I wanna get more granular about theory of changing.
How does a comms infra professional get from reading this report to installing the systems internationally?
Surely they
Basic research for unknowns in leveling up resilience and verification
Technical details like hardware cost * scale of implementation
Perhaps these can be done in a whitepaper.
Then they need
Recruit a software and hardware team
Do software and hardware work
Get buy-in from governments.
The buy-in part is where my theory of change completely breaks down. Would governments want to run implementations with their internal talent? In those worlds, the impact of a random comms infra professional without clearance in a particular country really stops at the whitepaper, right?
Hi Quinn! Thanks for this comment. Yes, I expect any theory of change for private actors here will run through policy advocacy. This both provides massive leverage (by using government funds) and is just necessary given the subject matter.
I wouldn’t say it stops at a white paper—one could organize track II dialogues to discuss the systems, lobby government, give policy briefings at a think tank, hold side events at international security conferences and treaty review conferences, etc.
This could also take the form of advisory roles (I’m thinking of case studies like Ash Carter and Cooperative Threat Reduction) to government.
Still, I agree that the “get buy-in from governments” is the crucial stage (but I think this is true for many and possibly all GCR-related interventions).
I wanna get more granular about theory of changing.
How does a comms infra professional get from reading this report to installing the systems internationally?
Surely they
Basic research for unknowns in leveling up resilience and verification
Technical details like hardware cost * scale of implementation
Perhaps these can be done in a whitepaper.
Then they need
Recruit a software and hardware team
Do software and hardware work
Get buy-in from governments.
The buy-in part is where my theory of change completely breaks down. Would governments want to run implementations with their internal talent? In those worlds, the impact of a random comms infra professional without clearance in a particular country really stops at the whitepaper, right?
Hi Quinn! Thanks for this comment. Yes, I expect any theory of change for private actors here will run through policy advocacy. This both provides massive leverage (by using government funds) and is just necessary given the subject matter.
I wouldn’t say it stops at a white paper—one could organize track II dialogues to discuss the systems, lobby government, give policy briefings at a think tank, hold side events at international security conferences and treaty review conferences, etc.
This could also take the form of advisory roles (I’m thinking of case studies like Ash Carter and Cooperative Threat Reduction) to government.
Still, I agree that the “get buy-in from governments” is the crucial stage (but I think this is true for many and possibly all GCR-related interventions).