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Impact Initiatives, Training & Education, Thought Leadership
Motive International
ATLAS LION TABLETOP EXERCISE (TTX)
ATLAS LION TABLETOP EXERCISE (TTX)
Programs, Thought Leadership
Guest User
Unlocking the Power of Narratives: Outputs from ...

Motive International hosted strategists, practitioners, software engineers, and researchers at the University of Mississippi's National Center for Narrative Intelligence for a Narrative Constructs in Joint Operations working group, a collaborative forum focused on examining the role of narrative as a strategic tool in modern military and information operations.  

Unlocking the Power of Narratives: Outputs from the Narrative Constructs In Joint Operations Working Group
Impact Initiatives, Thought Leadership
Salamah Magnuson, Morgan Keay & Kimberly Metcalf
Countering Hybrid Warfare: Mapping Social ...
Training & Education
Motive International
Motive Leads in Virtual Training & ...

Responding rapidly to DoD's need for remote training to maintain force readiness, our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and tech innovators adapted Motive’s signature courses to a fully virtual format. Since April, we’ve executed multiple iterations of highly-interactive online courses to soldiers and Marines working from home, quarantined on deployment, or constrained to virtual battle assemblies and drills. Find out more and see if these courses are right for your mission!

Motive Leads in Virtual Training & Education in the COVID-19 Era
Impact Initiatives, Thought Leadership, Training & Education
Motive International
A Pathway to Systemic Stability: ...

The current mass exodus of Venezuelans fleeing violence, economic collapse, and political instability in their home country is the largest migratory movement in Latin American history. Desperate to identify more effective and holistic policy and programmatic options to address the Venezuelan Migrant crisis, stakeholders in the region have expressed a need for a systems-level analysis to inform better strategies. This need inspired our team to conduct desk-based and in-country research relying on the rigorous and participatory Transforming Crisis Systems (TCS) approach.

A Pathway to Systemic Stability: Applying Motive’s Transforming Crisis Systems (TCS) to Colombia’s Venezuelan Migrant Crisis 

Training & Education

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ATLAS LION TABLETOP EXERCISE (TTX)

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Program Highlight: ATLAS LION TTX

On 10-11 JUNE 2025, Motive delivered a first-of-its-kind, AI-powered HQ certification tabletop exercise (TTX) for the 91st CA BN (SO)(A). The TTX, called Atlas Lion, fulfilled an Army requirement to certify a unit on highly nuanced critical tasks - but with greater rigor and at a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional exercise. This was possible thanks to Motive’s innovative TTX model, which leverages advanced technology, domain expertise, and exercise best practices in truly novel ways. This highly scalable, customizable model is ideal for single MOS or cross-functional elements seeking to harness the power of Next Generation TTXs for training or problem-solving.

Highlights

Scenario Complexity: Motive tuned AI “context frames” to exercise objectives and set parameters to adapt the scenario in response to training audience (TA) moves. The result? Atlas Lion’s LSCO scenario featured limitless complexity but without the incoherence or chaos of a typical exercise.

Scenario Dynamism: We used GenAI to produce multimedia injects, including simulated agentic bot characters, to create an immersive training environment and support high-quality dynamic scripting.

Rigorous Analytics: Custom AI workflows took in 1000x the data volume compared to a typical human Observer Controller (OC), analyzed TA actions against a custom assessment rubric, and generated robust analytics reports on task proficiency, risk level, and other actionable insights.

Minimal Manpower: Motive TTXs require zero dedicated OCs, minimal support from the sponsor unit, and rely on a lean Motive delivery team capable of running the exercise while also simulating dozens of characters.

Integration with Army Tools: Atlas Lion ran on commercial systems in parallel to Government networks, enabling the use of advanced tech and access to NIPR software and systems by the TA. This optimized for ease, cost, security, and realism.

In addition to agentic AI characters, Atlas Lion featured live role players like Motive SME & former real-world SOTF CDR, COL (ret) John Maraia (above, standing) to ensure realism & responsiveness.

Typical military exercises rely on “go/no-go” scoring by human OCs limited by what they see or hear. Atlas Lion leveraged technology to ingest audio, visual, text, and graphic data from the TA, and AI + human SMEs to assign and adjudicate scores based on 1000s of data points for a far more rigorous and accurate assessment.

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Motive’s tabletop exercise on investment security in the Philippines shows that Economic Security is National Security

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Motive’s tabletop exercise on investment security in the Philippines shows that Economic Security is National Security

The PHL SIMEX validated that the Philippine Government's new FDI screening regime and policy position are sufficient to block high-stakes investments, such as the Chinese transaction in the national power grid. The exercise also highlighted key challenges, revealing that the IIPCC needs to improve interagency coordination, streamline bureaucratic procedures, and build capacity in mitigation strategy and negotiation tactics.

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Motive Civ-Mil Team Snags Silver Medal in Global Impactathon

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Motive Civ-Mil Team Snags Silver Medal in Global Impactathon

Participating alongside 100+ global social entrepreneurs and changemakers, Motive formed a civilian-military team and participated in a 2-day virtual Impactathon August 21-22, 2020, taking second place among 25 teams for the most innovative approach to addressing extreme poverty.

Hosted by the NGOs Innov8Social and Join the Journey, the Impactathon challenged teams of participants to produce a social enterprise business model in less than 48 hours that could contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goal #1 to end poverty in all forms by 2030.

Custom TCS Workshop Informs Cross-Sector Planning to Address Real-World Conflict

Custom TCS Workshop Informs Cross-Sector Planning to Address Real-World Conflict

“Because of COVID, we shifted from in-person course delivery to Motive’s pandemic-proven all-virtual (online) course format,” Motive’s CEO, Morgan Keay explained. “But more importantly, when we learned about the unit’s urgent tasking to examine a particular evolving conflict, we proposed building a custom real-world scenario into the event at no additional cost. The idea was to maximize the unit’s investment in training and optimize impact by turning the final day of TCS into an action-oriented analytic and planning workshop. To co-facilitate alongside our SME instructors, we invited three world-leading academic and policy experts in the topic the unit had been directed to tackle.”

Motive Leads in Virtual Training & Education in the COVID-19 Era

Motive Leads in Virtual Training & Education in the COVID-19 Era

Responding rapidly to DoD's need for remote training to maintain force readiness, our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and tech innovators adapted Motive’s signature courses to a fully virtual format. Since April, we’ve executed multiple iterations of highly-interactive online courses to soldiers and Marines working from home, quarantined on deployment, or constrained to virtual battle assemblies and drills. Find out more and see if these courses are right for your mission!

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A Pathway to Systemic Stability: Applying Motive’s Transforming Crisis Systems (TCS) to Colombia’s Venezuelan Migrant Crisis 

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A Pathway to Systemic Stability: Applying Motive’s Transforming Crisis Systems (TCS) to Colombia’s Venezuelan Migrant Crisis 

The current mass exodus of Venezuelans fleeing violence, economic collapse, and political instability in their home country is the largest migratory movement in Latin American history. Desperate to identify more effective and holistic policy and programmatic options to address the Venezuelan Migrant crisis, stakeholders in the region have expressed a need for a systems-level analysis to inform better strategies. This need inspired our team to conduct desk-based and in-country research relying on the rigorous and participatory Transforming Crisis Systems (TCS) approach.

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Dismantling Afghanistan's Opium Empire: How the heroin-rich Taliban could become the world's most ironic counter-narcotics champion

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Dismantling Afghanistan's Opium Empire: How the heroin-rich Taliban could become the world's most ironic counter-narcotics champion

Since the toppling of their regime in 2001, the Taliban have demanded recognition from Kabul as a legitimate political actor in a country where they enjoy substantial support among segments of the population, not least for for the economic and infrastructural systems they helped cultivate and on which nearly all rural Afghans depend. The Taliban have a near monopoly on a global commodity representing a $4 billion dollar a year industry that necessitates the sustainment of elaborate supply chains: opium. But a deeper conflict analysis foretells a future in which the Taliban could soon be incentivized not only to walk away from its lucrative drug empire but become an ardent counter-narcotics partner to the Kabul government and its international backers.

A Tool for Guiding By, With and Through in Syria and Everywhere: A Case for Motive’s SCAT

A Tool for Guiding By, With and Through in Syria and Everywhere: A Case for Motive’s SCAT

Overcoming a legacy of broken pledges is just one of many hurdles in any future journey towards conceiving, authorizing, resourcing then carefully cultivating BW&T partnerships with any future partner. Yet instead of developing processes to ensure these myriad challenges are overcome, gut instinct and partisan politics still dominate U.S. decision-making on partnered operations, while informed analytic approaches to assess the risks, rewards, and requirements for successful BW&T are absent. Though there is no avoiding realpolitik, history makes a compelling demand for better tools to answer the critical questions of with whom, why, how and when to invest (or divest) from BW&T operations. One possible option: Motive International’s Social Contract Assessment Tool (SCAT).

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Social Contracts on NATO’s Front Line: Motive’s SCAT Helps Reveal Policy Dilemmas and Practical Opportunities

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Social Contracts on NATO’s Front Line: Motive’s SCAT Helps Reveal Policy Dilemmas and Practical Opportunities

In April and May of 2019, a team of Motive International experts composed of Dr. Salamah Magnuson, Morgan Keay and Kimberly Metcalf conducted an investigation of societal dynamics in Estonia through in-country field research focused on social cohesion and national security. The purpose of this initiative was to apply Motive’s Social Contract Assessment Tool (SCAT), a framework designed to identify and characterize social institutions and the sources of legitimacy that underpin them in transitioning or threatened societies in order to inform policies, plans and activities to mitigate threats and promote stability. 

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