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In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger’s Cat is often mischaracterized as a simple problem of observation. In reality, the thought experiment illustrates something more unsettling: a system can exist in multiple states simultaneously, and the act of observation collapses that complexity into a single, misleading outcome. Security force assistance (SFA) suffers from an analogous problem. Partner forces are complex institutional systems shaped by politics, incentives, institutions, leadership, and threats. When the United States chooses metrics to observe its security partners, complexity collapses into a simplified performance snapshot that obscures more than it reveals.
What the plan is trying to do in one sentence
It reorients diplomacy around a short list of national priorities and uses visas, bilateral deals, assistance, sanctions, standards setting, and commercial diplomacy as leverage to shape partner behavior and global systems in ways that strengthen U.S. sovereignty, security, and economic power.
Strategy is not abstract for the Special Operations community. It becomes deployment tempo, operational risk, and time away from home. And while the National Defense Strategy rarely needs to name Special Operations Forces directly, it assigns missions and priorities that, in practice, lean heavily on SOF’s comparative advantages: speed, access, partner enablement, and precision.
Foreign contacts have always been a significant focus of the security clearance process. In recent years, however, contacts involving countries considered adversarial to the United States have drawn heightened scrutiny. Relationships that once might have raised limited concern can now result in prolonged investigations, delays, or adverse clearance decisions if not properly disclosed and addressed.
In the rigid world of military tradition, true innovators are rare. Even rarer are leaders who respect tradition yet willingly break with convention when the mission demands it. Lieutenant General William Pelham Yarborough was one of those men—a visionary whose creativity, intellectual curiosity, and willingness to challenge orthodoxy when circumstances required, helped define the identity of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces. Remembered today as the ‘Father of the Modern Green Berets,’ Yarborough’s legacy extends far beyond a title; it lives on in the culture, symbols, and mindset of America’s most unconventional soldiers.
Modern conflict unfolds in an environment no longer covered in secrecy. In a new era of unprecedented transparency, publicly available information often shapes operations faster than classified intelligence. Drawing on lessons from Ukraine, this article argues that United States (U.S.) Special Operations must treat open-source intelligence (OSINT) as a primary discipline and reform organizational structures to enable faster decision-making. Without proactive OSINT integration, Special Operations risks ceding tempo and information advantage to adversaries who operate in the open.
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