#Learning to Navigate the Ladder of Complexity

We've all heard that policy-makers and decision-makers don't have time, sometimes scheduling their days in tightly managed blocks to include bathroom breaks. To be an expert practitioner in AI, you must consider yourself to be the same — your time is valuable, and you need to use it efficiently. You do not need to know everything, just know how to quickly get the right information when you need it, and use that information to make decisions and take action.

Learning by Example: Fixing DoD PKI Certificate Trust

Let's take an infamous example - connecting to a Military or Government website with a personal device and getting a certificate error.

Here's my super accurate statistical distribution on what people do when they see this error.

My job is to get you to realize that you can always be a part of the "fix it" crew, and that this will differentiate you. And that it's never that hard to understand any problem anymore.¹

Let's dive in.

At this point you could do a few things - branch the conversation into a technical deep-dive on how PKI and certificate trust works, or you could just get the answer and move on. Both are valid, but the key is to be intentional about which one you choose. If you have 5 minutes and just want to fix the problem, skip the deep-dive and go straight to the solution. If you have more time and want to understand the underlying concepts for future problems, take the deep-dive. Let's do the former.

Now we have fixed the issue - no more cert authority invalid.

A Note on Security

Installing root CAs into your system trust store is a significant action — it tells your OS to trust any certificate that chains to that root. That's why you should only install DoD certs from the official .gov or .mil websites, not from third-party mirrors or links you receive via email.

The https://public.cyber.mil/pki-pke/tools-configuration-files/ portal is the official distribution point and the only source you should use.

Closing

The point of this post is not to fix your cert trust issues (although you should understand and fix them), but rather, take something you know nothing about, and use AI to learn with precision exactly what you need to fix it and move on. This type of decision-making ability is what makes you like a key policy-maker now, with an army of analysts at your disposal (AI). You don't need to know everything, you just need to know how to get the right information when you need it, and use that information to make decisions and take action.

If you found this useful or have questions, join the community or explore the blog for more practical guides for Servicemembers navigating technology.

Footnotes

1. Ok... maybe not any problem. But a lot of them. And the more you practice, the more problems you'll be able to solve with AI. ↩