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War By Website: Sharing Knowledge Online in Real Time

Posted by TimSlavin at January 12, 2005

"In March of 2000, with the help of a Web-savvy West Point classmate and their own savings, they put up a site on the civilian Internet called Companycommand.com. It didn't occur to them to ask the Army for permission or support. Companycommand was an affront to protocol. The Army way was to monitor and vet every posting to prevent secrets from being revealed, but Allen and Burgess figured that captains were smart enough to police themselves and not compromise security. Soon after the site went up, a lieutenant colonel phoned one of the Web site's operators and advised them to get a lawyer, because he didn't want to see "good officers crash and burn." A year later, Allen and Burgess started a second Web site, for lieutenants, Platoonleader.org.

The sites, which are accessible to captains and lieutenants with a password, are windows onto the job of commanding soldiers and onto the unfathomable complexities of fighting urban guerrillas. Companycommand is divided into twelve areas, including Training, Warfighting, and Soldiers and Families, each of which is broken into discussion threads on everything from mortar attacks to grief counselling and dishonest sergeants. Some discussions are quite raw. Captains post comments on coping with fear, on motivating soldiers to break the taboo against killing, and on counselling suicidal soldiers. They advise each other on how to kick in doors and how to handle pregnant subordinates. Most captains now have access to the Internet at even the most remote bases in Iraq, and many say they'll find at least ten or fifteen minutes every day to check the site."

The New Yorker magazine has an article that is amazing on many levels. It is no surprise that junior officers would "get" how internet technologies might help them do their jobs. What amazes me is that the U.S. Army response has been to co-opt their efforts and attempt to make them better. Then again, any military is in a life or death situation (not just for themselves but for civilians they deal with) and can't afford to be too deluded for too long.  This article also is a decent case study of a classic knowledge management exercise: how to gather useful information in actionable forms in a way that can evolve over time.
URLs:

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050117fa_fact

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