A lot of lessons had been learned by the time I was involved in any deep thinking. I suspect the broad and deep aspect had been taken for granted up until OIF, because the previous generations had grown up marinated in Russia/USSR from day one at ROTC/Academy. My language for example, which has no national security relevance today.

Post cold war, it was whack a mole for a while, but eventually they realized who they really needed to focus on, and to be very deliberate about it.

I was rather surprised at the expense they went to to expose us to diversity of information, including symposiums where they flew in us and a variety of academics, government, and industry experts to remote locations to remove distractions. Not all of the speakers or background material was pro-military, or American, and none of them were retired colonels with a masters.

The caveat was that it focused on specific countries and regions. But they were shooting for broad and deep to the extent possible. In the context of this discussion (hobby level interest) I had assumed it didn't need to be stated that I'm not a career Phd academic in foreign affairs