NWC Issues in National Security Lecture Series, Lecture 8 "U.S. Homeland Defense"

This lecture took place February 7, 2023.

From Professor Matisek: The digital occupation of the American homeland by adversaries poses a major threat to the U.S. government, military and civil society. However, this non-traditional threat gets little attention because much of this digital occupation occurs below the perceived threshold of war. Before the internet, most Americans took homeland defense for granted. With two major oceans and friendly neighbors, the United States had not faced the real threat of foreign forces occupying the country since World War Two. However, in the information age, the digital occupation of the U.S. is an asymmetric advantage being exploited. This new battlespace is defined by collecting data for exploitation and the spreading of dis- and mis-information to divide and polarize the American public. To understand what American homeland defense should look like for the future, a comparative approach to threats is used to understand what other countries are doing better than the U.S. In 2021 and 2022, over 200 interviews were conducted with government and military officials (to include civil society actors) in the Baltics, Finland, Sweden and Ukraine. The purpose of this lecture will be to discuss how these countries conceptualize threats and the effective policies and countermeasures taken to protect their homeland – and what the U.S. needs to do as technological advances like AI will lead to everything being weaponized as every citizen becomes a combatant in future competition and conflict.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, Ph.D., is a military professor in the National Security Affairs department at the U.S. Naval War College and a fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative – a joint production of Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point. From 2018-2022, he served as an associate professor in the Military and Strategic Studies department, research director at the Strategy and Warfare Center, and senior fellow with the Homeland Defense Institute at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Besides having published over 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals, policy relevant outlets, and edited volumes on warfare, strategy, and military affairs, he received a Bronze Star in 2020 for flying sixty E-11 BACN missions and serving as director of operations and commander of the 451 EOSS at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.

The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.