instruction (POIs). Read on to learn how wargaming is providing our Sustainment Soldiers and Leaders with fail-safe experiences to learn critical warfighting skills — enabling them to reflect on experiential, shared events with their peers during Professional Military Education (PME)]. [If the podcast dashboard is not rendering correctly for you, please click here to listen to the podcast.] Following 15 years in various Armor enlisted and officer assignments, COL Mike Barnett became a Functional Area 57, Models and Simulations (M&S) Officer in 2011. He served as the Chief of Knowledge Management at the First Infantry Division and 8th Army, in both deployed and garrison operating environments. COL Barnett is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College and the U. S. Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In his current assignment, COL Barnett leads the Sustainment Exercise and Simulation Directorate at Ft. Lee, Virginia, where he and his team support Army-wide sustainment simulations for Division, Corps, and Army Service Component Command collective command post training events.

[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist and the Georgetown University Wargaming Society co-hosted our Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, last November, exploring:

“I think there’s a moral question that one has to ask in general about whether it’s appropriate for a machine to make a decision as to whether or not a human ought to live or die” [Editor’s Note: As observed in TRADOC Pamphlet 525-92, The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations: “The increase in the production, employment, and success of uncrewed systems means the Army can expect to encounter these systems across the breadth and depth of LSCO.” Contemporary conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East have witnessed the burgeoning use of autonomous weapons — empowering lesser states (i.e., Ukraine) and non-state actors (i.e., the Houthi Movement in Yemen) to conduct asymmetric strikes against nations with more robust military capabilities (i.e., Russia and Israel, respectively). These capabilities are transforming warfighting in both the air/land and land/sea littoral, eroding and possibly negating traditional concepts of air and naval superiority. The battlefield successes achieved using these autonomous technologies has led to them being rapidly proliferated around the globe, with Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO) like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) effectively employing armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) against both their criminal competitors and the Mexican authorities alike. In the ongoing race to develop more effective (read lethal) combat systems capable of overcoming kinetic and electromagnetic countermeasures, some nations are integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Vision (MV) with Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) — in essence removing human operators from within or on the OODA loop. U.S. policy on LAWS is documented in DoD Directive 3000.09, Autonomy in Weapon Systems, which includes the following statement: “Autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems will be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.” Per the U.S. Congress’s Defense Primer: U.S. Policy on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems: “U.S. policy does not prohibit the development or employment of LAWS. Although the United States is not known to currently have LAWS in its inventory, some senior military and defense leaders have stated that the United States may be compelled to develop LAWS if U.S. competitors choose to do so. At the same time, a growing number of states and nongovernmental organizations are appealing to the international community for regulation of or a ban on LAWS due to ethical concerns.” Today’s episode of The Convergence podcast features Dr. Mark Bailey, Department Chair, Cyber Intelligence and Data Science, National Intelligence University, exploring the tension that exists between the rapid convergence of AI and battlefield autonomy and our national values requiring transparency and oversight in our use of lethal force. Wit...