206 THE BiG DROP
mix of seasoned professionals with roots in the military, intel-
ligence and finance. It was exactly the kind of team needed to
fight 21st-century financial wars.
Financial threats come in many forms. Some relate to
criminal activities including money laundering related to drug
smuggling and arms sales and hackers who steal credit card
and other personal financial information. Other threats include
efforts to end run economic sanctions. These threats involve
countries such as North Korea and organizations such as Hamas
that are the targets of U.S. and allied imposed sanctions.
The most serious threats, however, are strategic in nature.
These involve rival states such as Iran, Russia and China that
engage in clandestine financial warfare using everything from
front companies in tax haven jurisdictions to cyber attacks that
threaten to shut down stock exchanges and banks. All of these
financial actors — from criminal gangs to strategic rivals —
are within the scope of our group’s efforts to help the United
States understand and defeat their threats.
Since the 1980s, the key to military planning and war
fighting has been the concept of “jointness.” Prior to the
1980s, the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force were not only
separate branches of the military, but they utilized their own
communications channels, equipment requirements and war
fighting doctrine, among other attributes. The result was a
lack of coordination and effectiveness.
These deficiencies came to a head in the darkly comical
blunders surrounding “Operation Urgent Fury.” That was the
invasion of the tiny Caribbean island nation of Grenada in- This was the first major combat operation conducted by
the United States since the end of the Vietnam War, in 1975.
Intelligence was highly deficient to the point that invading
forces were handed tourist maps of the island without military
grid lines. U.S. Navy forces fired on and killed U.S. ground
forces by mistake. Some invasion force members received