GCKN conducts research in support of U.S. Army information requirements as well as areas of operation and interest. Research requests come from both the institutional and the operational Army and are centered on issues of instability, vulnerability, and exploitability connected to the sociocultural layer of the OE.
GCKN identified a set of 12 conditions in the operational environment (OE) that actors could exploit when competing with the United States and its partners. Understanding these OE conditions and how various actors may exploit them is critical for the U.S. Army to plan, organize, train, and equip the force for success in mitigating or countering potential challenges to U.S. interests.
GCKN social scientists developed the GCKN Analytic Methodology (GAM) based on select social science research approaches, augmented with choice Structured Analytic Techniques (SATs). The process occurs in phases, relying on open-source research, scholarly literature, and vetted subject matter experts (SMEs) in the topic of study. The methodology is a combination of multiple divergent and convergent data analysis procedures.