This is an excellent overview of JSOC from inception to today. I’m a lot more familiar with the “white” special forces parts of USSOCOM, but I’ve had professional contact with both (when I was a contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan and sold products/services to them), and have always been interested in as much open source material about the community as possible. Fundamentally, white special forces, JSOC-type direct action special operations, the IC, automation, and cyber are the five long term forms of military power, and well worth studying how they have evolved.

The book seems pretty accurate to me since the areas where I do have other information are pretty much in congruence with it. A lot of the details of the major actions are well documented elsewhere and agree. What really made this book great was a look into the jsoc command level and interservice interactions, as well as some of the personalities leading the units. There were a few of the newer elements of JSOC described which haven’t really been discussed elsewhere, although not in great detail — I am looking forward to more detailed accounts focusing on the computer and network exploitation and preparatory/clandestine formations, although those obviously will remain secret as long as operationally beneficial.

One of the big takeaways is that future conflicts probably could be fought by a JSOC of the future which focuses less on the extremely high end expensive capabilities and more on clandestine and commercial activities (along with tech, both signals and cyber) (which is the direction it has been undeniably loving; a lot of the high end capabilities are used only because they exist); in the long run this might be something an entirely private organization could create and operate. ( )

Many interesting facts but written in a disjoint way. Like reading a collection of index cards. ( )