In this episode of Conversations on Strategy, Lukas Cox shares his thoughts on being an intern working on two collaborative studies for NATO. Read the collaborative study Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow's Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2) here. Read the collaborative study What Ukraine Taught NATO about Hybrid Warfare here. Email usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the monograph. Keywords: NATO, Ukraine, critical infrastructure, security, infrastructure resiliency Episode Transcript: On Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow's Battlefield and Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency Stephanie Crider (Host) You're listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government. Today I'm talking with Lucas Cox, who at the time of this recording was an intern with the Strategic Studies Institute and a graduate of the University of Washington's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He assisted with two collaborative studies: What the Ukraine, Taught NATO About Hybrid Warfare and Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow's Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security Resiliency. Welcome, Lucas. Lukas Cox It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Host Tell us how you ended up working on not one, but two books for the Army War College. Cox So, this is all a great opportunity from my dear professor and mentor Dr. Sarah Lohmann. She's a University of Washington professor at the Jackson School, which is where I got my undergrad in international studies. And so, we do this great project called “the task force.” It's sort of a capstone project. And it's a great opportunity to work as a team and to get into the real sort of meat of policy issues and present our findings to actually someone on the ground, someone that's actually in the field, which is something that you don't really get at four years in the university, especially in Washington state where we're away from the the policy world. And so, I had the privilege of being in her task force and being chosen as the chief liaison for our task force to deal with NATO Center of Excellence for Defense Against Terrorism (COE-DAT), as well as everyone here at SSI under the guidance of Dr. Carol Evans. That led to me leading the writing of the first chapter of this main book. I was able to present our findings on that chapter remotely at two conferences in Turkey at the COE-DAT at conferences over there and there's another one coming up in October, which I'd love to attend as well. And so that led me to the great opportunity that Dr. Evans and Dr. Lohmann said, “Why don't you come aboard and keep working on these projects and sort of see the project through for that book at least?” And then the energy security hybrid warfare book is another project of Dr. Lohmann's that she's been working on for the last couple of years, at least, with NATO Science and Technology Organization. Those are two simultaneous projects, and I volunteered to help in any way I could with those. It's been really exciting. Host It sounds exciting. What do you see as the most important take away from the chapter you wrote for the critical infrastructure book? Cox I had the great pleasure of wrapping up my internship here over in Upton Hall at the US Army War College, and I chose the issue of foreign acquisition of European infrastructure. And so, this is an issue that has to do . . . it's continent wide . . . it has to do with the EU and with NATO and with the US, as well. Is that over the past few decades, a lot of critical infrastructure (and when we say that a lot of it is infrastructure that's needed for military operations), it's become privatized,
