From: Neil Padukone
Sent: 27 January 2008

Dear Eve,

I hope you're doing well. It's been a little while since we've spoken. I just wanted to keep you up to speed on a fairly long-term project of mine that just reached some sort of milestone, and that I think you'll find interesting, as it is very much inspired by complexity theory.

As a short background, during the summer of 2006, I worked for Prof. Leon Fuerth, who was Al Gore's National Security Advisor from when Gore was a Congressman up until 2000, when they left the White House, though they're still close associates. I was assisting Fuerth on his Project on Forward Engagement, a method of orienting government and governance to better handle the increasing complexity and accelerating change in the world. This, among other things, involves incorporating long-term forecasting in government and altering the management structures of governance to be better able to deal with complex challenges.

That experience definitely shaped a lot of my intellectual interests, going into my time in London, and maybe even future employment and whatnot. But this term, I took the graduate course on Forward Engagement, which Fuerth uses as a sort of think-tank to get his students to explore some ideas that he defines. By some flip of the coin (well, I volunteered fairly vehemently!), I was the class chair, and so framed and managed my colleagues' work in the thinking and writing of a report, and in its presentation to some national security experts.
The task itself was to restructure the Executive Office of the President and the United States Cabinet in a manner that would be conducive to generating both diverse and constructive thought and effective response in governance, using complexity theory and network science as guiding frameworks. The report was addressed to a hypothetical President-elect in November 2008.

Among the panelists to whom we presented the paper were members of the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), an ongoing, non-partisan (bi-partisan) effort of former government officials, politicians, and experts that are seeking to restructure the way that the United States thinks of and acts on national security---beyond the conventional hyper-military focus---and implement this structure through an act of Congress.

The final presentation itself was a few weeks ago, and it went extremely well! My colleagues were amazing, and we received some great feedback, both affirming and critical, from the panelists. Fuerth himself was extremely impressed with the paper and wanted to send it on to others at PNSR and elsewhere. Moreover, post-presentation discussions with one of the guests---whose book I had read some time back---landed me a research position at PNSR for next term.

The final paper is attached in this email. It's very much inspired by your work and things that I've learned from you and the Complexity Group as well, so I thought you might like to take a look. If you're interested in the project itself, please feel free to browse www.forwardengagement.org <http://www.forwardengagement.org/>

Anyhow, I wanted to update you on this project that's in many ways a culmination of a year and a half of thought, but hopefully won't end here. I hope all is well with you; please keep me updated on any work you're doing, and if it takes you across the Atlantic!

Thanks very much!
 

All my very best,


Neil Padukone