And if you ever have trouble, if you ever have trouble finding the link, search your email for panelists. Well, I found it on the ten site. So yeah, yeah, but the panelists will get your write in. OK, OK, thank you. All right, we're all here. We have a quorum. So. I believe it's time for me to open the meeting with our lovely preamble. Good evening, everyone. It is February 27th, 2023 at six thirty six p.m. I am Robin Fordham, chair of the Historical Commission of Amherst, Massachusetts, and pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020, order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. GLC 30A section 18 pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended by Chapter 22 of the Acts of 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 14th, 2022 and signed into law on July 16th, 2022. This public hearing and public meeting of the town of Amherst Historical Commission is being conducted by a remote participation. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. A hyperlink to the hearing will be posted on the town's online calendar. And so we're going to move this meeting consists of one public hearing. So I believe I'm moving to the next part of our preamble here, which is that in accordance with the provisions of MGL Chapter 40A and Article 3.60 of Amherst General Bylaws Preservation of Historically Significate Buildings, this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice there has been posted and mailed to already as an interest. The Amherst Historical Commission is holding this public hearing to provide an opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding the following demolition application request and the property is 260 Leverett Road. And this is a request to demolish and Nate, I'm sorry, I don't have that exact language in front of me. Here's a request to demolish a circa 1830 single family home and any attached structures. There it is. I didn't have anything. So with that, I'm opening the public hearing and taking the testimony first with a report from the applicant. All right, Kevin, I'm promoting you to panelists. That means you can share your screen and just speak at will. And then I have all the documents available if you need me to share screen or anything. Good evening. Oh, you know what, Nate? I forgot to take a roll call of attendance. Do that now. OK, so a roll call of attendance when everybody's name in front of me. But when I call your name, say I for present, Madeline Helmer. Present. How do you start up? Present. Becky. Oh, my God. Lockwood. Present. It's not on the screen. Neither is mine. Hat off is absent. And Robin Fordham present. OK. So thanks, Kevin, if you want to give us a little bit of a presentation or do you want me to follow some images? If we could pull up the house picture, that'd be great. And let's do it this way. Do you prefer Nathan or Nathaniel? Nate or Nathaniel, I guess. Like Nate. OK. So let's do here's a Google Street view from that was included with the application. That's visible for everyone. OK. Yeah, this is an old house. It's the good thing about it is it's cute little farmhouse. The terrible thing about it is it's a cute little farmhouse. It's just not tenable right now. It's freezing cold. You have to run the heat almost nonstop or get a fire going to keep to make it comfortable. The bedrooms are upstairs. The single bathroom is downstairs. The stairs are not to code the very steep and a hazard for older people. And it's my intention to age in place here, but also to have parents stay with us periodically. So the house just doesn't fit what we want to do, what we need to do. We've looked at options of gutting it, remodeling it, but none of those address those core concerns. If we take down the back half of the house and build an addition, that could do it, but that adds at least two hundred thousand dollars to the overall cost, because the front would still have to be gutted so it can integrate it into the the new addition. We just don't have that kind of money. So, yeah, the request is that we can we take it down and build on roughly on that footprint, the new house, a post and beam structure that matches the other houses in the neighborhood. Thanks. So with that, we have any additional information from staff. Nate? Yeah, I'll say that the commission conducted a site visit today. Robin, Madeline, Heddy and myself were there. We walked around the exterior and then the interior just to take a closer look. You know, just clarify the condition of the property. And so here's an image from today in the houses and is in good shape. It's been maintained. You know, there's some work along, you know, some of the fascia on the north side in certain aspects, but by and large, it's, you know, we didn't see any visible rot or decay. You know, sometimes that's the case here where a sill is rotting or there's something structurally really unsound. Here's another image, kind of the south facing wall and then the corner, the east side facing, I guess, is kind of east facing the road. And so, yeah, I mean, it has new electrical upgraded service. The chimney on the north side of the scroll down or as you see here on the right side is not original to the house. And here is an image of that. You know, that's the fireplace that the owner mentioned using to keep it warm. There's another central chimney that was added at some point as well to incorporate a heating system. And then for other information, you know, other than the application, I didn't really, there isn't a lot for this area of town. And so in the application, we had the form, the inventory form, an older aerial photograph. And that's really about it to tell you the truth.  OK, so the next order of business would be to take questions from commission members or minority commission members that these are questions for the applicant or for town staff. This is not where we deliberate yet. So if anybody has any questions, just feel free to raise their hand or go ahead and speak. Becky. I'm sorry, I couldn't attend the meeting today. I did drive by and look at the outside questions about the inside. What about the plumbing, the electrical system? Is are there lead pipes? Do you have to do any work on those things if you were to rehabilitate it in some way? I can't tell you for sure. I don't know. I think most of the electric has been upgraded for the plumbing. I don't know. There could very well be lead here. I don't think any effort went into changing any sort of plumbing, but I do think the electrical has been upgraded. Madeline, or have you given any questions, Madeline? Yeah, I'd like to hear a little bit more about your considerations for retaining the exterior. And you said it would add two hundred thousand dollars to the overall building costs. And can you tell us a little bit more about how you came to that? Number and maybe who you consulted? Sure, our builder is the post and habitat post and beam and the pricing that they worked out for a brand new house on the footprint is almost the same as what an addition would cost. And on top of the cost of the addition, you would have to gut this place, get the old original house to make it one comfortable again, livable, insulated, new windows, new heating system, that sort of thing. And then also to integrate it into the new addition. So you would be almost doing two major projects at the same time. Our designer is Huckle, Huckle May. And they're over in Deerfield. Madeline, did you have any questions? I don't think so. I think Kevin answered a lot of questions during the site visit. So it was really helpful to to see the place and the site as well, you know, the property as a whole. No, I'm OK. Great. Thank you. OK, so then we can move on to any public comment. If there are members of the public who would like to comment, you can go ahead and raise your hand and they will let you into the meeting. Can I have just allow them to speak or have them come in as a panelist, Robin? Oh, doesn't matter. Oh, no, not really. Just takes another second to have them become a panelist. OK, I mean, just speaking is fine. Yeah. All right. Hilda, I see your hand. You can unmute yourself. Yeah, I'm just curious. If somebody wanted to move the house, is there any interior woodwork that's equivalent to what I see on the outside or better? Or is that on replaced with no. In other words, is there any 1830 woodwork left inside? No, honestly, the place has been remodeled, I think, multiple times on the inside. There are a few older plants in the very back of the house that we'd like to save and integrate into a new building. If possible, I didn't hear you. Oh, sure. There is nothing new on the inside. Nothing in the inside of the house ties back to 1830. It's been remodeled multiple times. There are some old planks in the back that we'd like. Yes, planks, yeah, that we'd like to integrate into a new home someday. But very few, very little. Thanks. Did you have any further comments, Hilda? No, no, I was just curious about that one. OK, thank you. It's the place where it'd be difficult to move it because it's so far from any place or anybody I know has a lot. Thank you. If there are any other members of the public who wish to make a comment, they can raise their hands. I see Annie Tiberio has raised her hand. Hey, Annie, you can unmute yourself. Thank you, Kevin. I'm one of your neighbors down the road. And my purpose for being here was just out of concern for wondering what was going to happen to the property. We had, you know, fantasies of a development going in or something. So we're glad to hear that that's not the case. It's a beautiful property and it's got so much life left in it. I'm delighted that it won't be dead and gone for good and erased from the from the from the earth. It's the I understand your problem with the house. I've lived in many old houses and they aren't always conducive to modern living or economical or environmental living. But I'm just I was here to reassure myself that we weren't going to be looking at a lot more traffic and a development going in. Excellent. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. No, when we first looked at the place, that was the intent. They had divided it up into five buildable lots. And my wife and I traveled up from Washington, DC to see it. And like we came to the same conclusion you have, it's a beautiful property and it would be a sin to chop it up into buildable lots. So we bought the entire property, all the lots as one, always with the intention of making the house something we could gracefully age and hopefully. But thanks for the kind words. Well, thank you for buying the whole thing and and preserving it as it is. It's I don't know if the greenhouse is workable or the barn or any of those things, but if I could have afforded it, I might have done it. Anyway, I wish you well and I'll look forward to meeting you someday. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to just weigh in any and I live together on Paul Cameron. We're just across the road a little closer to the lever line. We're at three sixty five on the east side. Yes, we go by there all the time. And like Annie said, we just we were curious about what's going to happen. You know, once this house, if it's demolished, what's going to happen? Of course, as she said, our fear was already stated, but I think you've put that to rest. You bought four other lots so that won't happen. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Yeah, great. Great. Now, we plan on farming. We want to bring this back to raising vegetables and fruit. That's our plan. Oh, great. That's great. There would be a welcome addition to the to the to the street. To the stop by any time if you see my car in the driveway, any time. OK, you're not living there now, are you? I am, sir. Oh, you are. OK. OK. And what was your name again? Kevin, Kevin O'Brien. OK, well, if we see you, we'll stop in and say hello. We just. Thank you. Thank you. OK, so as I see, no other members of the public for public comment. We will close the public comment section. And then, Nate, I believe your suggestion previously was that we just deliberate with the meeting open in case there are questions. Is that your general recommendation? Yeah, I think we can keep the hearing open for a bit just to see if any more information is presented or discussed. You know, then we can always close it with one motion to do, you know, but I think we can just continue questions or have a discussion with the commission. So I could say that, you know, Kevin, the process is the building has already been found to be significant. And that's what moved it to a hearing. And so the commission's role tonight is to decide whether the building should be properly preserved, and that would mean issuing a 12 month delay. And so the commission can issue a, you know, a preferably preserved order which, you know, stops demolition for 12 months or a demolition authorization, allowing you to move to a building permit to demolish. And so that's the discussion. And then if a delay is issued, oftentimes the commission likes to work with the owner to come up with, you know, different ideas or strategies. And so we would be reaching out to you to see if we could, you know, hire even hire another architect or engineer or do a feasibility study or something or see if we can move the house or, you know, what are the possible solutions? You know, it could be that it still results in a demolition, but maybe there's ways to work even with design to mimic some of the massing even or something of a new structure. So there's different ideas that could be discussed during a demolition. I don't have the guns. So it's really the commission, if they have any other questions or discussion. Yeah, so I wanted to open up to commission members for discussion. And I just wanted to remind everyone, although we've had some discussion about how the property will or won't be used, what is in our purview is about this particular building as a historic resource and its value to the community of Amherst and what did that would be a significant loss if it were demolished. So commission members wanted to make comment or deliberate at this time and go ahead and raise their hands or feel free to speak. So I think for me, I was really interested to be there today, partly because from. East Leverett Road up Leverett Road, it seemed to me that there had been a number of new builds in that in that neighborhood along Leverett Road that I they seem very new to me, maybe in the last couple of years. And what strikes me about 260 Leverett Road is that the house is really kind of close to the road and it's it's additional structures, its barns and, you know, other outbuildings and the. Greenhouse, which of course is is much newer in on the site, are quite are quite visible from the street and convey a sense of what that road was like historically in a way that some of the other houses don't. The whole thing kind of works together, you know, but it's. It's also an architectural style that is pretty important in terms of telling America's story architect in architecturally speaking, even though it's a modest example, the house has a lot of charm. Hilda, you asked about interior fittings and I think Kevin's right, there isn't a whole heck of a lot that's original. But, you know, the ceilings are commensurate with the house being a sort of small, rural Greek revival example from that time period. And the staircase up to the second floor is very charming. Maybe maybe charming isn't the word you would use if you were 85 years old and heading up to bed. But, you know, it had it seemed to me to have a lot of integrity as as a building sitting on its on its immediate site in relation to the road. So that wasn't a question. I hope that's OK. I'm kind of no, we're we're deliberating. That's actually really helpful. Madeline or Becky, did you want to jump in or I can appear? Renia.  OK, I'll jump in at this point. I want to echo what Hedy said. You know, it's always challenging when a demolition requests come before us. And this house in particular, its character defining features are so strong and so so visible from the public way. And so clearly a part of what is a very old part of Amherst. I've been trained recently. I've received my degree recently and I've been training to learn how to do the art. The historical research on properties like this and looking at the BAP from 1833 and the census records and finding Austin Lemus's a gravestone, which notes that he was the deacon. He had the Amherst Congregational Church in front of our CPA committee looking for funds for restoration. And I think while I didn't define it today, he was a congregationalist, I'm assuming that was his congregation. So I think the step back and the architecture in the setting are. Are just really strong, strong reasons to see this as a preferentially preserved building and to to see it as something that we would want to impose a delay on so that we could find a solution somewhere between that would not be complete demolition without any sort of attempt for a better outcome. And now, Leonard Becky, did you want to make a comment? Yeah, I don't have much to add because I just agree with what you and Hedy have said.  It was it was neat to see it today. And yeah, I think it would be good to to work maybe try and work together to figure out a solution. Yeah, I feel like the full context of the house is still there, which is it's so unusual to consider. Becky, did you want to make a comment? I completely agree. Taking some time to try and help find another another way to preserve the house would would be the most preferable outcome. And was there any more comment from commission members or Nate? No, I don't have any. OK, anything I can ask members of the public again if they have any further comment or questions. If so, raise your hand. I am not seeing any raised hands. So I think at this point, we would make a motion to close the hearing and then go ahead with the votes. Right, Nate? Yeah. OK. So a couple of questions. Yep. OK, one year. Does the clock start from when I put the application in or from today? It's from the vote of the preferably preserved. I mean, yeah, so I'd have to confirm that, but it's not from the time of application. Because the commission could have voted tonight to allow demolition. So what we'll do is we the town will file the preservation order if it moves forward with the town clerk. That's a confirm with the bylaw exactly when the clock starts. But you'll be notified when that when that is. So we have, you know, seven days or something to so many days to file a to file it with the town clerk and with the building commissioner. OK, is there any intent to identify historically significant buildings in advance of someone purchasing? This just seems very unfair to find out about this five years after I bought the place. Well, I think that, you know, we have mentioned this site. Yeah, yeah, I mean, some of it would be, you know, due diligence on a buyer's part and then also on the realtor or someone you're working with. Right. So this isn't, you know, enamorous. There aren't buildings that are prevented from being delayed necessarily. So even in local historic districts or national reserve districts, buildings could be demolished depending on plans or what what the project is. So there isn't kind of a categorically preserved building in town. I think some of it would be just knowing that it's an older structure. You know, what what does a town or municipalities have in place for protections? And so it varies, especially in Massachusetts, each community may have a different level of protection or bylaw regulation. I just think that, you know, what to me, if I saw that house, I would think, well, geez, it's early 19th century. It's an older house. The stairs might be steep. It might need a lot of work. You know, what what am I planning to do? You know, do I need to research that before I purchase it?  I think it's unfortunate that the real the real estate, you know, the real estate listing didn't have some mention or some acknowledgement of of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think I read too much into the plaque. My neighbor has that identifies it as an old building. OK. So do we have a motion to close the hearing? I can make that motion. OK, a second. A second. OK, I'm going to go to a roll call vote. Becky. Lockwood. We're voting to close the hearing, right? That's correct. Yes. I'm Madeline Homer. Yes. How do you start up? Yes. I'm Robert Ford and I vote yes as well. So the hearing is closed with a vote for to zero. We have deliberated. Do we have a motion from the commissioners to impose demolition delay or issue a demolition permit? I vote that we impose a demolition delay and that the building be preferably preserved. OK, do I have a second? I can second. OK, I have a second and so we'll go to a roll call vote again. I just any any discussion? I'm sorry, any further discussion on that discussion? Further discussion. Among commissioners. OK. All right. So we'll go to a roll call vote. I'll start with how to start up. This is a motion to issue a demolition delay on 260 Leverett Road. I say aye. How do you say hi, Madeline Helmer? Aye. Becky Lockwood. Aye. And Robin Ford, I vote aye as well. So it's four to zero vote to impose a demolition delay. Nate, I will let you take it from here in terms of what the applicant in the town can engage in going forward. Sure. Yeah, I was just looking at the bylaw. I try to see when exactly the delay, you know, when it when it starts and I can let you know, Kevin, over email. So yeah, I think that once, you know, once the delays issued it, the commission staff try to work with an owner to like, you know, as we mentioned, come up with alternatives to demolition. And so it could be engaging and architect to have other plans or cost estimates, you know, seeing ways that the front of the house could be preserved, seeing how the massing could work together. And so, you know, even moving the house is an option, although that's something that, you know, there's there's a lot involved there. The town does have Community Preservation Act funding, CPA funding that can be allocated to private properties for preservation and rehabilitation. And so it's something that if you're interested in, we can help you apply. It's an annual cycle. So the the applications are due until the fall and then they're discussed and voted on around now, actually. So this year's cycle is is somewhat concluding. But, you know, it'll start again next year in September, August, September. And so there is, you know, CPA funding that would could support this project. It could also be used for the barn or other outbuildings as well. You know, I just I'll make mention of that in the future. Yes, can you can you clarify what I'm just I was thinking about CPA funds to as well. And I'm thinking like, I mean, certainly certainly couldn't be used to renovate the interior to renovate the interior. But I mean, I would think they could be used. It's sort of a question of what they could be, how you would interpret preservation, like I would imagine a heating system upgrade or plumbing upgrades or something like that, that would allow the building to stay. It's just it's a little I think of it generally, you know, when we look at the North Amherst Church and, you know, you've got rotting clavards and things like that that are pretty obvious preservation issues. But yeah, it would be good to explore what might apply in this particular circumstance before kind of going too far down that road, since it's already in such good condition. At the same time, I imagine there's something there that would apply. Right. So CPA is for the preservation of the structure or rehabilitation of the structure. So, you know, sometimes things that are integral like heating or cooling or plumbing may be eligible, you know, foundation, building envelope.   So, you know, if you were saying there's costs to manage that with having an addition. And so depending on how that could be framed or worked out together, then, you know, there is possibility of using CPA funds for some of the work on the you know, the existing structure or structure. So, you know, without saying yes, I mean, I'm assuming there's eligibility there. Yeah. And I think I'm reminded that Jane made clear that that rehabilitation includes changes for accessibility, but that historical structures, you know, that their accessibility is an issue. And so there's the potential for that accessibility issue to be part of of rehabilitating it for for current use. That's that's a definition of rehabilitation. So that might be might be possible as well. I don't want to want to confirm anything. But OK. So at this point, I want to thank you for coming before our commission. I also wanted to thank you for the site. This is this afternoon. It was really lovely to see your property and Nate and we'll be in touch with you. And as far as the commission is concerned, I think at this point, we are just ready for a motion to adjourn. Nothing was correct me on that. No, that's good. I mean, Kevin, we'll be in touch and then, you know, we can talk about next steps or what you'd like, you know, what kind of work you'd like the commissioner staff to look into. OK. I do have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Oh, how do you so moved? Second. I'll second. So the meeting is adjourned at seven and nine p.m. Thank you, everybody, for your time and have a good evening. Thank you, Robin. OK. And Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck, Kevin. Thank you. Bye bye.


Hello, everyone. My name is Lianpeng from Wear My AI Labs. Today, my colleague, Fan Xiuwan, and I have introduced the project FATE LAM, which I will be working on the Linux Foundation AI and Data Community. Wait. I'm going to empower the large model with better learning. This is the right-to-use framework in financial and telecommunication company. So first of all, I wonder how many people here have heard of better learning before? Better learning is generally considered raised by Google from his broad better learning collaborative, machine learning, without centralized data. He proposed a method to train a model in users' cell phones, but doesn't need to collect all data from cell phones in the center place. This method is not complex. In the Wikipedia, it is applied to four steps. First, from the central server, choose a model. Then send the model to clients as the initial model. Let each client train this model with local data on the client side. Lastly, after several efforts, each client get a trained model, and then send it back to the central servers for averaging. Then we repeat the second to the fourth steps until we get a verified global model. This is a very basic flow. Of course, for privacy-reserving cases or learning ID cases, there are many different algorithms designed during the flow. The original case is a device case. But obviously, it tends to different organization in a global enterprise. And then you can envision a bigger scenario. How about different companies collaborate? For example, an internet company and a bank, an insurance company, and a telecommunication carrier, etc. That data can complement for better modeling without data centralization. And also able to prevent privacy leakage with some different privacy or MVC algorithm at doing the fair learning. Based on this, we ban initial and industrial better learning framework fake. For empowering the bank models with internet company data comparatively, this level is developed and driven in committee and then it is contributed to the Linglis Foundation AI and data. Now fake is biggest industrial-grade open source for a learning system in Linglis Foundation AI and data. There are over 4,000 engineers participate in the development and it is used in many banks and financial companies in production today. Well-well is also one of the key contributors to this framework. We are the technical feeling committee member of FAKE. We are the maintainer of FAKE and FAKE LLM project and the initial initiators of QFAKE which make FAKE easier to manage and provision in Kubernetes. And FAKE LCM which is based on QFAKE and provides better learning life cycle management. And the last keyword is LLM as our title. I believe most people here must heard of LLM before because this is the hottest topic this year. This image is from the presentation, the AI development. It shows the strategy is the part of platform or software that achieved 1,000 million users in history, much faster than Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other famous names. LLM is amazing, not like other machine learning algorithm which are designed for one purpose. LLM which model is some frightening. The same foundation model can adapt to a wide range of downstream tasks. And if you push harder, the increase of the training scale even shows more capabilities. We call this emergent that made more room for imagination. However, training for a large model is not easy. It requires a large data set to be trained and of course, it needs more resource. This table shows the way of data scale and the results to train the mainstream LLM model including public and closed source ones. Some of them use solo TB tokens and thousands of GPU or TPU that crazy. In another hand, along with more data set need to train a large model, the high quality public data is running out. According to the paper, we will run out data analysis of the limits of scale, there's less in machine learning. If that's the high quality training data we will run out next year. Moreover, when the requirement is the large model, more speed to local application it require more private data as the training data set. So how to protect privacy when we use private data to train a large model? For this demand that the federated LLM is raised, this is why we developed the project for LLM. But it is not easy. We face several obvious challenges. The first challenge is as I described before, family is collaboration, calling clients or even it has a through web. And as I said before, training a large model is required huge data for training. So how to exchange such large scale data through web during training and made a process in an acceptable time? The second challenge is as the table I saw several slides before, training a large LLM model requires a huge computing resource. However, a lot of family use cases log in the data center, but we need to train a local model in the Edge device or even IoT device. How to train or apply to a large model in his junior participants with limited resource? It is not easy, but we all come these challenges and build faith LLM. I will let my colleague, Banshu Wang, introduce how we do it in the project. All right. Hi, everyone. So Lane just introduced to us the background of federated learning and large language models and why we are attempting to integrate federated learning into this training of these models. So the challenges he mentioned are indeed the issues the industry is currently trying to address. So in the FIT project, we have already implemented and are in the process of implementing some of the solutions to these challenges. So all these implementations, we put them into one of FIT's sub projects called FIT LLM. So first, let's take a look at some of the proposed solutions and approaches in the industry to address these challenges. So let's start with the first challenge, which is that the model parameter that being transmitted during the federated learning is too large. So the most basic way to apply federated learning in large language models is for all participating parties to jointly train or fan tune a large language model with the same architecture. So for example, here we have three parties and together they can fan tune a LLMA model with their own local data. And to address the high communication cost problem, the industry has tried various methods, such as the approach described in the paper on the right, which involves freezing certain layers of the model and only train and updating other layers. However, experimental results have shown that although the communication cost may be lower, it can significantly impact the final model's performance. Therefore, we need to explore other more effective ways. And on the other hand, we all know that for now, for fan tuning large language models, the commonly used method here is what we call parameter efficient fan tuning, or PAPT. So the core idea of PAPT is that during the training process, we do not adjust all of the model's parameters, but instead we introduce a small number of new parameters. And only update these parameters during training.  And below that, there is LORA, which is a popular path method that uses low rank matrices to represent the updates to certain weight matrices in the self-attention module. And there are other methods like fan tuning and the prefix tuning, which involve inserting prefixes at the model's input layer or each transformer layer. And these prefixes are trainable. And during fan tuning, only this part will be trained and updated. So naturally, in federated learning, we can attempt to apply these PAPT approaches. This means each party will apply PAPT for the local training. And after that, we only need to transmit and aggregate the updated part. So this proportion of the transmitted parameters is generally like 1% or 1,000, or even less, of the original model's parameter numbers. So the industry has also proposed solutions like FedAdapter, Fed Prompt, which combine PAPT with federated learning. And also there is this paper, which compares various PAPT methods in the federated learning settings. Basically, when these methods are applied in federated learning, the data being transmitted or the transmission cost can be significantly reduced, while the model's performance do not decline much. So essentially, we can achieve a balance between cost and acceptable performance. And furthermore, this article also inspired us to implement FedLLM in certain ways. What we want is that we want to provide a solution or a framework that allow users to easily choose fine-tuning approaches based on their requirements and to configure and validate different methods very easily. So this is the first how to put it, the paradigm like we implemented in our current FedLLM. Basically, it is a homogeneous federated learning LLM framework based on PAPT. So the general idea is what we saw in those papers earlier. And in our code implementations, we have a module called PELLM, which stands for parameter efficient LLM. And within this module, we can work with a range of pre-trained models from the hugging face ecosystem. And this module also works with hugging faces PAPT library to use different path methods such as LORA. And after that, we can leverage Fed's existing like called horizontal federated neural network trainer to perform the federated training. So here is a simple example of the overall process. There are three parties here, and each of them will conduct several rounds of local training using LORA. And afterwards, the parameters of the LORA part will be aggregated and updated. And then, this updated, the global parameters will be used for next round of local training. So this process will iterate until certain termination conditions are met. And the aggregation process here can use secure aggregation methods based on different technologies like secret sharing, like differential privacy, which are commonly used in federated learning to protect privacy. Basically, by using these methods, we can ensure that no party can access the parameters of the others, but they can obtain aggregated results. And also, the community has some practical validations. Based on this PELM module, it can support like federated fine-tuning of homogeneous LLM with over 30 parties. And the final model's performance is better than any individual party's local model fine-tuned with their so-called own data. OK, so this is how to efficiently and privately do federated learning model aggregation for large model with the same architecture. Apart from that, Lane also mentioned that there is a second challenge, which is about the large computational resources required for training large language models. You know, in federated learning, the local resources available to each participant are very different. In many scenarios, these participants or clients can include edge devices, IoT devices, and the branches of various sizes. So unlike data centers or clouds, they do not have the large-scale computing clusters, and they also can have very different data volumes and distributions. So this scenario is what we call collaborative federated learning between cloud, edge, and the end. So in such scenario, participants may want to find new models with different scales. And how can we apply federated learning to this so-called heterogeneous settings? So for this, the industry also has some solutions and ideas. There's a paper from MIT that mentions an off-site tuning approach. Basically, with this approach, we can establish a federation between large models and the data. What does it mean? You know, for a model training scenario, there are data holders and there are model holders. We all understand that the data holder does not want to send their data out for fine tuning. So often, they need to bring the model locally for training. However, in some scenarios, this can be challenging too. For reasons like limitations in local hardware or because the model holder itself does not want to send the model to anyone, as they want to protect informations like model structure and weights. So with these requirements, the off-site tuning approach proposes that the model holder can provide some lightweight adapters and a lossy, compressed emulator to the data holder. And on the data holder side, they can fine tune the adapter with the assistance of the emulator. And in the end, the train adapter will be combined back to the original large model. And this way, the fine tuning process is relatively resource efficient, as it is essentially training a small model. And at the same time, the original model remains protected. So this is one approach, and there are other ways. When we think about collaboration between large and small models, we often think of knowledge distillation. There are various types of distillations like response-based, feature-based, and relation-based. So in this context, there are also explorations to apply knowledge distillation in federated learning for heterogeneous large language models. So for instance, there is distillation initiated from the participant or client side. Basically, each parties will do knowledge distillation from their different model to get student model with the same architecture. And the training of fine tuning process can then be performed by them to initially train their respective heterogeneous model and the student model at the same time, using both local private data and knowledge distillation. So the knowledge distillation is depicted in this figure besides the KD mark. It's a mutual. It's a bidirectional process. So then during the model aggregation phase in federated learning, we only aggregate and update the student model. So by iterating this process, we can allow the participants to continue benefiting from the training of others through federated learning, even though they have heterogeneous local models. And another research approach is kind of like server-side distillation, where the knowledge distillation is initially performed on the aggregation side, which means that during federated learning, all these participants still train and define tune as the modeler model. However, this model's initial state is distilled from a pre-trained, stronger, large model. So as mentioned earlier, especially in the so-called cross-device federated learning scenarios, participants may not be able to train large-scale models due to reasons like resource limitations. They can only train and use relatively small models. But if this small model can receive assistance from knowledge distillation from a large model, it will help the performance of the final model. So Google has this paper that talks about this kind of large model guiding small model approach. So there are some of the solutions of heterogeneous federated learning and the collaborations between large and small models. And of course, there are relatively cutting-edge research areas, and there are related topics like privacy protection, efficiency, and more that are still continually being investigated, being evaluated by the industry. And for the FIT LLM project, it has also introduced another paradigm called federated transfer learning for large language models, or FTL LLM, to address this kind of heterogeneity and collaboration. The transfer here refers to the transfer of knowledge. So through a fit of FTL LLM, we aim to provide a way to improve both large and small models simultaneously in federated learning. So in terms of implementation, for example, in the case of offsite tuning, the FIT LLM extends original paper to accommodate federated learning scenarios with small participants. So as shown here, the FIT aggregator or server first obtains the model from the hugging face interface. Then by following the offsite tuning approach, it can extract the simulator or emulator and the adapter. These elements are then distributed to these multiple participants or clients. And then each participant will fine tune the adapter in a federated learning fashion, including local training and the global aggregation. And the aggregation process still relies on FIT's secure aggregation protocols to further protect the privacy of all the participants. So this entire implementation is encapsulated within a specific implementation class called offsite tuning trainer. And also there is also practical validation in the community. Basically, through this approach, the model's performance consists of significant improvements while the resources requirements for participants are lower compared to training the original model. So this FTL LLM paradigm and the implementation was released back in the latest FTL LLM 1.3 version, which was released in the earlier September this year. So for now, we've seen how we can address the challenges in large language models for federated learning and the specific implementations within the FTLLM project. And from an engineering perspective, the FTLLM project plans to divide these implementations into different components, including a communication efficient hub, a model hub, and additionally, the implementation of other parameters, including mechanisms for privacy protection, is hosted in the privacy hub. And as mentioned, FTLLM itself is a sub-project of the broader FIT ecosystem. So what does it look like to run FTLLM within the overall FIT architecture so we can take a deeper look on the overall system design here. So FIT itself operates as a system with an API and a scheduling service called FITflow at the top. And the FITLLM model, as we are seeing here, is the components below and are orchestrated by FITflow. And further down the stack, there are optional optimization and acceleration libraries such as DeepSpeed. And moving on, we can introduce COOPFIT. The COOPFIT project organizes and deploys the FIT systems in a containerized cloud native manner. It provides functionalities, including the management of the underlying distributed computing engine and the hardware. And naturally, lots of these functionalities are implemented on top of Kubernetes on cloud native features. So now we have a system for running FITLLM. However, what we see here is just one participant, right? We need at least a second one, which is essentially another FITLLM system. And in the middle here is the OSX model who will coordinate the tasks between the two parties. And below there is a FedLCM service used for deployments of the federated learning systems in multiple parties within a so-called federation. So this includes deployments, operation, interconnection, management of tasks, data models, and more. So this is the typical deployment setup for FITLLM. Of course, our FITLLM can also run directly on FITs core or virtual machines. But if you want to manage and deploy them in a cloud native fashion and enjoy all the benefits that comes along, we introduce COOPFIT and FedLCM. Basically regarding COOPFIT and the so-called cloud native federated learning, we've covered this in previous COOPCON events and other events. So we won't take a deeper dive here today. Just know that by using COOPFIT and FedLCM, you can quickly deploy and manage production-ready FIT systems to start your federated learning jobs. And this is the FITLLM project roadmap. It is an active project that is continually involving. There are a couple of releases since the initial release in the first half of this year. And as mentioned earlier, we recently released version 1.3 in early September, and in which we introduce FTLLLM paradigm and the off-site tuning framework. And meanwhile, the FIT project has another development branch known as version 2.0. This dedicated to another crucial topic in federated learning, which is the interoperability among federated learning systems. This involves a lot of factory work, so there is a separate 2.0 branch with the community. And the plan is to merge FITLLLM, which is currently based on version 1.x into the 2.0 release by the end of this year. Okay, let's wrap up and provide a summary of our discussion today and what's next. So we've explored federated learning and its value in the context of large language models applications. And we talked about the challenges we will face when applying federated learning. And within the FIT open source project, the community has collaborated and is continuing collaborating with the industry to introduce suitable paradigms for training large language models to address these challenges. And still, it is worth noting again that the research and application of this so-called federated large models are still in the relatively early stage. So here we've highlighted some topics related to this and the FITLLM project. One important aspect is the integration with deep speed. You know, FITLLM already supports multi-node, multi-GPU training using deep speed for large models like chat GLM and Lama. And we can currently investigate how to leverage native scheduling mechanism in environments like Kubernetes to better integrate with deep speed and other libraries. And another topic was discussing and I think most people are interested in, it's about privacy protection. So we know that in federated learning, the training data never leave the local environment, right? But the final train model might still carry information from the original data. So especially for this generative models, could there be a way for the model to output this original data in some form? So currently there are no definitive answers. And as far as we know, different paradigms have different privacy implications and the community is actually exploring this area. So again, the FITLM and the industry will continue to explore federated large models. This includes expanding support for even larger models, exploring better mechanism and the more effective paradigms for privacy protection and to achieve a balance between privacy security and the efficiency. So as an open source project and the LFAI and Data Foundation, we welcome everyone to follow the developments in this area and to participate in this project to contribute to the community. And I think that's basically all for our sharing. Thank you, everyone.


Good day. I'm Colonel Jerry Moorlach, the Director of the Combat Studies Institute. You're about to use a video series which our instructors have prepared for the sole purpose of approving your presentation of M610, the Evolution of Modern Warfare. We've taken care to make the course that you teach as similar to the one taught at Fort Leavenworth as possible and choose to add these tapes to your libraries in order to give you every advantage as you prepare to teach this new course. These tapes are similar to the weekly train-up sessions which we utilize to prepare our instructors here at Fort Leavenworth. My intent for the tape sessions was to provide you insights and tips on ways to approach the lessons of M610 that were not available in the instructor notes. I've drawn various instructors, military and civilian, into the sessions based upon their specific expertise and historical background. They were asked to just talk to the lesson structure and content, giving you some additional information on the historical context and differing views on how to approach the lessons. These tapes will provide you a wealth of knowledge and direction that will significantly improve your readiness to teach our new history course. One word of caution regarding how to use these training tapes, they are not designed to be substituted for your instruction during the individual lessons of the course. As instructor preparation tapes train the training material, if you will, they are inappropriate for direct instruction to students and are not intended for that purpose. Our intent with these tapes is to improve your ability to lead the students' seminars by sharing tips and advice from some highly qualified experts. The Combat Studies Institute stands ready to provide whatever additional expertise or assistance that you may require, and we've included the institute's phone, mail and email contact information on the tape if you should need it. Good luck with the evolution of modern warfare course. Have a good time. All right, good day. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Scott Stephenson. I'm the course author for the Resident Military History Course at CGSC and accompanying me today and hopefully providing the knowledge that I might not be able to provide to this session are Lieutenant Colonel Jim Martin and Dr. Sam Lewis, both of whom will give a little intellectual credibility to this group. At this late stage in your course, it's time to start thinking about how you've seen these sessions we've had here on tape. We're thinking about an award program and we think perhaps this session might deserve at least consideration for the homiest trio on tape during our non-resident CGSC instruction instructor prep tapes. Take this seriously. This is the last lesson. This is the wrap up for the course that you've posted to these students. A chance to tie the threads that you've offered them all through the course. And so I think you want to allocate some time to that. What are the themes that you think they should and things they should have pulled out of the course, but also you want to hit the material because in my mind, I think Sam and Jim would agree with me that this lesson potentially one of the most interesting, one of the most provocative. It's about the way the Army thinks about its business, how we got to the way we are today, the way we operate today, the doctrine that we use today. And a large part based on the way the Army came out of the Vietnam War, how it assessed its experience in the Vietnam War, assessed the new challenges faced by the Warsaw Pact, and then how were they going to adapt to a new world going in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Again, this lesson tells us a lot about the way we think about our business today. And I think it's worked well on a way to come back to the themes that you talk about at the very beginning of the course. What are the relationships between history, theory, and doctrine? I'd like to start by asking Sam what kind of approaches in general you'd use to going after this lesson. First of all, I'd agree with your observations that this lesson will stand up on its own as a piece for looking at the U.S. military after the Vietnam War. But it's also an ideal opportunity to examine where we've been, why we're at this particular point, why we are this way, and what indicators are out there for the use of force into the future. So I always try to use this lesson to wrap it all up. One of the key notions in this lesson is, is there an American way of war? And throughout the course we've been using the text by Russell Wigley to examine his particular view on the subject. For those new instructors out there, trust your students and trust the readings. Let them attempt to come up with an evaluation of whether there is a unique American way of war, or is it part of something larger, a Western way of war? If it is different, how so and why? What is it like? When Saddam Hussein or a potential enemy of the United States looks at the U.S. military, what do they see? Do they see certain tendencies or certain things expected? And can we, ourselves, rely upon those to be used in the future? That's one notion. James? I've found that this lesson always for me ends up coming back, my students bring it back a lot to the Gulf War. Your instructor notes talk about maybe how does the Gulf War reflect what's occurred after Vietnam. And remembering that Korea and Vietnam were not the military experiences we might have liked them to have been. It's not unusual that many of our students will turn to looking at the Gulf War, which turns out the way we do want it to turn out. So don't be afraid if it goes that direction. That's not too unusual, it happens here too. I would suggest that it's healthy in many ways. One can maintain that Desert Storm represents a flowering of American military culture, whether you like it or not. And you notice in the introduction to this week's lesson, the author quoted Colonel Dr. Swain in pointing out some of our more predictable traits, the over-reliance on numbers, the over-reliance on technology. In German they'd say Buchstablich, the regimented process-oriented. That's not the way we like to see ourselves, though. Dr. Swain pointed out that we all like to see ourselves as Pattons, Guderians, and Rommels. And it comes as a shock when someone suggests that we are the slow-plotting, methodical players. We're bludgeoning to death instead of the bull-rapeer thrust. We like that. This is a good discussion question. You can get a lot of mileage out of this one. I don't think you particularly can if you've got someone who was in 7th Corps. All they have to do is have read Schwarzkopf's book and the treatment of General Frank in Schwarzkopf's book. And you can get an argument going. By the way, I used the term argument just as a euphemism for discussion, because a discussion is just an argument among civilized people. But you can get a great one going just on that disagreement there, because what Schwarzkopf wanted Frank's to be was Patton. And he wasn't, as I think Swain points out. There weren't any Pattons in the desert. Or if they were, doctrine and training made them behave in a more regimented manner. Scott, you do something in your class. I mean, when I was a new instructor here, you brought out some charts and things where you show the beginnings of this regimented piece in our army in the days when you and I came in. We're back from the 75-76 timeframe. And the cornerstone doctrine manuals that we used then and the manuals that flowed from that showed that regimentation that Sam talks about. We just came out of the 73 war piece not long ago. We talked about that. And some of the things that pop out there, the one that really pops to mind is the Sager. And all of a sudden there was an anti-tank missile out there that could kill an M-60 tank. Incredibly lethal. And in the army responded to it by becoming, to me, more regimented like Sam talks about, going numbers focused. Why don't you share that? I think that's a real good piece. And I could, I'd make a point that you want to allocate time in this lesson toward wrap it up and you want to talk about where is the army right now and what do we know and what can we project about the future of warfare. But the centerpiece of the lesson quite clearly is Herbert's deciding what has to be done. The Leavenworth paper, Camouflage, talks about the debate over the 76 edition of the FM 100-5. And you need to give that it's due because that piece is a real case study in the way the army thinks about doctrine. You've got to set that up though. And again, as Jim has said, in a way you have to refer back to the 73 war and shape the way the army thinks. But you even have to go back farther than that to what shaped the mind of the guy who's going to build the doctrine that the army takes into the post-Vietnam period. This lesson in the large part is about a guy named Depew. Many of you may not have ever heard of the guy, but Colin Powell said he, more than anybody, shaped the post-Vietnam army. Made it into the success story we took him to the Gulf War. Again, that's maybe a controversial point. Obviously, if you read in the Herbert piece, he wouldn't be a fun guy to work for. He's abrasive. He's aggressive. He's opinionated. But he's the guy who shaped that doctrine. And you really have to set this lesson up by talking about what shapes the world view of this guy as he takes on the business of remaking the army after Vietnam War. What do you think of the key things, Sam, that shaped the way he looked at doctrine and its role? I find Depew fascinating. I'm sure your students will find him fascinating. One of the things you can ask the students is what sort of a man was he? What were the influences upon him? I usually wait for a bit to ask that. I'll start off this lesson with a question. What was the strategic situation for the U.S. military and the U.S. Army in 1972 and 1973? What was the major threat? What were the results of our failure in Vietnam? What were the significances of congressional action to do away with the draft? I use that as a building block to start out from. Then I try to get into the realm of institutions. When we started this class off, we considered the development of the War Department and later general staffs to be a great sign of progress the wave of the future. 1973 comes along. They are no longer there. Is this progress? What does it represent? What is a trade-off? What does it do? What's an integration center? What happened to the old War Departments and General Staffs? Is this part and parcel of the American military culture and experience? That's worth looking at. At this point I usually bring in Depew, who was he? Why did he think this way? I ask the students if they have known anyone like Depew. What was he like working for? Is Depew typical of the U.S. Army officer corps or is he untypical? Exceptional. Where does he stand as a symbol in the evolution of modern warfare? Is he our Napoleon? Is he our Moatka? Or is he our George Steinbrenner? We have gotten some mileage out of that one in the past. George Steinbrenner. That's the way I started off. This question of who was this guy, do the students know who he is? I like to ask him a favor, Depew fighting position. Yes, I've asked that one too. Most of us at one time or another have had to dig one of those and it makes you wonder, who was this guy? That's probably the first place I ever thought about him. As I was trying to dig into Depew Foxhole in the red clay of Georgia. Calling him a number of names. You can reach out and kind of get your students' attention. You'll find it, and I'm sure you've already found by now, that things that you can reduce to a personal level with students, get them highly involved. So that's one way I've found you can reach out and grab these guys in this lesson. After you do that overview, you can reach out with something like that. Scott, you asked about background, and I think with almost any military actor, that you have to look at what's occurred in their life and how that then drives how they think. I mean, we grew up in the post-Vietnam generation, you and I, and that affects our thinking as military men. I was in the Gulf War, that affects my thinking. And I think you have to examine or get your students to examine those watershed events into Depew's life. And that's probably World War II and Vietnam. And how the army performed in Vietnam, which wasn't a positive thing, versus some things that happened in World War II, which was a more positive event, I think shaped Depew's look at the world. It really does. I think you see it in the FM. Yeah, I'm constantly struck by his experience in World War II and his interpretation of it. He fought in France and in Germany in 1944-1945 as a staff officer in the 90th Division. In the Division that, when first committed, had a pretty poor combat record, went through a series of Division Commanders, one relieved after another. And he describes that Division as a casually producing machine, producing American casualties. That's how badly it fought. He saw the small unit leaders and troops as being mediocre in his opinion and needing constant detail guidance. He contrasted that with the Germans in his mind knew that all the techniques and combined arms warfare and sight-fighting positions knew how to make the most of small unit leadership. And he said the American Army didn't look very well by contrast. In fact, he said, really, what we did, our infantry did during that war, was provide escorts for our forward observers and we blasted our way slowly across northern France into Germany. Again, going back to this idea of perhaps an American way of war being bludgeoning the enemy rather than something more akin to maneuver warfare. He came out of that with enormous respect for the Germans and some reservations about what kind of doctrine would be appropriate for Americans. He goes on to Vietnam where he's successful by all accounts and he comes up with a technique of the pile on, make contact with the smallest possible force and then pile of masses of firepower and troop back on there. And it seemed to be successful for him, but of course, Vietnam is not the war he's worried about. Like most of the Army, this is a painful aberration perhaps to him. He's got the face when he takes over the trade-off of a brand new challenge. So what do you see him thinking about the role for the new trade-off? What does that got to do for the Army in the post-Vietnam period? Before addressing that, I'd like to just throw out a brief idea on how to get to a number of these issues. And sometimes I start off the second hour of this question, and I ask, what are the major factors that influenced the creation of the 1976 manual? Depew obviously is one, and we should have talked about him in the first hour. What's the nature of the Warsaw Pact? How good are they? What do we think about them? What's the significance of the 73 Arab-Israeli War? Why all of a sudden is the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force cooperating, setting up a special cooperation office not too far from Norfolk? I think that's an indicator of how bad things were in 73. And finally, the German Army, both from Depew's experience with it in World War II. And for what the Bundeswehr is thinking about the defense of Western Europe from 1970 through 1976. As a facilitator, your job is to not list these down on the blackboard in Germanian fashion, but to draw forth these responses from your students and encourage your students to mention these and those other factors which I've forgotten or don't know because I'm not smart enough to, but those are four or five of the ones that I go with. Depew and the 76 manual. It's your question for me. The big question in my mind is, is this manual an aberration? Or is this a typical American product? By that I mean a product of the U.S. Army. And I try not to force my opinions on the students. I'll let them wrestle with this. Is he, in fact, a new George Steinbrenner, the boss who dictates everything, who does not trust his subordinates? And for those lawyers out there, I would like to say that I love and respect George Steinbrenner. What's in the 76 manual and why is it this way? There's a certain part of our society that comes out of World War II fascinated by technology, numbers crunching, and our ability to make the atomic bomb, for instance, or put overwhelming masses of firepower on a certain grid, on a map. If you go back and look at the 76 manual, there's a lot of that systems analysis type thinking in the manual. I'll frequently ask the students for the comments about what the 76 manual represented, but usually I get the best response by asking them what the response of the U.S. Army was to the 76 manual. And the author of the Leavenworth paper does a pretty good job there. They didn't like it. Why didn't they like it? Well, if you talk to the old, well, if you talk to your fathers and uncles who were around at the time, they'll tell you that the 76 manual was the first manual that told them how to fight that did not trust them as soldiers and men to use their judgment and their experience. The officer corps resented it for that reason. Alexander Haig was a general alive at the time, but he was powerful enough to stand up to Depew and Treydoch, and he said there's nothing in this manual about leadership. The principles of war are not mentioned. It has a lot of mathematical formulations, but it doesn't talk about what it really takes to lead men in battle. I think that was probably a decisive moment when someone that big can come out in public and say that. So that's the way I approach it. I think one of the key things, the phrases Sam used there was the how to fight, because we end up coming out of this 76 manual with a whole series of books, which we commonly refer to as how to fight manuals for the company level, the battalion level, the brigade level, and it tells you what it is you're supposed to do. It's like the emplacement and use of a claymore mind, but at the division level. And I think that represents an even greater frame of thinking like that in the American military system beyond Depew. I think if you look at the Vietnam War, you see this hang up with numbers, body count, a tangible something you can touch. We see it today in this college where people want a grading standard that you can reach out and touch and feel and see it shape, and they're comfortable with that. And I think that's part of our military... You can't quantify it, it's not worth doing it. That's right, and that comes from this period of time, I think. But that also is part of our culture, too. You always take your culture into account. I guess in this case, the successful army does reflect the culture from which it comes, because we certainly see it. Well, that quantification you see too in the other piece that sets this up in, I guess, the October War, too. The internal agenda taken over Kredak does not necessarily rewrite Dockham, but all of a sudden a new sense of urgency comes over, and I think Herbert points out we see the 73 war, and it seems to indicate that our army has spent 10 years in the jungle and lost the entire march or several marches to the Soviets who now have these formidable weapons systems. Again, as you point out, for technologically-oriented military, it's scary what we see in the deserts of the Sinai and the Golan Heights. BMPs, far better infantry fighting vehicle than anything we have. New air defense systems, the like of which we've got a hint of how good they are over Hanoi and Haifon, but they're tremendously effective against the Israeli air force. PMP bridges, our engineers don't have anything like them. And again, as you pointed out, the Sagar, we don't have anything... well, the total missile perhaps amounted on helicopters can approximate it, but the Soviets clearly have got something that seemed at first as effective and easily portable and available in vast numbers. And they're employing those weapons systems in Eastern Europe in mass quantities, and it's a scary prospect. Well, and you and I, as students in Tredoc during this period of time, I mean, I'm sure you got it at the armor school. I know I got it at the infantry school. I mean, as a mech infantryman, they spent hours teaching you how to run a Sagar watch. I mean, how to watch for the puff of smoke, the slow thing coming at you, back down into the pressure. That's right. I mean, they spent hours teaching us. We became so focused on the weapons from that war. And you see it in the manuals.  And if you're sitting here, the chance is as much. And those kind of very exact calculations are very much a part of Depew's Tredoc. And the focus back on the 73 war is very easy to see if I just think back into my basic course in 1976. It's in the shockwave through our army. Oh, it did. It did. I mean, that's one of the things we're talking about here with these how to fight manuals. That's his response. And the army's doctrinal response to those issues. There's another piece to this as well, is the army, as worried as it is about the threat, is recently, when Depew takes over Tredoc, has recently lost some procurement battles. It hasn't been able to say very clearly what it needs to face that threat. So it lost the battle over the MBT-70. It lost the battle over the Cheyenne helicopter. So the army's doing a bad job on Capitol Hill. And how do you argue for the kind of weapons decisions you need? Well, Depew says doctrine can play a role in that as well. What would you add on that, Sam? What do you think? I think there is a tendency to forget what a rude shot the 73 war was, not just for the US Army, but for the US military, and other militaries around the world to get the reports in on the new weapons systems. In the past, I've had some success asking the students about their branch. What was happening in your branch because of the 73 war? Or returning from Vietnam to help set the stage and get a lot of mileage out of that. Well, I can recall in the armor school in the mid-70s as a young lieutenant, having to memorize the position of every single vehicle and motorized rifle regiment in the approach march. And then, how does it look in attack formation? Being able to identify where the BMPs are, the T-72s, and then having to crank it in some level of detail, what we call the time battle calculus, and we still use that to a certain extent, but figuring out the force ratios, the mathematical calculations, how many weapons systems firing at what rate and what kind of engagement area will quote, this is a big term in service, targets as they come roaring into your engagement area. Again, it comes back to the kind of numerical approach to fighting. I found it amazing, the young budding lieutenants like us are imbued with this in the basic course and out we go into the army. And you talk about how it's not received well out in the army. You tell a story about popping out there as a staff officer. Doesn't reflect well. Would you like to hear? The indicative of what we're talking about versus the army at large, how they accept this, and what's being taught in the trade act schools. It's the CPX and the, I won't tell what unit it was in, but as a brand new S3, just out of the armored advance course, we were taught to put all our weapons systems up front because that's the only way we can get the right force ratios to take on the anticipated attack of a motorized rifle regiment reinforced. My battalion commander said, looking at the defensive problem, we need to keep a reserve. You can't predict how this battle is going to go. Common sense prudence, everything I've learned says we need to keep a reserve. I said, sir, the doctrine is coming out from the armor school says put your weapons system out there where they can service the adequate number of targets. So we put all, at that time, three company teams online. The enemy came, but then another enemy force blew in through a flank from our unit to our right and all of a sudden he was behind us. We had no force to respond to that. It was over. Yeah, we'd done the doctrinal thing and we'd been wrong. We looked bad.  Our battalion clearly had lost the fight and I was deeply humiliated about putting my battalion commander, recommending the doctrinal solution when really common military sense would have given them a better solution. That goes, I think, to a mixture of what we've talked about here for the last little while. The battalion commander out there goes, it doesn't make sense to me. But since it's training, it's not really soldiers' lives. Fine. We try what the doctrine says. But that's why I think some of these guys were resistant. It didn't allow for the common sense. You called it leadership. It didn't allow for leadership, for common sense. For looking at a piece of ground and doing situational awareness. It said... Now you're using buzzwords. Here's a piece of ground. We drew it out. Your area... You shouldn't have it there. The book says it should be here. And that was the mindset that was being taught. Doctrine that was being taught in the trade-up schools at the time. Going right down through the Depew methodology. He likes to... The quote here in your instructor's guide is that he believed manuals needed to express certainties clearly. He saw things in black and white. This is where you put foxholes and this is how they're done. This is where you put tanks and this is how you put weapons to service targets. It didn't allow for that common sense. That's why I think a lot of people out there had problems with those ideas. I only embarrass you with that story because it's a beautiful segue between these two issues. I embarrass you with that story in my class. Of course I always say it's you and not me. But I think it points that out and you don't have to use Scott's name, but that kind of an issue points it out. Again, brings it down to the point where these soldiers will understand it much better than some broader context. One of the things I want to... I like to get at in this lesson. There's a tendency among students here at CGSC and I'm pretty confident for the folks that you'll see out there unless they've been around a while and had a variety of experiences. The thing that doctrine descends on pillars from on high is absolutely the result of a rational actor model of development rather than a function of something that can be a very human process where egos and personalities and prejudices are involved. But I think Herbert lets your students see how that all works. I really want to know your comment about the process, how DePu gets this put out on the street the way he wants to look despite the resistance in the army. What do you think? I would suggest that it goes all the way back to lessons one and two. What is doctrine? What happens if someone in your institution all of a sudden gets a lot of power and is able to produce a manual telling them how to fight? And what happens if the rest of the institution disagrees with it? Is that really doctrine? Don't forget the second half of the book by Herbert. How do you change something that you don't like? What really is doctrine? And I suspect that doctrine is the collective knowledge and experience and values of the institution that even if someone like DePu comes along and forces a manual on you you may say three bags full for the first couple of years but your guys are eventually going to turn it around and produce something much more akin to what your real doctrine is. I like to go back here all the way to lesson one also where we talk about the relationship of theory doctrine and history. I think this is a great one to show how history is related to doctrine because what have we talked about? We've talked about the impact of his experience in World War II the impact of the experience in Vietnam the impact of the 73 war those are all historical events and we've talked about how that history has shaped doctrine and how doctrine has responded to those events so I like to take a full circle and say we told you that this was true that these things were interactive and here's a beautiful example of how historical events drive an historical actor to put out doctrine whether it's accepted or not is it really doctrine but he puts it out and you can see the influences of those historical events in his life so I like that way to tie this back together back all the way to 16 lessons so I think that works pretty well I like to emphasize the point about military culture he has his own set of experiences but there are people with other agendas in the army for example the infantry school they look at that manual and they see very little mention of the other kind of things the army has to do the contingency operations the operations in the third world almost exclusive focus on the full the gap this manual doesn't cut it it doesn't describe the full range of things that the army might be called on to do it doesn't reflect our experience in Vietnam if you look in the annexes to the book it talks about terrain and weather conditions in central Germany it doesn't talk about the gamut of things the army might have to do and for that reason they're dissatisfied with what's in the manual and that's part of the rejection there's another piece of it well, there's several other pieces of it but anything, would you come in on any other aspects of the manual that show tell us something about American military culture the relation of history, theory and doctrine yes I would suggest asking the students about what they think about the process of overcoming the 76th manual and replacing it with something better and what does that tell us about where we're at today and where we're going in the future do you in fact need a salesman to go out and convince the rest of the army that this new 82 manual is going to be the wave of the future what are the roles of the other generals who is going to write the manual where is it done? sometimes the manuals are written right here at Leavenworth sometimes are written by the Boat House gang in Virginia but sometimes are written by folks over at Sam's who writes it why who has input into it what does that tell us about the institution is the Air Force cut off on it is the Navy cut off on it how about our allies how complex has it become I think this is especially interesting a lot of the fact at the end of this year 1997 we'll have a new 100-5 on the street that at first blush looks like it will change the way we think about operations and I'll tell you that again it's not it is the function of key players putting their inputs in a new strategy new missions for the army and again you can use coming out in 1997 to look back at what happened before to get some idea of what role does doctrine properly play would you comment on that Jim? the thing that has bothered me about this manual and the role doctrine plays in this period of time you're talking about the 76 manual? I think it starts an argument and I may be wrong the argument may go even farther back starts an argument that is still alive and well in our system of training and doctrine and that's that issue of training and education that we deal with here all the time I mean this is in your book you'll find some issues on Depew versus Cushman Cushman representing though it may be an erroneous representation of the scholar who's looking for education it may well be it's just a personal thing that he doesn't agree with Depew and that's the other side to take but this issue of do we teach someone how to in place a claim on mind or do we teach them a broader contextual understanding of why you use it when you use it so that you don't teach them what to think you teach them how to think and that's what this course has been about and the problem for TRADOC is that they're responsible for the training of the newest recruit all the way up to and including the use of large units joint and combined armies and cohorts and thinking at the strategic level too where do you do what piece of training where does education come in if at all you're entirely right and if you want to get a discussion going in your class if things start to lag in this lesson if you want to bring out that training versus education piece I mean while the Depew Cushman argument shows it fomenting there most groups I've been in if you start that particular discussion your problem is you're gonna have to stop it because it'll go on for an extended period of time because most people have some opinions on that issue our students do hear about it and the big issue is why we're all here looking at these things because how will the US military prepare its leaders for combat in 2020 and 2030 what do you want to train them to do to dig the two-man foxhole or to think about change and how to deal with it and how to build flexibility into the system and that's where we're all here basically isn't it I think while you're on it another question you might ask is is about that level of paper itself it's written by Herbert who does a good job I think of describing the process but I think he brings his own prejudices to the book as well if you look at his background the back of the book Prejudice is a strong word can we say baggage we all bring a bunch of stuff baggage to whatever baggage he's a light infantryman experience most recent experience I think when you wrote the piece was the 101st that is the community within the army that perhaps reacted in most hostile fashion to what the Pew was putting on the 76th edition is he unfairly critical to Pew perhaps because of his background is he perhaps unfairly praising Cushman who had been part of that sub-community of his army you realize again even out in all aspects whether it's the reserve the National Guard or the active army there's a real complex animal out there and people with a lot of different world views involved and when it comes up to putting a doctrine out all those world views are going to try to be represented Herbert I think bring that baggage baggage may be the right word you see the same thing in an article which we give our students here but we don't give to you simply because there isn't time for that now you have the same thing you have a successful armoured war and here is Dan who is one of the brightest minds in the army today but it was a marked light infantryman going back with much that same baggage that Herbert has but this is just an aberration so there are communities within our own forces and you see them reflected in our history and we respond to different doctrine or how doctrine gets written based on what community is dominant at that moment in our forces there's another issue I'd like to talk about it I don't know how well this will show up maybe we can super repose it on the screen this is one of the most most criticized aspects of the new doctrine this is the active defense this is how we're going to defend western Europe 100 describes the division operations what you see is division arrayed in the defense three brigades across what you'll notice is there's no reserve excuse me and as you see a Soviet threat main attack coming into one of the brigade areas you see helicopters reacting within the battle area here and you see units reacting nimbly across the division area from one brigade to the other perhaps in contact but they're moving in to reinforce to quote thicken the battle as the enemy threat comes in the army the army looked at this with, well, scorn is one word this is what I was taught this is the sketch that he was using on that cpx I'm not going to get away from that bring it up the past we treat it as a learning okay, I hope you get a chance to look at this this comes again from page 519 of the 71 100 what it shows well we'll talk about the reaction to this army officers look at this and say wait a second units in contact can't just pull out of contact and go over and fight a battle in another part of the division sector and oh by the way who's controlling the temple of the fight and as you fight one echelon here who's controlling the arrival of a fall on echelon this is where we start to ask the questions about where is there a need for deep operations and why are you using your helicopters here to fight within your defensive area going deeper to fight the battle here controlling the actual temple of the fight starry general starry is one of the ones that first realized the limitations even though he was a point man for to pew and getting this manual written and put out on the street he went over to journey shortly afterwards as a cork emitter he started to see the flaws in what he helped create he realized that the enemy in this scenario was going to control the initiative the temple of the fight and that he didn't have the assets the weapons systems or the ability to pull off something like this and he started to rethink it he's going to be one of the leaders in rethinking in the reaction I think to that today we see at least until the new manual comes out we see an emphasis on synchronization we teach synchronization matrixes matrices and that battle that you display on that particular graphic I mean how do you synchronize that how do you synchronize the movement of a unit in contact from the right side back to the left there's no easy way to do that there's no way to control it the lack of using aircraft to go deep to start using their capabilities early I think you may see our movement towards more synchronization to try to deal with what we see in some of the deficiencies in that particular piece we're rapidly running out of time here I'd like to ask the two of you one question how has the U.S. Army changed from 1973 to 1997 well I'm let me offer you this question as a way to ask students that same question I what I do in the last class is say picture yourself in the center for anti-American studies in some hospital capital perhaps in southwest Asia where it has students from a variety of countries that are hostile to the United States and you're doing a study on anti-American studies 101 the American way of war based on what you've learned what is it and ask them to describe what is the American way of war and how would you take these guys on based on what you've seen in this lesson in previous lessons what kind of thinking would you use what's their style what do they do yeah that would be one approach to asking students coming back to that same question how have they changed are they lockstep like this are they flexible do they emphasize maneuver are they strictly about firepower do they excessively rely on technology those are the kind of questions I think I throw back at students to say have we changed from this or does this really reflect the 76th condition who we are what do you think well I think I agree with you questions would all work and I think you know the idea of the reliance on firepower now whether I would agree with some people have said the over reliance on firepower I'm not sure if I totally agree with that and the folks who paint what occurs in the desert as a negative be put together of the fist instead of the rapier like well you know how many guys do you lose in the rapier like versus how many we lost in the fist when oh yes we did then I'm not sure it's an aberration but you were there one of the differences I have every historian has baggage folks don't let them tell you they're objective it's a lie but I think a major difference that I see between say army today and our army in 76 when I came in is that we were totally oriented on the defense when I came in totally utterly I mean active defense it was all full of gap yes it was but it was all defensive in nature the Gulf War is the first time when we step out and approach things in a large the context of large units in an offensive manner I mean we now step out and do to someone what we're afraid the Soviets were going to do to us okay we have a much more offensive posture today I think than we did when I came in the army in 76 we always focused on the defense in 76 well we've seen an advanced cut of the new manual we see it is it goes beyond just war fighting the way we understand it it talks about a continuum of operation it puts what we call the past operations other than the war in the same continuum as thermonuclear exchanges and suggests the same principles and the tenets apply to that at one end of the spectrum at one end of the spectrum as the other and that's drawn some criticism from people in our department from students that I've shown the manual to what I think is we ought to approach all doctrine with a critical eye and one of the tools to do in that is history and that may be the kind of thing you use to segue into the finale what role is history how does it help you get at quote the best available thought which is what doctrine should be I like to wrap up the class by asking the students where have we come and where are we going into the future not just the United States and its use of force but the experience in general too how appropriate would these be for a nation like China or India for example what is happening in the world today that will influence the use of force tomorrow in 2020 and 2030 are always the terms that I try to mention to my students I do something very similar I continue to try to tell my students throughout the course the use of history is not just to figure out what happened in the past but to figure out what happened in the past and how it can help us in the future and I like to use myself as an example instead of Scott this time 20 years ago 20 plus years ago the 76 manuals what I came in the army with it's what I grew up with and I looked now 22 years later and go those are some silly things that we did but they made all the sense in the world then you have to put them in their perspective that's right and what I think the successful militaries do is guys like me don't just look back 22 years later well geez that didn't make sense the really successful guys look today at what happened in the past and figure out where it is we have to be in the future and that's the challenge I try to leave my students with the thought provoking issues that are here with the 76 manuals particularly because if there's a lieutenant colonel out there who's teaching this he's probably about the same time frame as I am and he goes back towards this manual as an example to say you know guys learn from the past but use it to help you look into the future because our army is about to change again it's coming I mean information age technology 20 years from now we probably won't recognize ourselves much as the guys from 76 if they went into isolation and came out and saw today and say how'd this happen so I like to leave the class with that I like to end with a look of okay we've seen the past but how do you use the past in preparing for the future and the relevancy of history I would tell instructors out there that when you get to this point you're maybe facing a big challenge and my thought is after teaching this course that maybe I shouldn't say this but I will anyway I've been teaching this course for a few years here at CGSC I'm not sure you're going to reach all of them there are a lot of students who will walk away from military history course and not really be able to judge the relevance of it will not walk away and be able to use military history as a tool in their decision making it's a jump a challenge that they're not going to make except that try to reach the ones the ones who are curious and I think and allow for the fact that not everybody is going to be able to walk away from military history course being able to put this in their toolkit unfortunately yes we're certainly right but on the other hand there are many who will be able to take advantage of this Colonel Swain said the final examination for this class is when you all go out into the field and face change and in many ways he's right I agree I think that's probably as good a way as I can think of to wrap this up good luck and I said I hope you have a productive and provocative discussion in classes I think you'll find us a rich lesson


Good afternoon. For those who are new, I'm Dr. Theron Sherman, and in today's briefing, we will be discussing SCP-7062. There isn't any objectionable material in this document. Well, unless you aren't a fan of poetry. So let's begin. Item number SCP-7062 Classification Level 2 Restricted Containment Class Neutralized Special Containment Procedures No procedures are necessary. Description SCP-7062 is the collective designation for an anomaly relating to poet and former Foundation researcher Leila Becker. SCP-7062-A was an ink jar full of dried blood belonging to Dr. Becker. SCP-7062-B was Dr. Becker's heart, functioning with no irregularities despite being completely disconnected from her body. Discovery SCP-7062 was discovered post-neutralization on September 8, 1998, when Dr. Becker was found expired on her desk. After a standard sweep of her apartment, SCP-7062-A and SCP-7062-B were discovered on a personal desk, alongside several poems written in blood. A coroner's report found that the heart had suffered rapid-talk-a-tsubo cardiomyopathy. Footnote A condition with the heart's left ventricle becomes loosened as a result of stress. Resulting in the exploration of the researcher, along with Dr. Becker's corpse, a note in standard ink was found on the desk. A direct transcription can be found below. Here I sit alone. Everything is cold and dark. Still waiting for you to phone. You were my spark. Now tears stream down my face. Your beauty reminded me of a dove. I see shadows in your place. Now I know the pain that comes with… Characters became increasingly illegible near the end of the note. Additionally, the final letters of the note were obscured due to the presence of lacrimal fluid. Thank you for listening.  Please become a patron or visit our merch store at the link in our bio to support our work. Secure and maintain. Protect.


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