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| Jason Bruzdzinski |
Analyzing Tough Problems
Jason Bruzdzinski
January 2004
Jason Bruzdzinski may be the only MITRE employee whose badge lanyard
says "U.S. Embassy"—in Chinese. It's a souvenir from three
tours of duty in Beijing serving as an Assistant Naval Attache.
It's also a nod toward one of his areas of expertise.
Bruzdzinski, a multidisciplinary systems engineer and political
scientist in the corporation's Center for Integrated Intelligence
Systems (CIIS), is an authority on Chinese security issues. He recently
presented a groundbreaking paper at a conference on the Chinese
People's Liberation Army, sponsored by the U.S. Army War College.
The paper examines an ancient concept of Chinese warfare called
shashoujian, which has recently become a major theme in
Chinese military writings.
Though he has always had a passion for international policy issues,
Bruzdzinski originally set his sights further north. The upstate
New York native studied Russian throughout college and intended
to make Eastern Europe the focus of his career. When the Soviet
Union collapsed toward the end of his undergraduate days, however,
he became a researcher on Asian issues at a non-profit foundation.
After holding increasingly responsible positions as an analyst on
the Asia-Pacific region, he served the U.S. House of Representatives'
Armed Services Committee, performing oversight on defense policy,
military strategy, and tactical intelligence issues. (During this
period, he also picked up a master's degree in national security
studies at Georgetown University and was commissioned as an officer
in the Naval Reserve.)
He joined MITRE in early 2000. Bruzdzinski admits that when he
first arrived he wasn't sure how he'd fit in, because he lacks the
traditional technical staffer's background in engineering. His concerns
were put to rest, however, as his broad experience in public policy
and security issues became an integral part of several MITRE programs.
Besides his work on China, Bruzdzinski specializes in helping the
government develop innovative ways to get hard-to-find information
from foreign sources.
Puzzling Out the Answers
"Being an analyst is like putting together puzzles," he says. "No
two challenges are the same. My job is to understand the specific
needs of the government, ask the right questions about what its
challenges are, and then help to find the answers. I bring together
teams from government, academia, and the private sector to address
these challenges, because the nature of the challenges is so complex.
Together we collect information to try to learn more about the nature
of the problem and define the issues, and then synthesize all of
that information, draw conclusions, and offer recommendations."
His paper on shashoujian grew out of an invitation to
speak at the War College conference. He chose shashoujian
(loosely translated as "assassin's mace") because its origins and
significance hadn't been fully grasped and understood by government
or academia.
"I couldn't rely on interviews with experts because there
weren't any," he says. "This is the first research effort
to comprehensively examine this concept." The paper is being
published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the War College
in 2004.
Coincidentally, as Bruzdzinski began his research, a MITRE team
of scientists was looking for someone to test its newly developed
foreign-language translation tools. Bruzdzinski—an admitted
"non-fluent" reader of Chinese—was the perfect candidate.
"These tools allowed me to conduct research on a very esoteric
topic in a foreign language. I was able to use the native Chinese
domain of the Internet to perform research. Without these tools
and the support of the MITRE scientists, I wouldn't have been able
to do it."
This kind of close interaction with domain experts also enables
the MITRE tool builders to make the machine translation tools more
useful. "This is important because most government personnel working
on Chinese issues aren't linguists, which presents a challenge,"
Bruzdzinski says. "These kinds of translation tools can help all
kinds of non-foreign language speakers, especially analysts, do
their work more efficiently and effectively."
Not only does Bruzdzinski believe that he "fits in" at MITRE, he
finds this to be the most satisfying phase of his career by far.
"I get a sense of fulfillment working here that I didn't get in
government or the private sector. The work is of great importance,
and it's an opportunity to really make a difference. I like serving
in the role of 'trusted advisor' to leaders within the U.S Government."
—by Alison Stern-Dunyak
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