I never agreed that the network's sole purpose should be on countering extremists. That would be as resource intensive as developing a unit that is only a one trick pony based on a particular adversary, instead of developing a capability that can be leveraged against a number of potential adversaries, and in some cases used during peace to pursue objectives. The concept leveraging a friendly network can be used to accomplish much more than chasing terrorists, as INTERPOL has demonstrated for decades now.

Clearly in many countries the immediate threat and common interest is extremism (excuse the term for now), but that also provides opportunities to develop relationships, understanding, and interoperability across a spectrum of government agencies and non government organizations that can be leveraged in many ways to pursue common interests well beyond CT/CVE. Also agree we need to move away from calling it the SOF network, and just call it the friendly network. We may or may not be the supported node in that network, and it certainly requires more than SOF to be effective. I think the network approach SOCOM took is sound and needs to continue, but it we should be our own worst critics and identify what has worked, what hasn't, how the network should evolve, and develop a strategic logic that underlies the concept that integrates the network's nodes (SOF or not).