David encouraged members to consider Discount Electronics for their computer needs to show our appreciation of their support. Ronney Reynolds reminisced about his and our Club’s history at St. David’s and encouraged us to make the move to the Ben Hur Shrine Temple a successful one. Sherry Workman shared a story about Rotarians involved in the massacre in Rwanda about 10 years ago and how they were able make a fresh start, hoping that we can do the same following our move. Ann Graham asked that we keep her and her family in our prayers as her husband continues to deal with health issues, the latest being a cancer diagnosis. He always encourages Ann to look for the silver lining. Caroline Valentine announced that as a result of her involvement with our Club and Helping Hand Home for Children, she has applied to be a foster parent and/or adopt one of the children at the home.

Following a few minutes of Fellowship time, Tarby Bryant introduced our guest speaker, (Ret) U.S. Army Colonel Scott Mac Leod, who is currently the CEO of Augmented Training Systems, a local startup that uses Virtual Reality to help train First Responders.

Colonel MacLeod presented some of his thoughts and opinions about the recent events taking place between the U.S. and Iran. He discussed how our leaders most likely framed the situation to consider the various interests and strategies going forward. He presented several positive and negative immediate outcomes of military action as follows: On the positive side for the U.S., Iran loses a key leader and they are forced to lie to their own citizens regarding their missile counter attack, falsely saying that 80 Americans were killed. On the negative side, Iran withdrew from the Nuclear Agreement, Iranian nationalism has surged, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution calling for the U.S. to withdraw all forces and there is a high likelihood of future terrorist attacks.

Colonel Mac Leod defined the Instruments of National Power as Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economic with the acronym being DIME. In dealing with the situation, the U.S. must try to identify the Iranian interests and build a consensus.

The leadership takeaways he presented are: (1) Do you have a Framing and Decision Making Taxonomy, (2) Can you step back from the fog and friction inherent during a crisis and apply critical thinking, and (3) Can you build consensus across organizational boundaries in support of common interests? He stated that these principles can be applied to our lives and professional careers, too.

A major element of U.S. strategy is assumed to be deterrence, particularly in regard to nuclear weapons, and an essential element in successful deterrence is a degree of uncertainty on the part of a would-be aggressor as to whether the target power, although attacked and badly damaged, will nonetheless retaliate – even at the risk of suffering further damage. This strategy is necessary to prevent nuclear proliferation in the area.

Next week’s program will be a presentation by the winning team from Camp Enterprise. President Davies acknowledged two of our newsletter sponsors, Mark Johnson (IBC Bank) and Michael Abelson (The Abelson Group); Andres Bustamante led us in reciting the Four Way Test to close the meeting.