Special Commentary: Post-COVID 

Transformation: DOD Goes into the Matrix?

June 29, 2020 | Professors Nathan Freier, Robert Hume, Al Lord, and John Schaus

DOD’S CHOICE IS NEO’S CHOICE

These are complex, turbulent, and uncertain times to be sure. The Department of Defense 

(DOD) is at an important inflection point. COVID-19 has irrevocably altered the dynamics of 

international security and reshaped DOD’s decision-making landscape. As a result, DOD will 

have to adapt to significantly different strategic circumstances post-COVID than those assumed 

operative in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS18). We recommend that DOD recognize 

this to be true, seize the initiative, create opportunity from crisis, and recraft defense strategy to 

re-emerge from COVID as a stronger, more hypercompetitive institution.

The past is definitely prologue in this regard. DOD’s current strategic circumstances mirror 

those of the immediate post-9/11 period. The wars that followed 9/11 forced a substantial 

strategic course correction on DOD. By 2003, it was clear that the azimuth set in the 2001 

Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR01) was fundamentally compromised by the stark reality of 

the Iraq and Afghan wars and the wider “Global War on Terrorism.” 

There was corporate recognition at the time that the path described in QDR01 was not likely 

to position the American military for the demands of the post-9/11 environment. Just as war 

reshaped DOD’s strategic agenda then, COVID-19 will change the dynamics of great power 

rivalry and the defense choices associated with it going forward as well. By itself, we suggest this 

necessitates a thoughtful re-examination of the assumptions and approach described in NDS18.

To use a pop culture analogy, DOD’s current situation is reminiscent of “Neo’s choice” in the 

dystopian movie The Matrix. In the film, rebel leader Morpheus offers protagonist Neo the 

choice of a red pill or a blue pill. The red pill extends to Neo an unvarnished view of “the matrix” 

and its broader and more difficult set of governing facts. The blue pill, on the other hand, 

returns Neo to his prior blissfully naïve existence plugged into a land of computer make-believe. 

The blue pill is all about doubling down on a comfortable yet already discredited past. The red 

pill offers Neo the opportunity to boldly enter a difficult but nonetheless transformational 

future. In the end (spoiler alert), Neo chooses red.
Like Neo, DOD has its own difficult “red or blue” choice on the near-horizon. COVID forced 

the issue. DOD’s choice is between prudent risk-taking, transformation, and increased 

hypercompetitiveness (red) on the one hand, and status quo, steady decline, and inevitable loss 

of position in key regions and domains on the other (blue). As in the case of Neo, we suggest that 

DOD choose the former (red pill) transformational option.

WHY TRANSFORM NOW? WHY IN THE MIDST OF CRISIS?

Former White House Chief of Staff and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel once 

suggested, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and what I mean by that [is that crisis 

provides] an opportunity to do things you could not do before.” This is precisely what we suggest 

with respect to DOD and COVID. The COVID crisis can incentivize real innovation across the 

defense enterprise if DOD is willing to exploit crisis in pursuit of profound change in strategy, 

concepts, capabilities, and posture. 

COVID-19 is without question a national crisis. And, DOD continues to have a significant 

role in responding to it directly. However, the pandemic also creates an excellent opportunity for 

defense and military leadership to thoughtfully re-imagine post-COVID strategy and “do things 

[they] could not do before.” Seizing that opportunity may well yield a more adaptive, forwardlooking, and hypercompetitive defense enterprise that creates greater synergy across highly 

contested regions and domains.

This matters now precisely because there is a palpable change imperative across the 

department. In successive studies of gray zone rivalry, risk, hypercompetition, and US IndoPacific Command (USINDOPACOM) theater design, we find real erosion in US military 

advantage vis-a-vis great power rivals China and Russia. As we see it, and many defense analysts 

continue to argue, US rivals China and Russia have a significant head start on the United States 

in resurgent great power competition. China and Russia hold the strategic initiative and use it to 

generate, seize, and exploit opportunities at US expense. They also have an edge in terms of 

proximity, strategic depth, strength of interest and/or motivation, and risk tolerance as it relates 

to on-going contests for regional primacy. 

Their persistent counter-US gray zone resistance is real indication that the prospective 

conflicts described in NDS18 are, in fact, already well underway in the eyes of Beijing and 

Moscow. Naturally, China and Russia are transforming their military capabilities and methods 

to improve warfighting prospects in the event rivalry with the United States escalates to armed 

hostilities. However, so far, there is no sign either would actually have to go that far to secure 

objectives. They already succeed short of armed conflict by attacking US vulnerabilities in what 

CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman calls “wars of influence.” 

DOD as an institution has simply not fully come to terms with the character of twenty-first 

century rivalry, a more vulnerable United States, and the eroded position accompanying both. 

According to a 2019 RAND study on gray zone threats, “The United States and its allies...have 
yet to come to terms with the challenge of the threat, let alone fashion a strategy to neutralize it 

or roll it back.” 

While rivals China and Russia retain the initiative and hypercompete (at present, 

predominantly through gray zone maneuver), the United States is only just now catching up. A 

singular US focus on terrorism and irregular warfighting over nearly twenty years of perpetual 

post-9/11 war effectively delayed American recognition of and adaptation to the Chinese and 

Russian threats. And, even now, US risk sensitivity, a bias for convention, service parochialism,

and glacial corporate decision-making processes continue to stymie the kind of sweeping 

defense innovation called for by the accelerating threats in and from the European, Eurasian, 

and Indo-Pacific regions. 

In the USINDOPACOM area of responsibility, for example, the United States is out of 

position physically, conceptually, and with deployed and anticipated forces and capabilities, in 

the face of an aggressive and transforming Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In a 2019 

report, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and colleagues at the Center for a New 

American Security suggest, “(T)he PLA may hold the initiative and control the time line.” Vis-àvis an even more reckless Russian threat, DOD has also not yet come fully to grips with Russia’s 

unique brand of counter-American resistance that is decidedly “at odds with the general US 

understanding of warfare.”

In addition to external threats, there are internal post-COVID challenges as well. Within 

DOD, there will inevitably be new resource pressures effecting DOD’s pursuit of virtually any 

strategic course of action. These downward pressures on budgets, missions, manning, 

modernization, and readiness are largely the same ever-present challenges facing all DOD senior 

decision makers. COVID will likely magnify their impact. 

DOD will never be completely out of money. However, it may have less money or less 

discretion in spending it coming out of the COVID experience. Absent executive leadership, 

innovation, and creativity, resource constraints may only hasten erosion of US military influence 

worldwide. Perceived scarcity, after all, can end in even more intense inter-service rivalry, suboptimal enterprise-wide compromise, and, ultimately, an ineffective, astrategic distribution of 

resources and priorities.

CHOOSE RED—TRANSFORMING INTO THE POST-COVID ENVIRONMENT

The forces described above in combination put excessive pressure on DOD. Pre-COVID the 

United States was already in the midst of its most consequential great power struggle since the 

fall of the Soviet Union, facing not one but two capable and, increasingly, hostile opponents in 

China and Russia. Before COVID, the United States was already vulnerable to catastrophic 

losses in an escalating conflict with either rival as well. COVID only compounded that challenge. 

The risks associated with great power rivalry have likely only become more acute since the 
COVID crisis began. Nonetheless, COVID is also creating space for transformational change in 

DOD. 

The strategic shock of COVID provides senior defense leadership with an opportune break 

from business as usual and a relatively brief window of opportunity for fundamentally reimagining a more hypercompetitive strategy in the post-COVID environment. Re-imagination 

implies a return to first principles. It suggests revisiting NDS18 in detail. And, finally, it argues 

for remaking US strategy mindful of even greater vulnerability as the United States emerges 

from pandemic. In brief, re-imagination argues strongly for DOD opting for the 

transformational red pill over the status quo blue. 

Absent some adaptation and looking forward into the post-COVID environment, the 

animating US defense prescription for great power rivalry seems to be more of the same but 

better—the blue pill, status quo ante. According to David Ignatius, in a review of the recently 

published book, The Kill Chain—Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare, status

quo ante is par for the course for DOD. Ignatius observes, “The Pentagon is good at doing what 

it did yesterday.” 

We argue that pursuit of status quo ante post-COVID may limit near-term transformational 

pain but also almost certainly increase longer-term risk. A return to status quo ante would not, 

generate the kinds of asymmetric approaches essential to the United States regaining exploitable 

initiative and serial advantage against rivals China and Russia.

Consistent with NDS18, post-COVID strategy should boldly aim to “out-think, outmaneuver, out-partner, and out-innovate” US rivals. But, we suggest it should also be a 

hungrier, more realistic, “play from behind” approach than its predecessor. It should not, for 

example, assume—as does NDS18—a future “Joint Force that possesses decisive advantages” 

over all rivals. Instead, post-COVID transformation should optimize the department, its 

components, and its Joint concepts and capabilities to prevail across domains in a “persistent 

struggle to gain, exploit, and regain transient advantage” against capable opponents who will 

often enjoy positional, conceptual, and technical advantages. 

It is true that DOD is only just now putting programs in place to achieve NDS18’s objectives. 

However, it is also true that the NDS18 emerged well before COVID and that the pandemic and 

its downstream effects will no doubt have an outsized impact on DOD’s future operating 

environment and the attendant strategic choices available to the defense department. 

Dramatic defense re-imagination in the midst of a global pandemic is tough to believe 

possible for the slow-moving defense bureaucracy. However, there may be no better time for it. 

Choosing the transformational red pill now might yield the kind of institutional change only 

possible when visionary leadership sees opportunity in the midst of a profound crisis.

Indeed, we suggest it would be prudent for DOD leadership to recognize that the great power 

that sees, understands, and exploits the dramatically altered post-COVID decision-making 
landscape first will be in the best position to secure a more hypercompetitive strategic position 

in the future. We recognize that choosing the transformational red pill now will be bitter, 

disruptive, and, at times, viscerally counter-cultural. However, in the right dose, it may also turn 

post-COVID uncertainty into American advantage and usher in a more hypercompetitive 

transformational DOD vision. 

That vision need not—and likely should not—be as or more expensive as the pre-COVID 

defense proposition. It should, however, be more strategic. After all, if DOD seizes the 

transformational opportunity COVID provides, it may discover that the strategic and 

operational answers to its many demands are not always tied to bigger budgets but instead to 

better and more innovative ways of doing business. 

This is no time for DOD to aspire to “steady as she goes.” Doing so may needlessly squander 

an opportunity to steal the march on rivals China and Russia. As of now, the accumulating 

successes of both will continue to erode confidence in US leadership, increase risk to US

interests, and deny American freedom of action to the point of US irrelevance. We suggest their 

emergence from the COVID experience and ours will largely determine a new distribution of 

power and influence for decades to come in key regions of the world.

Seizing the opportunity provided by the COVID pandemic—making Neo’s choice to embrace 

transformational change—implies exposing the limitations of existing biases and business 

models. It means actually embracing the realities of twenty-first century rivalry, developing a 

more unified defense and Joint vision to contend with it, and creating new enterprise, global, 

theater, and all-domain approaches to thrive in an environment of ceaseless great power 

hypercompetition. We were warned. So what will it be? Red or Blue?

*****

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 

of Defense, or the US Government. This article is cleared for public release; distribution is 

unlimited.

*****

Organizations interested in reprinting this or other SSI and USAWC Press articles should 

contact the Editor for Production via email at usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.ssiwebmaster@mail.mil. All organizations granted this right must include the following statement: 

“Reprinted with permission of the Strategic Studies Institute and US Army War College Press, 

US Army War College.”
*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and US Army War College (USAWC) Press publications may 

be downloaded free of charge from the SSI website. Hard copies of certain reports may also be 

obtained free of charge while supplies last by placing an order on the SSI website. Check the 

website for availability. SSI publications may be quoted or reprinted in part or in full with 

permission and appropriate credit given to the US Army Strategic Studies Institute and US

Army War College Press, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA. Contact SSI by visiting our website 

at the following address: http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/.