78. Task Force Wolf with LTC Daniel Gomez

In today’s post and podcast, we feature the winning submission from our Back to the Future Writing Contest — Task Force Wolf — as a short audiobook and then interview its author — proclaimed Mad Scientist LTC Daniel Gomez — about his inspiration for the story, the impact of democratized technology and ubiquitous connectivity on the future of warfare, and why we should be experimenting with these commercially-available capabilities — Enjoy!]

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LTC Daniel Gomez currently serves in the U.S. Army Reserve as an Instructor of Innovation and Creativity at Joint Special Operations University, United States Special Operations Command. During his twenty years in service, LTC Gomez served two combat tours in Iraq, two Special Operations deployments to the Pacific Theater, and five years as an instructor, scenario designer, and course manager at the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. LTC Gomez is the CEO of First Person Xperience LLC, an education and training company focused on teaching Creativity, Adaptability, and Human Dynamics to National Defense Professionals.

In our latest episode of The Convergence podcast, Army Mad Scientist asks proclaimed Mad Scientist LTC Daniel Gomez about his inspiration for his winning submission Task Force Wolf, the impact of democratized technology and ubiquitous connectivity on the future of warfare, and why we should be experimenting with these commercially-available capabilities. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our conversation:

• In LTC Gomez’s story, JTF Wolf is designed to track and interrupt illicit operations in Eurasia, specifically Turkey and its northern neighbors. His re-imagined geo-political structure describes the New Soviet Union and T’China(Taiwan re-joined with mainland China) as global powers using irregular and liminal warfare, regionally and internationally.

• Non-state actorshave employed mobile video games, ubiquitous connectivity, and cryptocurrency to conduct multi-domain, synchronized operations across multiple geospatial regions while operating as independent and self-sustained, but distributed, joint teams. Built-in communications software was leveraged for real-time translation of over 100 different languages.
  
  
• These teams were able to access home camera video feeds and manipulate them with deepfakes(Deep-Snapping) and access car toll passes to search for less than reputable locations for blackmail (Spot-Blowing) to charge victims monthly fees to support their illicit business. They identified and exploited...