Friday, October 3, 2024

Greetings

         My name is Jon Solomon, and I can’t begin to express my appreciation to Galrahn for granting me the opportunity to contribute here at Information Dissemination. I’m a longtime reader/comments lurker, and am very excited to be joining the ID team!
I’m a former U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer, and served two combat systems division officer tours in destroyers from 2000-2004. Since then, I’ve worked as an analyst at Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. providing systems engineering and program management support to several directorates within the Navy's Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS).
I am not an engineer, though. Rather, my educational background is in security studies with focal areas in maritime strategy, naval history, naval technology, and deterrence theory. I’m extremely lucky to have a job where I am able to apply these academic interests as well as the operational and technical knowledge I gained in the Fleet to support the programs I work on.
My favorite pastime is writing. During my master’s work at Georgetown’s Security Studies Program I managed to develop one of my course papers into a journal article on cyberdeterrence. That experience, as well as kind feedback on my subsequent thesis paper from Bryan McGrath and his colleague Tim Walton, motivated me to develop my master’s research into two additional journal articles that were published last year: one on maritime deception and concealment and the other on conventional deterrence of China. In fact, when I asked Bryan for comments on the latter, he went several steps further and shared his thoughts on it with you here back in January.
I have written several new pieces in my free time over the past two years that I hope will be of interest to you. Many of my initial pieces will deal with conventional deterrence, as I want to help broaden popular understanding of the underlying theory as well as highlight some of its implications for contemporary strategy and policy. Others will cover topics in cyber-electromagnetic warfare, naval doctrine and force structure, and the strategic implications of guided munitions inventory management. Quite a few are heavily endnoted, as I want to highlight the source data, arguments, and analysis. I’ll be breaking the longer articles up into week-long series of posts.
I’ll also be periodically writing shorter commentaries on current naval and strategic issues, think tank monographs, and journal articles as possible. As a preface, next week I’ll be posting up my personal definitions of three key terms that will provide important context for my future posts.
Being accepted to write for ID is frankly an honor. I’m a firm believer that peer review makes one’s arguments stronger, and I can’t think of a better means for ‘red teaming’ my ideas than tapping the incredible knowledge base that is ID’s dedicated readership.

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