In 2024, my classmate threw me under the bus to be the keynote speaker for the Army's AVENGERCON VIII. It was an interesting opportunity for me to cross my civilian and military experiences in the cyber domain particularly to be a voice for the Soldiers to speak at the senior leadership. Unfortunately, their leadership was remarkably absent from the event but the message got out anyway.

AVENGERCON began small in 2016 and slowly grew in size over the years from a conference room, to the McGill Training Center auditorium, to the Georgia Cyber Innovation & Training Center in Augusta. The greatest part of the event is that it is NOT focused on showcasing for leadership or having seniors grandstand about their paper accomplishments. AVENGERCON is meant to be run by Soldiers, for peer Soldiers, to share tradecraft amongst each other. I first attended AVENGERCON III myself and am glad to now be part of its history.

Photo by: Steven Stover https://www.dvidshub.net/image/8265428/avengercon-viii-keynote-speaker

I'm not going to put a transcript of my entire keynote here - some bits shall remain only the memories of those who were present. The TLDR version, as a combination of the opening by COL Stephen Hamilton and my comments, is our current cyber force is being lead by individuals without actual cyber experience. Everywhere else in our Army, we demand leaders to lead from the front, understand their Soldiers work roles, and have operational experience in their craft. Yet somehow, in the decade the Army's cyber branch has existed, we have managed to do exactly NOT that. A summary article on army.mil captured the essence well:

“Basically, in about ten more years, there won’t be any excuse for any of these leadership, senior positions to be filled by someone else, never been an operator, never been an analyst, or never been an developer. Do the math, a second lieutenant operator in 2015, that first round, by 2033, (Soldier) should be an 0-6. Same with the NCO side. (Soldier) should be a sergeant major, a command sergeant major.”