A History of the Third Offset, 2014-2018

This report documents the history of the Third Offset from 2014 to2018. The Third Offset was a competitive strategy that sought to capitalize on the potential for certain technologies to offset the recent military advances of China and Russia. This history focuses on institutional efforts to effect change within the U.S. Department of Defense(DoD) and the key defense leaders who strove to bring that change to fruition. Over a four-year period starting in 2014, senior DoD leadersabove all Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work, who served in that role from mid-2014 to mid-2017developed working groups and agencies to push the ideas of the Third Offset. Their efforts were successful in that the 2018 National Defense Strategy embraced many of the fundamental tenets of technological advances and organizational changes developed by the Third Offset. In that sense, this history provides an example of how to effect organizational and process changes in large military institutions like DoD. This research should be of interest to policymakers, historians, and scholars with an interest in organizational change, the impact of emerging technologies, and strategic competition.