Dr. Hriar Cabayan, also known as “Doc” by nearly everyone who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, never imagined the radical turn his career would take on that fateful morning of September 11, 2001.
When the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the west wall of the Pentagon, everything changed in an instant—not only for millions in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., the targets of the three attacks, but for the United States and the world. Dr. Cabayan was among those working on the Pentagon premises—far enough from the crash site to be safe, but close enough to directly experience the aftermath.
Not only had Dr. Cabayan dodged this unfathomable act of evil, but he was staggered as to how the perpetrators pulled off such a deliberate and deadly series of mass murders. With a doctorate in physics and 20 years’ experience working on the effects of nuclear weapons, strategic defense initiatives, and energy programs, Dr. Cabayan had been recruited by the Joint Chiefs several years before 9/11. Ironically, the very purpose of the assignment was addressing the emergent challenge of terrorism coming out of Afghanistan.
Dr. Cabayan agreed to share his improbable transformation from a “hard science guy” to the ultimate humanist in service to his adopted country, the United States. In his role as Science Advisor at Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabayan orchestrated a team of as many as several hundred specialists representing an array of fields. Under his direction, these experts worked in concert to solve one of the biggest challenges in U.S. military history: understanding the mind, motivations, culture, and behaviors of terrorists and terrorist groups, and the civilians caught in their grip. In appreciation of his 20 years of service, Cabayan received the Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the Office of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2007 and again in 2019.
Born in Damascus, Syria, Dr. Cabayan moved with his family to Beirut and completed his undergraduate degree at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He left for the U.S. to earn his doctorate in physics from the University of Illinois. After graduating, he taught mathematical physics for four years at New York University’s renowned Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and at McGill University.
In 1977, Dr. Cabayan joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) outside Oakland, California. Twenty years later, in 1997, he relocated from California to Arlington, Virginia to work for the Joint Chiefs. He returned to LLNL as a Visiting Scientist in 2019 and retired in 2020. He continues to work on special projects: writing papers, analyses, and presentations for professional and civilian audiences, sharing his unique insights on strategic defense around the world, including the Republic of Armenia.
The whole upheaval with 9/11 taught me that I had to learn who it is I am fighting. I realized that I was going down the wrong path just pushing hardware.
Q: It’s an honor to learn about your illustrious career, especially your time at the U.S. Department of Defense. Let’s start at the beginning. As a hardcore civilian scientist, how did you wind up at the Pentagon?
A: It’s a question I am asked often. To try to put it simply, it was the late 1990s; the Cold War had ended, the world was relatively quiet, and life was good. I was working at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California and very focused on my work in nuclear physics. Some of that work involved working remotely for the Pentagon on the physical side of strategic defense, mainly the technology of weapons. Then, after 20 years, a contact of mine at the Joint Staff mentioned that they could use a science guy and would I be interested. Unlike my position at Livermore, which was with civilian scientists, this new opportunity was on the military side. This is where intelligence, defense policy, and operations fell under the same command. This appealed to me because in operations things move much faster than in the science lab. I decided the time was right to try something new. My assignment was only for two years and was focused on terrorism, which, during the Clinton years, was already on our radar screen. However, I was covering it purely from the science and technology side. Then 9/11 happened. The two years turned to 20 and my career went in a whole new direction.
Q: Tell us about your experience on September 11th when Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
A: That morning, I was in the Pentagon. Fortunately, my side of the structure wasn’t hit like the other side. All the same, I was traumatized by the magnitude of the destruction and death toll. However, I was also in deep shock. I had spent the past two years of my career trying to get Osama Bin Laden and his network in Afghanistan. Then, out of nowhere, he drops a bomb on my head! My main thought was, ‘Hey, how did we fail so badly?’ And honestly, I don’t know what I did for several days after that. I recall we couldn’t drive our cars, because the Pentagon parking lot was hit. How I got home, what I did after, I don’t remember—the trauma must have blocked it out.
Q: What changed for you and your Joint Staff colleagues post 9/11?
A: When I returned to the office, I was told to drop what I was doing and focus only on countering terrorism. It was my responsibility to work the terrorist threats coming out of Afghanistan. We were now under the Bush administration and in the middle of all this, the war on Iraq started. Then came the insurgency.
Remember, I was coming from the physical sciences. In those years, pretty much everything was rooted in technology. I thought that with technology, we could go and kill these guys. So, I put a large network together. But it was still hardware [weapons] oriented; the thinking in the Pentagon was that we were going to solve the terrorism problem with technology. Then I met an old friend of mine who had become a general. He had just returned from Baghdad. I went to meet him right away. I asked him what he needed from us. He looked at me and said, “Doc, I’ve got all the hardware I need, but I have no idea what’s happening on the ground.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, I was still clinging to the physical side of things. Slowly, it began to dawn on me. We’re going about this in the wrong way.
Dealing with terrorism was not something you could learn in the universities at the time. Over time I learned that, with counterterrorism, you need a network of your own to unlock what’s going on in the mind of a terrorist. Not just the person but the group. By this I mean a network of anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists, in addition to the physicists, neuroscientists, and other disciplines. That’s what it means to have a multidisciplinary approach. It reminded me of an ancient Greek saying that ‘a hedgehog knows one big thing, but a fox knows many things.’ That’s when I realized I had to become a fox.
Q: How did you make the shift from scientist to generalist?
A: First, I called in a very well-known anthropologist. She spent several hours trying to explain to me that to do counterinsurgency, you must understand the people. That was the pivot point in my career. Fortunately, it was easy for me to assemble networks, in large part, because the Joint Chiefs were desperate for answers, as so much was at stake. I worked very hard getting up to speed. Over time, I would know many, many things, but none of them to any great depth. For that, I had to rely on the best experts out there. They came from various places, but they set up a network very quickly, as the urgency could not withstand the slow-moving bureaucracy involved in hiring. I interface with the network to this day.
Q: Did the multidisciplinary approach work out as a counter-insurgency strategy?
A: Before I answer that, let me also say that, by necessity, I had to make sure that whatever we were producing was correct. If you do an assessment and at the end somebody dies because it was wrong, that is a heavy burden. I had to make sure that we produced the absolute very best advisory services. Even though I read up on everything, I could never truly catch up. Let’s say it was on a sociological assessment of ISIS, but there were political aspects, cognitive aspects, issues of culture and geography. For that, I needed the specialists to help put the puzzle pieces together. So yes, the multidisciplinary approach was essential.
At the same time, I informed the folks at the Joint Staff that if they wanted a one hundred percent correct answer, they should ask someone else. You see, I concluded that, in cases like this, you had to speak truth to power, admitting that nothing was guaranteed. When there is so much uncertainty in the world, you must live with uncertainty.
Q: What lessons can you share about making such tough decisions?
A: Foremost is this: Never go to a meeting where key decisions are being made and impose your own views. I always entered the room with a complete open mind and no ego. I learned to listen, listen, listen. To everybody. I can give you an example. This one general told me he was worried that a particular country was vulnerable to instability. He wanted to know if his concerns were valid. I asked him to give me some time to give him an answer. This question was so critical that I brought in a large number of people who knew the country, its social networks and such. Finally, after several months of intense work, they gave me their consensus: It was not going to happen.
I reported back to the general and could sense that on some level he wanted us to prove his instincts right, but of course, he was very relieved by the opposite verdict. The lesson here? Never tell your superiors only what they want to hear. That is the kiss of death for anyone who wants a good position in the government. You are on the path to disaster if you are not strong enough to speak truth to power. Whether you are on the civilian side or the military side, you must tell it to them straight. And I can say now that, eight years later, what I told the general has stood the test of time.
Q: Though you said technology was not the answer to fighting insurgents, what about AI? Does that change the game?
A: Well, I am no AI expert. When I went to school, we used the computer to do our own calculations. There is lots of hype about AI and we need to be very careful. But those who say AI is not useful or reliable are also wrong. AI has many potential benefits. Recently, it proved to be beneficial in following the Azeri disinformation campaign against Armenia. I wanted to know how the Armenian government was responding to the 24/7 media assaults but could not get too far. Then I teamed up with several students at Ohio State University, led by a brilliant Armenian student. They devised a resilience monitoring system for Armenia, using AI technology. I was extremely impressed. Nevertheless, for strategic defense, I consider AI as something only to add to the multi-disciplinary mix, not replace it.
Q: How did your position expand your worldview and enlighten you to how power works behind the headlines?
A: When I started out, I was quite naive. I had a rather limited knowledge base of what’s going on globally. The whole upheaval with 9/11 taught me that I had to learn who it is I am fighting against. I realized that I was going down the wrong path just pushing hardware. Time was of the essence. There were soldiers killed every day in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we didn’t know how to stop it. We didn’t understand the insurgency. The U.S. would send down bombs and all of that, but it made no difference. The insurgents kept fighting. This new reality caused a huge shift in my thinking.
Q: If you were to advise a young person on the benefits of serving in government, what personal characteristics should they possess to succeed?
A: Some people want to go corporate and make lots of money in the private sector. Others want to pursue technology development. I say more power to them. But if you want to serve your country, it starts with some introspection. What are you good at? Are you a fox or a hedgehog? If you’re a hedgehog, then there are many government positions that align well with doing one big thing well. You can go into the Department of Defense and develop the next best aircraft or whatever. You can go into the State Department and develop the next strategy to deal with a foreign country. Or, if you are more of a fox and you don’t want to just do one thing day in and day out, but you’re good at a variety of things, there are opportunities that require that flexibility. You don’t have to be a master in everything.
In my case, I started out as a hedgehog and was forced to become a fox. Here I am 20 years later, and I haven’t looked back.
