Command and control

Well, uh, The Chinese plans have been revealed in the usual surreptitious way through the South China Morning Post.

A September 5 article by an Ohio-based SCMP reporter obtained a copy of an article from the Chinese journal Command and Control, which has a website.

You can go to it.

I went there.

They would hit Army.

They would hit Command and Control.

They would hit missile launchers.

They would hit communications towers, you name it.

Command is legal authority.

Control is the ability to turn that authority into coherent action.

Syria is trying to create a single chain after a long civil war.

Niger's chain split amid mounting losses and a deteriorating security campaign.

Yes.

So is one of the characteristics of this type of company sort of a centralized command and control? Everything comes into one place and being the CEO or the founder and that person makes all decisions and then disperses those decisions out.

That's right.

That's right.

Then you start to realize that you've got a new vision for yourself and your leadership can go to the next level and people will continue to relapse into their old behaviors.

That happens all the time.

The CEOs relapse into their command and control behaviors.

and often the leadership team members will relapse into their yes men and women behavior.

Have

you found that, I don't know how much has progressed in the US, but I'm seeing, and for me, because I've had a huge shift moving away from command and control into more coaching based cultures and coaching type of training and leadership, right? Which I'm assuming that must support the work that you're doing.

Because rather than telling, we're now asking questions and most importantly, we're listening.

a little bit more.

People did vote with their feet, right? If they weren't being listened to, they walked.

And we've seen a bit of an empowerment shift move away from the boardroom and into the employees a little bit more.

Has that really supported some of the work you're doing as well? Has it moved enough? Or is there still a huge number of command and control enterprises out there which do struggle to make this shift as quickly as perhaps we'd like to see them?

Yeah, I think that shift has been really helpful for team members, for sure.

What does that shift, I suppose, look like for someone who's running a team?

Yeah, no, I often talk about that shift that I've observed that you've just mentioned there and early on a lot of my work, you know, if I go back 20 years ago, a lot of my work was working with, you know, a lot of men in banks and construction industries, you know, and that were under pressure to shift from being a command and control leader to this new modern approach of, creating an environment where people could bring their best selves to work.

And, you know, and engagement was becoming a serious business.

We were measuring engagement and we knew that, and the science has continued to be pretty clear that empowering people gets more discretionary effort and better performance overall.

[dramatic music] Welcome to Command and Control, a podcast series about military command and the control measures used to orchestrate combat engagements and wars.

This episode is about contemporary C2 with Eve Asula.

The show is sponsored by Systematic.

I've talked to one country reconnaissance unit who said as well that, "We would like to see where the heck we are heading 'cause we kinda don't want to die." That means also, like, how we see, have maybe drones, have satellite imagery, have the information in advance before we are actually making the move because nobody wants to die, and we in our societies care about our humans no matter who they are.

Russia don't, and then that makes it very, very different ballgame, and that's what we see in Ukraine as well.

And also, what we see in Ukraine, what makes things even harder also for command and control side, Russia is bombarding civilian infrastructure massively, and they don't just do one launch.

When the aid is sent, they do the second attack on top.

So the casualties, it's huge in numbers now, and it's getting worse and worse, and that is to break the trust of society towards decision-makers and towards also army and, and everybody else.

It no longer had one shared picture of the battle.

That separation explains why command and control matter as much as firepower.

Command is the authority to decide what the force will do.

Control is the means of turning that decision into coordinated action.

Efficient communications did not reconcile incompatible loyalties.

The network helped units act quickly on a decision that destroyed the political basis of cooperation.

Command and control had functioned.

Strategy had failed.

What is the abnormal parent-child process relationship that's gonna be tipping off a SOC analyst, and even the, the more trained, advanced threat hunters? So beginning to end, that would be where I would point someone to start looking, or at least a, a SOC, like, this is what you're gonna want to look for.

Well, you mentioned one of the standout elements to me, which is that they're using Google Sheets as command and control.

Can you walk us through how that works and, and why that's so effective, a, a great place for attackers to hide?

Yeah, that...

[upbeat music]

We'll be right back.

[upbeat music] Yeah, one of the things that really stood out to me was, um, your team actually authenticated to the attacker's live command and control infrastructure.

That's not something we hear about every day.