SAASS 660: Technology and Innovation

In this episode, Dr. Whitman Cobb and Col. Hollon are joined by members of the SAASS 660 teaching team to discuss the course on Technology and Innovation and its role as the final course of the curriculum. The conversation examines how military innovation occurs, emphasizing the bureaucratic, organizational, and political challenges that shape the adoption of new ideas and technologies. The guests highlight the course’s focus on linking historical case studies to contemporary problems, encouraging students to think critically about how innovation is institutionalized. The episode also explores the course’s distinctive “Mother of All Briefings” exercise, which requires students to apply insights from past innovations to current technological challenges.

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Books Mentioned

Christopher J. Fuller, See It/Shoot It: The Secret History of the CIA's Lethal Drone Program (Yale University Press, 2017)

Michael W. Hankins, Flying Camelot (Cornell University Press, 2023)

Matt Hersch, Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2023)

Trent Hone, Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the US Navy, 1898-1945 (Naval Institute Press, 2018)

William H. McNiel, Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society (University of Chicago Press, 1982)

Stephen Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovations and the Modern Military (Cornell University Press, 1991)

Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald, The Hand Behind Unmanned: Origins of the US Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford University Press, 2025)

The opinions expressed here are those of the hosts or the guests and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Department of the Air Force, the Depart of Defense, or the United States Government.