Naval Intelligence’s Lost Decade
Proceedings Magazine - December 2018 Vol.
By Commander Wolf Melbourne, U.S.
When then–Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead issued the memorandum formally establishing the Information Dominance Corps (now Information Warfare Community) in November 2009, he quoted Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés at Veracruz: “We’ve burned the boats . . . there’s no going back!†This is often seen as the act that led to Cortés’ historic defeat of the Aztec Empire in 1521. His men, as Cortés later put it, “then had nothing to rely on, apart from their own hands, and the assurance that they would conquer and win the land, or die in the attempt.†1
Today, the Cortés anecdote is a metaphor for bold, decisive action necessary to take organizations through fundamental change to new heights. It is problematic, however, because it confuses the motivation for the plan with its actual execution. Burning the boats did not advance Cortés’s men one step toward Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. The Spanish still had a long way to go—there were brigantines to build, alliances to form, and numerous battles to be won in the two-year campaign. After the boats were burned, Cortés’s men moved off the beach and got to work.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-12/naval-intelligence%E2%80%99s-lost-decade
