She Stayed Silent at the Briefing — Until the General Said, “She Wrote the Manual.”

 

Part One

The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, 14:30 hours on a Thursday afternoon. The secure conference room on the third floor of the Pentagon was filled with senior military officers seated around a large oval table. Classified documents were spread in front of each attendee. A projection screen at the front displayed slides marked secret, no foreign, classified information not to be shared with foreign nationals.

Major General Robert Harrison, US Army, sat at the head of the table. At 54, he was the director of strategic plans and policy for US cyber command, responsible for developing the military’s approach to cyber warfare. He’d convened this meeting to discuss proposed updates to joint publication 3-12, the official doctrine document for military cyberspace operations.

Around the table sat colonels and generals from each service branch. Air Force Colonel James Peterson, 48, sat directly across from Army Colonel Sarah Williams. Marine Colonel David Chen was reviewing documents intently. Navy captain, equivalent to Army Colonel Jennifer Morris, was taking notes. In the back corner of the room, away from the main table, Lieutenant Colonel Elena Martinez sat in a chair against the wall.

At 38, she was notably junior compared to most attendees, a lieutenant colonel among colonels and generals. She wore her army combat uniform, her name tape clearly visible, her rank insignia showing the silver oak leaf of Lieutenant Colonel. Elena had been in the meeting for 90 minutes and hadn’t spoken once.

She’d just listened, taking occasional notes in a small notebook, her expression neutral and professional. Several of the senior officers had glanced at her periodically, clearly wondering why she was there. Some assumed she was someone’s executive officer, there to take detailed notes or handle logistics. Others thought maybe she was a technical specialist, brought in for a specific topic that hadn’t come up yet.

The debate had been intense and contentious. The proposed changes to JP 3-12 involved fundamental questions about how the military conducted cyber operations, questions about offensive versus defensive priorities, about authorities and command relationships, about the balance between speed and oversight. Colonel Peterson had been particularly vocal.

“The current joint publication 3-12 is fundamentally flawed,” he said, his voice carrying passion and frustration. “It was written in 2018 and the cyber threat landscape has evolved dramatically. China and Russia have developed capabilities that didn’t exist when that doctrine was written. Our adversaries have become more sophisticated, more aggressive, more willing to operate in gray zones.”

He tapped the printed copy of JP 3-12 in front of him. “This document is built on frameworks that are outdated. It’s too conservative, too risk-averse, too focused on defensive operations. It doesn’t give combatant commanders the flexibility they need to respond to threats in real time.”

Several officers nodded. Navy Captain Morris added, “Colonel Peterson makes valid points. The doctrine does seem to prioritize caution over effectiveness. In the time it takes to get approval for cyber operations under current doctrine, the window of opportunity often closes.”

Marine Colonel Chen countered, “But the approval processes exist for good reasons — to ensure operations are legal, to avoid unintended escalation, to coordinate with other government agencies. We can’t just have individual commanders launching cyber attacks without oversight.”

“I’m not suggesting no oversight,” Peterson replied. “I’m saying the current framework is too rigid. We need to rewrite the doctrine from scratch with fresh thinking that accounts for modern realities. The 2018 version was well-intentioned, but it’s simply not adequate for today’s threat environment.”

In the back corner, Elena Martinez continued listening quietly. Her expression hadn’t changed, but if anyone had been watching closely, they might have noticed the faintest hint of amusement in her eyes.

General Harrison leaned back in his chair, clearly frustrated. The meeting was going in circles, strong opinions, no consensus, and frankly a lot of criticism of existing doctrine without concrete suggestions for improvement. He glanced at Elena, sitting silently in the corner. He’d invited her to this meeting specifically because of her expertise.

He knew her background, knew what she’d accomplished, knew that her perspective would be invaluable. But she’d remained quiet, apparently content to let the senior officers debate. Harrison made a decision.

“Colonel Peterson, before we continue down this path of completely rewriting the doctrine, I’d like to hear from Lieutenant Colonel Martinez. She’s been quiet throughout this discussion, but I think her perspective would be valuable.”

Peterson looked confused and mildly annoyed at the interruption. He glanced at Elena, clearly trying to place who she was. “With respect, sir, I’m not sure we need input from—” He stopped himself, but the implication was clear.

Why are we asking a lieutenant colonel, the most junior person in the room, for her opinion on strategic doctrine that colonels and generals are debating?

Several other officers looked similarly puzzled. Who was this lieutenant colonel, and why was the general deferring to her?

Harrison’s expression hardened. His voice became formal, almost icy. “Colonel Peterson, before you finish that sentence, I’m going to share something with you that apparently you’re not aware of. Lieutenant Colonel Elena Martinez is not here as someone’s aide or technical assistant. She’s here as the foremost subject matter expert on Joint Publication 3-12.”

He paused, letting that sink in.

“In fact, Lieutenant Colonel Martinez wrote Joint Publication 3-12. She was the lead author of the 2018 version that you’ve been criticizing for the past 15 minutes as fundamentally flawed and outdated. She personally drafted the frameworks you say need to be reconsidered and rewritten from scratch.”

The room went completely silent. You could have heard a pin drop.

Colonel Peterson’s face drained of color. His mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. Every officer in the room turned to look at Elena Martinez sitting quietly in the back corner with her notebook.

Elena set down her notebook and stood, smoothing her uniform. She walked calmly to the front of the room, her expression professional, but with a hint of dry amusement playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Thank you, sir,” she said to General Harrison.

Then she turned to address the room, her voice clear and confident. “For those who don’t know me, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Elena Martinez. From 2016 to 2019, I was assigned to the Joint Staff J-6 Cyberspace Operations Division. My primary responsibility during that time was to lead the team that developed Joint Publication 3-12, Cyberspace Operations.”

She let that information settle before continuing.

“The development process took 18 months. My team consisted of cyber operations specialists from all service branches, legal experts, intelligence analysts, and representatives from Cyber Command. We conducted extensive research, interviewed hundreds of operators and commanders, analyzed past operations, and reviewed classified intelligence on adversary capabilities.”

“The result was Joint Publication 3-12, published in June 2018. It’s currently the official doctrine guiding all US military cyberspace operations.”

Elena looked directly at Colonel Peterson, her expression neutral, but her eyes sharp. “Colonel, you’ve criticized the document as fundamentally flawed, outdated, too conservative, and suggested it needs to be rewritten from scratch with fresh thinking. I’d like to address those criticisms specifically, if I may.”

Peterson looked like he wanted to disappear. “Ma’am, I— I apologize. I didn’t know you were the author. I wouldn’t have been so blunt if I’d known.”

“Don’t apologize for being blunt, Colonel. Honest criticism is valuable. If the doctrine has problems, I want to know about them. But I do want to address your specific points because I think some of them are based on misunderstanding of what the doctrine actually says.”

Elena pulled up a new slide on the screen, a page from JP 3-12. “You said the doctrine is too conservative and too focused on defensive operations. Let me show you something.”

She highlighted a specific paragraph. “This section, which I wrote, explicitly authorizes offensive cyber operations when approved by appropriate authority. It doesn’t prioritize defense over offense. It establishes frameworks for both. The reason there are approval processes isn’t because we’re risk averse. It’s because cyber operations have potential strategic and diplomatic consequences that require coordination.”

She clicked to another slide. “You criticize the doctrine for being outdated because it was written in 2018 and doesn’t account for evolved threats. But doctrine is deliberately written to be threat agnostic. The frameworks in JP 3-12 aren’t based on specific adversary capabilities in 2018. They’re based on enduring principles of how cyberspace operates as a domain of warfare. Those principles haven’t changed.”

Navy Captain Morris raised her hand. “Ma’am, what about the criticism that the approval processes are too slow? That by the time operations are approved, opportunities have passed?”

“That’s a valid operational concern,” Elena acknowledged. “But it’s not a doctrine problem. It’s an implementation problem. The doctrine establishes what authorities are required and why. The speed of approval processes depends on how individual commanders and staffs implement those requirements. If approvals are taking too long, that’s a training and staffing issue, not a fundamental flaw in the doctrine.”

She looked around the room. “Let me be clear about something. I’m not saying JP 3-12 is perfect. No doctrine document is perfect. Doctrine should be reviewed and updated periodically as we learn from operations and as technology evolves. That’s why we’re here — to discuss potential updates. But updating and completely rewriting from scratch are very different things. Before we decide the entire framework needs to be thrown out, we should be specific about what isn’t working and why.”

Elena clicked to a blank slide and picked up a marker. “So, let’s do that. What specific operational challenges are you facing that the current doctrine doesn’t address adequately — not theoretical concerns, actual problems you’ve encountered in real operations?”

The room was quiet for a moment. Then, Colonel Williams spoke up.

“Ma’am, one challenge we faced is coordinating cyber operations with conventional military operations. The doctrine addresses cyber as a separate domain, but in practice, we’re increasingly integrating cyber effects with kinetic operations. The coordination mechanisms in the current doctrine sometimes feel inadequate for that integration.”

Elena wrote “Integration with kinetic ops” on the board. “Good. That’s actionable feedback. The 2018 doctrine does address integration, but maybe not in enough detail for what you’re doing operationally. Now, that’s something we can enhance in an update.”

Marine Colonel Chen added, “Another issue is cyber operations in the gray zone — activities below the threshold of armed conflict, where adversaries are targeting us, but we’re not in a declared war. The doctrine’s frameworks assume clear conflict scenarios, but a lot of what we’re doing now is in ambiguous legal and operational spaces.”

Elena added “Grey zone operations” to the board. “Excellent point. That’s definitely something that’s evolved since 2018. We were aware of gray zone issues when we wrote the doctrine, but the problem has become more pronounced. We should address that more explicitly.”

For the next hour, the discussion became productive. Instead of arguing about whether to throw out the entire doctrine, officers provided specific feedback on what was working and what needed enhancement. Elena facilitated the discussion, taking notes, asking clarifying questions, and explaining the reasoning behind existing doctrine provisions.

As the meeting concluded, General Harrison stood. “Ladies and gentlemen, this has been productive. Lieutenant Colonel Martinez, would you be willing to lead the team that develops the proposed updates to JP 3-12?”

“Yes, sir. I’d be honored.”

“Good. I’ll issue a tasking order formally assigning you as lead. You’ll have representation from each service branch and from Cyber Command. Target completion in 6 months.”

After the meeting adjourned, Colonel Peterson approached Elena looking genuinely embarrassed. “Ma’am, I need to apologize properly. I spent 15 minutes criticizing your work without having any idea who you were. That was unprofessional of me.”

Elena smiled slightly. “Colonel, I appreciate the apology, but honestly, I found it useful. You were passionate about the topic and you articulated specific concerns, even if some were based on misunderstanding the doctrine. That kind of feedback when channeled constructively helps improve the final product.”

“Still, I should have been more measured in my criticism.”

“Maybe. But if I’d introduced myself at the start of the meeting, would you have been as honest about your concerns or would you have softened your criticism because the author was in the room?”

Peterson thought about that. “Probably the latter.”

“Exactly. So, your ignorance of who I was actually gave me more honest feedback. That’s valuable.”

Peterson nodded slowly. “I have to ask, ma’am, why did you stay quiet for so long? You could have jumped into the discussion at any point.”

Elena glanced at General Harrison, who was listening to this conversation. “Sir, may I speak frankly?”

“Please do,” Harrison said.

“I stayed quiet because I wanted to hear what people really thought about the doctrine without being influenced by my presence. Once people know you’re the author, they either defer to you or they dig in defensively on their criticisms. Neither response is useful. By staying silent, I got to hear genuine debate. I learned what aspects of the doctrine are confusing or being misinterpreted. I identified what operational challenges have emerged since 2018 that the current doctrine doesn’t address.”

“Well, that information is going to make the update much better.” Harrison smiled. “That’s exactly why I invited you but didn’t introduce you at the start. I knew you’d handle it this way.”

As officers filed out of the room, several approached Elena to introduce themselves properly and offered to support the doctrine update effort. Navy Captain Morris said, “Ma’am, I have to admit, when I saw a Lieutenant Colonel sitting in the corner taking notes, I assumed you were someone’s aide. I’m embarrassed that I made that assumption.”

Elena shrugged. “It’s a natural assumption when you see a junior officer in a room full of senior people. I don’t take offense. And for the record, being underestimated can be tactically useful.”

 

Part Two

Three weeks after the briefing, the official tasking order hit every inbox that mattered.

USCYBERCOM TASKORD 24-017
SUBJ: JP 3-12 (CYBERSPACE OPERATIONS) REVISION WORKING GROUP
LEAD: LTCOL ELENA MARTINEZ, USA

The email went to flag officers, service cyber component commands, and joint staff directorates. Attached was a neat list of names from every branch: Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Space Force, even a civilian from NSA.

Some of those names now knew exactly who she was. Some only saw, “Lieutenant Colonel? As lead?” and raised eyebrows.

Elena read the order once, then saved a copy to her hard drive. Her office at Fort Meade looked out over a parking lot and a patch of stubborn grass. It was the kind of nondescript building you forget you’ve driven past a hundred times. Inside, it hummed with classified networks and the low murmur of people who fought wars in code instead of bullets.

Her phone buzzed.

“Martinez,” she answered.

“You see it?” Harrison’s voice had that faint undercurrent of amusement again.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“It’s not a vote,” he said. “It’s a requirement. We need this done, and done right. You have six months. That’s ambitious and you’re going to tell me it should be nine.”

“It should be twelve,” she said.

He chuckled. “Then let’s call six an honest compromise between what’s needed and what’s possible. You’ll have support. You’ll have friction. That’s how you’ll know you’re doing it right.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Elena?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t be too polite with them this time,” he said. “This time, they know who wrote the manual.”

She smiled despite herself. “No promises.”

The first working group meeting was in a secure conference room at Fort Meade that smelled like coffee, whiteboard markers, and the faint tang of nervousness that hangs around any group of officers about to be asked to actually produce something.

They came in ones and twos: Navy Commander with a SEAL trident on his chest and a cyber billet on his orders; an Air Force lieutenant colonel who’d spent the last three years keyboard-deep in offensive operations in USCYBERCOM’s Joint Task Force-Ares; a Marine major with a reputation for turning impossible cyber support requests into “I think we can do that”; a Space Force civilian who looked more like a grad student than a career intel analyst.

And then there was Peterson.

He walked in with a folder under his arm and a humility he wore like a new uniform. He gave Elena a sharp nod. “Ma’am,” he said.

“Colonel,” she replied, keeping her voice neutral.

He took a seat halfway down the table. Not at the end of authority, not in the shadowy safe anonymity of the back. The middle.

“Okay,” Elena began, once everyone had settled. “You’ve all seen the tasking order. You also know, most of you, that I was the lead author on the 2018 version of JP 3-12.”

A few nods. A few sideways glances.

“You should also know that I don’t consider that version sacred,” she continued. “It was written based on the best information and operational experience we had at the time. That’s changed. The threats have evolved. So have our capabilities. Your job over the next few months is to tell me, in painful, specific detail, where the doctrine you’re using is getting in your way — and where it’s saving you from your own worst instincts.”

The Marine major grinned. “Just what every Marine dreams of, ma’am. A license to complain.”

Laughter loosened the room.

Elena flicked to the first slide: a single sentence.

Doctrine is supposed to reflect what works, not what we wish worked.

“Let’s start where we left off in the Pentagon,” she said. “Integration with kinetic ops and gray-zone activity. Then we’ll talk authorities, speed of decision, and anything else you’re losing sleep over.”

For the first hour they did what they were trained to do: describe problems.

“During a SEAD campaign last year, we had an opportunity to blind an enemy radar net with a tailored intrusion,” the Air Force officer said. “By the time we got the JFHQ-C approval, the pilots were already overhead. We missed the window.”

“We’re constantly whack-a-moling Russian bots in Europe,” the NSA civilian added. “But when we want to reach back into their infrastructure, the question of ‘armed attack’ threshold and proportionality stops us. It’s not that we can’t do anything; it’s that no one knows what we’re allowed to do without risking escalation.”

“We’re still teaching brigade commanders that cyber is ‘the nerd’s problem,’” the Marine admitted. “But then they expect magic when they want a comms blackout on an enemy position. There’s a huge education gap between what’s in JP 3-12 and what they think it says.”

Elena wrote on the board until it was crowded:

– Timing / Approval Latency
– Gray Zone / Law of Armed Conflict Ambiguity
– Integration w/ Maneuver
– Training Gap (Commanders)
– Misinterpretation of Authorities

Then she underlined the last one twice.

“This,” she said. “This one is half our battle.”

Peterson cleared his throat. “Ma’am, on that note…”

Here it comes, she thought.

“I went back and reread JP 3-12,” he said. “Carefully, this time. I also had my staff pull every FRAGORD that referenced it for the last three years. The number of times we blamed ‘doctrine’ for something that was actually command risk aversion was… sobering.”

He slid a thin folder across to her. “Case studies. Where we used JP 3-12 as a shield for our own discomfort instead of as a framework.”

Elena flipped through. Redacted operation names, timelines, blocks of text. In the margins of one she saw his handwriting: “Doctrine does NOT prohibit, our staff interpreted it that way.”

She looked up. “Thank you,” she said. And she meant it.

Six weeks later, the working group had morphed from a skeptical collection of branch advocates into something resembling an actual team. They fought — viciously sometimes — over sentences, commas, the exact placement of the word “should” versus “shall.”

“‘Shall’ makes it directive,” the Navy commander argued. “We need clarity or else every JTF will interpret it differently.”

“‘Shall’ also locks us into a process that may not fit every operation,” the Marine shot back. “Give commanders intent and let them flex.”

Elena listened, refereed, and when necessary, cut through.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “We’ll use ‘shall’ where the law or international norms demand no wiggle room — proportionality, civilian infrastructure, interagency coordination in certain spaces. We’ll use ‘should’ where we want to let the context guide the answer. If we try to script every scenario, we’ll write a document no one reads.”

They groaned but nodded.

Some nights, she stayed in her office long after the hum of conversation in the hallway died down. The building took on a different sound then — fewer voices, more ventilation, the steady whirr of climate control. She’d sit with a draft on the screen, redlining her own language from 2018.

You were too cautious here, she’d think. Or: no, keep that, you were right to insist Treasury gets a say before someone bricks a foreign bank’s servers.

When she finally closed her laptop, her eyes bleary, she sometimes caught her reflection in the darkened window.

“This is what you signed up for,” she’d tell the woman staring back. “You didn’t ask for rank. You asked for responsibility.”

On a humid August morning, right as they were beginning to stitch the first coherent draft together, a different kind of tasking hit everyone’s inbox like a thunderclap.

USCYBERCOM OPORD 24-033
SUBJ: RESPONSE TO MAJOR ADVERSARY CYBER INCIDENT

Elena skimmed the fragmentary order.

A major American port on the Gulf Coast had just had half its cranes freeze mid-operation. Container stacks were stalled. A ransomware note blinked on screens from the harbor control tower to the shipping company’s HQ.

The message was full of grammatical errors and skull emojis, but the code behind it was anything but amateur. Early analysis pointed not to criminal gangs but to REMIT, a persistent adversary set the intel community had tied to a foreign intelligence apparatus for years.

“Ah, hell,” the Marine major muttered, reading over her shoulder. “They picked now.”

“Days like this are why doctrine matters,” Elena said, already reaching for her secure phone.

Within an hour, she was on a VTC with the Joint Cyber Center, the affected combatant command, DHS, FBI, and a flustered representative from the Department of Transportation whose background was more bridges than bits.

Scrolls of data flowed along the bottom of the screen: indicators of compromise, network maps, chain-of-custody notes from the port’s own IT team.

“The port’s a critical node in our logistics chain,” a two-star at TRANSCOM said. “Every hour they’re down is millions in losses and supply chain delays. We need it fixed yesterday.”

“We cap payments to criminals,” the DHS rep said sharply. “We can’t let public infrastructure owners think the US government will bail them out of ransom.”

“I’m not paying anybody,” TRANSCOM shot back. “I’m asking Cyber Command what they can do to get my cranes moving.”

All eyes, on half a dozen screens, drifted toward the small tile labeled “LTCOL MARTINEZ.”

“Ma’am?” Harrison’s voice came from another tile, his expression tight. “Thoughts?”

They weren’t calling in the author of JP 3-12 out of sentiment. They needed the doctrine interpreted in real time, under pressure.

Elena opened the digital copy of the current document and the working draft in two windows side by side. Old language on the left, her redlines and new thoughts on the right.

“The doctrine tells us three things relevant here,” she said. “One, what we can do to defend — hunt teams, technical support, interagency coordination. Two, what authorities we need if we decide this is a state actor and not a criminal gang. Three, what thresholds trigger our responsibility to treat this as more than just ‘helping a private entity.’”

She paused, scrolling.

“Right now, JP 3-12 frames an attack on port operations as a potential strategic risk only in a declared conflict,” she said. “Our draft update explicitly calls out critical infrastructure in the homeland as a strategic target even in gray zone activity. This incident sits exactly in that seam.”

“That’s helpful for the doctrinal discussion, Lieutenant Colonel,” TRANSCOM said tersely, “but my cranes are still frozen.”

“I’m not ignoring that, sir,” she said. “I’m saying doctrine gives us cover to do what we need to do legally and quickly. General Harrison, under existing authorities, Cyber Command can deploy a surge team to assist the port and TRANSCOM IT, correct?”

“Yes,” Harrison said.

“Then we do that now,” she said. “Parallel to that, we make a call on attribution. NSA, where are we?”

The civilian analyst on the line adjusted his glasses. “We’ve seen this malware family before,” he said. “REMIT was sloppy with a command-and-control server two years ago. Same codebase, some new modules. We assess with moderate confidence this is them.”

“Moderate isn’t high,” the DHS rep pointed out.

“It’s enough to widen our aperture,” Elena said. “We can treat this as a state-backed gray zone action against critical infrastructure. Under both existing JP 3-12 and the draft, that authorizes proportional, coordinated cyber responses — not necessarily ‘hit back at their port,’ but options. ISR intrusions into their logistics networks, prepositioning access to demonstrate we can see and touch what they care about if they don’t back off. All in consultation with State and Treasury.”

“You’re saying we show them our hand without punching yet,” the Marine major summarized.

“I’m saying we follow a ladder of escalation that doctrine already outlines, instead of improvising under public and political pressure,” Elena replied.

The plan came together faster than anyone on the call would have believed possible a few years earlier. That wasn’t because JP 3-12 was magic; it was because the people on the line had a language they could point to, an agreed framework they could lean on while tired and worried.

Within hours, hunt-forward teams were on site at the port and in virtual sessions with its IT staff. By evening, half the cranes were back online, slaved temporarily to a backup control system they’d dusted off and patched.

Three days later, REMIT’s own logistics servers in a country thousands of miles away experienced “unexplained slowdowns,” then outages, then a purely accidental cascade of denial-of-service incidents triggered by “test traffic” from machines that, if traced, would lead to… nowhere obvious.

State delivered a cable through back channels that said, in diplomatic language, Cut it out. We’re not going to publish what we know — but we know.

The port went back to full operation within a week.

On paper, in the classified after-action, the operation was recorded as a successful defensive-response effort under existing JP 3-12 authorities. In the margins of the same report, under “Lessons Identified,” someone had written:

“Draft update language on gray zone and critical infrastructure would have been helpful to clarify options up front.”

Elena read that and felt the odd, bright sting of validation. Doctrine was always “behind” the bleeding edge of reality. That was its job, in a way — to capture what worked, not chase what was fashionable. But seeing her future sentences reflected in present actions made the long nights and redlines feel less abstract.

Two months later, when the working group reconvened in person to review the contoured first draft of the update, there was a difference in the room.

They’d all read the after-action report. Some had been on call that day.

“Your gray zone section held up,” the Navy commander said. “We used it like a cheat sheet.”

“It’s not a cheat sheet,” she corrected dryly. “It’s instructions you didn’t want to follow when I wrote the first version.”

Peterson chuckled, raising his hands. “Guilty as charged, ma’am.”

They went back to work.

By the time the six-month deadline loomed, the new JP 3-12 draft was more than just a touched-up version of the old one. It had new sections on persistent engagement, a clearer articulation of how cyber integrated with multi-domain operations, and an entire chapter on operating in that murky space below armed conflict — the very space REMIT had tried to exploit.

In the foreword, in language destined to be public someday, the draft said:

“In an era when cyberspace underpins every aspect of national power, U.S. military operations in this domain must be agile, disciplined, and grounded in law and enduring principle. This publication reflects lessons learned from years of operations and the evolving threat landscape. It is not a checklist. It is a framework for thinking and acting with speed, judgment, and responsibility.”

Elena didn’t put her name on that page. Doctrine authors rarely did. That wasn’t the point.

But when Harrison forwarded the draft to the Joint Staff with a cover memo that read, “Product of LTCOL Martinez and the Joint Working Group; strongly endorsed,” she let herself smile.

Being silent in that first briefing had been a choice. So was speaking now — not to win an argument, but to give the next person in a crisis something better to lean on than panic and guesswork.

 

Part Three

Capitol Hill smelled like polished wood, old carpet, and coffee that had been sitting on warming plates since 0700.

It was a different kind of battlefield, one where rank pins meant less than party affiliations and the people asking questions were elected, not selected.

“Lieutenant Colonel Martinez,” the staffer whispered, touching her elbow as they waited outside the hearing room. “You’ll be sitting on the second panel after General Harrison. Your written statement has been distributed to all members. Remember: speak plainly.”

She almost laughed. She’d spent the last decade fighting the urge to bury ideas in jargon. Now here she was, about to explain cyberspace operations to representatives whose last meaningful interaction with computers might have been supervising interns.

The hearing title was bland:

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
HEARING ON “MODERNIZING CYBER WARFARE DOCTRINE”

The subtext, as always, was not.

A string of recent incidents—REMIT at the port, a suspicious outage at a Midwestern power substation, a run of disinformation campaigns that had torn through social media—had finally pushed Congress to ask the question the military had been wrestling with quietly for years: What exactly are you doing in cyberspace, and why should we give you more money for it?

Harrison handled the first wave.

He spoke in careful, measured terms about the threat landscape, actual operations, and the need for updated doctrine. He fielded pointed questions about civil liberties and international law with the patience of a man who’d prepped with lawyers and slept badly for a week.

“General,” a congresswoman from California asked, “what assurances do we have that offensive cyber operations won’t be used without clear oversight? We’ve learned from our history in other domains that power creeps if left unchecked.”

“That’s precisely why doctrine like JP 3-12 exists,” Harrison replied. “It codifies who can authorize what, under which circumstances, and what legal frameworks apply. It’s not a blank check; it’s a brake and a steering wheel.”

When it was Elena’s turn, she adjusted the microphone, smoothed her uniform, and looked out at the semicircle of faces.

“Lieutenant Colonel, you wrote the manual, correct?” the Chair asked.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I led the team that developed the current version of Joint Publication 3-12 in 2018 and the working group that drafted the proposed updates.”

A murmur ran through the room. The staffers’ briefing packets had included that fact, but hearing it out loud made it real. A junior officer, in congressional terms, sitting alone at the witness table, claiming authorship of something that sounded intimidatingly official.

“Walk us through,” the Chair said, “in English, please, what doctrine means in this context.”

She did.

“Doctrine,” she said, “isn’t law. It doesn’t create authorities out of thin air. What it does is take the authorities you, as Congress, have given the Executive Branch—through statutes, authorizations for use of military force, appropriations—and structure how the military uses them. It’s how we translate broad guidance into daily decision-making.”

“So when a commander wants to, say, take down a foreign bot network?” another member asked.

“He doesn’t—or shouldn’t—wake up and decide that on his own,” she said. “He looks at doctrine, at standing orders, at the legal guidance from his staff. Doctrine tells him: this kind of action at this scale requires this level of approval. It also reminds him to ask: is this proportional? Could it unintentionally affect civilian systems? Does State need a say because of diplomatic implications?”

One representative frowned. “Your critics say it slows things down too much.”

“Sometimes it does,” she said. “Sometimes that’s a feature, not a bug. Fast isn’t always better. In cyberspace, one line of code can have cascading effects across borders. We need mechanisms to pause and think before we cross thresholds.”

“And yet,” the California congresswoman said, “we saw in the port incident that slow approvals can cost us economically. How do you square that?”

“By being more precise,” Elena said. “The doctrine we’re proposing clarifies when certain actions are inherently defensive—like helping an American port restore its systems—and can be delegated and executed quickly. It also clarifies when actions start to look like the use of force under international law and thus need higher-level approval. The ambiguity in the old version made everyone nervous. They over-interpreted caution.”

“What about gray zones?” a younger representative asked, leaning forward. “These attacks that aren’t quite war, aren’t quite crime, but definitely aren’t nothing?”

She nodded. “That’s one of the major areas we’re updating. In 2018 we knew about gray-zone operations, but they’ve exploded since. Our draft treats persistent adversary activity against our infrastructure and information space as part of a continuous competition, not just as anomalies. It gives us options short of ‘do nothing’ or ‘escalate to armed conflict.’ That includes being more transparent with the American public when we can.”

“Transparent,” an older representative repeated skeptically. “In classified operations?”

“Transparent about patterns, not sources and methods,” she said. “We can say, for example, that a foreign adversary is consistently probing our hospitals’ networks, without saying exactly how we know that. The public trust component in cyber is as critical as the technical piece. If people think every blackout is ‘the Chinese’ because they’ve seen too many movies, we have a problem.”

Laughter, this time, was genuine.

The questions went on. Some were sharp. Some betrayed a shaky grasp of the basics. Some were clearly grandstanding for C-SPAN.

But in the middle of it, one representative asked something that pierced straight through procedure.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” she said, “you’ve been in rooms where everyone outranked you. Men twice your age debated your work without knowing you were the one who did it. Now you’re here, sitting alone, answering for doctrine that carries the weight of national defense. Personally—not as an officer, but as a human being—what’s that like?”

The room shifted, slightly. Even staffers looked up.

Elena let out a slow breath.

“It’s… a lot,” she said, to a ripple of sympathetic laughter. “But I’ll say this: doctrine is never the work of one person. I may have been the lead, but JP 3-12 reflects hundreds of voices—operators, lawyers, intel analysts. My job has been to listen and synthesize, not to impose my opinions.”

She glanced around.

“As for being underestimated,” she added, “I’ve learned to use it. When people assume you’re just there to take notes, they talk more freely. You hear the real problems, not the rehearsed ones. That makes the doctrine better. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters more than who gets credit.”

The congresswoman tilted her head. “Do you ever wish your name were on the cover?”

“My name is on the classified distribution list,” Elena said dryly. “That’s enough.”

The hearing adjourned with the usual ritual: chairs scraping, conversations clustering, reporters shouting questions that went mostly unanswered.

In the hallway, Harrison caught up with her.

“You handled yourself well,” he said. “Better than some generals I’ve seen in that room.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said. She loosened her collar slightly. The AC had been on Arctic setting, but adrenaline was its own heat source.

“You might get some calls,” he added. “Universities, think tanks, maybe even a book agent.”

She grimaced. “Sir, with respect, I’d rather edit another doctrine pub than write a memoir.”

“Give it ten years,” he said. “You’ll want to correct everyone else’s version of your story.”

She smiled but said nothing.

That night, back in her small row house outside Baltimore, she kicked off her boots, fed her neighbor’s cat (on an eternal cat-sitting rotation that had somehow become formalized without paperwork), and collapsed onto the couch.

Her phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

She almost ignored it. Then muscle memory kicked in; unknown numbers sometimes meant bad news. She answered.

“This is Martinez.”

“Lieutenant Colonel, this is Sarah Williams,” the voice said. “Sorry to call you on your personal line.”

“Colonel,” she said, sitting up a little. “No problem. Everything okay?”

“More than okay,” Williams said. “I just… wanted to say thank you. For today. For the doctrine. For reminding a bunch of us old warhorses that thinking deeply isn’t the enemy of acting quickly.”

Elena exhaled slowly. “Thank you, ma’am. That means a lot.”

“One more thing,” Williams added. “I’ve got a young captain on my staff. Bright, quiet, gets steamrolled in meetings. She watched the hearing on DoD broadcast. Told me, ‘I didn’t know we could do that.’”

“Do what?”

“Sit in a room full of stars and not apologize for knowing what we know,” Williams said. “You gave her… a model. Whether you wanted to or not.”

After they hung up, Elena sat in the half-dark with the cat purring at her ankle and thought about that captain.

She thought about herself ten years earlier, an exhausted major in a SCIF, crafting slides for other people’s briefings, biting her tongue because she’d been told it was “career-limiting” to correct a colonel in public.

Then she went to her desk, pulled out a legal pad, and started drafting something new—not a doctrinal publication, not a briefing.

A one-page guide.

Not classified.

For junior officers who found themselves in rooms where they were both the least and the most experienced.

She titled it:

“On Being the Quietest Subject Matter Expert in the Room.”

 

Part Four

The promotion orders came on an unremarkable Tuesday, buried in a daily batch of admin emails.

SUBJECT: OFFICER PROMOTION – COL MARTINEZ, ELENA L.

She stared at the line for a long second, then opened the attachment.

Effective upon Senate confirmation, the President has nominated you for promotion to the rank of Colonel, United States Army.

“About time,” Sophie texted when Elena sent her a screenshot. “So when do we get to start calling you ‘Colonel Manual’?”

“Never,” Elena replied. “Not if you want me to keep answering your calls.”

In the small ceremony a month later, held in a modest auditorium at Fort Meade, Harrison pinned the silver eagle on her chest while her parents watched from the second row, her mother dabbing at her eyes with a napkin she insisted was “just from the AC.”

“You know,” her father said afterward, hugging her carefully around the edges of her uniform, “when you told me you were going into cyber, I had no idea what that meant. I still don’t. But I know this: your grandmother used to say, ‘The most important person in the room is usually the one who did the homework.’ You did the homework.”

Elena blinked against a sudden sting in her eyes. “I had good teachers,” she said.

Doctrine wasn’t glamorous. Most officers wanted commands, not commas. But in the years that followed, JP 3-12’s updated edition quietly shaped everything from how joint task forces requested effects during crises to how midlevel commanders thought about cyber alongside artillery and air support.

It also shaped careers in ways more personal than Elena had anticipated.

One afternoon, at a joint exercise in Germany, she sat in the back of a darkened operations center watching a brigade staff stumble their way through a simulated cyber incident layered onto their field problem.

The young captain on the cyber cell—probably the same rank she’d been when she wrote her first doctrine annex—was being ignored by a red-faced infantry colonel who kept insisting, “Just turn it off and back on again,” every time someone mentioned a compromised network.

The captain shot Elena a desperate look.

She stayed silent.

Let’s see, she thought.

Sure enough, the brigade’s operations officer, a major with salt-and-pepper hair and the permanent squint of someone used to squinting at maps in the rain, finally said, “Sir, with respect, JP 3-12 says we should consider this part of the enemy’s shaping operations. If we ignore it, we’re fighting at half power.”

The colonel glared. “You read the manual?”

“Yes, sir,” the major said. “Captain Chang here actually briefed us on it last month.”

Slowly, grudgingly, the colonel turned to the captain. “All right, Captain. What does the manual say we do?”

The captain’s back straightened. Her voice was steady.

“Sir, doctrine gives us three options in this scenario…”

As she spoke—outlining a course of action that blended defensive measures with a request for support from higher headquarters, using the exact language Elena remembered drafting on a long-ago night—Elena felt something ease inside her.

This, she thought, was the point.

Not that people knew her name.

That they knew what to do.

Later, in the chow tent, the captain approached her, tray in hand, eyes wide.

“Ma’am, I just wanted to say—”

“You did well,” Elena cut in.

“I froze at first,” the captain admitted. “Then I remembered your one-pager.”

Elena raised an eyebrow. “My what?”

“That… guide?” the captain said. “The one that’s been circulating on the mentoring forums? About being the quiet expert?”

Elena nearly choked on her coffee.

“Circulating,” she repeated.

“Yeah,” the captain said earnestly. “Everybody shares it. You wrote it, right?”

Elena thought back to that night with the cat and the legal pad. She’d emailed the finished page to three people: Sophie, Naomi at the foundation, and a major she mentored at Meade. Apparently, the Army’s informal networks had done the rest.

“I did,” she said.

“It helped,” the captain said. “A lot.”

After the exercise, on the flight back, Elena opened her laptop and pulled up the file.

On Being the Quietest Subject Matter Expert in the Room

Know your stuff. Silence without competence is just absence.
Listen first. People will tell you how they think the world works before you decide how to correct them.
Ask questions that reveal assumptions. “When you say ‘doctrine says,’ what line are you talking about?”
Save your capital. Speak when it moves the ball, not just to prove you’re there.
Don’t confuse being invited to the table with being obligated to eat what’s served.
When you do speak, be precise. Vague fear is easy to dismiss. Clear problems demand answers.
Remember that being underestimated is not an insult if you can turn it into an advantage—for the mission, not your ego.

She smiled. It wasn’t doctrine, but it was its own kind of manual.

The foundation grew alongside her career.

As cyber incidents became more visible to the public—hospitals locked up, pipelines snarled, city IT departments reduced to pen and paper—Margaret Evans’s name started appearing not just on skyscrapers, but in op-eds that said things like, “Thanks to a grant from the Evans Foundation, small-town school districts can now teach basic cybersecurity hygiene.”

Elena gave a keynote at one of the foundation’s conferences once, reluctantly, at Sophie’s insistence.

“Come on,” Sophie had said. “You can talk to generals. You can talk to a room full of teachers and students.”

She talked about doctrine—because she didn’t know how to talk about anything else—and about how the same principles that made an army function under pressure applied to cities and schools facing their own, smaller-scale wars in cyberspace.

“Know what you’re protecting,” she said. “Know what you’re willing to risk. Know who needs to be in the room when you make decisions. That’s doctrine, whether you call it that or not.”

Afterwards, a high school principal came up to her.

“We’re never going to have a cyber command,” he said. “We have one IT guy and some old Chromebooks. But the way you talked about frameworks—that helps. Thank you.”

Her world had stretched.

From a SCIF in the Pentagon to a classroom in Cleveland.

From crafting strike authorities to helping a school district recover from a ransomware attack by sending in a team from the foundation’s outreach program.

The stakes were different. The principle was the same.

Know your domain.

Write it down.

Teach people how to use it.

On a cool October evening, years after that first briefing where she’d sat in the corner and let men critiquing her work hang themselves on their misunderstandings, she found herself back in the Pentagon, walking the same corridor to the same third-floor conference room.

This time, the nameplate outside the door read:

CYBER DOCTRINE REVIEW — ANNUAL

Inside, the table was ringed with new faces. Some she recognized from the working group. Some were younger than JP 3-12 itself.

Harrison wasn’t at the head of the table anymore. He’d retired the year before, moving to a cabin in Colorado where, rumor had it, he still woke up at 0500 and did battle with trout instead of taskers.

In his place sat a three-star she didn’t know well.

“Colonel Martinez,” he said, standing as she entered. “Thanks for joining us. Please, sit up front.”

She took a seat—not at the head, not in the corner. Somewhere she could see everyone’s faces.

On the screen at the front of the room, the first slide showed a timeline.

2018: JP 3-12 (Original)
2024: JP 3-12 (Revision)
2029: JP 3-12 (Review)

“We’re here to start the next cycle,” the general said. “Colonel, you’ve done this dance before. We’d like your perspective as we go into another period of reassessment. The world’s changed again.”

Of course it had. Quantum threats were no longer theoretical. AI-generated disinformation had turned entire elections into noise. Kids who’d grown up on encrypted messaging apps were now lieutenants expecting their radios to do things that made old sergeants’ heads hurt.

Elena opened her notebook.

She listened.

Air Force colonel: “Our autonomous systems are making local decisions faster than our kill chains can keep up. Doctrine doesn’t address who owns that accountability yet.”

Navy captain: “We’re seeing cyber effects underwater now. Unmanned systems can be ghosted if we’re not careful. JP 3-12 barely mentions undersea cables, let alone autonomous subs.”

Space Force major: “The line between cyber and space is blurrier every day. Are our satellites part of your domain or ours? The doctrine says ‘joint,’ but in practice…”

She took notes.

In the back of her mind, she could hear Margaret’s voice, wry and relentless:

Write it down, Elenita. If you don’t, someone else will, and they’ll get it wrong.

The general finished his opening remarks.

“Before we get lost in the weeds,” he said, “I want to note something. Whatever we decide in this room will shape how lieutenants we have not yet commissioned will fight wars in a domain we are still learning to define. That’s the weight of what we’re doing.”

He turned to Elena.

“Colonel,” he said. “Last time you stayed silent until someone forced the room to see you. This time, I’d ask you to start us off.”

She looked around the table.

Faces turned toward her, expectant. Not dismissive. Not surprised.

“We’re not starting from scratch,” she said. “Doctrine is a living thing. It grows, it sheds, it scars. The principles we wrote down in 2018—about proportionality, authorities, the need for coordination—still hold. But the environment has changed. Our people have changed. Our adversaries have changed faster.”

She clicked to a slide she’d prepared, one that had no classification marks, just three words.

PEOPLE
PROCESS
PRINCIPLES

“If we make this about technology,” she said, “we will always be behind. If we make it about people using processes guided by principles, we have a chance. So let’s talk about where our people are confused, where our processes are brittle, and which principles we’ve neglected.”

In the corner of the room, a young major in a uniform that still had crease lines sat with a notebook, eyes wide, pen poised. Someone would probably assume she was there to take notes.

Elena met her gaze and gave her the smallest nod.

You belong here, that nod said.

Just wait.

Listen.

Then speak when it counts.

Outside, traffic flowed around the Pentagon in its endless circle, headlights flickering like data packets moving along an old, familiar route.

Inside, under fluorescent lights and the weight of history and the hum of air handlers, a woman who had once been underestimated in the same room now led the conversation about the future of a domain nobody had a map for when she’d first put on the uniform.

She stayed silent when it helped her understand. She spoke when it helped others act.

And every time someone invoked “the manual,” whether they realized it or not, they were invoking the work of a person who had chosen, over and over, to let the mission matter more than her ego.

She’d written the manual.

Now she was rewriting what it meant to be the kind of officer who could.

THE END!

Disclaimer: Our stories are inspired by real-life events but are carefully rewritten for entertainment. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidental.