Author: Ambershay Cooper

General Berger says in his planning guidance, “The complexity of the modern battlefield and increasing rate of change requires a highly educated force.” So why read a book ostensibly about video games when books on war are too numerous to read?

Ready Player One was not among the more than forty Reading List books for which the Marine Corps University Research Library has a “Why This Book?” guide. Superficially, the connection to military education is hard to find. The story’s protagonist, Wade, spends all day playing a life-like video game in pursuit of a hidden egg and its multi-billion-dollar payout. Clues along the way require a vast knowledge of arcane 1980s movies and video games.

Though Wade’s challenge is different than ours, he embodies a fundamental Marine Corps ethic—a commitment to mastery that allows him to improvise solutions to unique problems. Ender’s Game is an immensely enjoyable testament to the delayed gratification of diligent preparation. His “eureka” moments—when he solves a riddle or devises a plan to infiltrate his enemy—are not the product of innate genius. Instead, as Ian Leslie says in Curious, “They arise from the gathering and the working over—the slow, deliberate, patient accumulation of knowledge.” He cultivated that knowledge base over years of exhaustive preparation. Ultimately, it gave him an extraordinary ability to weave disparate threads into cohesive solutions.

This level of preparation is a central requirement of our maneuver warfare philosophy. A centralized command and control system requires one big brain. The rest can waste their time on their smartphones. In maneuver warfare, everyone needs to be smart. Everyone needs to study. General Berger demands a “Highly educated force,” not a “Highly educated senior officer/SNCO corps.” Ready Player One is an enjoyable parable about how to get there.

—Captain Edwin Powers

There is a lot to unpack in Ready Player One. Especially when considering the book is a selection to the Commandants Reading List. In fact, questioning the relevance of this book on the list is fair. What does the story of a bunch of computer geeks solving irrelevant riddles while playing 80’s era video games in a virtual world have to do with fighting and winning wars?  

In arguably the seminal work on the theory of American military strategy, Russel Weigley explores that since the American Revolution,  The American Way of War is a progressive reduction of the use of human combatants in the pursuit of state objectives. He frames military activity as but one aspect of “all-inclusive planning for the use of total resources to advance the national interests.” (p. xix). The consequence of such strategic thought has led to a robust defense industry combined with international alliances and treaties created to diminish the threat of nuclear war, maintain open access to global commons (sea and air lanes), and balance any potential global competitor to the United States. Until now, this model has proven successful. But how does the future battlefield complicate this existing hegemony?   

Cyberspace alters the concept of geography as a limiting or enabling factor for nation states. Cyberspace is why Estonia can have an oversized role as a contributor in the NATO alliance. It is why Russia, a country in demographic decline with the GDP equivalent to New York state, can punch well above its weight on the global stage, and it is why China is able to advance its military capability at a stunningly accelerated pace. Why do entities compete in cyberspace? Nobody dies there, at least not immediately. It is the politically convenient battlefield for democracies and non-state actors alike, far from headlines where the bloodshed is non-existent, but a reduced number of combatants still use force to compel the enemy to their will.  

Ready Player One combines the two concepts. The OASIS is a virtual domain absent of geographic limitations, and the combatants face very little, if any, actual physical harm. Nevertheless, the consequences of existing in this impersonal domain have real-world implications. The automation of nearly every aspect of a future society nearly eliminates the need for skilled human labor, or actual human connection. The associated apathy, unemployment, and dependency on network access contribute to mass decline in the robustness of a population which turns to drugs, crime, and of course virtual reality. Control of this virtual domain is as important as controlling any sea lane or air corridor.      

It is not controversial to state that cyber is here to stay and the vulnerabilities of cyberspace are a threat to the global information commons. From Chinese Huawei to Facebook to your local bank, multiple public and private entities have access to data that has the potential to alter all of our lives. Gaining access to and protecting this information is the new global common—one that will be competed for. Ready Player One assists the reader to think about this virtual place where computer geeks become SOCOM warriors whose loyalty and skills can determine the success or failure of our society. Ready Player One provides a unique, and constructive contribution to thinking about the future and is a valuable selection in the Commandants Reading List.

–Lt Col Brad Fultz

By Burke Tysen

Like Ender’s Game, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Penguin Random House, 2011) is a science fiction book on the Commandant’s Professional Reading List. Unlike Ender’s Game, Ready Player One does not read like a story of war, strategy, or military training in a futuristic setting. Dystopian, yes. Military, no. Set in the year 2044, but heavily drawing on retro-nostalgia for the 1980s this future world is a terrible reality for most people: overcrowded, resource constrained, and hopeless. Like most people, the teenage protagonist Wade Watts really feels alive only when he’s physically participating in the worldwide virtual-reality utopia known as the OASIS. The OASIS is more than a “massive multi-player on-line role-playing game” encompassing commerce, education, entertainment, social interaction and daily work for most humans. Wade has devoted his life to studying the elaborate contest of puzzles hidden in OASIS that were put in place by the system’s creator James Halliday based his obsession with the pop culture of his youth and designed as a scavenger hunt to determine who will ultimately control (and profit from) the OASIS after his own demise.

What about Ready Player One makes it relevant to military professionals and why is the book of value for the Marine Corps’ professional reading program?

Usually, when a book is made into a film, plot elements, characters, and entire story arcs are changed, combined, simplified or omitted. What key elements of the book were changed when Ready Player One was made into a movie?  Do these changes enhance or reduce the value of the movie as a supplement to the book in the context of professional reading for Marines?

reviewed by 2ndLt Austin Swink

Originally published in the September 2018 Marine Corps Gazette.

Ready Player One explores the economics of cyberspace in a way that a layperson can understand. In his novel, Ernest Cline provides a view of a world in which resources outside of the cyber world, “The Oasis,” are scarce, and the quality of life for most Americans has significantly declined. As a result, the critical infrastructure in this world is the virtual world, where resources are plentiful and opportunity is rich.

Soon, we may see the increased automation of the American workforce. With this innovation, many lower-skilled positions will no longer be available. Many Americans will move to the cyber domain for work. This has already begun with the rise of the so-called “gig-economy,” in which permanent long-term occupations became scarcer after the last financial crisis, and a flood of college graduates decided to seek out temporary work and side-jobs in cyberspace. Often this work is done from home, with little to no interaction with the outside world, co-workers, or consumers. This cyber sector of the economy will likely grow, and Ready Player One rightly demonstrates how cyberspace is a critical infrastructure in the new economy.

Ready Player One shows how an advanced warfighting organization can be defeated in the cyber domain by using its strengths against itself. In the novel, a large corporation, Innovative Online Industries (IOI), functions like a military in the cyber world. It deploys avatars, controlled by its employees, into the virtual world in order to affect the domain to its advantage. In the book, this means competing and fighting in the domain for control of The Oasis. Without getting into too much analysis, it is clear that IOI could be comparable in operations and tactics to the Marine Corps. It may not be a stretch to call IOI a subscriber to a cyber version of maneuver warfare. However, its strengths soon become its critical vulnerabilities.

Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, DC, stated to Marine Corps Times last September that there exists a Chinese strategy for using the superior logistics capabilities of an adversary to disrupt the adversary’s combat operations. This is done by cyber infiltration and the disruption of logistics systems in a manner that is covert—which could adversely impact the sustainability of deployed military forces. The end state of such a strategy, Singer suggests, is that a Marine unit requests ammunition and instead receives toilet paper, yet all the while, the Marine Corps logistics systems functioned as they should have, hitting all the wickets and delivering the supplies on time.

Eerily similar to this scenario, is (spoiler) the protagonist, Wade Watts’ infiltration of IOI. Wade hacks IOI’s systems so that it shows him as owing a delinquent debt to IOI, and the company captures him as an indentured worker. Using his position as a worker in IOI, Wade exploits the company’s systems, not to cause chaos but to use its seamless and efficient operations in order to set conditions where IOI as an organization responds to an event in a way that will disrupt its own operations and give a significant advantage to its adversary. This ends up as a critical vulnerability and allows Wade to win the “war” for The Oasis and control the cyber domain. It is clear, if Singer is correct, that our near-peer adversaries are looking to do the same. We could lose the next war not because we made a mistake but because we did everything right. This is a terrifying concept that is now possible because of the cyber domain.

Ready Player One shows that cyberspace is not a domain that the Services should be using to compete for dollars and operations. Rather, the Services must face the present reality that this domain exists, that it has effects on every other domain, and that the United States must have cyber superiority. The cyber domain has effects on every other domain—ground, sea, air, and space. An effective cyber warrior will disable communications, disrupt intelligence gathering efforts, deceive navigation systems, divert logistics chains, shut down power sources, and leave little else functioning. However, the most effective cyber warrior cannot hack our minds, our endurance, our ability to lead, and our ability to innovate.

In World War II, air warfare became a fully developed domain of warfare in which all other domains were irreversibly affected. In order to win the war, Allied leaders understood that they must conquer the air. Air superiority was not simply a watchword for those who wanted to appear engaged in the discussion on the future of warfare, and it was not a budget item that a Service needed to have in order to compete for dollars. It was the reality of warfare.

Today, cyber superiority must be achieved by the United States in order for us to compete and win against near-peer adversaries. If we do not accept this reality, we will have to stop using the term near-peer. We must not allow that to happen. Ready Player One clearly shows how important the cyber domain is, and that the entity that controls it controls the destiny of the world.

Ender’s Game is an archetype for how certain literary works can remain timeless, and it has rightfully earned its place on the Commandant’s Reading List. Like many futuristic science-fiction novels, the lessons learned from Ender’s Game are not meant to be static; rather, they evolve with changing time and circumstance. With advances and changes in technology, culture, and society, the book provides a mirror for the audience to ask themselves the question, “Is this how things should be.” In the past, the Marine Corps found use in how Ender’s Game presented force-on-force training, applicability Maneuver Warfare, and ethical leadership. While these will always remain valuable lessons from the novel, Ender’s Game has new relevancy with the upcoming age of automation and the use of unmanned systems in future wars.

            If you were to pick up any recent issue of the Marine Corps Gazette, more likely than not, you will find an article discussing the implications of unmanned or automated systems and their lethal utility in future conflicts. Based off of many of Gazette articles, it is likely that humans will become increasingly irrelevant in combat as automated and unmanned systems start to outperform the average Marine. Consequentially, the people controlling and manning these systems will become increasingly removed from the battlefield. Already, the American military has the capability to conduct drone strikes from military bases thousands of miles away; the protagonist of Ender’s Game, Andrew Wiggins, likewise (although unknowingly) utilized an unmanned system (disguised as a training simulation) to command his force and ultimately defeat his enemy at the expense of his own fleet and the almost total genocide of the enemy species.

            Ender’s Game was written toward the tail-end of the Cold War, and the destruction of the bugger’s home-world and species has obvious implications to that era’s fear of a nuclear confrontation resulting in Mutually Assured Destruction—where the deaths of millions were only a button press away. However, to the 21^st century reader in the current decade, Ender’s Game provides a useful allegory for the rise of unmanned and automated systems. In the not so distant future, servicemen will have the increased capacity to bring about a greater level of destruction and lethality than ever before. Battlefields will become larger and those controlling unmanned and automated systems will become farther removed from the battlefield. A reoccurring motif in many popular news sources that report on contemporary drone operations always comment on how the devices used to control these systems are reminiscent of video game technology. Much like Ender’s battle station was designed to appear as a training simulation, servicemen are becoming increasingly able to conduct lethal operations without even experiencing the consequences first hand. The Cold War metaphor, “pushing the button,” which symbolized how top leaders had the ability to start a nuclear holocaust at the press of a button, will soon extend to the average service member—who at the press of a button—will also be able to bring destruction while far removed from the consequences. 

            Having recently read Ender’s Game in conjunction with many Gazette articles, I argue that the book still maintains relevance and will continue to be a useful tool for future Marines. Similar to how Andrew Wiggins was able to wage war through an apparent training simulation, far removed from the battlefield, future Marines will increasingly rely on weapons systems that place the user increasingly farther from where the fighting is taking place (albeit on a significantly smaller scale than Andrew Wiggins). With the civilian casualties from drone strikes already being a controversial issue, Ender’s Game acts as a warning to those who fight wars with tools that place the warfighter farther from the battlefield. When pushing a button can mean the difference between life and death for any amount of peoples, the person controlling the system, regardless of rank, must be fully aware of the consequences of their actions. 

-William Treuting

In an age of declining consumption of books during leisure time, Ender’s Game reminds us how enjoyable reading is. It is thus well placed on the Primary Level Enlisted reading list, as a Trojan Horse to the young men and women who may not have discovered that reading for one’s profession is much more interesting than reading for English class.

Ender’s Game is equally relevant to SNCOs and officers, as Orson Scott Card offers interesting insights. Specifically, we should consider how the International Fleet’s training pipeline and doctrinal concepts prepare Ender Wiggin to save the world. Card provides not a handbook, but a discussion guide to debate our preparations for our next “Bugger Invasion.”

In the IF, the emphasis in officer development is the development, first and foremost, of a leader. Ender’s genius is a weapon only insofar as it merges with an ability to inspire others to follow his ten-pound brain. Officer Candidates School and The Basic School are similarly structured—tactics are important, but they are a vessel through which we give Candidates and Second Lieutenants “sets and reps” in leadership. Ender, despite his young age and inexperience prior to training, grew into the kind of leader who “if he had asked [his army] to follow him to the moon without space suits, they would have done it.” Our TBS graduates are not at that level, but they are well equipped to get there.

Just as Ender incorporates the enemy Buggers’ best practices into his own, the Marine Corps has demonstrated equal humility in its doctrinal ideas. Maj Ian Brown outlines how German blitzkrieg tactics informed our maneuver warfare philosophy. Both Ender and the Marine Corps seem to share the idea that the best ideas are not always homegrown, and an enemy fighting for malign ends can contribute mimicable means.

There are also ways in which the IF’s training model diverges from the Marine Corps’. Specifically, their ability to insulate their trainees from the distractions of planet earth is enviable at a time when that particular planet seems to produce more means of distraction. These inhibit our ability to focus prolonged, uninterrupted thought on the kind of type two thinking that produces consequential changes and maximal results.

Additionally, “games” are more important in the IF than the USMC. The Battle School and Command School allow Ender to lead his army in creative ways through ever-increasing challenges. The challenge of those games drives his ultimate success. Too often, we put our Marines in boxes that restrict their growth—whether for their comfort, ours, or both.

The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said in Flow, “The more a job inherently resembles a game—with variety, appropriate and flexible challenges, clear goals, and immediate feedback—the more enjoyable it will be regardless of the worker’s level of development.” Challenging work is the counter-weight to the panoply of modern distractions—it focuses the mind while bringing joy to the Marine in his or her work. Mazer Rackham told Ender, “…humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.” But it is in the thrill of challenging, complex work—games—that our Marines achieve brilliance.

—Captain Edwin Powers

“Nobody gets here without being brilliant—make them good.” p. 206

Enders Game is justifiably a seminal part of any military PME program. Across the DOTMLPF spectrum, the story of Ender Wiggins has applicability. The intent of this brief post however, is to address the lessons learned from Enders experience upon taking initial command inside of a broader discussion on leadership. 

The reader witnesses the isolation accompanying Ender during the transition period from a regular soldier excelling as a first among equals to a small unit leader. Although his tactical legitimacy was cemented through rigorous evening training sessions with those who followed willingly, the authority of command created new expectations—and pressures. 

Ender experiences isolation and sleeplessness as he confronts the responsibilities to train and lead his unit in the battle room. This isolation is contrasted with the building confidence coincided with creating subordinate small unit leaders able to operate with initiative, absent direct orders. Ender evolves to embrace the new role, quickly excelling in competitions and exceeding the already highly set expectations. 

As the story plays out, we find Ender in command of the entire fleet directing subordinate leaders. The rigorous training produces a unique combination of decentralized maneuvers operating within a centralized command framework. Multiple small units operating with initiative against a numerically superior enemy and displaying creativity within commanders Intent. 

Amongst the various lessons in Enders Game, this is the most profound, and applicable. The reader witnesses the evolution of a brilliant young mind struggling not only to master the battle personally, but to successfully direct multiple assets towards a common enemy critical vulnerability.  It drives home a foundational axiom—great leaders are made, not born. The July edition of the Gazette provides a deep look at the concept of leadership. The question I will pose is this: if great leaders are made, what more should/could we be doing to take the top 25% of the American population (our Marines), and make great leaders out of them?  

—Lt Col Brad Fultz

Major Ian T. Brown

The first shot across the bow in the “Ender’s Game” call to action has the author taking Ender’s military educators to task for not grounding his training in a historical context. The author seems to think that because the adult teachers of the International Fleet (I.F.) hide the truth of what Ender’s doing behind the artifice of simply playing games, they have denied Ender a certain fullness of experience he would have otherwise gained from the truth.

I’ll confess my first reaction was to pull out my own copy of “Ender’s Game” to see if I had badly overlooked such a gap in Ender’s training. Not filling Ender in on historical lessons learned would be a glaring omission in his I.F. education. However, on review Orson Scott Card, despite his non-military background, evidently appreciated the value of historical study enough to indeed make it part of Ender’s curriculum. There are several instances both at the Battle School and Command School where Card has Ender studying military history and after action reports and video from the First and Second Bugger Invasions (from the 2002 Starscape edition, pages 45, 187, 258, and 265 all describe Ender’s various excursions into the past). We can thus rest assured that, in the face of future alien invasion, our planetary defense force will have a sufficiently robust PME program for its child warriors.

But I think the author’s larger point on the artifice employed to train Ender deserves additional discussion. He argues that Ender “fights a war thinking it’s a game.” While true, this assessment is also incomplete. Yes, Ender doesn’t know that he’s (spoiler alert) really fighting the Buggers. But he’s not treating the simulations like a game, just as Ender didn’t treat his Battle School skirmishes like playground pass-times. While the actuality of what Ender’s doing is hidden from him, Ender is still exercising military judgment and personal leadership exactly as if he’d known what was really going on. He manages and balances his use of subordinates based on their strengths and weaknesses. He adapts and changes tactics based on previous experiences to avoid predictability. Ender even dabbles in logistical considerations, noting in the final battle that he must consider fuel consumption in a gravity well (“cheaper to go down than up,” p. 290) While Ender thinks he’s playing a game, he’s still using the full mechanics of what he’d have to do were the situation “live.”

So the question is, does the artifice matter in the end? In our own Marine Corps, do we consider someone not fully experienced if, say, they’ve only ever done UDPs and MEUs with their associated CERTEXs and allied exercises, but never flown an hour of red time or fired a shot in anger on the ground? This seems an unfair assessment; while an aircraft commander or platoon leader in those situations might not be exercising their judgment or leadership in combat, they are still exercising judgment and leadership. They are still solving problems, balancing use of resources, choosing courses of action— often in conditions which, while not combat, are still attempting to simulate the chaos and friction of combat. Those experiences carry their own value, especially in the aggregate as no one or two or five MEUs/UDPs ever go the same way. There’s always a new wrinkle, a fresh twist on an old problem that requires creativity in its solution. There’s still value in having to grapple with those problems. 

We don’t have a bunch of live combat zones we can cycle the whole Marine Corps through to gain un-artificial experience. We are then left, as Ender was, with the artifice of peacetime deployments and simulated exercises. But, as we saw with Ender, do enough of those and it still builds a wide repertoire of experience from which one can draw on that day when the balloon actually goes up. Solving problems under any kind of conditions is still better than not ever having to solve a problem until combat.

I agree with the author that “the true test is on the battlefield.” But it’s better to have already fought, won, lost, and learned on a thousand virtual battlefields, as Ender did and we attempt to do in our own training, so that we have some measure of confidence that we will win on the day we must step on the real battlefield. I think the I.F. gave Ender all that they could, to include historical context (and access to the victorious commander from the last war, thanks to relativity). And while Graff and Mazer Rackham and all the other grown-ups hid real battles behind the artifice of computer simulations, they taught Ender what we teach our own Marines when we train: everything you do is to orient on your opponent and beat him. Or phrased another way: the enemy’s gate is down.

Since the creation of the Commandant’s Professional Reading List in 1988, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card book has been required reading for all Marines.  At the time, the book was considered a primary tool to illustrate many of the principles of Maneuver Warfare.  In addition, the book presented visionary ideas about wargames, and realistic force-on-force “free-play” training. 

Much has changed in the last 31 years.  Is Ender’s Game still important enough to be required reading for all Marines?

How does Ender employ trust tactics, commander’s intent and mission orders in training the Dragon Army and when fighting the Formics (aka buggers)?

Have the books ideas on the importance of wargames in training tactical decision makers become reality in the Marine Corps?  Why or why not?

What message does the book convey to Marines about ethical leadership?  Is Ender a positive example of an ethical leader?

In 2013 Ender’s Game was released as a movie.  Is the film as thought provoking as the book?  How do they differ?  Should the movie be on the Commandant’s Watch List, if such a thing existed?  Refer to the May 2019 edition of the Gazette: “The Commandants’ Watch List” by 1^st Lt Isaac Caughran.

By Maj Ryan Pallas

“Experience was obviously the best teacher, but rarely would the soldier have the luxury of choosing the time, manner, or place of his experiences. In the absence of actual combat experience, Scharnhorst believed that history would provide the officer with a repository of ideas and methods for use in battle.” – Charles Edward White “The Enlightened Soldier”

I am an advocate for military education, now more than ever.  One would think the war games given to Ender would bolster my stance on how effective education through the use of tough, realistic training is.  My take on the novel, although useful for combat training there is a noticeable lack of historical significance and education given to Ender.  Ender is given half of the equation.  He fights a war thinking it’s a game.  His innocence and naivety are his downfall, his tactical prowess and leadership are his strengths.  Ender is an example that without knowledge, the skills taught become useless when implemented.  A larger debate looms, knowledge vs. wisdom.  As the Greeks call it, phronesis (wisdom), is the true guide.  Ender lacks exactly that.

In a recent article by Joe Byerly (https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2019/06/06/the-goal-of-self-development-knowledge-vs-wisdom)  “Wisdom should be the goal of self-development.  Wisdom takes a lifetime.  It comes from the deliberate investment in your development in your development.  It comes from studying the past.  It comes from both success and failure.  It comes from taking the time to reflect on experiences until we find the lessons we need to learn.”  Ender lacks historical significance to make the best possible decisions.  Ender is implemented as a tool by the military, which recruits and trains young children, to battle the buggers, without hesitation.  When reading that last sentence one could argue the military at present, recruits young men and women to do the same thing (buggers can be any adversary the U.S. could face).  So, where is the difference?  The difference lies in our education.  Ender didn’t have a lifetime, just over a decade to develop the requisite skills to defeat and destroy an entire race.

Ender lacks a basic understanding of the consequences his actions will cause and has been misled, through omission, by the army he serves.  Although a brilliant tactician and natural leader, Ender does not comprehend the impact his decisions until the final conflict.  Was this the point?  Were the men who led him to this fate unable themselves to “pull the trigger” and execute the war plan to destroy the buggers?  I am reminded of the sacred relationship between the soldier and the state.  We as an all-volunteer force may not always understand the full impact of the strategy employed in a war time environment. Mazer tells him at the end, “Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn’t know. We made sure you didn’t know. You were reckless and brilliant and young.”

Ender is an example of the lengths which a nation or state will go to in order to win a war, or to impose their will onto another.  The point of military training is to repeat an action to ensure a basic response is initiated without hesitation during the middle of a chaotic and stressful environment, combat.  How do we offset ethical and moral issues while instilling good order and discipline when the ultimate outcome is death?  Again, education.  The law of armed conflict (jus in bello / jus ad bellum) is the foundation which creates a baseline of knowledge or principles for all service members developing an ethical and moral framework for our conduct on the battlefield.

Ender embodies the difference between knowledge and wisdom.  His tactical knowledge is very high, his understanding of the implementation of that knowledge is on the opposite end of the spectrum.  This is not to say Ender is unethical or foolish, but purposefully misled.  The very people who capitalized on his strengths also exploited his weaknesses.

How does this apply today?  Both officer and enlisted educational requirements operating in the current rapidly changing global landscape operating just shy of the threshold of armed conflict requires each Marine to bolster themselves with a larger understanding of tactical military actions with direct strategic impacts.  Events like the Osama Bin Laden raid being broadcast real time on social media require a deeper understanding of the variable domains and complexities which make up the battle space. Recent events with a Russian Naval ship coming within feet of a US Naval ship in the Philippine Sea. Instantaneous decisions which can lead to the next World War–the education of our forces is paramount. One wrong move, one wrong misinterpretation (Didn’t Ender engage about what the buggers wanted prior to attacking?), can lead to a destruction of an entire race or planet.

Ender is a warning to us all.  No matter how gifted, no matter how great our performance in simulators or war rooms, or how talented we think we may be, the true test is on the battlefield.  We must be cognizant as service members that off the battlefield our actions have direct affects even if we are hundreds of miles removed.

I am reminded of the quote from Batman, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”  The military is the violent end of diplomacy, the big stick according to Dr. Eliot Cohen.  Unfortunately, Ender was a means to an end, but then again, aren’t we all?  The difference lies in our education when married with experience, our phronesis.