Special Commentary: Memorandum for 

SECDEF: Restore “Shock” in Strategic Planning

May 05, 2020 | Professors Nathan Freier, Robert Hume, and John Schaus

“How these trends interact and the nature of shocks they might generate is uncertain, 

the fact that they will influence the security environment is not.”

– 2008 National Defense Strategy

BOTTOM LINE – RESTORE “SHOCK” INTO STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESSES

The Department of Defense (DOD) needs to re-institutionalize horizon scanning for 

“strategic shock” and integrate this perspective into its strategy, plans, and risk assessment. 

Defense-relevant “strategic shocks” are disruptive, transformational events for DOD. Though

their precise origin and nature are uncertain, strategic shocks often emerge from clear trends. 

Shocks are often recognized in advance on some level but are nonetheless “shocking” because

they are largely ignored. 

Too often, rapid strategic shock catches the DOD off guard because leadership fails to 

account for it. To be sure, accounting for shock is a value judgment. Many may actually see what 

ultimately becomes a shock well in advance. However, readying for shock requires leadership to 

understand a contingency event’s potential for strategic-level hazard. Failing that, and once 

confronted with shock, leadership frequently mischaracterizes it as defying reasonable 

prediction and prior planning.

The run-up to COVID-19 is instructive on the subjects of foresight and shock. Countries that 

fared the best in the current crisis, such as South Korea, Vietnam, and New Zealand, saw 

pandemic coming thanks largely to their experience with the SARS and MERS epidemics. They 

carefully examined lessons learned to prepare responses and are now reaping the benefits of 

their readiness.

The United States, on the other hand, failed to embrace and act upon the same insights in 

spite of experience with pandemic disease. The Bush Administration’s 2006 National Strategy 

for Pandemic Influenza and subsequent DOD Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza, 
the Obama-era pandemic “playbook,” and prominent recent think-tank gaming, are ample 

evidence that the US had “strategic warning” of the current pandemic. 

While COVID-19 is this memo’s backdrop, its focus is on how DOD can again regain the 

institutional foresight and corporate will to better see sudden transformational change in 

advance and prevent shock. Strategic shock has defined DOD’s difficult last two decades. Like 

COVID-19 for the US government overall, the terror attacks of 9/11, a protracted and unfocused 

war against terrorism, and the Iraq insurgency and civil war were all foreseeable. Yet all forced 

radical unanticipated deviations from DOD’s preferred strategic course. Of late, gray zone 

competition, and perhaps now COVID-19, has the potential to force unanticipated change on the 

defense enterprise as well.

There are immediate demands associated with mitigating COVID-19 hazard that will require 

DOD’s undivided attention for the time being. To date, DOD reports almost 62,000 personnel—

active, reserve, uniformed, and civilian—are supporting the COVID-19 response. As the 

department meets immediate needs, however, it should also learn how to anticipate, 

institutionalize, and prepare for future shocks.

Lessons learned from the COVID-19 experience about strategic decision-making and 

planning will be myriad across the department. The most important lessons are those that 

highlight the fundamental importance of shock proofing against the “known unknowns” that 

result from prudent horizon scanning. Integrating these lessons into the department’s corporate 

outlook will help shock proof it against the next profoundly disruptive event.

DOD is an inherently conservative institution. Change is a hard sell—especially change 

perceived to be inspired by speculation. Failure to learn from the current COVID-19 experience 

will again engender real consequences such as institutional turbulence, increased risk to 

strategic interests and objectives, and fits of ad hoc adaptation. These are poor outcomes for an 

institution already struggling to adapt to a hypercompetitive security landscape.

BACKGROUND – A PAINFUL CAMPAIGN OF (RE)LEARNING AND RISING 

STRATEGIC-LEVEL RISK

Since 9/11, DOD has struggled to achieve durable success because it fails to account for 

shocks in its planning and forecasting. Bureaucratic self-interest, service tribalism, and a bias 

for convention rob DOD of the creativity, imagination, and intellectual freedom of action it 

desperately needs. Without foundational change in this regard, DOD will find it increasingly 

difficult to deal with uncertainty and strategic shock.

Strategic shock results when the defense enterprise abruptly refocuses and retools to 

respond to an unexpected strategic-level challenge. Shock, as the word suggests, is 

fundamentally disorienting to the entire defense enterprise. Shock suddenly alters plans, 

priorities, and operations in ways that result in wide-ranging institutional change. 
There was an attempt to institutionalize shock into planning through important work on the 

concept of strategic shock in advance of the 2008 Defense Strategy. This preliminary work on 

foresight is unsurprising given the times. The 9/11 attacks had been a punishing reminder of the 

high cost of failed imagination. Beginning in 2006, in the midst of two protracted (and 

unanticipated) irregular wars, DOD’s work on shocks was implicit recognition that it could not 

allow uncertainty to undermine the pursuit of deep insight, imagination, and creativity in 

strategic planning.

More important, the work on strategic shock reminded national security leadership that 

uncertainty—more than any specific tangible state or non-state threat—was in fact DOD’s 

principal business. Further, DOD recognized that the degree of risk associated with uncertainty 

and the degree to which the defense enterprise sought to account for it were inextricably linked. 

Risk in a defense context—defined here as the likelihood of failure or prohibitive cost in 

pursuit of interests and objectives—will likely skyrocket over the coming year. As the nation 

weathers a deep pandemic-induced recession, COVID-19 may have far-reaching institutional 

impacts on force structure, readiness, and modernization due to downward fiscal pressures in 

the federal budget. These fiscal pressures may significantly limit US military freedom of action 

worldwide. COVID-19 has also already heightened tensions in discernible ways between the 

United States and its pacing rival China. Theses tensions increase prospects for armed 

escalation in the Indo-Pacific and put American regional interests in substantial jeopardy. 

Finally, rivals China and Russia have demonstrated a willingness to exploit COVID-19 for 

gray zone maneuvering. To date, this manifests primarily in the strategic influence and 

information arenas but may increasingly result in overt encroachments on vulnerable interests 

as the United States and its partners remain distracted by pandemic mitigation. Rival 

predations on US partners during this period of US distraction may be one unique hazard in this 

regard.

Further, domestic security concerns related to rivals’ exploitation of the strategic influence 

and information space are noteworthy as the United States navigates a pandemic and 

presidential election amidst deep partisan and societal divisions. Russia in particular has 

already proven uniquely adept at leveraging electronic media to influence US audiences and sow 

disharmony. China may be as active as the Russians now on this front—though perhaps less 

widely recognized as such. These collateral threat vectors—created or accelerated by COVID19—inevitably increase risk to interests and objectives for a US great power currently hobbled by 

pandemic response. 

In the end, though circumstances may be without (recent) precedent, they are neither 

unthinkable nor do they defy estimation. A commitment to appreciate foreseeable shocks like 

COVID-19 may limit disruptions on DOD’s ability to meet worldwide and homeland defense 

responsibilities. At a minimum, prior consideration of a pandemic shock certainly would have 

forced DOD senior leadership to think through and hedge against COVID’s wide-ranging 

impacts. Such warning would enable the marshaling of means to adequately meet worldwide 
military demands, secure the US homeland, and assist the American population in a public 

health emergency, all while protecting the force. Prior DOD identification and planning for this 

kind of shock might have also inspired substantial shock proofing across the US government. 

However, we are where we are now. It is not where we have to be in the future. As the nation 

fights through and emerges from COVID-19, the history of DOD’s interest in shock does not 

have to be a quaint artefact of the post-9/11 period. Instead, it can be a model for enlightened 

strategic planning through the next several decades.

“UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS” AND “KNOWN UNKNOWNS”— KNOW THE 

DIFFERENCE

Understanding likely and consequential shocks is an important component of more 

enlightened strategic planning. In February of 2002, Donald Rumsfeld quipped that uncertainty 

was reducible to a simple, catchy formulation—known knowns, unknown knowns, known 

unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Many characterized Rumsfeld’s press conference riff as 

nonsense. However, Rumsfeld’s musings on that which is known and unknown are now 

frequently applied in fields like project management that also employ facts and informed

assumptions in planning. DOD should take notes.

As the nation faces yet another practicum on unconventional surprise, a critical lesson for 

future Pentagon leadership lies in the differentiation of Rumsfeld’s “unknowns.” There are 

“unknown unknowns” and “known unknowns” relevant to defense planning. Both capture the 

concept of shock. One, however, is more compelling in a defense-planning context. 

The “unknown unknown” represents the unlikely but consequential “bolt from the blue.” It 

is a “discontinuous break” from our current intellectual frame and, thus, it is reasonably unseen 

in strategic planning. The “unknown unknown” is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swan.” “Black 

swans” are rare, high-impact events only predictable with the benefit of hindsight and a reconstructed reality. If prior DOD, US government, and private sector consideration of influenza 

is any indication, COVID-19 was clearly not a “black swan.” Neither were 9/11, the war on 

terrorism, the Iraq insurgency and civil war, and great power gray zone rivalry. These are the 

more common but still dislocating “known unknowns.”

“Known unknowns” are recognized uncertainties much likelier to emerge as actual problems 

in the real world. A “known unknown” is a “gap in knowledge that an individual [or in this case 

an organization] knows about and is aware of at the relevant time.” In 2011, one of us suggested 

that this brand of shock was observable but discounted or devalued in strategic planning. The 

“unknown” in this regard is not one of fact or fiction. Instead, the “unknown” qualities are more 

about specific characteristics like precise origin, timing, scope, and character. 

These factors are often more significant and measurable than leadership is willing to 

acknowledge in post hoc explanations. Too often, institutional leadership characterizes all 
shocks as “black swans.” “Who could have seen it coming?” becomes a comfortable shield 

against accountability until the next disruptive (and avoidable) surprise.

PREPARE TO BE SURPRISED – INTEGRATING THE “KNOWN UNKNOWN” INTO 

PLANNING

While consideration of the true “unknown unknown” makes for an interesting thought 

experiment, the “known unknown” is where DOD needs to focus a greater portion of its future 

planning attention. This brand of shock exhibits four important characteristics. 

First, the “known unknown” is most often consistent with recognized and observable

disruptive trends in the strategic environment. Second, it is prone to sudden or rapid onset with 

immediate wide-ranging effect. Third, its long-term impact is transformational for the entire 

enterprise. Finally, fourth, it is often foreseeable in strategic planning processes calibrated to 

look for it. And, it is foreseeable in enough detail for senior leaders, strategists, and planners to 

adequately account for it in some detail in their work.

DOD’s most transformational events over the last twenty years were often knowingly 

sidelined in the planning and estimate processes that preceded their manifesting as shocks. The 

defense enterprise focused on rogue regimes, ballistic missiles, and weapons of mass 

destruction, but instead fell victim to catastrophic terrorism. DOD planned and built forces for 

two major theater wars but waged a worldwide war on terrorists instead. Rapid conventional 

regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq yielded decidedly “irregular” and protracted occupation, 

insurgency, and civil war. The reorientation to great power military rivalry of the 2018 National 

Defense Strategy is already meeting effective indirect Russian and Chinese resistance in the 

gray zone. Now, COVID-19 threatens to unleash transformational impacts. The key uncertainty 

is the degree to which these force DOD to re-examine the entire defense proposition from 

objectives, missions, and capabilities to simple affordability. 

As DOD learns lessons on warning and enterprise adaptation associated with COVID-19, it 

may also begin to consider sources of the next disruptive strategic shock. Dangerous trends in 

gray zone competition, nationalism, populism, political extremism of all persuasions, climate

change, and public health are all potential origins of the next set of disruptive challenges. There 

are likely many other sources. Sadly, we do not anticipate DOD or the US government is 

applying substantial analytic or planning effort to these well-known hazards. Treating emergent 

future outcomes related to them (and like trends) as unknowable “black swans” is strategic 

malpractice.
RECOMMENDATION – SHOCK-PROOF THE DEFENSE ENTERPRISE AND ITS 

COMPONENTS

Going forward, DOD needs to address high-impact contingency events whose emergence 

would trigger sudden profound change in enterprise strategy, plans, operations, and priorities 

worldwide. It should do so immediately.

Like with the quadrennial National Defense Strategy Commission, and President 

Eisenhower’s Solarium Project, DoD and its components should each charter third-party 

competitive analysis efforts. These should focus on identifying disruptive shocks peculiar to each 

organization and their institutional strategies. These efforts should account for the widest 

possible range of perspectives relevant to the charter organization and easily integrate into 

department-wide risk assessments. These studies would provide DOD, the wider executive 

branch, and potentially Congressional oversight committees, an important independent 

perspective on mid- and long-term risk. 

This initial step in shock proofing provides only a preliminary buffer against the next 

disruptive shock. History indicates “known unknowns” are likelier than are the preferred 

contingencies that often drive decision making in more traditional planning and estimate 

processes. Thus, persistently widening the aperture for planning and analysis to consider shock 

will broaden perspectives to prompt early action to offset crippling future disruption. 

Even well executed shock analysis does not necessarily prevent it. But, such analysis can 

posture the defense enterprise for more rapid and effective adaptation in the event of new

shocks. Disciplined and rigorous strategic planning requires creativity, imagination, and 

intellectual freedom of action in strategic forecasting. Initiatives that foster these qualities will 

improve DOD’s overall institutional resilience. 

In the end, surviving a shock intact cannot define DOD success. Rather, success is thriving

in the midst of shock in order to continue advancing objectives and interests in spite of profound 

adversity.

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The views expressed in this Special Commentary piece are those of the author and do not 

necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department 

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